Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [64]
Also, like Lincoln, she was fascinated by politics, having grown up in a political household. Among her happiest childhood memories were the sparkling dinner parties at her elegant brick house in Lexington, hosted by her father, Robert Todd, a Whig loyalist who had served in both the Kentucky House and Senate. At these sumptuous feasts, Lincoln’s idol Henry Clay was a frequent guest, along with members of Congress, cabinet members, governors, and foreign ministers. Mesmerized by their discussions, Mary became, her sisters recalled, “a violent little Whig,” convinced that she was “destined to be the wife of some future President.”
Undoubtedly, Mary told Lincoln of her many personal contacts with Clay, including how she once proudly rode her new pony to the statesman’s house. And she shared with him a vital interest in the political struggles of the day. “I suppose like the rest of us Whigs,” she wrote a close friend in 1840, “you have been rejoicing in the recent election of Gen [William Henry] Harrison, a cause that has excited such deep interest in the nation and one of such vital importance to our prosperity—This fall I became quite a politician, rather an unladylike profession, yet at such a crisis, whose heart could remain untouched while the energies of all were called in question?” Lincoln was deeply engaged at the same time in “the great cause” of electing the “Old hero.”
Beyond their love of poetry and politics, Mary and Abraham had both lost their mothers at an early age. Mary was only six when her thirty-one-year-old mother, Eliza Parker Todd, died giving birth to her seventh child. Eliza’s death, unlike the death of Nancy Hanks, did not disrupt the physical stability of the household. The Todd slaves continued to cook the meals, care for the children, fetch the wood, bank the fires, and drive the carriages as they had always done. If Lincoln was fortunate in his father’s choice of a second wife, however, Mary’s loss was aggravated by her father’s remarriage. Elizabeth Humphreys, a severe stepmother with cold blue eyes, gave birth to nine additional children, openly preferring her brood of Todds to the original clan. From the moment her stepmother moved in, Mary later recalled, her childhood turned “desolate.” Henceforth, she lamented, her only real home was the boarding school to which she was exiled at the age of fourteen.
This estrangement, combined with a family history of mental instability and a tendency toward severe migraines, produced in Mary what one friend described as “an emotional temperament much like an April day, sunning all over with laughter one moment, the next crying as though her heart would break.” She could be affectionate, generous, and optimistic one day; vengeful, depressed, and irritable the next. In the colloquial language of her friends, she was “either in the garret or cellar.” In either mood, she needed attention, something the self-contained Lincoln was not always able to provide.
As their courtship proceeded, the very qualities that had first attracted the couple to each other may have become sources of conflict. Initially drawn to Mary by her ability to command any gathering with her intense energy, Lincoln may well have determined that this reflected a tiresome and compulsive need. Mary may have come to define Lincoln’s patience and objectivity as aloofness and inconsiderateness. We know only that at some point in the winter of 1840–41, as they approached marriage, a break occurred in their relationship.
While the inner lives of men and women living long ago are never easy to recover, the difficulty is compounded here by the absence of intimate letters between Mary and Abraham. Seward, Chase, and Bates disclosed their deepest feelings in their diaries and letters, but not a single letter survives from the days of the