An earlier post mentioned Mary Lincoln’s relationship with Alice D. Shipman.
While they knew each other previously, they seem to have spent the most time together in 1870-1871. At that time, a widowed Mary Lincoln was living in London with Tad. She had a lot of friends there, and Congress had finally approved a pension for her. It seems to have been by far the most functional and happy period of her widowhood. It is painful to read of this time, because it gives the sense she might have managed to salvage a decent life if Tad hadn’t died in July 1871.
At the time, Shipman was a young woman who had recently married a prominent Kentucky newspaper editor, Paul R. Shipman. The couple had decided to travel abroad, and she was expecting her first child. Since the custom was for expectant mothers to stay inside, Mary visited often.
In 1896, nearly fifteen years after Mary’s death, Shipman published a piece on their relationship in the New York Sun, along with some letters of Mary’s letters to her. (Both Shipman and her daughter, Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews, had writing careers.)
The piece, published on October 18, was titled “Abraham Lincoln’s Wife/The woman as she was, not as she was pictured.” Shipman came out swinging:
I wish to say here a few words of Mrs. Lincoln, who has been treated for the most part, publicly and privately, as if to defame her were somehow to glorify her husband; whereas the contrary rather is the natural effect, for surely, if a man is known by the company he keeps, much more he is known by the woman he weds. The shafts that strike the wife pierce the husband also, and their offspring besides, for not only is the mother the nearest and dearest of earthly beings, but, under the law of heredity, her traits are presumptively those of the child. Did the traducers of Mrs. Lincoln forget that they were stabbing the husband and the son when they struck the wife and mother?
I have often been asked, by persons who should have known better, if Mrs. Lincoln were not a light-headed, coarse, half-educated woman . . .
Here, she gave the positive description of Mary I shared in earlier post, and also said that Mary often brought her bouquets, “some of them sent to her byy distinguished friend, one by [John Lothrop] Motley . . . and another by the Count de Paris . . .” The reference to people who should have known better pops up often in accounts of those who knew Mary well. This is in line with Shipman’s remark that, “I have reason to know that many things said of her were due to personal animosity, and these, once gaining currency, came in time to be accepted facts . . .” This is not because Mary Lincoln was inexplicably persecuted, but because this is an ugly part of human nature that recurs in the historical record, and undoubtedly is going on right now. It’s good to keep in mind Shipman’s comment that “The avidity with which mankind seizes upon evil report, against even its idols, is a sad commentary on its humanity.”
Shipman seemed to believe that a major cause of criticism faced by Mary was her decision to travel incognito at times, to avoid gawkers. This was considered considered stranger under the social norms of the time than it is now. I don’t know how much it really bothered people, but Mary made it a regular habit, and seemed to get a little thrill out of it at times. Especially in her widowhood, when she didn’t always want to face people.
The other aspersions cast on Mrs. Lincoln were even more unmerited than this, many of them having been pieces of slanderous patchwork dashed with facts, and some of them lies out of whole cloth. None of them was just, and the whole of them together did not, in the judgment of any one acquainted with their ‘shining mark,’ amount to a serious inculpation . . . The public is sometimes swayed by a species of hypnotism, and in such cases when a notion, true or false, has once been insinuated into its multitudinous head, the suggestion becomes for the time a dominant idea, transforming and coloring all opposing ideas, no matter how correct or certain. Hence to serve the interests of truth history is continually unmade as well as made. In this way, it may have been, the ill-natured gossip about Mrs. Lincoln had its origin and acquired its currency.
Shipman’s parents had spent some time in the Illinois political world in the 1840s and 1850s, and knew the Lincolns. Then they moved to Kentucky. For reasons that aren’t clear, Lincoln’s best friend Joshua Speed and his wife were Shipman’s guardians in the late 1860s, prior to her marriage. She lived with them in Louisville, Kentucky. Mary was then living in Chicago, Lincoln having been assassinated not long before, and Shipman traveled there, probably around 1865-1866, to visit “Col. Taylor.”
