Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker (2 page)

O
n Election Day, Elizabeth Keckley hurried home from a midafternoon dress fitting to the redbrick boardinghouse on Twelfth Street where she rented two small rooms in the back. Although she never failed to carry her license attesting to her status as a freedwoman whenever she ventured out, on that day of the presidential election of 1860 she was eager to be safely indoors well before curfew. The city hummed with breathless excitement even though the white citizens of Washington City, District of Columbia, were not enfranchised to vote. In this, the capital’s colored residents, both slave and free, were their equals, although Elizabeth prudently refrained from remarking upon this similarity to the wives of the city’s social and political elite for whom she sewed the beautiful gowns they wore to balls and levees and receptions. Her patrons were united in their suspicion of and disdain for the Republican candidate, a lawyer from Illinois they disparaged as an unpolished rube from the West and a radical abolitionist. They disagreed, however, on which of his three rivals ought to succeed President Buchanan, who, if ineffectual, had at least done their home states and the South’s “peculiar institution” no enduring harm.

If a spontaneous parade sprang up and turned into a riot, as happened far too often those days, Elizabeth wanted to be well away from the furor. Already the streets were filling with men hurrying from tavern to hotel for news of the election, gathering on corners with like-minded fellows and glaring across the way at their rivals, crowding anxiously around the doors of the telegraph office on Fourteenth Street although the returns wouldn’t be in for hours yet. Many folks had obviously been enjoying the free whiskey dispensed by the various political clubs that dotted the blocks near the White House, and from time to time their bursts of raucous laughter drowned out even the unceasing clip-clop of horses’ hooves and the more distant whistles of passing trains. As she made her way home, Elizabeth tightened her grip on her sewing basket and kept her bearing serene and composed, flinching only once, when a young man wearing a campaign button boasting a tintype of Mr. Breckinridge jostled her in his haste to reach the bulletin board outside the National Hotel.

She breathed a sigh of relief when she reached her own quiet neighborhood, a haven in what had been an unfamiliar city only months before. She had come to Washington City that spring after a few failed weeks in Baltimore, where her struggle to find work convinced her to seek her fortune elsewhere. Not long before that, she had lived in St. Louis, where, after years of toiling and saving, she had purchased her freedom and her son’s. Now George was a student at Wilberforce University in Ohio, and she was a successful mantua maker, a businesswoman with an admirable reputation, independent and free. She could more easily bear the miles separating her from her only child knowing that he was acquiring the education she herself had always longed for and had been denied, and that no man could claim him as property ever again.

Virginia Lewis, her landlady and dear friend, must have seen her approach through the front window, for she met her at the door. “What’s the news?” she asked, breathless, studying her expression as if to read the answer there. “I know how your ladies talk. If anyone knows what’s happening, they would.”

“I’m afraid they don’t know any more than we do.” Elizabeth set
down her sewing basket and unwrapped herself from her shawl. “Nothing’s changed from what we heard this morning. Mr. Lincoln’s favored to win, but we won’t know for a fact until they count the ballots.”

“I suppose your ladies wouldn’t care much for a President Lincoln.”

“Not one bit. Most of their husbands like Mr. Breckinridge, and so they do likewise. A few of them like Mr. Bell too.” Elizabeth lowered her voice conspiratorially. “As for Mr. Lincoln, they fear he wants to free all the slaves.”

They shared a laugh. “Well, then, God bless him,” declared Virginia. “If that’s true, I pray he wins.”

Elizabeth nodded, but private doubts troubled her. No matter what the Southern partisans inhabiting the city said about Abraham Lincoln, as far as she knew, he had never promised to end slavery, only to keep it from spreading. But even if he had placed his hand on a Bible and declared himself a staunch abolitionist, her few months in Washington had taught her that candidates often made promises that they found impossible to keep after taking office. Whatever Mr. Lincoln’s intentions, and whether they boded ill or good for Elizabeth and the Lewises and other colored folk, when Mr. Lincoln’s people swept into the city to take over, most of Mr. Buchanan’s would be swept out, among them the husbands of several of her best patrons. She could only hope that enough of them would remain behind to keep her business thriving.

It was perhaps too much to hope that the new First Lady would have a taste for finery, and that Elizabeth might somehow attract her notice.

It was well after midnight when she was startled awake by the sounds of shouting on the streets outside, of jubilant songs and speeches, and soon thereafter, of the firing of pistols and shattering of windows. She sat up in bed and strained her ears in the darkness, sifting sense from the jumble of noise and fury until she understood that the votes had been counted, the result announced.

Abraham Lincoln would become the sixteenth president of the United States.

When Elizabeth had first arrived in Washington, she had no money, no friends, no place to call home, but she had soon found work as an assistant seamstress for two and a half dollars a day and took a room in a boardinghouse. Before long she decided to strike out on her own, and she had a sign and business cards made. She advertised herself as a skilled mantua maker, capable of sewing the complicated, snug-fitting bodice of the style that well-dressed ladies most desired. Slowly but surely, she acquired a few patrons, who recommended her to their friends and acquaintances. One generous lady, a friend of the mayor, persuaded him to waive the fee for the license that, like all free Negro females over the age of fourteen, Elizabeth was required to obtain within thirty days of her arrival if she wished to remain in the city. And she had already decided that she did wish to stay, even though the daily sight of slaves in chains being led through the muddy streets from shipyard to auction house and the restrictions upon freedmen like the license and curfews sometimes made her feel as if she were not truly free.

