雙語·林肯傳 27

27

We must retrace our steps now, for I want to tell you of an amazing thing that happened shortly before the fall of Richmond—an incident that gives one a vivid picture of the domestic miseries that Lincoln endured in silence for almost a quarter of a century.

It happened near Grant's headquarters. The general had invited Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln to spend a week with him near the front.

They were glad to come, for the President was almost exhausted. He hadn't had a vacation since he entered the White House, and he was eager to get away from the throng of office-seekers who were harassing him once more at the opening of his second term.

So he and Mrs. Lincoln boarded the River Queen and sailed away down the Potomac, through the lower reaches of Chesapeake Bay, past old Point Comfort, and up the James River to City Point. There, high on a bluff, two hundred feet above the water, sat the ex-hide-buyer from Galena, smoking and whittling.

A few days later the President's party was joined by a distinguished group of people from Washington, including M. Geoffroi, the French minister. Naturally the visitors were eager to see the battle lines of the Army of the Potomac, twelve miles away; so the next day they set out upon the excursion—the men on horseback, Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Grant following in a half-open carriage.

General Adam Badeau, Grant's military secretary and aidede-camp and one of the closest friends General Grant ever had, was detailed to escort the ladies that day. He sat on the front seat of the carriage, facing them and with his back to the horses. He was an eye-witness to all that occurred, and I am quoting now from pages 356—362 of his book entitled “Grant in Peace:”

In the course of conversation, I chanced to mention that all the wives of officers at the army front had been ordered to the rear—a sure sign that active operations were in contemplation. I said not a lady had been allowed to remain, except Mrs. Griffin, the wife of General Charles Griffin, who had obtained a special permit from the President.

At this Mrs. Lincoln was up in arms. “What do you mean by that, sir?” she exclaimed. “Do you mean to say that she saw the President alone? Do you know that I never allow the President to see any woman alone?”

She was absolutely jealous of poor, ugly Abraham Lincoln.

I tried to pacify her and to palliate my remark, but she was fairly boiling over with rage. “That's a very equivocal smile, sir,” she exclaimed: “Let me out of this carriage at once. I will ask the President if he saw that woman alone.”

Mrs. Griffin, afterward the Countess Esterhazy, was one of the best known and most elegant women in Washington, a Carroll, and a personal acquaintance of Mrs. Grant, who strove to mollify the excited spouse, but all in vain. Mrs. Lincoln again bade me stop the driver, and when I hesitated to obey, she thrust her arms past me to the front of the carriage and held the driver fast. But Mrs. Grant finally prevailed upon her to wait till the whole party alighted....

At night, when we were back in camp, Mrs. Grant talked over the matter with me, and said the whole affair was so distressing and mortifying that neither of us must ever mention it; at least, I was to be absolutely silent, and she would disclose it only to the General. But the next day I was released from my pledge, for “worse remained behind.”

The same party went in the morning to visit the Army of the James on the north side of the river, commanded by General Ord. The arrangements were somewhat similar to those of the day before. We went up the river in a steamer, and then the men again took horses and Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Grant proceeded in an ambulance. I was detailed as before to act as escort, but I asked for a companion in the duty; for after my experience, I did not wish to be the only officer in the carriage. So Colonel Horace Porter was ordered to join the party. Mrs. Ord accompanied her husband; as she was the wife of the commander of an army she was not subject to the order for return; though before that day was over she wished herself in Washington or anywhere else away from the army, I am sure. She was mounted, and as the ambulance was full, she remained on her horse and rode for a while by the side of the President, and thus preceded Mrs. Lincoln.

As soon as Mrs. Lincoln discovered this her rage was beyond all bounds. “What does the woman mean,” she exclaimed, “by riding by the side of the President? and ahead of me? Does she suppose that he wants her by the side of him?”

She was in a frenzy of excitement, and language and action both became more extravagant every moment.

Mrs. Grant again endeavored to pacify her, but then Mrs. Lincoln got angry with Mrs. Grant; and all that Porter and I could do was to see that nothing worse than words occurred. We feared she might jump out of the vehicle and shout to the cavalcade.

Once she said to Mrs. Grant in her transports: “I suppose you think you'll get to the White House yourself, don't you?” Mrs. Grant was very calm and dignified, and merely replied that she was quite satisfied with her present position; it was far greater than she had ever expected to attain. But Mrs. Lincoln exclaimed; “Oh! you had better take it if you can get it. Tis very nice.” Then she reverted to Mrs. Ord, while Mrs. Grant defended her friend at the risk of arousing greater vehemence.

When there was a halt, Major Seward, a nephew of the Secretary of State, and an officer of General Ord's staff, rode up, and tried to say something jocular. “The President's horse is very gallant, Mrs. Lincoln,” he remarked; “he insists on riding by the side of Mrs. Ord.”

