Mrs. Lincoln’s Salon: Her Form Inclines To Stoutness

[Eva Elisabeth]

I wonder if Abraham Lincoln perhaps preferred that kind of shape.

But not too much, though. Ten years earlier (1838) he had written about Mary Owens:

"I knew she was over-size, but she now appeared a fair match for Falstaff...for her skin was too full of fat, to permit its contracting in to wrinkles; but from her want of teeth, weather-beaten appearance in general, and from a kind of notion that ran in my head, that nothing could have commenced at the size of infancy, and reached her present bulk in less than thirty five or forty years; and, in short, I was not all pleased with her."

Forgot about that...maybe he meanwhile had changed his mind? However, I think the "mindchange" is the best proof that he did love his wife as love makes everyone beautiful the way she/he is.