Thoughts from Mary's sister Elizabeth

[Susan Higginbotham]

Elizabeth wrote this about Julia: "[I]nsanity, although a new feature, in our family history, first appeared within my knowledge, in the case of my own daughter, at the early age of thirteen. For six months, she was so decidedly flighty, as to be closely guarded. Her back from incidents is scarred its length. At the birth of each child, the same symptoms were shown, and severely felt, particularly by her husband, and my self.

"At no time, has she ever been natural in her demeanor."

Mary Lincoln in an 1864 refers to Julia's indiscreet conduct during a White House visit, including riding in a closed carriage with a man not her husband and staying up late with gentlemen in the library. Michael Burlingame quotes a letter from Ada Bailhache, a friend of Julia's, in which she states that Julia was involved in an unspecified scandal in 1872 and that her husband was given a diplomatic posting to Argentina to get them out of the country.

I wonder what the "incidents" that led to the scarring would be.