Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker (46 page)

“How provoking,” Mrs. Lincoln exclaimed, sinking heavily into a chair, panting from the effort of scaling the tower of stairs. “I declare, I never saw such unaccommodating people. Just to think of them sticking us away up here in the attic. I will give them a regular going over in the morning.”

“You forget they do not know you,” Elizabeth reminded her. “Mrs. Lincoln would be treated differently from Mrs. Clarke.”

“True, I do forget. Well, I suppose I shall have to put up with the annoyances.” Mrs. Lincoln’s expression turned woebegone. “Why did you not come to me yesterday, Elizabeth? I was almost crazy when I reached here last night, and found you had not arrived. I sat down and wrote you a note—I felt so badly—imploring you to come to me immediately.”

“I thought perhaps you would change your mind,” Elizabeth admitted. “I also knew I would have great difficulty securing rooms for ‘Mrs. Clarke.’”

“Well, based upon what we have seen so far I cannot fault you for suspecting as much.” Then she gave a little start. “You have not had your dinner, Elizabeth, and you must be hungry. I nearly forgot about it in the joy of seeing you. You must go down to the table right away.”

Elizabeth was famished, but the thought of a good meal partly revived her. Mrs. Lincoln pulled the bell rope, and when a servant appeared, she ordered him to give Elizabeth her dinner. Elizabeth followed him downstairs, where he led her into the dining room and seated her at a corner table. She was giving him her order when the steward approached. “You are in the wrong room,” he said gruffly.

Elizabeth regarded him mildly. “I was brought here by the waiter.”

“It makes no difference. I will find you another place where you can eat your dinner.”

Elizabeth’s stomach rumbled as she got up from the table and followed him from the dining room. “It is very strange,” Elizabeth said tightly when they reached the hall, “that you should permit me to be seated at the table in the dining room only for the sake of ordering me to leave it the next moment.”

The steward halted and regarded her over his shoulder. “Are you not Mrs. Clarke’s servant?”

“I am with Mrs. Clarke,” Elizabeth replied, emphasizing the distinction.

“It is all the same.” He turned back around and continued down the hall. “Servants are not allowed to eat in the large dining room. Here, this way. You must take your dinner in the servants’ hall.”

Humiliated and hungry, Elizabeth followed the steward through the rear corridors of the hotel, knowing that it was the only way she was likely to get a bite to eat. On reaching the servants’ hall, the steward tugged on the knob only to find the door locked. He left Elizabeth standing in the passage while he went to inform the clerk. A few minutes later, the obsequious clerk came blustering down the hall, the scent of his perfume preceding him. “Did you come out of the street, or from Mrs. Clarke’s room?”

“From Mrs. Clarke’s room,” she replied politely, refusing to mirror his ill temper.

“It is after the regular hour for dinner. The room is locked up, and Annie has gone out with the key.”

For a moment Elizabeth hoped that he might allow her to return to the dining room, but when he said nothing more, her pride would not allow her to stand waiting in the hall any longer. “Very well,” she said, turning toward the staircase. “I will tell Mrs. Clarke that I cannot get any dinner.”

He scowled as she began to climb the stairs. “You need not put on airs,” he called after her. “I understand the whole thing.”

“I don’t think you do,” Elizabeth muttered under her breath as she reached the first of far too many landings. “If you understood the whole
thing,” she huffed as she climbed, “it is strange that you should put the widow of President Abraham Lincoln in a three-cornered room in the attic of this miserable hotel.”

Murmuring to herself what she could not say to his face only made her feel worse. When she finally reached Mrs. Lincoln’s room, tears of humiliation and frustration blurred her vision.

At the sight of her downcast expression, Mrs. Lincoln’s brow furrowed in concern. “What is the matter, Elizabeth?”

“I cannot get any dinner.”

“Cannot get any dinner? What do you mean?”

Elizabeth sank into a chair and told her all that had happened since the servant had led her downstairs. “Those insolent, overbearing people,” Mrs. Lincoln exclaimed, furious. She seized the armrests of her easy chair and pulled herself fiercely to her feet. “Never mind, Elizabeth. You shall have your dinner. Put on your bonnet and shawl.”

