Charles Dickens, Edwin Stanton, and the Assassination

[LincolnToddFan]

(03-05-2015 12:33 PM)L Verge Wrote:  I agree with Linda on that last assessment of Mrs. Lincoln's behavior irritating Mr. Stanton. Although I understand what she must have been going through, I have often thought that her behavior was atypical for a well-bred Victorian lady. Even today, I feel uncomfortable around "weepers and wailers" at viewings and funerals - and I don't consider myself a hard-hearted lady.

Mary was indeed a well-bred Victorian lady...but hardly a typical one! She was too outspoken, too well-read, too intelligent, too bad tempered...too...EVERYTHING. She simply didn't know her place and if she did, she didn't stay there. I have never sat next to a person who was the center of my universe as they got a bullet in the brain, but I imagine her hysterics were too much for the group of shell-shocked men at the Peterson House that night.

The stoic composure displayed by Jacqueline Kennedy in Dallas would have been beyond someone of Mary's temperament. And in Los Angeles in 1968 Ethel Kennedy reportedly urged everyone who was sitting vigil over her dying husband to go into his room-alone-and spend a few minutes saying goodbye before they pulled the plug on RFK.

Can anyone imagine poor Mary doing that?