Mary: Mrs. A. Lincoln

Summary (from the publisher): Mary Todd Lincoln is one of history’s most misunderstood and enigmatic women. The first president’s wife to be called First Lady, she was a political strategist, a supporter of emancipation, and a mother who survived the loss of three children and the assassination of her beloved husband. Yet she also ran her family into debt, held seances in the White House, and was committed to an insane asylum. In Janis Cooke Newman’s debut novel, Mary Todd Lincoln shares the story of her life in her own words. Writing from Bellevue Place asylum, she takes readers from her tempestuous childhood in a slave-holding Southern family through the years after her husband’s death. A dramatic tale filled with passion and depression, poverty and ridicule, infidelity and redemption, Mary allows us entry into the inner, intimate world of this brave and fascinating woman.

Review: Mary: Mrs. A. Lincoln is a historical fiction novel about Mary Todd Lincoln. In the novel, Mary Todd Lincoln is writing her own biography from the insane asylum, Bellevue Place. Thus the story is told in dual story lines, with each section beginning with an account of her time at Belluvue Place, and then going further back in time to relay her life story, until the two narratives converge in time.  I'm generally not a huge fan of first person novels, but it did serve the purpose of giving this a faux memoir feel. The novel concludes with Mary leaving her written memoir in a carpetbag on a train. Mary imagines that a railroad employee will force open the lock and "discover that it contains only someone's writing tied with a nightdress ribbon and a long, black hair. Irritated that he has expended so much effort upon something which has no worth, he will send it all to be burned. No one will read what I have written here. And I suppose in the end, that is as it should be. It is enough that I have read it myself" (620).

For the most part, this novel seems historically accurate, and gives a voice to a historical figure that is traditionally viewed as hysterical and a drag to a beleaguered and largely beloved president. The problem is that reading her story from her point of view did not endear me to Mary. I don't think I like her very much as a character. While I sympathize with her childhood being one of a great many children and losing her mother at the age of six, it does not excuse her selfish and outrageous spending habits and irrational demands upon her husband and family. 
  
In the novel, Mary is seen constantly wracking up outrageous debts because of her uncontrollable spending habits. The book alludes to her delusions to explain this habit, implying that Mary saw objects as a way to protect and insulate her family. "I had the boxes brought to my room where I sat upon the bed and unpacked every piece of it. I held the sugar bowl, and the creamer in my hands and their gleaming weight seemed a promise that the infection which sickened limbs would not find Robert, that whatever it was which poisoned blood would keep from Taddie. The serving pot offered me assurance that my husband would survive the burdens of his office, that the war would not eat out his life. I kept the silver service in my closet where I might look upon it whenever I felt need of its unmarred durability. Two days later, when Robert wrote again begging to go to war and a hint of the gangrene filled my nose and mouth, I returned to the shop and purchased a set of silver cake plates to keep it company" (394). 

Additionally, Mary is shown as becoming obsessed with seances, or connecting with her lost loved ones through spirit mediums. "I went next to Boston, a city which possessed more clairvoyants than any other. [...] Twice I thought I saw Taddie's face hovering behind a certain gentleman medium, mimicking the very precise manner in which he called up spirits. One time I imagined that my lap felt Willie's weight, and at the end of the evening, I noticed that my skirts were creased by something I could not otherwise explain" (567). Much of Mary's behavior was irrational, however, she was a woman who lost three children and a husband after losing a mother very early in life. Additionally, the war forced her to see her family divided, fighting on opposite sides, and she lost her younger brother in the war. Furthermore, following the Civil War, mediums and spirit connections were very popular for a country that had lost thousands of individuals. Mary Lincoln was certainly not the only American attempting to connect to a dead relative.

I took issue with Newman's choice to make Robert, Mary's oldest son, the prime villain in this novel. From Mary's perspective, her oldest and most distant son, the only one to survive to adulthood, but also the one to institutionalize her, likely was the villain. However, from birth, Mary describes him as indifferent and cold and he is depicted as treating his wife cruelly, leading her to alcoholism. From all historical accounts, it sounds as if Robert did have reason to put his mother away, so I find his depiction unfairly skewed in Mary's favor. Mary imagined assassins were chasing her and tried to commit suicide; she was hardly a rational and healthy individual when her son chose to commit her. 

I also thought many of the fictional details of Bellevue Place a bit contrived. Several patients die at the hands of the insane asylum, and Mary is visited by her medium friend Myra who gives her the implausible tale of visiting Robert and discovering he is keeping her locked up falsely. "'I saw another letter,' she told me. 'He was working on it when I came in, and when he was called away, he made a point of pushing it beneath some papers.'" It seems a bit too coincidental for purposes of the novel flow that Mary just happened to have a devoted medium friend that just happened to uncover private letters in Robert's office. 

I enjoyed learning more about Mary Lincoln, especially regarding her life before and after her marriage to Abraham Lincoln, since these were periods I knew little about. I was particularly moved by Mary's conflict between wanting to have a hand in her husband's career and in politics and yet feeling the pull of domestic obligations. "The following day, recalling how I had invited myself into my husband's bedroom to give him direction upon the delivery of a political speech, I spent several hours making a spun-sugar cake of great elaborateness. That night, however, I went to him again so I might demonstrate Madame Mentelle's advice regarding dramatic gesture. Indeed from that time onward, I came every night into my husband's bedroom in order to share some portion of Madame's theatrical instruction. And every day following, I prepared a cake which required no fewer than twelve steps, and then swept and scrubbed some long-neglected portion of my house" (230). Newman provided intriguing insight into a complicated figure who was the first President's wife to be called First Lady, and whose legacy endures today. 

Stars: 3