Sherry Chandler

Mary Todd Lincoln

A review by Janet Maslin in the NYTimes today of Daniel Mark Epstein’s new book, The Lincolns: Portrait of a Marriage (Ballantyne Books):

One of Mr. Epstein’s primary goals, it seems, is to break with convention when it comes to the story of the Lincolns’ stormy domesticity. He takes a more generous, warmblooded view of this union than most biographers do. He appreciates the early attraction between the two of them, the sustained intimacy that lasted long into their lives together and the fond, even frolicsome nature of their shared communication.

Mr. Epstein is also mindful of the image-consciousness that they shared, a matter inadvertently underscored by this book’s cover image. It shows the Lincolns together, but it is a synthesis of two separate images; they always resisted being photographed together because of the great discrepancy in height between them. The president would joke about this as “the long and the short of it.”

“The Lincolns” relies less on new information than on a thoughtful, sometimes even presumptuous examination of existing material. For instance Mr. Epstein surmises that the abrupt hiatus in the couple’s courtship reflected Lincoln’s fear that he had contracted syphilis, rather than ascribing this breakup to Lincoln’s doubts about his love for Mary Todd.

If anything, according to this book, he loved her too much to marry her in 1840, not too little. She was described at that time, after all, as “the very creature of excitement” and “one who could make a bishop forget his prayers.”

There is even some novelty in Mr. Epstein’s willingness to write about Mary — or Molly, as her husband called her — as a mesmerizing creature rather than a harridan in the latter part of the marriage. Even after the Lincolns had been battered by the deaths of two sons and the immense public pressure of the presidency, he asserts, they were closely bound by Mary’s enduring (if sometimes troublemaking) involvement in her husband’s political career.

Epstein is atypical as a Lincoln biographer because he is less scholar than poet. He has published three books of poetry and biographis of Aimee Simple McPherson, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Lincoln and Whitman, and Nat King Cole.

Here’s copy from the publicity blurb:

She was witty, tempestuous, a Kentucky blueblood; he was brilliant, moody, a farmer’s son born in a log-cabin. They got married on a few hours notice in 1842, when he was thirty-three and she was nearly twenty-four.

…

Now Daniel Mark Epstein has produced an incisive and balanced portrait of the Lincolns, from their mysterious and troubled courtship in 1840 until his assassination in Ford’s Theatre in 1865. Of their twenty-two years of marriage, all but five were spent in Springfield, Illinois. This is the first biography to give due attention to the Springfield years: the close quarters of the Globe Tavern—their first dwelling; their joyful creation of a home together on the edge of town as Lincoln built his law practice and made his first forays into politics; their shared joys and sorrows as parents of four boys; their travels together to Washington, New York, Chicago, and Niagara Falls; their burning ambition as Lincoln achieved celebrity status during the Lincoln-Douglas debates, and at last was elected to the highest office in the land.

The marriage that found a balance in small-town Springfield disintegrated in the cauldron of Civil War Washington. Epstein captures the glory and pathos of the White House years: the grandeur of Inaugural Balls and State dinners, Mrs. Lincoln’s social triumphs and failures, her susceptibility to mediums and sycophants after the death of their favorite child, Willie.

Here’s a sample Epstien poem at The Cortland Review.

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