In October, a few weeks before the election that threw Washington City into uproar, Elizabeth sewed a gown for the wife of the cavalry officer Colonel Robert E. Lee. “Spare no expense,” the colonel had urged Elizabeth as he entrusted her with a hundred dollars to purchase lace and buttons and ribbons for his wife’s attire. Elizabeth gladly did as he bade her, and when Mrs. Lee wore the gown to a private dinner party at the White House in honor of the Prince of Wales, the other ladies in attendance were so impressed by the gown’s beauty and elegance and excellent fit that they sought out Elizabeth’s services. Her reputation grew as one delighted patron after another recommended her to their friends, and soon she had almost more work than she could handle.

Not long after the election, one of Elizabeth’s patrons recommended her to a neighbor, Varina Davis, the wife of Senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi. Informed that the Davises were late risers, Elizabeth offered to come to their I Street residence in the afternoons rather than first thing in the morning. That way she would have steady work sewing for the senator’s family in the afternoons, and her mornings would be free to devote to other patrons. Mrs. Davis agreed to the arrangement,
and so the autumn days passed pleasantly and productively, despite the growing tension in the city that the election seemed to have augmented rather than diffused. The Davis residence was a hub of Southern activity, with politicians and statesmen from the South racing in at all hours and disappearing into Senator Davis’s study for clandestine meetings in hushed voices that occasionally broke out into angry shouts. Mrs. Davis’s mouth would tighten a trifle at each outburst, but usually she would barely glance at the door and carry on as if nothing had happened. If she were in a particularly cheerful mood, she might make a small joke about men and their tempers, but Elizabeth suspected that she was as concerned as they were about the widening divide between North and South, if not quite so loud about it.

Elizabeth liked the Davises. The senator struck her as a considerate, dignified gentleman, and Mrs. Davis—dark-haired, with large dark eyes and a complexion less fair than was fashionable—was well educated and witty, and she seemed to have friends in every corner, Republicans and Democrats alike. Mrs. Davis looked to be in her early thirties, perhaps a decade younger than Elizabeth, perhaps a little less. She loved to read and to quote poetry, and whenever Elizabeth called, she usually found her in the midst of writing a letter, reading a book, or enjoying a visit from a friend.

One gray December afternoon, Elizabeth arrived at the Davis residence just in time to see one of Mrs. Davis’s friends, the pretty and vivacious Mrs. Samuel Phillips Lee, leaving in a huff. “She doesn’t look well pleased,” Elizabeth murmured to Jim, the colored doorman, a slave who had come north from Mississippi with the Davises. “I’m almost afraid to come inside and find out why. Did she and Mrs. Davis argue?”

Jim nodded. “Not long, and not too loud, but enough. I heard Mrs. Davis say she’s not gonna associate with Republicans anymore.”

“Why, that’s just silly.” Elizabeth shifted her satchel to her other hand and gestured to Mrs. Davis’s departing guest, who was picking her way carefully down the street. The winter chill had frozen the mud into hard, deep ruts, which made walking treacherous. It was difficult to say which was worse, the thick, sodden mud that soiled skirts and stole
shoes from one’s feet or the frozen variety that tripped one up and turned one’s ankles. “Mrs. Davis has lots of Republican friends.”

“Not many of them show up around here anymore.” Jim glanced over his shoulder and leaned toward her confidentially. “Guess how many angry Democrats can squeeze inside Mr. Davis’s study.”

“Ten?” Elizabeth replied, curious. “A dozen?”

“Twice that, I saw it for myself. They came in yesterday at dusk, senators and secretaries and the like, one by one, all quiet, and they stayed till near three o’clock this morning, talking secession.”

Elizabeth’s heart thumped. The first time she had heard the word secession, she had been obliged to ask her landlord Walker Lewis what it meant, and the sound of it still had the power to unnerve her. “Talking war too?”

“Talk of one usually leads to talk of the other, don’t it?”

Elizabeth nodded. It did, and ever more so. “Maybe it won’t come to that. Maybe it’s all just a lot of political bluster.” She knew that Senator Davis was working day and night to come up with a compromise to keep the slave states in the Union. She wanted to believe that something might yet come of his efforts, but the two sides’ differences were so sharp and strongly felt that an agreement seemed impossible.

“Maybe so,” Jim said as he showed her in, but she knew he was merely being polite. Perhaps he wanted war, if the war would bring him his freedom. She could not fault him for that.

She found Mrs. Davis in the parlor, a book on her lap, her gaze faraway. “Good morning, ma’am,” she greeted her. “I’ve finished basting the lining for the day dress if you’d care to try it on.”

Mrs. Davis looked up with a start. “Certainly, Elizabeth.” She rose and beckoned Elizabeth to follow her upstairs to her boudoir.

The senator’s wife said little as Elizabeth helped her into the muslin bodice and skirt. Elizabeth firmly believed that investing the time and effort into the cut and fit of the lining was the secret to a well-fashioned dress, and she could only shake her head at seamstresses who hastened through that most essential part of the process. First Elizabeth would make a pattern for the lining by pinning
inexpensive muslin or paper upon her patron’s figure. Next, she would remove the pieces and baste them together. Her patron would try on this rough garment, which Elizabeth would fit and adjust and offer to her patron to try on again, over and over, for more fittings and adjustments until Elizabeth was satisfied. Only then would she risk putting shears to the more expensive satins and silks and moirés that would comprise the outer garment. After that, the carefully constructed pattern was the only model Elizabeth needed to sew the gown, a step she would complete in the privacy of her own rooms. The process was laborious and time-consuming, but Elizabeth insisted that it was the only way to ensure a perfect fit. She wondered what her patrons would think if she told them she had learned the technique of cutting on the figure by sewing clothing for her fellow slaves back in Virginia—not for the sake of fashion, of course, but so as not to waste any of the rough osnaburg cloth the mistress provided.

As Elizabeth took in the vertical pleats in the back of the bodice and pinned them carefully, Mrs. Davis sighed and said, “I wonder…I wonder if I should have chosen a fabric more suitable for a Southern summer.”