LINCOLN, Mary Todd (1818-1882). Autograph letter signed ("Mary Lincoln"), to Rhoda White, Nice, France, 16 March 1869.

4pp., 8vo (267 x 216 mm), on black bordered stationery, old folds, minor soiling, minor losses, tissue-lined.

"SORROW, SUCH AS OURS..."

Five months after sailing to Europe, Mrs. Lincoln writes to her friend Mrs. White, who had been widowed in 1867: "...Past friendship, through the trying years of the war---and the fearful loss, we have both sustained in our dearly beloved husbands, are des, too strong, for time or distance to sever..." She explains that she has come to the Riviera for her health, leaving her son Tad at his studies in Frankfurt: "I find myself regaining strength. For sorrow, such as ours, there is no balm, the grave and Heaven, with reunion with our loved ones can alone heal, bleeding, broken hearts. Wherever I am, feeling so sadly, I lead a life of isolation & retirement, although I have been here several weeks, I am sure few or none are aware of it..."

She suggests that Mrs. White join her on an excursion to Italy: "We could visit places of interest without being recognized. Of course, Americans abound everywhere---& in my morning walks in the sunshine, you can always recognize them, very often by their loud voices, so early as ten or eleven in the morning, velvet costumes &---Full dress, when one is sight seeing or in quest of health & change, must certainly be a trial. After we have suffered heavy afflictions, life is at best a fearful endurance. To me every thing looks so desolate. I often wonder why, I was spared, when my darling husband was taken, and to suffer so much too!..."

Rhoda Elizabeth Waterman White was an American author whose work was often published under the name "Uncle Ben of Rouses Point." The wife of New York judge James W. White, Rhoda White, was a key player in one of the most infamous incidents of Lincoln's presidency: the execution of Nathaniel Gordon, who in 1862 was tried and convicted of kidnapping 897 Africans with the intent of bringing them to the United States to be sold as slaves. She, along with Gordon's wife and mother, begged Lincoln to show mercy; however, Lincoln refused, saying that "any man, who, for paltry gain and stimulated only by avarice, can rob Africa of her children to sell into interminable bondage, I never will pardon." Despite this incident, Rhoda White remained close to the Lincoln family and, following the president's assassination, became one of Mary Lincoln's most consistent correspondents.

PROVENANCE:
Sotheby's, New York, 13 May 1987, Sale 5575, Lot 100

REFERENCES:
Turner, p.503

This lot is located in Chicago.