I was especially charged by Mr. and Mrs. Speed to be sure, during my visit, to call on Mrs. Lincoln…I expressed some reluctance, not having seen Mrs. Lincoln since my infancy, and being, to tell the truth, somewhat impressed by the stories about her; but my guardian and his excellent wife, who rated these stories at their true value, insisted that I owed it to them, and, above all, to the memory of my parents, to go to see her…
She agreed, but the Taylors and other friends told her not to go through with it, saying Mary had refused to receive or return the calls of Chicago women. At the time, this was highly contrary to etiquette, and apparently this unfriendliness alienated some of the Chicago elites. It seems pretty likely that Mary was grief-stricken and overwhelmed at that point, not up for seeing a lot of new people, and that they could have chosen a more charitable interpretation had they been so inclined. In any event, Shipman had promised the Speeds, and called at Mary’s hotel. Shipman was then in her mid-20s, and Mary always liked younger people.
To my agreeable surprise, she not only received me, but detained me far beyond the conventional limits, returning the call the next day or the day after that…The simple truth is that Mrs. Lincoln at this period was in a state of health which incapacitated her for appreciating, much more for a reciprocating, the civilities of the public. Her recent experiences, acting on her shattered nerves, had made her morbidly suspicious, causing her to fear in each stranger an enemy, as [‘]The bird that hath been limed in a bush,/With trembling wings misdoubteth every bush.[’] Widowed in the most tragic circumstances, hounded in the midst of her grief by the press and almost the world over, attacked alike in private and in public . . . what wonder that her mood, under this terrible and cruel strain, was over-sensitive, with all that such a state implies? In these circumstances she naturally did less than justice to the motives of the Chicagoans, and they knew nothing of her motives, or of her condition. The misunderstanding was mutual, but unhappily the consequences of it fell on her alone, and fell in the familiar form of personal aspersion. She was the victim of the circumstances. The multitude set a high estimation on the homage they pay to individuals, and woe to the object of that homage who, no matter how innocently, fails to acknowledge it. In this capital point of popularity it was Mrs. Lincoln’s fate to fall, but the failure was in no proper sense her fault. I have said thus [this?] much of Mrs. Lincoln purely in the interest of justice, for, although she was the friend of my parents and of others dear to me, and my own friend, I have no interest in her at variance with that supreme one. Indeed, I might have said nothing, even under stress of this high motive, had I not recently been asked, not only by her contemporaries by members of the rising generation, if this, that, and the other thing concerning her were true or not. I have therefore felt it a duty to say what I have said.
She included three letters sent to her by Mary, which were printed, two dated 1870 and one 1871. One was sent from Germany, two from England. These three letters were reprinted in the official biography published by Mary’s niece, Katherine Helm, in 1928. It is worth noting that Helm’s book is largely constructed from newspaper clippings, not original research or family lore.
Which brings me to the research lead:
I recently came across an auction listing from 2008, at Thomaston Place in Maine. The lot sold, but I don’t know who the buyer was. (Paul R. Shipman and Alice D. Shipman died two weeks apart, in 1917.)
VASES - Pair of Mary Gregory vases, gift of Mary Todd Lincoln, given to Alice D. Shipman by MTL, includes copies of letters from MTL to ADS while MTL was taking the cure in Bavaria in the 1870s and a copy of 'The Perfect Tribute' by Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews, daughter of ADS. These have descended through her family. The vases are caramel Bristol glass and have the typical depictions of children in white enamel, 11 1/2"H x 5 1/2"DIA, fine condition, stoppered by cork.
It is possible that the copies described are the same as the ones published in 1896, and in Helm’s book. The letters do not refer to Bavaria, but the one written in Frankfort-am-main mentions her having made a visit to the waters of Bohemia (“taking the cure.”) The other two were written from Leamington and London. There seem to be three options:
1) These are the 1896 letters, and the description is mistaken about the location.
2) These are unpublished letters from the same period, 1870-1871.
3) These are unpublished letters from 1875-1876, when Mary was institutionalized (“taking the cure”) in Batavia, Illinois. Shipman was likely living in New Jersey at this time, but could have visited Illinois at some point, or they could just have exchanged letters.
If the answer is 2) or 3), especially 3), I’d really like to know what happened to the copies of the letters, or the originals. I fear that the buyer may have just wanted the vases, and tossed the rest. I can’t find any images that show the letter copies.
If you know anything about where they might have gone, please let me know!
Hi KE, I’m Beth Ziegler. I live in Edgewater Park, NJ ½ mile from where Alice & Paul Shipman lived at 221 Edgewater Ave. until 1917. I know a lot about their history! Please contact me if interested in talking! b_e_sumner@zoho.com or (973) 223-3322.