Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [232]
As a proper young lady, Julia was appalled by some of the boys’ antics. She refused to join in when she found the four of them sitting on the president, attempting to pin him to the floor. She was embarrassed when they interrupted cabinet meetings to invite members and the president to attend one of their theatrical performances in the attic. Though Lincoln himself never seemed to mind, taking great pleasure in their fun, Julia felt she was responsible for curbing their youthful exuberance. Sometimes Willie would help to restore order. He was, Julia wrote, “the most lovable boy” she had ever known, “bright, sensible, sweet-tempered and gentle-mannered.” More often he would simply retreat to his mother’s room, where he loved to read poetry and write verses.
Despite Julia’s great affection for Mary, she was stunned by the first lady’s overbearing need to get “what she wanted when she wanted it,” regardless of how others might be hurt or inconvenienced. A curious example of such behavior took place when Julia’s mother attended a White House concert, decked out in one of her fashionable bonnets. When Mary greeted her, she looked closely at the beautiful purple strings on the bonnet and then took Mrs. Taft aside. Watching the scene, Julia was “puzzled at the look of amazement” on her mother’s face, not fathoming why she “should look so surprised at a passing compliment.” It turned out that Mary’s milliner had created a purple-trimmed bonnet but lacked sufficient purple ribbon for the strings. Mary hoped to acquire Mrs. Taft’s purple strings!
Few recognized the insecurity behind Mary’s outlandish behavior, the terrible needs behind the ostentation and apparent abrasiveness. While initially thrilled to move into the White House, Mary soon found herself in the compromising situation of having one full brother, three half brothers, and three brothers-in-law in the Confederate Army. From the start, she was not fully trusted in the North. As the wife of President Lincoln, she was vilified in the South. As a Westerner, she did not meet the standards of Eastern society. Feeling pressure on all sides, she was determined to present herself as an accomplished and sophisticated woman; in short, the most elegant and admired lady in Washington.
Driven by the need to prove herself to society, Mary Lincoln became obsessed with recasting her own image and renovating that of her new home, the White House. Unattended for years, the White House had come to look like “an old and unsuccessful hotel.” Elizabeth Grimsley was stunned to find that “the family apartments were in a deplorably shabby condition as to furniture, (which looked as if it has been brought in by the first President).” The public rooms, too, were in poor shape, with threadbare, tobacco-stained rugs, torn curtains, and broken chairs.
The sorry condition of the White House provided the energetic Mary with a worthy ambition. She would restore the people’s home to its former elegance as a symbol of her husband’s strength and the Union’s power. In another era, this ambition might have been applauded, but in the midst of a civil war, it was regarded as frivolous.
In the middle of May, Mary went on a shopping trip to Philadelphia and New York, taking along her cousin Elizabeth Grimsley and William Wood, the commissioner of public buildings. Having discovered that each president was allotted a $20,000 allowance to maintain