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By Root 6866 0

of the White House and its surrounding landscape engaged Mary throughout the summer and fall of 1861. She raved to a friend that she had “the most beautiful flowers & grounds imaginable, and company & excitement enough, to turn a wiser head than my own.” Yet with each passing month, she spent less time with her husband, whose every hour was preoccupied with the war. Though he still took the afternoon drives she had prescribed, he often invited Seward along so the two men could talk. In late August, when Seward’s wife and daughter arrived in Washington to spend several weeks, Lincoln took them for drives nearly every afternoon. Frances took an immediate liking to the president, whom she described as “a plain unassuming farmer—not awkward or ungainly,” who talked with equal ease about “the war & the crops.” Fanny was captivated. “I liked him very much,” she recorded in her diary. She was especially delighted when the president showed her the kittens her father had given to Willie and Tad and told her that “they climb all over him.”

During these pleasant interludes with the Seward family, Lincoln stopped to visit the various encampments in the surrounding countryside. Halting the carriages, he and Seward would talk with the soldiers. A veteran reporter who had watched every president since Jackson wrote that he had never seen anyone go through the routine of handshaking with the “abandon of President Lincoln. He goes it with both hands, and hand over hand, very much as a sailor would climb a rope.” The affable Seward was equally at ease. Fanny took particular delight in watching them greet troops from the 23rd Pennsylvania Regiment. “With one impulse” the men cheered Lincoln’s appearance so loudly that the horses were “somewhat startled”; then they “began cheering for ‘Secretary Seward’ passing his name from mouth to mouth.” Fanny proudly confided in her diary that “I love to remember all Father says and does.”

Frances Seward was happy to be reunited with her husband for the first extended period in almost a year, but she found the frantic pace of wartime Washington life enervating. Nor did she feel at home in the “palatial” house her husband had taken on Lafayette Square. In a letter to her sister, she wistfully confessed that Henry was never “more pleased with a home—it accommodates itself marvelously to his tastes & habits—such as they are at this day.” She praised Fred and Anna, who were so “gifted in making their surroundings…tasteful & attractive.” But it was a home designed for the three of them—her husband, son, and daughter-in-law—not for her. It perfectly fitted the constant round of entertaining that Seward so enjoyed. And Anna was far better suited to the role of hostess than Frances—confined to her bed by migraines for several days every week—could ever hope to be.

As she readied herself to return to Auburn, Frances was concerned that she had not yet called on Mary Lincoln. The first lady had just come back from a three-week vacation in upstate New York and Long Branch, New Jersey, and Frances felt it her duty to visit, “especially as I went to see her husband.” On the Monday before Frances was due to leave, word came that Mary would receive her and her family that evening. After dinner, John Nicolay arrived to escort the Sewards to the White House. The little group included Henry, Frances, Fred, Anna, and Fanny, as well as Seward’s youngest son, Will, and his new bride, Jenny. They were shown into the Blue Parlor by Edward, the Irish doorkeeper who had worked in the White House for nearly two decades. “Edward drew a chair for Mrs. L.,” Fanny recalled, and then arranged the chairs for the rest of the party, before leaving to inform Mary that her guests had arrived. “Well there we sat,” Fanny recorded, until “after a lapse of some time the usher came and said Mrs. Lincoln begged to be excused, she was very much engaged.”

“The truth,” Fanny wrote, “was probably that she did not want to see Mother—else why not give general direction to the doorkeeper to let no one in? It was certainly very rude to have us all