More on Mrs. Lincoln's [non] faux pas

[L Verge]

In looking for something else, I ran across this description of Mary Lincoln in a booklet produced by the White House Historical Association. I found it an appropriate assessment and tastefully done:

Mrs. Abraham Lincoln (1818-1882), often the subject of derision even in her time, was the first presidential wife subjected to negative press. She suffered not always in silence; hers was not yet the time when a first lady might be hardened to unkind reporting, and the situation was unique. Mary Lincoln's was a transitional time. An intellectual by nature, she loved literature and was probably far better read than Lincoln. Nervous and high-strung, she was an insecure woman whose appearance was so in contrast to Lincoln's homely ways that she never settled well as first lady. Although easy with the refinements of social and diplomatic Washington, she dealt entirely in personalities; she interpreted those who objected to her as being against her and too often coddled even the most brazen sycophants. Privately, she was an affectionate wife and mother and Lincoln, if not a particularly attentive husband, seems to have been devoted to her. After the war and his death, what appears to have been a mildly manic condition sharpened until in one brief period she was declared insane. As a widow she lost her son Tad, who lived with her, and after that was left only with the chilly Robert Todd Lincoln, to whom she was not close.