The Madness of Mary Lincoln

4. Of Unsound Mind

4 Of Unsound Mind When Mary arrived in Chicago, she “seemed startled” that a perfectly healthy Robert met her at the station.1 He asked her to come stay at his house, but she declined since she and Robert’s wife still were estranged. Instead, they went to the Grand Pacific Hotel to secure her a room and to have supper. After Mary told Robert that a man had poisoned her coffee on the train ride north, Robert decided to take a room for himself as well. He slept at the hotel, in a room next to Mary’s, every night for more than two weeks.2 Mary slept well the first night, but most every night thereafter she was restless and would knock on Robert’s door, often because she was afraid of being alone. Twice in one night, she knocked on his door and eventually asked to sleep in his room. Robert gave her the bed, and he slept on the lounge. After that, Robert called Dr. Ralph N. Isham, his personal physician, to attend his mother. Around April 1, Mary became increasingly paranoid and agitated. That morning, she tried to go downstairs in the elevator half-dressed. Robert called the elevator back and sought to induce Mary to return to her room, an interference she regarded as “impertinent.” When she refused to leave the elevator, Robert, with the help of a hotel employee, “gently forced her out,” to which she screamed, “You are going to murder me!” Back in her room, Mary said that the “wandering Jew” who had taken her pocketbook on the train in March would return it at three o’clock.3 She also sat near the wall and for an hour professed to be repeating what this man was telling her through the wall. During the afternoon, Mary approached the hotel manager, Samuel Turner, and said “something was wrong with the house,” that she “heard strange sounds” in her room and was afraid to be alone. She told him the city was on fire on the South Side and then made him take her to every room with a “7” in its number in search of a Mr. Shoemaker.4 Turner took her back upstairs and said he would return in fifteen minutes. Five minutes later, she was back downstairs, repeating her fears and saying that a strange man in the corridor was “going to molest her.” She asked to stay in some other female boarder’s room to be safe. Turner left her in 44 45 . Of Unsound Mind the room of a Mrs. Dodge until she returned from dinner, but shortly thereafter he was summoned to the room where Mary’s “appearance was wild and her fears were repeated.” Turner concluded she was “deranged” and did not consider it safe to leave her alone. That night, Mary knocked on Robert’s hotel room door so many times that he told her he would leave the hotel if she persisted. Other hotel employees also witnessed Mary’s bizarre behavior during the month of April. The hotel housekeeper, Mrs. Allen, who spent two nights in Mary’s room, reported that Mary was “excited, agitated, restless and nervous” and that the widow said a small window in her room “boded ill” and “disturbed her.”5 Mrs. Allen also saw Mary “mix several kinds of medicine together.” Hotel employee Maggie Gavin, who took care of Mary’s room and slept with the widow in her room for four weeks, witnessed similar events. She said Mary was anxious about her son and extremely restless at night and often would pace the floor or go to Robert’s room out of fear. Gavin said Mary would “complain frequently that people were speaking to her through the wall” or the floor and would call Gavin’s attention to the voices. Mary also would point to nearby chimney smoke and say that the city was burning down. Robert also experienced his mother’s fear of fire, about which the physicians later would warn him. He said that since the Great Fire of Chicago in 1871, his mother had kept her trunks and property in the Fidelity Safe Deposit Company’s building. In late April, however, Mary became convinced that all Chicago was going to be burned, except Robert’s house, and declared that she intended to send her trunks to Milwaukee. Robert suggested that if his house were to be spared, then it would be the best...