Odds and Ends
I stumbled across this in D. C.’s Daily National Republican for January 17, 1871. At the time, Mary Lincoln had just won a pension and was in England, soon to return to America with Tad. There is evidence that former gardener John Watt at times showed her letters around to the press and possibly tried to blackmail her with them, but somehow they never made it out, except this one. At one point his office burned down and he may have lost them, or someone bought them up and destroyed them. Looks like he might have sold off little notes like this. Not sure what she meat by “the family is less on Saturday,” unless she was talking about a specific week. Possibly this was very early on, when her relatives were staying with her and maybe went out socializing on Saturdays.
On March 3, 1863, the Pittsburgh Daily Post referenced “The president’s most facetious anecdote,” which he told “to the Chevalier Wykoff, about his amiable spouse’s early admiration for hoop skirts.” This is presumably the incident in which Mary, as a child, tried to create her own hoop-skirts out of tree branches, and sneak out of the house before her stepmother saw her new style. She and her cousin, who later revealed the story, sewed all night in secret, but were spotted the next morning. Mary’s stepmother told them they looked like “frights” and made them change; Mary was furious, protested this treatment, and declared she would wear what she pleased when she got older. Apparently Lincoln thought it was a good story and shared it while President.