“What for?”

“What for?” Mrs. Lincoln put on her bonnet and stood at the mirror, tying the strings. “Why, we will go out of the hotel, and get you something to eat where they know how to behave decently.”

Warily, Elizabeth said, “Surely, Mrs. Lincoln, you do not intend to go out on the street tonight?”

“Yes I do. Do you suppose I am going to have you starve, when we can find something to eat on every corner?”

“But you forget. You are here as Mrs. Clarke and not as Mrs. Lincoln. You arrived alone, and the people here already suspect that everything is not quite as you say. If you go outside the hotel at night, they will accept that as evidence against you.”

“Nonsense. What do you suppose I care for what these low-bred people think? Put on your things.”

“No, Mrs. Lincoln,” Elizabeth said firmly, though her stomach rumbled a protest. “I shall not go outside of the hotel tonight, for I understand your situation, even if you do not. Mrs. Lincoln has no reason to care what these people may say about her, but Mrs. Clarke wishes to remain incognito, so she must be more prudent.”

With some difficulty, Elizabeth finally persuaded Mrs. Lincoln to act with caution. She was so frank and impulsive that she never gave enough thought to how her words and deeds could be misconstrued. Elizabeth bade her good night and went off to her own room, but not until she was settled in bed and had turned down the lamp did it occur to her that Mrs. Lincoln could have ordered dinner to be served to Elizabeth in her room, so that she would not have had to retire hungry.

The next morning, Mrs. Lincoln knocked on Elizabeth’s door before six o’clock. “Come, Elizabeth, get up,” she called. “I know you must be hungry. Dress yourself quickly and we will go out and get some breakfast. I was unable to sleep last night for thinking of you being forced to go to bed without anything to eat.”

Elizabeth too had slept poorly in her uncomfortable, lumpy bed, kept from restful slumber by her growling stomach. Swiftly she dressed, and before long she and Mrs. Lincoln were taking their breakfast at a restaurant on Broadway about a block away from the St. Denis Hotel. Afterward, they strolled up Broadway and entered Union Square Park, where they seated themselves on a bench beneath a canopy of trees bright with autumn colors, watched the children at play, and discussed Mrs. Lincoln’s plan to sell her wardrobe. Mrs. Lincoln soon revealed that the previous day, while Elizabeth was en route from Washington, she had called on a diamond broker after seeing an ad in the
Herald
at the breakfast table. “I tried to sell them a lot of jewelry,” Mrs. Lincoln said. “I gave my name as Mrs. Clarke. The first gentleman I spoke with was pleasant, but we were unable to agree on a price. He stepped back into the office to confer with another gentleman, and just as I concluded they were plotting to hurry me out the door, a third gentleman entered the store. He looked over my jewelry—he was, as I later learned, Mr. Keyes, a silent partner in the firm—and discovered my name engraved inside of one of my rings.”

“Oh, dear,” said Elizabeth.

“I had forgotten about the engraving,” Mrs. Lincoln confessed.
“When I saw him looking at the ring so earnestly, I snatched it from him and put it in my pocket.”

Elizabeth smothered a laugh. “I’m sure that didn’t provoke his curiosity at all.”

“I did not want to wait around to find out. I hastily gathered up my jewelry and started to leave, but they had become much more interested in my wares, as you can imagine. I left my card, Mrs. Clarke at the St. Denis Hotel. They are to call to see me this forenoon, when I shall enter into negotiations with them.”

“Is that wise?” Elizabeth asked carefully. “Surely they’ve figured out that you are Mrs. President Lincoln.”

“Or that I am her thieving maid.”

“Not likely, I think.” Earnestly, Elizabeth said, “With such delicate business, should you trust a firm that you have never heard of before, one that you chose only because you spied their ad in the paper? Wouldn’t it be more prudent to seek a recommendation from an acquaintance, or work through a jeweler you’ve done business with before?”

“More prudent but impossible,” Mrs. Lincoln replied. “I could not ask friends for introductions or go to my favorite jewelers without exposing myself. Even if Mr. Keyes knows who I am, the rest of the city must not suspect. I could not bear the humiliation.”

