Recently I obtained a book titled "The Last Lincolns,"  the rise and fall of a great American family. It's a  fascinating intriguing book. Mary Todd Lincoln is the figure in focus at the start of this riveting American tragedy. Mary Todd Lincoln was tempestuous, sharp tongued, neurotic, hysteric, high strung, irrational, overbearing--and a compulsive shopper. There was something about Mary that was a magnet for trouble.
She seemed to carry a black cloud of doom and gloom over her head. Bad luck followed her. She was criticized for petitioning Congress for years for a widow's pension after her husband was shot. The public thought she had been left a rich widow, but the executor of her husband's will doled out miserly sums from a trust since it was well known that Mary was unwise with money. She lived in hotel rooms, some barely above flop house status as money dwindled.
Being a friend of Mary T. Lincoln was risky. She was very fond of a mulatto seamstress, Mrs. Keckley, who had bought her freedom and had a thriving shop sewing for the rich. She was the person Mary called on to be with her after Lincoln's murder, and later, desperate for funds, she enlisted Mrs. Keckley--who had to close her shop-- to go with her to New York to sell some of her old clothes. Potential buyers sneered at the clothes, saying there were perspiration stains under the arms and the clothes were soiled.
Newspapers got hold of the story and it became known as "The Old Clothes Scandal."  It mortified her son Robert who was establishing himself as a lawyer. Mary's reputation with the public plummeted even lower. Mrs. Keckley wrote a book about her association with Mary while sitting around waiting for the clothes to sell. As a consequence, her business failed and she died in poverty.
Then Abe Lincoln's former law partner William Herndon struck another blow. He decided to write a book chronicling Abes's early life. That's when his research found out about Ann Rutherford, Abraham Lincoln's  first true love--a person Mary said Lincoln had never mentioned to her. Besieged on all sides with criticism and deeply hurt she took her son Tad (Thomas) and moved to Germany where there were some famous hot springs.
Tad had been born with a cleft palate and developed an overbite and had a speech impediment, but tutors in Germany finally taught him to speak correctly. Mary had lost son Eddie, dead in 1850 at age three, and Willie at age eleven from cholera (whose death almost unhinged Abe Lincoln). Tad had been rambunctious, a wild child, had the symptoms of  attention deficit disorder, and curiously couldn't dress himself until he was a preteen. But as he grew up he settled down and took care of his mother.
Bad luck followed Mary Todd Lincoln. Germany went to war with France (the Franco Prussian war) and she and Tad had to hastily leave Europe. They went to Chicago where Mary's oldest son Robert lived. Tad had turned eighteen. He developed a cough, and was soon gravely ill. Modern forensic anthropologist think from the symptoms Tad had a long simmering case of TB, and an overlying viral infection caused his lungs to fill with fluid. His death was long and agonizing. He had to sleep upright to breathe. A chair was built with a bar across it so he could sit up and hook his arms around the bar to keep from falling out should he doze off.
Feverish, feeble, pus and fluid drowned Tad's failing lungs. Mary and oldest son Robert kept a death watch. In July 1871, Tad passed away. Mary was distraught. Bad luck continued. In October 1871 Mrs. O'Leary's cow kicked over a kerosene lantern and Chicago went up in flames. Robert's house was destroyed. Mary Todd Lincoln's behavior became odd after that. (I'm in the middle of the book now, where Robert commits his mother to an asylum..more about that.)
susil