Mary Todd Lincoln's faux pas (plural), worse, and much worse

[David Lockmiller]

(06-13-2014 06:27 PM)Susan Higginbotham Wrote:  I looked up Burlingame's sources for the story about Mary and Clara chattering while Lincoln tried to give his speech. One is the October 7, 1867, Boston Daily Advertiser, which refers to Mary and a "gay party of ladies" in the window instead of just to Mary and Clara (and recounts the detail about Lincoln's pained look); the other is Clara's letter of April 29, 1865, in "We Saw Lincoln Shot," where she recalls standing at a window with Mary the night of the speech but doesn't mention herself or Mary drowning out the President. She adds that after the speech, the company went into Lincoln's room, where "Mrs. Lincoln declared the last few days to have been the happiest of her life."

Assuming that the Boston Daily Advertiser account, reported more than two years after the fact, is accurate, I don't see Mary as being insensitive here, just carried away by high spirits.

Clara Harris' letter of April 29, 1865 significantly differs from the account of the same event written by the Marquis Adolphe de Chambrun in a letter to his wife on April 12, 1865 (Impressions of Lincoln and the Civil War, a Foreigner's Account, by the Marquis Adolphe de Chambrun as translated from the French by General Aldebert de Chambrun, Random House, New York, 1952, pages 92-94):

On Tuesday, a tall colored man knocked at my door, bringing a bunch of flowers and a note. Both came from Mrs. Lincoln. She told me that her husband was to address the crowd the next evening from the White House window and asked me whether I would like to listen with her to his speech, from one of the adjacent ones. Naturally, I accepted gratefully and found myself at the Executive Mansion before and after Mr. Lincoln had finished his speech.

It was a great event and a remarkable discourse, in which the President underlined his political conceptions and offered to moderate between the opposing parties. This solution does not seem to please a large majority; but the coming days will show what can be made of this idea. The ceremony concluded, Mrs. Lincoln took me through the White House. When we came opposite the President's door, she threw it open without knocking. There was Mr. Lincoln, stretched at full length, resting on a large sofa from his oratorical efforts.

When the President saw us enter, he rose impulsively, came forward and took my hand, which he held in his own a long time as though to show his pleasure and affection at seeing me again. We exchanged several words on the subject of his address and the extremely moderate ideas which he had expressed therein. He spoke at length of the many struggles he foresaw in the future and declared his firm resolution to stand for clemency against all opposition.

I did not stay too long, in order to let him rest, and escorted Mrs. Lincoln down to the parlor where she habitually receives. A third person, Miss Harris, daughter of one of the New York Senator, completed our intimate trio.

Clara Harris' letter stated that "the company (presumably, including a "gay party of ladies") went into Lincoln's room."

The Marquis Adolphe de Chambrun wrote in a letter to his wife on the day following Lincoln's speech on the night of April 11, 1865: "When we (i.e., Mrs. Lincoln and the Marquis) came opposite the President's door, she threw it open without knocking. There was Mr. Lincoln, stretched at full length, resting on a large sofa from his oratorical efforts. . . . I did not stay too long, in order to let him rest, and escorted Mrs. Lincoln down to the parlor where she habitually receives."

Perhaps Clara Harris and the Marquis Adolphe de Chambrun were not referring to the same Lincoln speech. How else can an accounting of the same event be so divergent?