Elizabeth Keckley's "Behind the Scenes at the Lincoln White House

[Gene C]

From Jason Emerson's "Giant in the Shadows" p.275
(I'm in the middle of reading this and read this passage for the first time last night)

"The publication about his mother that may have annoyed Robert Lincoln more than any other was Elizabeth Keckly's memoir, Behind the Scenes or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House.....The book not only includes the complete story of the Old Clothes Scandal in 1867, in which Keckly played a major role as Mary's confidante, but also prints in full a series of private letters from Mary Lincoln to Keckly."

"Keckly wrote her book, she claimed, to make Mary more understandable and sympathetic to the American public. She also hoped the book proceeds would help her old friend pay off some of her debts. The idea backfired. The book was denounced as scandal and trash and lost Keckly many clients and friends. Part of the public outrage was simply because Keckly was black but also concerned the publication of Mary's private letters. Keckly claimed the professional writer who assisted her with her manuscript added the letters to the book without her consent or knowledge. But it didn't matter. Keckly had violated Victorian codes "not only of friendship and privacy, but of race, gender, and class'....Mary Lincoln was so angry she never spoke to Keckly again. Robert Lincoln - in his high Victorianism, which included a conscious class separation and bias - was infuriated at what he regarded as a betrayal of trust and an indecent exposure of his family's privacy by a mere servant. Reportedly, he complained to the publisher and had the book suppressed: when he encountered Keckly in Washington years later, he was 'so hostile to her that he could not be made to understand her true motive for writing the book'."