Elizabeth understood, and after enjoying the sunshine and cool breezes a little while longer, they returned to the hotel. Shortly after their arrival, Mr. Keyes called, and after they withdrew to a parlor to chat, Mrs. Lincoln confirmed her true identity. He was, as Elizabeth suspected he would be, elated, and he willingly admired the shawls, dresses, and fine laces Mrs. Lincoln displayed for him. When Mrs. Lincoln explained why she was compelled to sell her wardrobe, Mr. Keyes was much affected by her story and severely denounced the government for its ingratitude. He was disgusted by the tale of their ill treatment at the St. Denis too, and he urged Mrs. Lincoln to move to another hotel without delay.

Mrs. Lincoln agreed, and as they rode to the Union Place Hotel,
Elizabeth said, “Perhaps when we arrive, you can confide in the proprietor, and give him your true name without registering, to ensure the proper respect.” Hesitantly, Mrs. Lincoln agreed, but by the time they reached the hotel, she had changed her mind again, and registered as Mrs. Clarke. Even so, they were treated with far more courtesy—perhaps because Mrs. Lincoln’s real name was discernible on some of her trunks, if one looked carefully, and the staff knew who she was but pretended otherwise.

After they had settled into their new accommodations, Mr. Keyes and Mr. Brady called on Mrs. Lincoln often over the next few days, for they had much to discuss. Mrs. Lincoln was anxious to dispose of her garments and return to Chicago as quickly and discreetly as possible, but to Elizabeth’s consternation, the gentlemen would hear nothing of this. “Put your affairs in our hands,” Mr. Brady declared, “and we will raise you at least one hundred thousand dollars in a few weeks. The people will not permit the widow of Abraham Lincoln to suffer. They will come to her rescue when they know she is in want.”

This was precisely what Mrs. Lincoln wanted to hear, in both financial and emotional terms, and so she agreed to work with W. H. Brady & Co. They advanced her six hundred dollars for her expenses while she remained in New York, and they assured her that their plan, once they devised it, would succeed.

The Union Place Hotel was comfortable, and the brokers’ confidence was heartening, but even so, Mrs. Lincoln and Elizabeth remained wary of discovery. On Sunday they took a carriage ride through Central Park, but they took no pleasure in it, because despite the heavy veil Mrs. Lincoln wore to conceal her identity, they could not throw open the window for fear of being recognized. They also narrowly escaped being run into by another carriage, and they were terribly alarmed not only for the harm that might have come to them, but because an accident would have drawn attention and their masquerade would have been exposed.

Elizabeth disliked the subterfuge more every day, but when Mr. Brady and Mr. Keyes came to Mrs. Lincoln with their plan for disposing
of her goods, she began to dread that the scheme was a disaster in the making. Mr. Brady believed that the prominent Republican men who owed their fortunes to Mr. Lincoln would be willing to advance her money rather than let it be made known that his widow was so impoverished that she was compelled to sell her wardrobe. To that end, he urged Mrs. Lincoln to write letters describing her unhappy circumstances, addressed to him but dated as if she had written them weeks earlier while still in Chicago. The brokers wanted her to imply that she had saved letters compromising various politicians and businessmen who had profited from wartime contracts. Mr. Brady and Mr. Keyes would show the letters to the gentlemen in question in hopes of embarrassing them into providing for her. If that failed—if her plight, their loyalty to the Republican Party, and their own sense of self-preservation did not move them—Mr. Brady would threaten to publish the letters.

To Elizabeth the plan smacked of blackmail, and the moment Mr. Brady and Mr. Keyes left, she urged Mrs. Lincoln not to go along with it. “I fail to see how any good could come of dishonesty and threats,” she said. “You said you wanted to dispose of your wardrobe quickly and quietly. I fear these letters will only draw the matter out and bring you unwanted attention.”

“I have been ignored long enough.” Mrs. Lincoln sat down at her table and took out pen, ink, and paper. “Mr. Brady and Mr. Keyes believe that I must do something to gain the attention of the gentlemen best placed to assist me.”