Mary's friends

[LincolnToddFan]

(03-31-2015 03:45 AM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  I am on the fence. I agree on both, Mary acknowledging E. K. was a rock to her during the W.H.years (and was quite disappointed she wasn't with her during the night of April 14/15), as well as that on the other hand her "instruction letters" regarding the clothes sale sound like to an employee rather than to a friend, but then again Mary wrote in that kind of demanding tone also to (other) closest friends (e.g. when she ordered them to visit her).

Re: "Keckly completely gave up her sewing business to care for Mary" - I'm afraid this doesn't tell anything about Mary's view on the friendship.

As for Clara Harris, I would think she, like Julia Taft, was rather a surrogate daughter to Mary.

Hi Eva,

Julia Taft was definitely a surrogate daughter-while it lasted. But even though Clara was a lot younger than MTL I've read nothing to indicate that she thought of her as anything other than a charming friend, someone she liked having around. Of course after the trauma of Ford's Theater there is no more mention of the lady or her fiance. Like everything else associated with that awful night she wanted no reminders.

Her relations with Keckly were complicated by and dictated by the social customs of the time. Keckly was not only a servant, she was a woman of color. No matter how MTL felt about her, there were limits to the way the relationship could be conducted publically and probably privately as well. But it's significant to me that other than her sons, Lizzie is the only one MTL repeatedly cried and pleaded for at the Peterson House on Apr14-15 1865. The fact that Lizzie was not there is because she was barred from entering the WH that night and not informed where Mary was. Keckly's unique status is also underscored by the fact that she was permitted to spend a few moments alone with AL's remains upstairs just before the autopsy began. And it was Keckly, along with Tad and Robert, who remained closeted with MTL in the little dark bedroom for the 40 traumatic days and nights after AL's murder. No one else except Dr. Anson Henry and occasionally Sec'y Stanton were permitted in that room. (MTL Letters, Levitt & Turner, pgs #221-241)

"....Aside from Mrs. Keckley, who was in a category all her own, her closest friends in Washington were the settled wives of Congressmen, generals and administration officials...." (Letters, Levitt & Turner, pg#136)

She also writes to AL that Lizzie has asked her for a loan during a trip to NYC, and that she (MTL) had a spell of illness and that "if it had not been for Lizzie Keckly I do not know what I should have done". (Letters pgs #139-140)

At the time of MTL's move to Chicago, Keckly had been retained to sew the bridal trousseau for a big society wedding in Washington. At Mary's insistence and pleading Keckly abandoned the commission to move to Chicago with her. This is something that costs her a lot of money.(Keckly "Behind The Scenes")

To me there is no way to refute that it was, for a long time, an extraordinarily intimate and mutually supportive relationship. It was as close a friendship as possible considering the barriers of race and class, which made the later publication of Keckly's book all the more painful to MTL.

On the other hand I am a little confused about the inclusion of Henry Clay as a true friend of MTL. He was the idol of her childhood and young womanhood, but he was mostly a much older friend of her father's. Other than the famous story about her riding her pony to his estate as a little girl and demanding to see him, I don't know of any interaction between them. And there are certainly no extant letters.