Book World: 'The Lincolns'

'Portrait of a Marriage'

"Americans have long been fascinated by the contrasting characters of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln: the lanky, lugubrious, long-faced man and the woman who described herself as a 'ruddy pine knot with periodic exuberances of flesh.' The Lincolns themselves played on their differences; Abraham, lengthened by his famous stovepipe hat, would stand next to his wife, rendered even rounder by ruffles and decorations. He would point to himself and say, 'My friends, this is the long of it.' Then, his hand on Mary's head, he added, "And this is the short of it." No surprise, then, that the strongest elements of Daniel Epstein's The Lincolns are his portraits of the two as individuals. Epstein succeeds in delineating Abraham Lincoln, studious and thoughtful (sometimes to the point of catatonia), and Mary Todd Lincoln, whose high-energy existence could tip her into either full-blown psychotic rage or the depths of depression."

Biographer Daniel Mark Epstein was online Tuesday, July 8 to discuss his new book, The Lincolns: Portrait of a Marriage, which was reviewed in Book World.

Epstein has also written biographies of Aimee Semple McPherson, Nat King Cole and Edna St. Vincent Millay.

A transcript follows.

Join Book World Live each Tuesday at 3 p.m. ET for a discussion based on a story or review in each Sunday's Book Worldor in the weekday Style Section.

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Daniel Mark Epstein: Good afternoon. I'm Daniel Mark Epstein, author of The Lincolns: Portrait of a Marriage. Thanks for joining us online. I've written the first full-length portrait of the Lincolns' marriage in more than 50 years. And I'm grateful for an opportunity to chat with you, and answer any of your questions that I can.

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Walnut Creek, California: Where did you find references to information about the Lincolns' marriage? Is there correspondence that has survived between the two?

Daniel Mark Epstein: There is a good deal of correspondence between them, although not as much as we'd like. Mary's letters are edited by Turner and Turner, and Lincoln's are in his complete works edited by Roy Basler. There are also wonderful recollections of the Lincolns together by many contemporaries, including Benjamin French (the White House Years), John Hay, and many interviews with Springfield neighbors conducted by William Herndon.

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New York City: What can we expect to learn about Lincoln that we did not otherwise know from the previous scores of books about him?

Daniel Mark Epstein: I can tell you what I learned. For one thing Lincoln was a man of enormous passion as well as intellect. I discovered well-documented incidents of rage and sorrow on Lincoln's part that I have never seen described in other biographies. It became clear to me he was passionately in love with Mary Todd almost from the day he met her. What I also learned, and I believe the reader will learn from this book, is that his life with Mary and the children was rich and rewarding in the first 16 years, in Springfield. But the delicate balance they achieved there was destabilized, destroyed under the pressures of the White House during the war. Other books about Lincoln see his marriage as a horror from beginning to end. It wasn't.

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Harrisburg, Pa.: Lincoln was known for listening to various sides of arguments on policy matters, weighing them, and making a decision on what he believe was the best course of action. Did Mary Todd Lincoln advise Abe Lincoln on policy matters and if she did, what areas of policies concerned her, and did her suggestions influence any policies?

Daniel Mark Epstein: Mary was influential in managing the social affairs at the White House, in redecorating it and making it hospitable. In terms of policy, she tried to influence him by getting him to discharge certain "enemies" she saw in the cabinet, such as Salmon Chase. He did not heed her advice there. Generally she had little if any influence on his political policies.

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Arlington, Va.: What do you make of the claims of some scholars that Abraham Lincoln was gay or bisexual?

washingtonpost.com: The Gay Emancipator? (Slate, Jan. 14, 2005)

Daniel Mark Epstein: Another way to ask the question is: Is there evidence that Lincoln engaged in homosexual acts? I was unable to find any significant evidence, and therefore it was not an important theme in my book. On the other hand there is considerable evidence (four children) that Lincoln did engage in heterosexual acts. That was as much as I really needed to know about Lincoln's preferences in order to write about the marriage. Certainly there was no homosexual relationship or inclination that interfered with the marriage.

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Springfield, Ill.: It has been stated that Lincoln withdrew from an engagement to Mary Todd and then withdrew from society, causing his friends to fear for his health and life. Can you comment?

Daniel Mark Epstein: This is quite true, well documented, and I discuss it at length in The Lincolns.

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Washington D.C.: Mr. Epstein, Book World's review on Sunday suggested that you say in your book that the Lincolns had frequent (maybe even daily) sexual intercourse. How did you find the sources for such a claim?

