Mary Todd Lincoln knew a lot of grief. Her mother
died when she was 6. She lost three of her four children and was sitting
beside her husband the night he was assassinated. When I picture her I see
a woman veiled, dressed in voluminous yards of black silk. Fate and history
have not been kind to Mary Lincoln. We’ve all seen the caricatures
and the T-shirts: “I’d have to be crazy to go back to
Springfield.” Everyone knows Mary Todd Lincoln was crazy.
Wasn’t she? Her oldest son, Robert, thought so, and in 1871 he
won a court battle to have her declared insane and committed to Bellevue, a
private sanitarium in Batavia, Ill. It is here we meet her in Barbara
Hambly’s new novel, The
Emancipator’s Wife. At 56, Mary was
sick, tired, addicted to opiates, and severely depressed — but she
still had her trademark spark of rebelliousness. Hambly uses this spark to
kindle the fires of Mary’s memory and take the reader back to
Mary’s childhood in Lexington, Ky. Mary Todd was what we have come to think of as the
typical Southern belle. There were plenty of picnics, parties, ball gowns,
and beaux. I have the impression that Hambly has taken a bit of her
character for Mary from that iconic daughter of the South Scarlett
O’Hara. Mary adored her father, a prominent politician and friend of
Henry Clay, but he was often gone from home, and she had an uneasy
relationship with her stepmother. But Mary had a fatal flaw in a girl her age: She was
smart. A voracious reader, she devoured books and newspapers. She was
keenly interested in politics in a time when such an interest wasn’t
considered ladylike. She paid attention to how people treated their slaves.
So while her friends of 17 and 18 were being married, Mary turned down
several suitors, was sent to boarding school, and at the age of 20 traveled
to live with her sister Elizabeth Edwards in Springfield, Ill. Those of us who live in Springfield will have fun
seeing our fair city portrayed through Mary’s eyes. Suffice it to say
that it wasn’t Lexington. But the new capital city had one thing her
hometown didn’t: a young lawyer named Abraham Lincoln. The courtship
was rocky, but Hambly has deftly drawn not just a loving marriage but also
a loving partnership. Mary was an active partner in fostering her
husband’s career at a time when most women were relegated the roles
of mother and social hostess. To Mr. Lincoln she was “Molly,”
or “Mother.” At 5-foot-2 she was, literally, his little woman. The narrative of the novel moves back and forth in
time, as memories do. Along the way we get the richness of history during
what is perhaps our country’s most crucial period. And though the
novel has the broad sweep of history, it is written from a personal point
of view. It succeeded in making me sympathetic to a woman who, at times,
was quite trying. It will be interesting to see whether other readers
agree, for The Emancipator’s Wife is the novel chosen by this year’s one-book campaign
sponsored by several area libraries. Hambly will be coming to Springfield
and will speak at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 16, at the Hoogland Center for the
Arts, 420 S. Sixth St., in Springfield. She will read from The Emancipator’s Wife,
answer questions, and autograph books. Reservations are not necessary for
this free program. Free reader’s guides are available at all
participating libraries. For more information, visit
www.lincolnlibrary.info.
This article appears in Nov 10-16, 2005.