This of course added fuel to the flame.

“What do you mean by that, sir?” she cried.

Seward discovered that he had made a huge mistake, and his horse at once developed a peculiarity that compelled him to ride behind, to get out of the way of the storm.

Finally the party arrived at its destination and Mrs. Ord came up to the ambulance. Then Mrs. Lincoln positively insulted her, called her vile names in the presence of a crowd of officers, and asked what she meant by following up the President. The poor woman burst into tears and inquired what she had done, but Mrs. Lincoln refused to be appeased, and stormed till she was tired. Mrs. Grant still tried to stand by her friend, and everybody was shocked and horrified. But all things come to an end, and after a while we returned to City Point.

That night the President and Mrs. Lincoln entertained General and Mrs. Grant and the General's staff at dinner on the steamer, and before us all Mrs. Lincoln berated General Ord to the President, and urged that he should be removed. He was unfit for his place, she said, to say nothing of his wife. General Grant sat next and defended his officer bravely. Of course General Ord was not removed.

During all this visit similar scenes were occurring. Mrs. Lincoln repeatedly attacked her husband in the presence of officers because of Mrs. Griffin and Mrs. Ord, and I never suffered greater humiliation and pain on account of one not a near personal friend than when I saw the Head of the State, the man who carried all the cares of the nation at such a crisis—subjected to this inexpressible public mortification. He bore it as Christ might have done; with an expression of pain and sadness that cut one to the heart, but with supreme calmness and dignity. He called her “mother,” with his old-time plainness; he pleaded with eyes and tones, and endeavored to explain or palliate the offenses of others, till she turned on him like a tigress; and then he walked away, hiding that noble, ugly face that we might not catch the full expression of its misery.

General Sherman was a witness of some of these episodes and mentioned them in his memoirs many years ago.

Captain Barnes, of the navy, was a witness and a sufferer too. Barnes had accompanied Mrs. Ord on her unfortunate ride and refused afterward to say that the lady was to blame. Mrs. Lincoln never forgave him. A day or two afterward he went to speak to the President on some official matter when Mrs. Lincoln and several others were present. The President's wife said something to him unusually offensive that all the company could hear. Lincoln was silent, but after a moment he went up to the young officer, and taking him by the arm led him into his own cabin, to show him a map or a paper, he said. He made no remark, Barnes told me, upon what had occurred. He could not rebuke his wife; but he showed his regret, and his regard for the officer, with a touch of what seemed to me the most exquisite breeding imaginable.

Shortly before these occurrences Mrs. Stanton had visited City Point, and I chanced to ask her some question about the President's wife.

“I do not visit Mrs. Lincoln,” was the reply.

But I thought I must have been mistaken; the wife of the Secretary of War must visit the wife of the President; and I renewed my inquiry.

“Understand me, sir?” she repeated; “I do not go to the White House; I do not visit Mrs. Lincoln.” I was not at all intimate with Mrs. Stanton and this remark was so extraordinary that I never forgot it; but I understood it afterward.

Mrs. Lincoln continued her conduct toward Mrs. Grant, who strove to placate her and then Mrs. Lincoln became more outrageous still. She once rebuked Mrs. Grant for sitting in her presence. “How dare you be seated,” she said, “until I invite you?”

Elizabeth Keckley, who accompanied Mrs. Lincoln on this trip to Grant's headquarters, tells of a dinner party that “Mrs. President” gave aboard the River Queen.

One of the guests was a young officer attached to the Sanitary Commission. He was seated near Mrs. Lincoln, and, by way of pleasantry, remarked: “Mrs. Lincoln, you should have seen the President the other day, on his triumphal entry into Richmond. He was the cynosure of all eyes. The ladies kissed their hands to him, and greeted him with the waving of handkerchiefs. He is quite a hero when surrounded by pretty young ladies.”

The young officer suddenly paused with a look of embarrass-ment.

Mrs. Lincoln turned to him with flashing eyes, with the remark that his familiarity was offensive to her.

Quite a scene followed, and I do not think that the Captain who incurred Mrs. Lincoln's displeasure will ever forget that memorable evening.

“I never in my life saw a more peculiarly constituted woman,” says Mrs. Keckley. “Search the world over and you will not find her counterpart.”

“Ask the first American you meet, ‘What kind of a woman was Lincoln's wife?’” says Honoré Willsie Morrow in her book “Mary Todd Lincoln,” “and the chances are ninety nine to one hundred that he'll reply that she was a shrew, a curse to her husband, a vulgar fool, insane.”

The great tragedy of Lincoln's life was not his assassination, but his marriage.

