Seed Pearl Necklace and Bracelets

[Donna]

Being facetious, Roger. It wasn’t a call to arms. I speak tongue-in-cheek myself on occasion.
To your point though, Reva. Yes of course Mary was plump. She was described throughout her life as plump. From the earliest contemporaneous physical accounts of her as a teenager until the day she died. It is without a doubt the most frequently used adjective to describe her. She was plump in her earliest known dag image dating from circa 1846. She was plump in late 1860 when posing with Willie & Tad. She was plump on March 4th 1861 when posing with Abe prior to the inaugural ball. And she was plump in the series of photographs taken later on during Lincoln’s presidency, though she did appear to pack on a few pounds in the last couple of years of his tenure.
So are ‘tiny’ and ‘plump’ mutually exclusive? If you choose one term, do you automatically discard the other? Are the individuals, who have examined some of Mary’s dresses and expressed amazement at how ‘tiny’ she was, simply wrong in their own judgement? A judgement based on a thorough examination of a physical, tangible item of clothing, as opposed to a visual examination of a form of representational reality based on a process rife with inherent distortion? (Again, Daguerreotype versus paper images).
There was no drastic or dramatic weight loss or gain from late 1860 to late 1862. ‘Tiny’ or ‘plump’. You can pick your own adjective. But whichever you choose applies equally to her photos from the period in question. The visual evidence simply doesn’t support any comments to the contrary. As is the case with the ‘comparative height’ remarks. Or the “day dress”. Just some plump little hillbilly with skeleton hands sittin for a formal daguerreian photograph adorned with gold and diamonds and a nice chatelaine and Point d’ Alencon lace collar......with a 20 year old five-and-dime, hand-me-down “day dress” she dug out of the back of the closet.
Do you people really believe what you say???