What are you reading now?

[Susan Higginbotham]

Susan - Would it change my opinion of Kate Chase; that she could have benefited from some good discipline in her growing-up years (and later)? I have not read a lot on her, but what I have read made me think that I would not like her.

The book focused on her courtship and marriage, so it didn't delve heavily into her younger years or into her rivalry with Mrs. Lincoln, except as background. She does seem to have made a genuine effort to make her marriage work, which wasn't easy, as her husband turned out to be a philandering alcoholic whose behavior became increasingly erratic over time. Her last years were difficult--her only son killed himself, one of her three daughters was mentally disabled, and she was reduced to selling produce from her estate to neighbors--and she bore these circumstances with grace.

There's a compilation of letters between her father, herself, and her younger sister, called Spur Up Your Pegasus: Family Letters of Salmon, Kate, and Nettie Chase, 1844-1873, that makes for interesting "dip-in" sort of reading.

I started Jason Emerson's biography of Robert T. Lincoln last night. Enjoying it, except that it's a big book that's not at all conducive to reading with a dog in one's lap. I didn't know that Abraham Lincoln had patented an invention!