When Booth fired, Lincoln did not know what had hit him, but for twenty-three years he had reaped almost daily what Herndon described as “the bitter harvest of conjugal infelicity.”

“Amid storms of party hate and rebellious strife,” says General Badeau, “amid agonies... like those of the Cross... the hyssop of domestic misery was pressed to Lincoln's lips, and he too said: ‘Father, forgive: they know not what they do.’”

One of Lincoln's warmest friends during his life as President was Orville H. Browning, Senator from Illinois. These two men had known each other for a quarter of a century, and Browning was frequently a dinner guest in the White House and sometimes spent the night there. He kept a detailed diary, but one can only wonder what he recorded in it about Mrs. Lincoln, for authors have not been permitted to read the manuscript without pledging their honor not to divulge anything derogatory to her character. This manuscript was recently sold for publication with the provision that all shocking statements regarding Mrs. Lincoln should be deleted before it was put into print.

At public receptions in the White House it had always been customary for the President to choose some lady other than his wife to lead the promenade with him.

But custom or no custom, tradition or no tradition, Mrs. Lincoln wouldn't tolerate it. What? Another woman ahead of her? And on the President's arm? Never!

So she had her way, and Washington society hooted.

She not only refused to let the President walk with another woman, but she eyed him jealously and criticized him severely for even talking to one.

Before going to a public reception Lincoln would come to his jealous wife, asking whom he might talk to. She would mention woman after woman, saying she detested this one and hated that one.

“But Mother,” he would remonstrate, “I must talk with somebody. I can't stand around like a simpleton and say nothing. If you will not tell me who I may talk with, please tell me who I may not talk with.”

She determined to have her own way, cost what it might, and, on one occasion, she threatened to throw herself down in the mud in front of every one unless Lincoln promoted a certain officer.

At another time she dashed into his office during an important interview, pouring out a torrent of words. Without replying to her, Lincoln calmly arose, picked her up, carried her out of the room, set her down, returned, locked the door, and went on with his business as if he had never been interrupted.

She consulted a spiritualist, who told her that all of Lincoln's Cabinet were his enemies.

That didn't surprise her. She had no love for any of them.

She despised Seward, calling him “a hypocrite,” “an abolition sneak,” saying that he couldn't be trusted, and warning Lincoln to have nothing to do with him.

“Her hostility to Chase,” says Mrs. Keckley, “was bitter.”

And one of the reasons was this: Chase had a daughter, Kate, who was married to a wealthy man and was one of the most beautiful and charming women in Washington society. Kate would attend the White House receptions; and, to Mrs. Lincoln's immense disgust, she would draw all the men about her and run away with the show.

Mrs. Keckley says that “Mrs. Lincoln, who was jealous of the popularity of others, had no desire to build up the social position of Chase's daughter through political favor to her father.”

With heat and temper, she repeatedly urged Lincoln to dismiss Chase from the Cabinet.

She loathed Stanton, and when he criticized her, she “would return the compliment by sending him books and clippings describing him as an irascible and disagreeable personality.”

To all these bitter condemnations, Lincoln would say:

“Mother, you are mistaken; your prejudices are so violent you do not stop to reason. If I listened to you, I should soon be without a cabinet.”

She disliked Andrew Johnson intensely; she hated McClellan; she despised Grant, calling him “an obstinate fool and a butcher,” declaring that she could handle an army better than he could, and frequently vowing that if he were ever made President, she would leave the country and never come back to it as long as he was in the White House.

“Well, Mother,” Lincoln would say, “supposing that we give you command of the army. No doubt you would do much better than any general that has been tried.”

After Lee surrendered, Mr. and Mrs. Grant came to Washington. The town was a blaze of light: crowds were making merry with songs and bonfires and revelry; so Mrs. Lincoln wrote the general, inviting him to drive about the streets with her and the President “to see the illumination.”

But she did not invite Mrs. Grant.

A few nights later, however, she arranged a theater party and invited Mr. and Mrs. Grant and Mr. and Mrs. Stanton to sit in the President's box.

As soon as Mrs. Stanton received the invitation, she hurried over to Mrs. Grant, to inquire if she were going.

“Unless you accept the invitation,” said Mrs. Stanton, “I shall refuse. I will not sit in the box with Mrs. Lincoln unless you are there too.”

Mrs. Grant was afraid to accept.

She knew that if the general entered the box, the audience would be sure to greet the “hero of Appomattox” with a salvo of applause.

And then what would Mrs. Lincoln do? There was no telling. She might create another disgraceful and mortifying scene.

Mrs. Grant refused the invitation, and so did Mrs. Stanton; and by refusing, they may have saved the lives of their husbands, for that night Booth crept into the President's box and shot Lincoln; and if Stanton and Grant had been there, he might have tried to kill them also.