Daniel Mark Epstein: Nowhere in this book do I speculate on the nightly sexual habits of Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln. It was the Washington Post reviewer who raised the impertinent question as to whether or not the Lincolns had sex daily.

In my book I refer to four roughly calculable dates of conception of the Lincolns' children. As artificial insemination had not yet been invented, I did assume that the Lincolns had sexual intercourse at least four times in their lives together. After Tad Lincoln, their fourth, was born, the Lincolns were found in bed together by an eye-witness, once, a decade later.

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New York, N.Y.: To what degree was Lincoln's decision to marry a calculated career move? One gets the sense that he didn't love Mary so much as tolerate her, especially in the later years.

Daniel Mark Epstein: The Lincolns got married because they were in love. They shared many interests, including poetry, politics, theater, word-play, and a love of mimicry, all of which are scrupulously documented in this book. If there was any political advantage in marrying Mary Todd, it was not evident until several years later.

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Philadelphia, Pa.: How mentally stable was Mary Todd Lincoln throughout the White House years?

Daniel Mark Epstein: To use a modern medical term, Mrs. Lincoln began to "decompensate," i.e. lose her mental balance soon after Lincoln was elected. That is when she began her infamous shopping sprees in New York and Philadelphia. After her son Willie's death in 1862 she fell into a depression from which she never really recovered, and this was exacerbated by a head wound from a carriage accident in 1863. She began to have hallucinations. Nevertheless, she continued to discharge her duties as first lady with considerable stamina and aplomb until her husband's death.

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Southern Maryland: Good afternoon. Is it possible that Mary Todd Lincoln suffered from bipolar disorder? From what I have read about her it seems like she became increasingly unstable after she and Lincoln were in the White House. Also how was Abe's relationship with his oldest son, Robert?

Daniel Mark Epstein: I am reluctant to apply modern psychiatric terminology, or to diagnose these 19th century figures (so far distant) in modern terms. Mary indulged in spending sprees that look like "mania." She was certainly traumatized into deep melancholia by the death of her sons and husbands. But how much of that is clinically bipolar, and how much was circumstance is very difficult to tell.

Robert seems to have suffered more from the "oedipal" difficulties with his father than the younger children, as is typical of a first son. He said himself that his father was too distant when he was growing up for him to ever know him. And then, Robert was somewhat resentful for having to take care of his mother, during her various illnesses and bad moods, when his father was on the law circuit.

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San Antonio, Texas: I had heard that Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln had been arguing on the evening of his assassination. Is there any truth in that?

Daniel Mark Epstein: I've never heard that they were arguing that night. They seem to have had a wonderful day together that day, and it's part of the sadness of the ending.

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Niles, Michigan: Do you believe that Abraham Lincoln was a good father in that he was not a disciplinarian with his own younger sons, putting them to hard work or regular chores as his own father had done to him?

Daniel Mark Epstein: Lincoln was not a strict disciplinarian, but he was a hands-on parent, when he was at home. He played with the children, studied Latin declensions with Robert, built model boats with Willie, enjoyed taking them all, with their friends, to the circus. He took them with him to market, and often babysat. When Mary was disabled with grief after the death of son Willie, Mr. Lincoln, while burdened with the cares of the presidency, took charge of the younger son, Tad, who slept in his room. Lincoln was a demonstrably affectionate, loving father.

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Herndon, Va.: Do we have any idea of what type of documents - letters, etc., Robert Todd Lincoln destroyed?

Daniel Mark Epstein: We have an idea. And it's very frustrating. Robert appears to have destroyed any letters between his parents that would have reflected negatively on their relationship. We know that because he quotes, occasionally, for the benefit of scholars during his lifetime, PARTS of letters that obviously have a more interesting context.

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Central Pennsylvania: Did Abe Lincoln take any steps to curb his wife's spending? Or was he too wrapped up in the war to respond?

Daniel Mark Epstein: For a long time he had no idea how much she was spending. After a couple of years, when she had overspent the White House budget by about double her allotment, the Commissioner of Public Buildings broke the news to him. Lincoln threw a fit. That may have curbed the spending on White House furnishings for awhile.

Her personal debts, for shawls, dresses and gloves, he never knew about. She had accounts with the finest stores in New York and Philadelphia, and kept running up more and more debts, which the merchants were happy to grant her, knowing the president's wife must sooner or later be called to account.

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Washington D.C.: Did Mary Todd make Lincoln a better leader, a worse leader, or would you say that his leadership skills were uninfluenced by her?

