3
The soldiers of Company K One Hundred and Fiftieth Pennsylvania Volunteers had become practically a part of the White House family. Abraham Lincoln treated them as though they were his own sons, called most of them by their first names, personally arranged for their passes and furloughs.
So when Mary Todd Lincoln had all her shopping purchases carried up to the family sitting room and displayed, Lincoln’s face wore a sober look of disappointment. Mary was tired and on edge but she excitedly showed him, one after another, the toys she had bought for Tad, the gifts for Robert, and a few items for members of the household staff.
“Look, Abraham, this gun—it fires like a real cannon! With smoke.”
“Nothing for the boys?” he asked, rubbing his long hands over his knees, a characteristic nervous gesture.
“Why, I’ve just showed you—the wallet and cuff buttons for Bob and all these—”
“I mean my boys. The Company K boys.”
Mary stared incredulously. “Good Heavens—you can’t give Christmas presents to a whole company of soldiers! There must be a hundred of them.”
“I wish there were,” he said heavily. “I wish every company in our army was full strength but unfortunately they’re far short in numbers. There are less than forty of those boys and they’re far from home and Christmas is a bad time to be homesick.”
“They could be worse off,” she snapped. “They could be out there along the Rappahannock or down in those marshes of Mississippi. Pennsylvania’s not so far. Lord knows you’re always fixing up furloughs for them so they can go home. Why, it would cost a fortune to give gifts to all that company—and anyway, what can you give a soldier?”
“Some warm socks might come in good. That ground’s frozen out there and it’s likely to snow hard any day now.”
“The commissary should keep them in socks.” She was testy as always in the face of criticism. “Don’t I do enough—going out to those horrid hospitals twice a week—carrying things—this house is practically stripped of bed linen, all torn up for bandages.” She fluttered about her purchases, flushed and breathless, her hands making little snatching gestures, picking up things, putting them down again, twisting string around her fingers.
“Very noble of you, indeed,” he approved. “I’m proud of what you do but I’m still thinking about Joe and Nate and those other boys. They curry horses and clean harness and saddles; they look after Tad and his goat—and of course they’re always on guard for fear I’ll get shot, though I can’t figure any place where I could be where nobody could get at me, unless they buried me.”
“That man, that one-eyed man, you’re crazy to let him come here!” Mary cried. “Mr. Nicolay says so.”
“Gurowski? I know.” He smiled patiently. “If anybody does the Democrats a favor by putting a bullet in my head it might very well be Gurowski. He croaks that the country is marching to it’s tomb and that Seward and McClellan and I are the gravediggers.”
“They’ll be digging your grave if you don’t have a care for yourself!” Her volatile mood had shifted; she was almost in tears. “That horrible creature with those old green goggles, that silly red vest and that big hat and cape—he looks like Satan himself, yet you listen to him!”
“I’m his hired man, Mary,” Lincoln repeated. “The bald-headed old buzzard is smart enough. He had a good job working under Horace Greeley on the Tribune, but they had to let him go because he couldn’t distinguish truth from slander. Then Seward put him in the State Department as a translator but he published so many slurs about Seward and me that they dismissed him from that job. He started as a revolutionary in Europe; now he thinks he can save this nation. Maybe by eliminating me. He’s written down now as a dangerous character. He won’t be allowed in here again, so don’t worry.”
Mary would never worry long, he knew. She was too mercurial, too easily diverted by trifles. What troubled Lincoln most was her impulsive inclination to meddle. She took a hand in decisions, was always writing indiscreet letters to newspaper editors, discussing national affairs too brashly; she interfered in decisions over post offices and appointments to military academies. When New York papers printed long items about her travels, her clothes, her bonnets and baggage, she was flattered and excited, unaware that her husband was unhappily reading into some of these accounts an amused note of criticism and contempt. She was as much a child as Tad, he told himself often, but unlike Tad she could not be controlled.
All through the evening she busied herself happily over her gifts, wrapping them in white paper, fetching bits of ribbon from her dozens of bandboxes for bows and decorations. Abraham Lincoln slipped off his elastic-sided shoes and stretched his bony feet to the fire. He dozed a little and had to be warned sharply by Mary when his gray wool socks began to smoke a little.
