Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker (53 page)

It’s over, Elizabeth thought when the quilt was finished.

She had been working doggedly until then, keeping herself so busy that she had no time for contemplation, but the realization that it was truly over cracked the façade of her serene resignation, and all the grief pushed out through the fissures, and she wept.

In 1890, eight years after Mrs. Lincoln was beyond caring what Elizabeth did with the precious relics entrusted to her, Elizabeth found herself in such difficult financial circumstances that she was obliged to sell her mementoes of Mr. Lincoln, which she had cherished and protected for thirty-five years. Overcoming her wariness of brokers, she enlisted the services of W. H. Lowdermilk & Co. and sold her treasures to Mr. Charles F. Gunther of Chicago, a candy manufacturer and collector of curiosities. To Mr. Gunther went the bloodstained cloak Mrs. Lincoln had worn to the theater on the night of her husband’s assassination, the right-hand glove Mr. Lincoln had worn at the first public reception after his second inauguration, and everything else. The only mementoes Elizabeth kept for herself were a pair of Mrs. Lincoln’s earrings, the pieces of fabric left over from sewing Mrs. Lincoln’s dresses, and the medallion quilt, which to Elizabeth seemed a relic of that time, although she had finished it later.

Word of the sale found its way to Wilberforce University near Xenia, Ohio, where the news must have evoked Bishop Daniel Payne’s curiosity and concern. He had never forgotten how Elizabeth had once offered to donate her Lincoln relics to the university, so they might be exhibited in Europe to raise money to rebuild the school’s main building, which had burned down on the day President Lincoln was assassinated. Mrs. Lincoln had objected so vehemently that Elizabeth had apologetically withdrawn her offer, but Bishop Payne had understood her dilemma and had respected her decision. Mrs. Keckley must have fallen upon hard times indeed to sell her cherished mementoes now.

Elizabeth was pleasantly surprised to receive Bishop Payne’s letter inquiring about her health, and she enjoyed his pleasant reminiscences and his description of how the university had grown and prospered since the days her son, George, had studied there. Then he proposed a change to the faculty that astonished her so much she had to ease herself into a chair: He offered her a position as head of Wilberforce University’s Department of Sewing and Domestic Science.

She immediately wrote back to thank him profusely, but to decline. She was no professor, she reminded him. It was true that she had
learned her letters in childhood, even though it had been illegal for her to read and write, and she had endeavored all her life thereafter to obey her father’s wish that she “learn her book.” She had always loved to read, especially the Bible, but she had enjoyed nothing in the way of a formal education. Would not university students expect a more learned instructor?

Not at all, Bishop Payne promptly responded. Students in the Department of Sewing and Domestic Science expected instructors who knew their craft inside and out and could skillfully pass on their knowledge to others. Elizabeth fit that description perfectly, and her experience as a mantua maker in the highest of Washington’s social circles would be invaluable. That she had accomplished so much without the benefit of formal schooling attested to her strength of character—her determination, perseverance, and love of learning, values she could impart to her students.

Although Elizabeth had taught sewing to freedwomen in contraband camps and ambitious young ladies in her workrooms, she had never taught in a classroom. How very different it would be, she reflected, imagining herself standing before a class of eager pupils, patiently demonstrating how to make flawless darts and lecturing them on the benefits of proper posture in avoiding neck and back strain.

She agreed to visit the campus, to meet the faculty and students and to learn more about the position. She traveled by train and was entertained so graciously by everyone she met there that after two days at Wilberforce University, she gladly accepted Bishop Payne’s generous offer. And so it was that after thirty years in Washington, at the age of seventy-four, she packed up her few belongings, bade farewell to Walker Lewis and his daughters and Emma and her many friends from the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church, and moved out west to Ohio.

Never once in her blessedly peaceful and rewarding years there did she regret her decision.

Elizabeth thrived in the classroom and on peaceful strolls around the campus chatting with her cheerful, inexhaustibly curious, impossibly young students, all of them born after the war, never having known
a single day when slavery was the law of the land. Dressmaking had changed since she had honed her skills in the art, but she adapted, and she soon discovered that experience trumped even the most newfangled tricks and contraptions. Among themselves, her students whispered stories about her and would come to her later, wide-eyed and awestruck, to ask what President Lincoln had really been like and whether it was true that his wife had been insane. Elizabeth would never fail to respond with serene praise for president and First Lady alike, and she would never allow anyone to disparage Mrs. Lincoln in her presence.

Sometimes Elizabeth would invite a group of favorite, promising students to her home and show them the silks and satins and other fine fabrics she had saved from making Mrs. Lincoln’s garments. On occasion, she would reward an accomplishment with a gift of a small scrap of the precious fabric, which the lucky student could make into a pincushion, a small, useful White House treasure of her own. Her students and a few faculty members alike marveled at her quilt, and they sympathized when she expressed her regret that she had been unable to give it to Mrs. Lincoln as she had intended.

Elizabeth found it strange that not one of her students seemed aware of the scandal that had led to her estrangement from Mrs. Lincoln. Some of them had heard that she had written a memoir, although none of them had ever read it, which surprised Elizabeth not at all since Robert Lincoln had done his utmost to reduce the inventory.

Eventually it dawned on her that perhaps she had triumphed over the scandal after all.