Daniel Mark Epstein: I am not sure that he would have become president if it had not been for Mary Lincoln's ambition and constant belief in his destiny. She encouraged him during times when he was ready to give up.

On the other hand, I believe that his innate leadership qualities, once given the arena of Civil War America would have prevailed with or without Mary Lincoln. She was not a component of his moral compass.

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Biography: You seem to have written biographies of fairly disparate people - is there a theme I am not seeing? How do you choose the subjects of your books?

Daniel Mark Epstein: The thing that links the subjects is that they all have lives that make great stories, they are true to themselves, and each one leaves the world in a better place than they found it.

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Ashburn, Va.: Do you know if they planned their retirement, which was interrupted because of the assassination?

Daniel Mark Epstein: According to Mary Lincoln, they intended to travel abroad. Lincoln particularly wanted to go to the Holy Land. Mary wanted to see the capitals of Europe. Then, Lincoln also spoke of returning to Springfield to resume the practice of the law.

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Northwest D.C.: What happened to Mrs. Lincoln after she was widowed? How long did she live, and where?

Daniel Mark Epstein: Mrs. Lincoln's fate after the assassination was very sad. For awhile she lived in a hotel in Chicago, for awhile she travelled and lived in France. Tad Lincoln died in Chicago at age 19 of TB, and this seems to have robbed Mrs. Lincoln of whatever hold she had on her mental health. Finding her a danger to herself, Robert Lincoln committed her to Bellvue Sanitorium in Illinois in 1875. She was there for three months before being discharged. For most of the rest of her life she lived with a sister in Springfield where she died in 1882.

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Wokingham UK: Were the Lincolns of the same mind on religious matters? I think of him as the last of the great deists.

Daniel Mark Epstein: Mary was really a not-very-observant Presbyterian. Lincoln was, I agree, a great deist, maybe not the last of the great deists, but a deist all the same. He rarely attended church (belonged to no sect or denomination) but became more religious after the death of Willie Lincoln, turning to the Bible for consolation.

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Washington, D.C.: To what extent did the Lincolns' marriage survive in Springfield because Abe chose to spend weeks at a time away from home riding the circuit? To what extent did the fact that they were thrust together in the White House cause things to become more stressful?

Daniel Mark Epstein: I don't believe that the marriage was in any way improved because Lincoln spent as much time on the circuit as he did. Mary is quoted as saying that she could have loved him more if he'd stayed more at home.

He may have, like many sailors and traveling salesman, preferred a balance of life on the road and life at home. He was away about a third of their married life in Springfield.

It was certainly frustrating for them, when they got to Washington, to find themselves for the first time living in constant proximity in a place where real intimacy was impossible.

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Del Ray, Va.: I just want to shout out to all my friends in Waukesha, Wisconsin where Mary Todd Lincoln took the waters!

Daniel Mark Epstein: Me too! Shout out to those folks in Wisconsin where Mary Todd took the waters!

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Washington, D.C.: I have two questions: 1. What sort of strain did Mary Lincoln put on the marriage in corresponding with her half-brother who was serving in the Confederate Army as well as her half-sisters who were married to pro-Confederates? 2. How much social pressure was Mary Lincoln under as First Lady since Buchanan was not married and Jane Pierce hated Washington and more or less withdrew from her duties as First Lady?

Daniel Mark Epstein:1. The Lincolns were under constant political pressure from Lincoln's own party because of Mary Lincoln's Confederate relatives. She was suspected of secessionist sympathies and even of being a Confederate spy. But this did not put a strain on the marriage per se. Lincoln ALWAYS put family before politics when it came to this. When Emily Helm, the Confederate widow, needed to come north, Lincoln took the political risk of welcoming her to the White House.

2. Mary Lincoln was under great political pressure for the reasons above, and others. Socially, she was closely watched because her predecessor, Harriet Lane (Buchanan's niece) had been an extraordinarily effective hostess, and because Washington (basically a southern city then) regarded Mrs. Lincoln, a westerner, as rustic and unsophisticated.

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Washington, D.C.: What was Washington like in the Lincolns' time? Did Mary like living here?

Daniel Mark Epstein: Mary did not like Washington. The climate was very difficult for her and her children, too hot in the summer too cold in the winter. The streets were unpaved, either muddy or dusty. There was a terrible stench because of the lack of proper sewage system.

And then, there was the old guard of Washington society, that looked down upon her.

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Daniel Mark Epstein: Thanks everybody! That was an exhilarating hour. Please forgive all of my typos and mispellings. I hope that you enjoy reading The Lincolns: Portrait of a Marriage!

Dan Epstein

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