Mary Lincoln was a bit of a coquette herself, but she was always upset by the sight of attractive women flocking around her husband. Once, just before Lincoln went down to a reception, he came into her room as she finished dressing and, “with a merry twinkle in his eyes,” asked her which of the ladies he would be permitted to talk to that evening. He mentioned several names, but his wife called them all deceitful or detestable, and finally said she didn’t approve of his “flirtations with silly women, just as if you were a beardless boy, fresh from school.”
”But mother,” he sighed, after she had said something disparaging about every women he mentioned, “I insist that I must talk with somebody. I can’t stand around like a simpleton and say nothing. If you will not tell me who I may talk with, please tell me who I may not talk with.”
After she had named three women whom she particularly detested, he gave her his arm and they went down.
Source:
Boller, Paul F. "Mary Todd Lincoln." Presidential Wives: An Anecdotal History. New York: Oxford UP, 1988. 122-23. Print.
Original Source Listed:
Keckley, Behind the Scenes, 124-25.
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