Sons and parents

[STS Lincolnite]

(01-10-2015 07:42 PM)L Verge Wrote:  As for Mr. Lincoln, I too believe that he would have made the comment about the asylum in order to tell Mary how serious her depression was becoming. I think he would have sought private help and companionship if Mary had required it. In the case of Robert, I think his personality (and probably the nagging of his wife) worked against Mary Lincoln. At least she was placed in a respectable treatment center instead of a run-of-the-mill insane asylum.

I think Laurie's comment is right on point. Lincoln could have pointed out any building in the distance and called it an asylum (whether it really was or not) just to get Mary's attention. Private help would have been much preferred (both clinically and politically) to the more public admission to an asylum.

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(01-10-2015 08:32 PM)Gene C Wrote:  A quote from William Stoddard, one of President Lincoln's private secretary's
"At first it was not easy to understand why a lady could one day be so kindly, considerate, so generous, so thoughtful, and so hopeful could upon another day appear so unreasonable, so irritable, so despondent, even so niggardly, and so prone to see the wrong side of men, women and events. It is easier to understand it all and to deal with it after a few words with an eminent medical practitioner."

'This can only mean that some time prior to 1864, a physician recognized Mrs. Lincoln's trouble and told Stoddard what it was, and that thereafter he was able to recognize the limits of her responsibility. Could others have known as much as Stoddard did, history would have been kinder to Mary Lincoln.'

I wonder if the "sometime prior to 1864" referred to was in 1862 after Willie's death (the time frame Eva referred to in her post). Although she seems to have had issues for some time before that, that particular incident seemed to really set her off and maybe to the point that an "eminent medical practitioner" was in fact consulted - probably informally.