In 1893, Wilberforce University participated in the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, a grand and glorious event in commemoration of the four hundredth anniversary of Columbus’s discovery of the New World. When the event was in the planning stages, exhibit proposals from colored Americans were summarily rejected, but after strong protests from the black community led by Frederick Douglass and Ida B. Wells, the exposition organizers relented and allowed very limited participation, including displays of needlework and drawings in the Women’s Building. Knowing that many skilled artisans and
scientists of her race had been unfairly excluded diminished Elizabeth’s pleasure in the honor bestowed upon Wilberforce University, and if it had been up to her, she would have withdrawn from the exhibition in solidarity. But it was not her decision, and, as she told herself, her hardworking students deserved to have their excellent work displayed and their achievements noted. Only by taking their rightful place among whites and presenting their handiwork before the eyes of a skeptical public could they hope to influence prejudiced minds.

Elizabeth felt herself drawn along by the strong pull of memory as she and several of her students traveled by train to Chicago. When she closed her eyes, she could see her former patron and lost friend as she had been in those grief-stricken weeks in Hyde Park, lamenting alone in her darkened room, staring unhappily across the vast dark blue of Lake Michigan. She had never ceased mourning, Elizabeth knew. She had never gathered up the shards of her broken life and reassembled them into something new, something endurable, if not happy. Even though Mrs. Lincoln had passed beyond all human suffering, and had been reunited at long last with her youngest sons and her beloved husband, Elizabeth was moved to pity for her anew.

The exposition was a wonder to behold. Elizabeth had assumed that it would be much like the Great Northwestern Sanitary Fair she had attended in the city in June of 1865, but the World’s Columbian Exposition far surpassed it. Fifty nations participated, and when she wasn’t tending her department’s exhibit, Elizabeth and her students toured the various buildings and pavilions, marveling at clever new inventions, tasting strange and often delicious foods, and listening to music from different countries far across the sea. A wistful ache filled Elizabeth as she waited safely on solid ground while her bold, young students braved a ride on a dangerous-looking contraption called a Ferris wheel. The exposition’s vast grounds were so close to Mrs. Lincoln’s former Hyde Park residence that Elizabeth could have walked there, if she wished—but she knew she would find no comfort or satisfaction in revisiting that unhappy chapter of her past.

She would rather continue to explore the exposition, which seemed
to represent the future with all its newness and wonder and innovation, and to pass pleasant hours at the Wilberforce University exhibit, which was firmly rooted in the present. Their exhibit resided within the Manufacturers and Liberal Arts Building, and in their modest portion of the vast space, wooden figures clad in garments designed and made by Elizabeth and her students showed off the department’s skill and artistry, and a revolving showcase displayed photographs and biographies of their graduates.

Observing passersby as they admired the garments, and watching her students as they answered questions with grace, intelligence, and poise, Elizabeth felt her wistfulness recede as the warm glow of joy and pride filled her heart almost to bursting. This was her legacy, she realized, not the beautiful wardrobe she had sewn for Mrs. Lincoln or even the book she had written with such good intentions. These young women, and the apprentices she had instructed and advised back in Washington, and the runaways and freedwomen she had provided with the fundamental skills to care for themselves and their families—they were her legacy. Their success and independence and confidence were her true gifts to the world.

Her greatest legacy could not be measured in garments or in words, but in the wisdom she had imparted, in the lives made better because she had touched them.

E
lizabeth gazed out upon the streets of Washington through the carriage window, thinking of how much the capital had changed since she had first settled there as a younger, more ambitious woman in 1860. In her mind’s eye she could still envision it as it had been then—the unfinished Capitol dome, the muddy streets, the slaves in chains being led from harbor to holding pen.

How the world had changed since then. How she herself had changed.

Her weekly carriage rides were prescribed by her doctor, who insisted that she get out and about to increase the vigor of her constitution. Ever since she had moved back to Washington after a mild stroke had obliged her to resign from Wilberforce University, she had resided in a basement room at the Home for Destitute Colored Women and Children on Fifteenth Street. It amused her to refer to it as
her
home, not only because she lived there, but because it had been endowed in part by donations from the Contraband Relief Association she had founded so long ago. She liked her solitary room, small and neat, the little table with a pitcher and bowl in one corner, a straight chair in the
other, a rocking chair near the bed, and the old trunk containing her clothes and what remained of her cherished mementoes. Over the dresser hung a picture of Mrs. Lincoln, and through the window Elizabeth could watch young colored men and women on their way to and from classes at Howard University. No one but her pastor and a few friends knew that she resided there, who she was and who she had been. And that was the way she liked it.

When the carriage pulled to a stop in front of the home, Elizabeth slowly and gingerly stepped down, accepting the driver’s assistance with thanks. Straight and tall, unbowed by age or infirmity, she crossed the threshold, exchanging polite greetings with the residents and staff she passed. “You have a visitor in the parlor,” one woman told her, and so Elizabeth headed down the hall, curious, because she was not expecting anyone, or she would have gone driving earlier.

In the parlor she discovered a most welcome guest, her goddaughter Alberta, or Mrs. Alberta Elizabeth Lewis-Savoy as she was now called, whom she had known since the moment of her birth. “My dear girl,” Elizabeth greeted her happily, embracing her and kissing her cheek. Alberta would always be a girl in Elizabeth’s eyes, though she was thirty-seven with children of her own. “To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure? I didn’t expect to see you until Sunday.”

Alberta smiled warmly, but her manner was somehow hesitant, a guarded look in her eye. “I stumbled upon an interesting article in the newspaper this morning, and I thought you might want to see it.”

She took a clipping from her handbag and gave it to Elizabeth, who held the page without unfolding it. “It was so fascinating you could not wait a few days?”