Lincoln, Mary Todd, First Lady

Mary Lincoln writes to one of her staunchest widowhood friends, commenting on Tad's homesickness and expressing appreciation for her congressional pension. The former first lady thanks Mrs. Orne for the faithfulness of her correspondence and apologizes for the inconsistency of her own. "I have much to say to you—but where shall I commence. In the first place—I must speak of my young boy, who remembers you & yours, with such gratitude and affection. He has become so homesick & at the same time, his English education, has been so entirely neglected—that I have consented—with many a heartache to permit him to go home—to enter upon an early fall term—in some Northern school. ... I must, in a warm climate ... do the best I can until spring without him when I think I will return to the U.S."

Mrs. Lincoln expresses gratitude as well for Mrs. Orne's role in securing the $3,000 annual pension that Congress had voted her just the previous month. "[W]hen you write to your noble husband & brother ... express my deep, deep, gratitude for their indefatigable efforts in my behalf, and may I also trouble you to get them to express to all my friends ... my great gratitude—for all they have done for me. The sum, that was voted me, will greatly assist me & not a murmuring word, shall be heard from me as to the amount. I feel assured that if a larger sum had been insisted upon it would have fallen through all together."

In closing, Mrs. Lincoln apologizes for her odd stationery ("You must excuse my paper as my usual mourning paper is somewhere in a trunk, which I am too lazy to unpack"), announces that she has arranged for Tad to meet with General Philip Sheridan, and expresses plans to see Mrs. Orne shortly in London.