Some Impressions of "Mrs. President"

John Hartwell

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Dr. Pliny Earle (1809-92) was an Alienist (as psychiatrists were then known), and a very famous one in the later 19th century. A native of Leicester, Mass., Dr.Earle was a pioneer in the treatment of the Mentally Ill., a founder of the American Medical Association, and Superintendent of the Mass. Hospital for the Insane in Northampton. He lectured widely in Europe and America, and once noted that he had shaken hands with every President from Andrew Jackson to Rutherford B. Hayes. His first meeting with Abraham Lincoln came on March 3, 1863. As described in his diary:

"Saturday last Dr. Nichols and I went to the White House to call on Abraham and Mary Anne, as we Friends (Quakers) say. We arrived about two. Mary Anne was doing the honors and receiving the honors without the assistance of her husband, who had unexpectedly been called to the Capitol by some business with the Senate.

"Mrs. President was dressed in a rich black silk, with a wide lace flounce, and a train that lay on the floor a foot behind her. She wore a lot of jewels -- brooch, earrings, two bracelets and a head band -- all made apparently or jet and pearls set in gold." Pliny knew that his wife, Anna, would demand all the important details.] "The Blue Room, where this occurred, was so far darkened by its heavy blue curtains as to give a twilight effect to everything. To tell the truth, Mrs. President acquitted herself exceedingly well, ... she is a better looking woman and did this reception better than either Mrs. Polk or Mrs. Pierce, as I saw them."

The President arrived some time later, and Dr. Earle thought him "a lank looking fellow." He had little opportunity on that occasion to exchange more than pleasantries, because of the pressing crowd in the receiving line. "So I passed on with the multitude into the East Room where was the same old story I have seen and heard for so many winters -- a jam of men and women, but an entirely new set of men and women. With the exception of three or four public men, I saw but two persons I could remember ever to have seen before ... there was less dress, less style, much fewer persons of really polished manners than in former times -- a change due in part to the change in administration, but still more to the war and its effect in bringing certain persons to Washington, and keeping others at home or in the campaigns. I saw only one member of the Cabinet, Gideon Welles of Connecticut,. I spoke with Cassius Clay ad with General Fremone, still a popular man."

Dr. Earle made another, early morning visit in May 1864, as part of a delegation of the American Association of Medical Superintendents of the Insane. He found the President "thin, worn, and haggard." But, he was in good humor, "He told us that there were enough of us , he reckoned, to keep everybody straight or else make everybody crooked." Just what the gathered alienists mad of that rather cryptic remark, Dr. Earle does not tell us.
 
Really extremely interesting, thanks very much! It's a ' thing' with me, the vitriol with which Mary Lincoln was and is still sometimes viewed. When I say I'm a fan, you get ‘ Yes but she did….. “ So what? Mary Lincoln was an extraordinary woman without whom Abraham Lincoln would not be where he was. Who does anyone think held the household, including Lincoln together in the long, dark days of his awful depression? Who had to have held many, many other ‘ teas’ for apparently socially exacting well-wishers, like these approving Quakers we read of here, helped groom political allies?

I’m guessing somewhere exists a book on Mary without a Herndon undertow carrying it through 20 chapters of Mean, Bi-polar, Crazy Mary. Probably in archives somewhere in a library because the story of a woman slowly crumbling under torments too great to bear wasn’t the hatefest folks wished to read at the time.
 
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