The Insanity File: The Case of Mary Todd Lincoln

6. Conclusion

8 CONCLUSION Free at last, Mary Todd Lincoln remained in Springfield only until summer's end. Although Elizabeth continued to argue that her sister should at least make Springfield her headquarters, Mary said that the town held too many sad memories. She departed in September 1876 with a new favorite, Edward Lewis Baker, Jr., a grandson of Ninian and Elizabeth and a sort of substitute for the grandchildren from whom Mrs. Lincoln was now estranged, one ofwhom, in fact, she had never laid eyes upon. She and Baker went first to Kentucky, visited Mammoth Cave, toured the sites ofMary's youth in Lexington, and made a pilgrimage to the cemetery where the ancestral Todds lay. Then they went to the centennial exposition in Philadelphia. Afterward, Mary spent a week in New York City and finally departed on the Labrador for Le Havre. Her ultimate destination was Pau, France, where, Mary assured her sister, she had friends who would be kind to her, including several members of the Orleans family, the deposed bourgeois royalty of France, whom she had met in Washington during the Civil War and later again in England.1 After Mary left, Elizabeth wrote Robert an apologetic letter. Mary, fearing that her son might attempt once again to control her movements, had sworn her sister to secrecy in regard to her time of departure. She left, Elizabeth explained, because "her resentful 120 CONCLUSION [ 121 nature found it necessary to place the ocean between you and herself ." She predicted that Mary would weary ofher self-described and self-imposed "exile" and return ere long to the United States, ifnot to Springfield. Elizabeth admitted that it was "utterly hopeless" to think of Mary's recovering from her buying mania. When in the past she had let slip exclamations ofsurprise at useless purchases, it "invariably called forth angry words" from Mary. Elizabeth reckoned that her sister had already added six trunks to those Robert had sent down to Springfield the previous spring, and Mary had gone on a spending spree in New York before her departure. Aunt Lizzie summed up her feelings this way: I often wonder Dear Robert, if the course, I have been constrained to pursue has at all dissatisfied you-The truth is I only, from the beginning of this unpleasant matter, wished to do my duty, depending upon the judgements of others for guidance. It may yet tum out, that all parties have been too indulgent-ifso, the consolation will be, in having erred on the side ofhumanity. I am still ofthe opinion that she will not expend her income, and also believe that a sense ofloneliness will cause her return, sooner than she contemplated-the improvement in her social feeling, was quite manifest, during the stay here-and among strangers, she will yearn for home ties." Mary showed no evidence ofyearning to see her son, and Robert quickly lost touch with her. When asked about his mother a little over a year later, he could say only that she was "somewhere in Europe" and that he did not "know her present address."3 He could, of course, always get it from his aunt, who maintained contact and continued her role as intermediary between embittered mother and chastened son. When Mary's letters began to speak almost immediately of apparently serious health problems, including rapid weight loss from her "great bloat" to one hundred pounds by early 1880, Elizabeth urged her to seek medical help and to return to America. But Mary still feared that Robert might interfere with her freedom ifshe returned, or so at least Elizabeth thought. By the spring of 1879 Mrs. Edwards was worried enough to suggest that Robert write his mother in France, but Robert was "afraid a letter from me would not be well received." "If I could persuade myself otherwise [he con- 122] CONCLUSION tinued], I would write to her at once & not think I was making any concession, for I have not allowed her anger at me to have any other effect upon me than regret that she should so feel and express herself toward me. As to interfering to control her in any way, I assure you and I hope you will so write to her, that under no possible circumstances would I do so." In a rare moment ofrevealing candor, Robert reflected, "If! could have foreseen my own experience in the matter, no consideration would have...