Lincoln & Herndon

[LincolnToddFan]

Eva, if the anthology/compilation of her letters is any indication, MTL was very secure in her belief that she had her husband's love.

Not even a hint of doubt in any one of the 600+ letters. So despite what he said to her to get out of the engagement with her, at some during their reconciliation and marriage he very effectively and permanently persuaded her otherwise.

[RJNorton]

Lincoln couldn't keep a hired girl because she was tyrannical to her and Lincoln perforce was compelled to look after the children.

Herndon seems to be blaming Mary for the fact that Abraham was "stuck" looking after the kids. This does not seem fair to me because Abraham was gone months at a time leaving Mary as the sole parent in the home. Shouldn't he bare some responsibility when he was at home and she was out? Herndon seems to feel this would be the "hired girl's" responsibility. In those days were "hired girls" like nannies? Was it the girl's responsibility, and not Abraham's, to look after the children when Mary was out? Would that have been the normal practice? By using the word "compelled" it sounds like Herndon felt it was an injustice that Abraham would have to look after the kids when Mary went to church, etc.

[Eva Elisabeth]

Also it seemingly didn't come to Herndon's mind that A. Lincoln might have enjoyed spending time with his kids (as he stated in White House years). This is especially weird as Herndon himself enjoyed spending time with his kids, taking them out into the nature, showing them plants, etc.

[LincolnToddFan]

Lincoln couldn't keep a hired girl because she was tyrannical to her and Lincoln perforce was compelled to look after the children.

Herndon seems to be blaming Mary for the fact that Abraham was "stuck" looking after the kids. This does not seem fair to me because Abraham was gone months at a time leaving Mary as the sole parent in the home. Shouldn't he bare some responsibility when he was at home and she was out? Herndon seems to feel this would be the "hired girl's" responsibility. In those days were "hired girls" like nannies? Was it the girl's responsibility, and not Abraham's, to look after the children when Mary was out? Would that have been the normal practice? By using the word "compelled" it sounds like Herndon felt it was an injustice that Abraham would have to look after the kids when Mary went to church, etc.

Thanks Roger...I might as well have posted this myself!

[Mylye2222]

[quote='Angela' pid='35516' dateline='1404841385']
[quote='LincolnToddFan' pid='35509' dateline='1404834128']


If she was so awful as so many people seemed to

You raise excellent points. Daniel Mark Epstein, in his wonderful book The Lincolns: Portrait of a Marriage, posits that Mary was always a volatile personality. Part of it was the painful childhood of emotional abandonment that she endured by losing her mother as a very little girl, then acquiring a stepmother almost immediately afterward who did not want her around and made no secret of it. Mary was sent away to boarding school and later said she considered Madame Mentelle's school in Lexington her only real home as a girl. In fact, bonding over desolate childhoods might have been something that attracted her to AL initially.

After she married AL there is reason to believe(confirmed by her letters) that she looked upon him partly as a replacement for the father who had emotionally abandoned her. Her seamstress confidante Keckly wrote in her memoirs that nothing delighted MTL more than when AL called her his "child wife", something that might have annoyed most other women. And I have already quoted the letters she wrote after his death, describing him as her lover, husband AND father.

His frequent absences, his emotional withdrawal from her when he was home, all could have contributed to triggering the rages and meltdowns she became notorious for in their Springfield years. She probably saw it as one more parent figure rejecting her.

In fact any time someone she loved died she would interpret it as a personal abandonment, and would emotionally go to pieces. This first happened when toddler Eddie Lincoln died in 1850. She had only just begun to recover from the death of Willie in 1862 when the husband she called "Father" was shot in the head while holding her hand.

According to Epstein, biographer Jean Baker, and Ruth Painter Randall, it was the experience of the Civil War White House that was the straw that broke the camel's back and unleashed her latent mental illness full force.

She was probably not an easy person to love or even like, but I have great sympathy and compassion for Mary Lincoln.

Thanks SO much for mentioning "Crowns". I was absolutely impressed by that book. It was a very sympathetic dual biography that did justice to both Varina Davis and Mary Todd Lincoln. I knew absolutely nothing about Varina D. before I read that book. What a woman. Jeff Davis was very lucky to have her. In fact, I am not sure he deserved her!

Perfectly summed up.
The Lincolns bounded over their childhoods marked by lack of emotional support from parental figures. Both Mary and Abraham suffered a LACK OF LOVE as children, those scars mark you for life and both were afraid of being let down. Plus they both loved the same things in life, poetry, politics...

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Also it seemingly didn't come to Herndon's mind that A. Lincoln might have enjoyed spending time with his kids (as he stated in White House years). This is especially weird as Herndon himself enjoyed spending time with his kids, taking them out into the nature, showing them plants, etc.

It was not in the norm back then for a man to babysit his children. Lincoln did it and enjoyed it. He was beyond his era for that. He also helped Mary sometimes with household duties.

[Gene C]

According to Jean Baker's book about Mary, almost everyone in similar situations as Mary's had difficulty in retaining domestic help.
A labor shortage of young ladies willing to do that kind of work.