Mary Lincoln funeral

[LincolnToddFan]

Hi Laurie, in all fairness to Robert the time lapse between Mary's final collapse(Saturday July 15th) and her death(Sunday July 16th) was only just about 24 hours. According to Jason Emerson's Giant In the Shadows: The Life and Times of Robert Todd Lincoln as soon as he was telegraphed of her collapse he began making arrangements to go to Springfield. The delay was caused by his wife, who had originally planned to go with him but apparently became ill en route and had to be put in a hotel to recover.

However, before the collapse, Robert certainly didn't believe his mother was all that sick. He had just written to her close friend Sally Orne that she was exaggerating her physical ailments. But at the end she was blind, incontinent and in gruesome physical pain from boils and a spine that was literally disintegrating. She weighed only 100 pounds and had to finally remove her wedding band in her last few days for fear that it would be lost...it kept sliding off her fingers. Her last words were "I am dying".(Mary Todd Lincoln/Jean Baker...Looking For Lincoln/Kunhardt)

At the end she believed Lincoln would return to her and refused to sleep on "his" side of the bed.

Mary's funeral sounded lovely and appropriate. She was finally given the respect that the widow of Abraham Lincoln did not receive in life. I think she would have smiled at the irony of crowds lining the streets, businesses closing in her honor, the distinguished pallbearers.

I am sure that Herndon, after all the pain he caused MTL would not have had the gall to show his face at that funeral. And if he did, I would hope that Robert and the rest of the family would have had him ejected. I certainly would have!

I thought the eulogy where the minister likened the Lincoln to two intertwined trees was beautiful.