Mary Todd Lincoln found herself undone by fame

NONFICTION
The media are not always kind to our first ladies: Pat Nixon was derisively called "Plastic Pat," Rosalynn Carter was criticized for recycling her inaugural gown and Nancy Reagan was said to be too fond of designer clothes. But perhaps the worst vitriol was reserved, as Catherine Clinton relates in "Mrs. Lincoln: A Life," for the wife of the 16th president.

Mary Todd Lincoln was the first presidential wife to be called the first lady, with all the expectations and criticisms attached to a title that even today lacks clear definition.

Perhaps unfairly, the public's expectations of first ladies depends as much on the zeitgeist -- now it's digging a vegetable garden, while a century ago it was tea parties -- as the temperament of the first lady. And unfortunately, Mrs. Lincoln, who has tended to be either ignored or treated as a virago, was a victim of both the times and her temperament.

Clinton begins with Mary's early life as the daughter of a prosperous family whose life changed when her mother died after the birth of her seventh child. Mary was 6, and her father soon remarried, more children were born, and a second family took precedence over the first, a fact that increased Mary's insecurities and isolation.

The meeting with Abraham Lincoln, the lengthy courtship with its mysterious disruption, their marriage and their years in Springfield, Ill., are all vividly described.

And Clinton notes how the well-educated Mrs. Lincoln possessed an astute political sense and was devoted to advancing Lincoln's ambitions. But the death of her sons -- one during their time in the White House -- and the long and bitter Civil War exacerbated her highly strung nature and tendency to mood swings. She became a binge shopper, as well as increasingly subject to depression.

In Washington, often a vindictive place, she was, because of her Kentucky background, rumored to be supporting the South, though she spent long hours visiting the Union wounded and writing letters for them. The president's assassination (she bitterly resented being kept from him as he lay dying), revived all the demons of her nature. And her years as a widow included a brief incarceration in an asylum, scandals about the selling of her old clothes and voluntary exile in Europe.

Clinton perceptively describes a woman of intelligence and ambition undone by too many tragedies and the times, which were not hospitable to women deemed to be difficult.

Judith Chettle is a Richmond-based book reviewer and writer.