Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker by Jennifer Chiaverini

will hear of it.”
    Elizabeth decided it would be kinder not to warn her that gossip would spread the tale swiftly enough without help from the press, if something deliciously shocking had indeed happened. Miss Chase was one of the most popular young ladies in Washington society, praised for her charm and wit as well as her beauty, and if she had affronted the First Lady, it would be quite a story. “What did she do?”
    “Well…” Mrs. Lincoln hesitated. “It sounds silly when I describe it.”
    “Then perhaps it’s really nothing after all.”
    “Oh, no, no, it’s something.” Mrs. Lincoln picked up a spool of ribbon, turned it over in her hands, and set it aside without really seeming to examine it. “I was bidding my guests good-bye, and when it came to be Miss Chase’s turn, I said, ‘I shall be glad to see you anytime, Miss Chase.’ She replied, in a thoroughly lofty tone, ‘Mrs. Lincoln, I shall be glad to have
you
call on
me
at anytime.’ See how she puts herself above me? I will have to go to her. She does not intend to visit me.”
    Elizabeth frowned. Miss Chase’s remark did possess a certain air of disrespect, but her reputation was that of a perfectly lovely and admirable, if ambitious, young woman. “That was not kind of her.”
    “Not kind? It was more than that. It was impertinent and unbecoming a young lady.” Mrs. Lincoln rose and went to the window, looking out over the Potomac to the green hills of Virginia on the other side. “I suppose I should expect nothing better from the daughter ofSecretary Chase. You know she and her father expected the Republican Party to nominate him instead of my husband.”
    “I did not know.”
    Mrs. Lincoln turned away from the window, nodding. “It’s true, and since her mother is dead, if her father had been elected president, Miss Chase would have been his hostess. She believes that their rightful place is here in the White House, and that she should be First Lady now, not I.”
    “Well,” said Elizabeth mildly, “he wasn’t, and she isn’t.”
    After a moment, Mrs. Lincoln laughed. “Yes, that’s right. Still, I’m certain it remains her greatest ambition.”
    From that day forward, Mrs. Lincoln and Miss Chase were social rivals, each considering herself the highest lady in Washington society and resenting the other’s attempts to demonstrate her superior rank. Miss Chase had the advantage of beauty, popularity, charm, and long-standing ties to the established elites, but Mrs. Lincoln had the president, the White House, and the title of First Lady. And, Elizabeth liked to flatter herself, Mrs. Lincoln had the advantage of a particularly skilled dressmaker who would make sure she always went out in public—or into battle, as it sometimes seemed—perfectly turned out.
    For Elizabeth had become Mrs. Lincoln’s regular modiste, and throughout the spring of 1861, she would sew more than fifteen gowns for the First Lady. She also often dressed Mrs. Lincoln in her finery and arranged her hair for balls, dinners, and levees. One evening, as the president observed how skillfully Elizabeth tended to his wife, he asked her if she were brave enough to attempt to subdue his own unruly locks.
    “If you didn’t make such a habit of running your hands through your hair, it wouldn’t be such a tangle,” Mrs. Lincoln admonished him.
    The president merely smiled and sat down in his easy chair. “Well, Madam Elizabeth,” he asked, “will you brush my bristles down tonight?”
    “Yes, Mr. President,” she replied, taking his comb and brush in hand. When she finished, he examined himself in the mirror and declared that his hair looked as if it had been taught a lesson. He was so pleased that it became his custom to ask Elizabeth to attend to his hairafter she finished dressing his wife, and Elizabeth did what she could with it.
    As the weeks went by, Elizabeth took on other duties within the White House, such as running errands for Mrs. Lincoln and