Ridgewood May 22, 2013 THE VILLADOM TIMES II • Page 7 ‘Mary Todd Lincoln’ greeted with new understanding by John Koster Abraham Lincoln’s angry contemporaries often etched an image of Mary Todd Lincoln as somewhere between an untamed shrew and a depressed psychotic. But the Mary Todd Lincoln who spoke in Ridgewood last week kindled understanding, affection, and a certain wary respect. Pat Jordan came to Ridgewood in costume with artifacts and brought Mary Todd, later Mrs. Lincoln, to life for an audience of informed, mostly mature residents. The program was presented under the auspices of the Bergen County Division on Disability Services and the Ridgewood Post Stroke & Disabled Adult Support Group. Jordan delighted the audience with a one-hour impersonation and a half-hour of informed questions and informative answers. She told some of the familiar stories about young Abraham Lincoln and young Mary Todd -- such as the time he said he wanted to dance with her in the worst possible way and she told him, after they danced, that he actually HAD danced with her in the worst possible way. “He had a wonderful sense of humor,” Mary Todd recalled. “I liked to tease him. He would take it. He was self-deprecating at times, and I think he liked it.” Beyond the glowing history of the Lincoln legend, Mary delved into the reasons for her swings between greatness and mental illness. Mary lost her beloved brother Robert when she was four and her mother when she was six. Her stepmother, who would eventually have nine children of her own, had little time for her, though she was more negligent than cruel, but her father had money and pampered her, at least by the hardscrabble frontier-family standards of Abraham Lincoln, who had also lost his mother and a sister in his childhood. “I always loved fashion,” Mary Todd said. “I remember once that I wanted a hoopskirt. My stepmother said, ‘Absolutely not. You are much too young.’ So I made my own out of willow branches, but she made me take it off before church.” She also said, “I decided I wanted to go to school because most of the women I knew didn’t know anything.” She had to pay extra for language lessons, but she learned how to speak some French. She admitted, however, that she never knew much about cooking until she and Lincoln got married on Nov. 4, 1842. “Stephen Douglas, in a very small way, was a beau of mine,” she added of the days before her marriage. Mary glossed over the fact that Lincoln had once jilted her before they had married, but she said she was delighted with his wedding gift to her. “I had no flowers, but he had a ring made for me and inside it said ‘Love is eternal.’ I have looked at that every day of my life.” Their first son, Robert, was born on August of 1843 and (continued on page 19) Pat Jordan as ‘Mary Todd Lincoln’