“I declare, Abraham, you’d burn yourself to a cinder if I didn’t look after you! You’ve even scorched your pantaloons. Yes, you have. I can see where the broadcloth is singed on that right leg. It’s like putting ribbons on a pig to try to dress you up decently. Sometimes I despair of ever making you into a real gentleman!”
Lincoln smacked absently at the hot fabric of his breeches. “In this town, Mary, gentlemen are as thick as fleas in a dog pound. Take credit for making me into a man but let the fashionable aspect go.”
“People can’t see how much you know,” she argued. “All they see is how you look. No wonder that New York paper called you a ‘pathetic, disheveled figure’ when you made that speech at Gettysburg. I suppose your cravat was crooked and your socks falling down.”
“They’ve called me worse things. Names don’t stick unless your hide is soft. I got toughened up back yonder.”
“I notice you act kind of flattered when they call you a railsplitter—and a yokel.”
“Well, I know I was a good railsplitter. If they called me a sorry railsplitter I’d resent it.” He was unperturbed. “What is a yokel? A fellow from the country. So I must be a yokel for I sprung from about as deep in the country as you can get air to breathe, so deep there wasn’t even a road there, just an old trace that meandered up the bed of the crick part of the way. America’s made of yokels. Our side, anyway. Your friends down South have got a few stylish gentlemen but a lot of them lost their sashes and their plumes up at Gettysburg and they got buried right alongside the yokels. Humiliating to them, I reckon.”
She had to laugh. “You’re hopeless, Abe Lincoln.”
“Well, I know you’d admire me a heap more if I could go around like Jim Buchanan. Long-tailed coat and white vest and my head cocked to one side like a tom turkey admiring all the gals. He brought plenty of elegance to this office but if he’d had a little yokel grit in his gizzard the country wouldn’t be in this mess, maybe. One thing I know, you wouldn’t want me sashaying around the gals like Buchanan. You’d spit fire if I commenced that. Go on and fuss at me, Mary; it don’t bother me and I can still lick salt off the top of your head.”
She pulled the cord of the little toy cannon and aimed it at him. The cork that was fired from it hit him in the stomach and he bent over, pretending to be mortally wounded, uttering grotesque groans. She clutched at him abruptly, holding both his arms.
“Don’t do that!” she wailed. “It’s like my dream.”
He put his arms around her, pressed her head against his chest. “You having dreams again? I thought you’d quit that foolishness.”
“I’ve had the same one, over and over. I can’t see you but I can hear you groaning—like that. And I wake up in a cold sweat feeling something warm on my hands—like blood!” she moaned shuddering.
He patted her head soberly. “You eat too many cakes at parties. Too much syllabub. Getting fat, too.” He pinched her playfully. “Me now, I’m one of Pharaoh’s lean kine. More bones than a shad and they all poke out and rattle. You should have married a pretty little feller, somebody like Steve Douglas.”
“I didn’t want him. I wanted you.”
“Well, you got me, Mary, not anything extra of a bargain but I did set you up so high you couldn’t go higher unless you got made queen of some place. You’re a queen now, queen of a torn and divided country all drowned in sorrow and hate and woe. But it won’t always be like that.—I wish to the Lord I knew what to do about that little man, Ulysses S. Grant! I reckon I’ll just have to give him command of the army.” He put her gently aside, letting care return to possess him.
“He may be a fine soldier but he’s a dirty, drunken little man,” sniffed Mary, “and I don’t like his wife either.”
“He fights better, dirty and drunk, than a lot of elegant fellers I’ve got in commands. If he can win battles he can go dirty as a hog and it won’t degrade him any in my estimation,” Lincoln declared. “As for his wife, you’ve got a bad habit of not liking wives, Mary.”
“That’s not true. I like some of their wives—when they’re not cold and distant and look down their noses. It’s because I know how to buy pretty clothes and my bonnets become me. I do look nice when I’m dressed up, Abe Lincoln. And I know how to behave in company. After all there is a little respect due to my position,” she stated, complacently.
He gave her a comradely pat and went back to his chair and the stack of papers he had put aside. “All right, Mama, you do the peacocking for this office and I’ll try to win the war,” he said, withdrawing into that remoteness that always baffled her.