'A Heart As Large As His Arms Are Long'

Fifth of 45 excerpts from Lincoln by David Herbert Donald:

The Lincoln's domestic life was often troubled. Husband and wife were as different in temperament as they were in physique. He was slow, moody, given to bouts of melancholy and long periods of silence. He depended on his inner resources. She was lively, talkative, and sociable, constantly needing the attention and admiration of others. Indifferent to what other people thought, he was not troubled when visitors found him in his favorite position for reading, stretched out at full length on the floor. She, who had grown up in houses with liveried black servants, was embarrassed when he answered the doorbell in his shirtsleeves.

. . . Lincoln, immersed in his own work, probably had no idea how hard his wife had to labor. She had to cook, clean, and scrub. She had to pump the water in the backyard and haul it into the house for heating. She had to keep the wood fire going in the kitchen stove and, during much of the year, in the living-room fireplace. Though Lincoln had his suits made by Benjamin R. Biddle, the local tailor, she had to sew all her own clothes, as well as those of her children; her purchases at John Irwin & Company, the Springfield general store, included, needles, buttons, thread, muslin, calico, cambric, whalebones, and corset lace.

Mary Lincoln's bad temper was famous in Springfield. Everybody heard stories about the tongue-lashings that she gave to maids, to workmen about the house, to street vendors -- and to her husband. In part, these were the result of overwork and exhaustion on the part of a woman who up to the time of her marriage had never turned her hand. In part, they reflected the unsteady condition of her health. Every spring she suffered excruciating headaches -- possibly the result of an allergy -- and she suffered much from menstrual cramps. Highly emotional, she was terrified of lightning storms, of dogs, of robbers, and when she was in a panic, she could not control her actions.

. . . Even when he was home, [Lincoln] did not provide the comfort, the warmth, the affection that she craved. After a busy day at work, seeing clients and attending to cases in court, he wanted to sit quietly before the fire, reading, and he failed to realize that his wife, cooped up in the house all day with no one to talk to but infants, longed for adult conversation. Sometimes his inattention made her fly off of the handle. On one occasion as he sat reading in his rocking chair in the living room while she cooked dinner, she warned him that the fire was about to go out. Absorbed in his reading, he did not respond, and she called out again, and then a third time. Furious at being ignored, she found a way of getting his attention: she struck him on the nose with a piece of firewood.

Such episodes were infrequent. The subject of much gossip in Springfield, they incorrectly represented the Lincoln's marriage. For all their quarrels, they were devoted to each other. In the long years of their marriage Abraham Lincoln was never suspected of being unfaithful to his wife. She, in turn, was immensely proud of him and was his most loyal supporter and admirer. When someone compared her husband unfavorably to [Stephen A.] Douglas, she responded stoutly: "Mr. Lincoln may not be as handsome a figure . . . but the people are perhaps not aware that his heart is as large as his arms are long."