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boardinghouse would offer them lodgings, and one landlady bluntly declared that if she offered the officers’ wives a safe haven, she would lose all her other boarders. Discouraged and angry, the women had been obliged to leave their husbands to their defense of Fort Sumter and seek refuge in the North. When they arrived in Washington, bitter and defiant, they found themselves warmly welcomed by the Republicans and celebrated as the first martyrs of the war.
    “I cannot imagine such a state of feeling,” one of Elizabeth’s patrons declared as Elizabeth dressed her for a levee at the White House one evening. Margaret Sumner McLean was the daughter of the Massachusetts-born Major General Edwin Vose Sumner and the wife of Captain Eugene McLean, a Maryland native with unabashed Southern sympathies. Her father’s cousin was the abolitionist senator Charles Sumner, who had been savagely caned and nearly murdered on the Senate floor almost five years earlier by a colleague from South Carolina who had taken great offense to one of his antislavery speeches, which was not surprising considering that it had been full of personal insults. To say that Mrs. McLean’s loyalties were probably divided in those troubled times was, in Elizabeth’s opinion, a grave understatement. “To turn away helpless women, to leave them homeless and unprotected! I am quite indignant with so-called Southern chivalry.”
    “I hear a few Southern gentlemen offered the ladies rooms in their own homes,” said Elizabeth, adjusting the fall of lace around Mrs. McLean’s shoulders. “The ladies declined.”
    Mrs. McLean laughed in brusque dismissal. “They had no choice, and the gentlemen of Charleston must have known that. How could officers’ wives accept the hospitality of men who had openly avowed enmity toward their husbands? I can imagine the turn the negotiations would have taken: ‘Ho, there, Major Anderson! Still determined to hold Fort Sumter, are you? Did I mention that we have your men’s wives?’”
    “You think those Charleston men would have harmed the ladies?”
    “Oh, probably not. They were gentlemen, not common ruffians. But even if their safety had been guaranteed and notarized, the ladies couldn’t put their brave husbands under any obligation to their enemies. Nor should it have been necessary. Where were the kindly widows of Charleston, the dutiful landlords? How would they feel if their women were treated so contemptuously in Washington or New York?”
    “I imagine they would not think well of it.”
    “No, indeed. They would consider it an act of war.” Her gown and hair in order, Mrs. McLean dismissed Elizabeth with her thanks and a promise to send along Elizabeth’s good wishes in her next letter to Varina Davis, a dear friend whom she missed terribly. Washington society wasn’t the same without her, and the excitement of new acquaintances was a poor substitute for the company of longtime, loyal friends.

    Elizabeth didn’t see Mrs. McLean again until nearly two weeks later, when she unexpectedly called at the Lewis boardinghouse. Elizabeth was hard at work sewing in her rooms when she heard footsteps and the rustle of hoop skirts in the hallway. Glancing up from her work, she was astonished to discover Mrs. McLean standing there, regarding her imperiously over a muslin-wrapped bundle tied with twine. Elizabeth’s heart sank, but she kept her face pleasantly expressionless. She did not like it when her patrons came to her rooms, especially without any notice whatsoever. It was more appropriate to their status—and more protective of her privacy—if she went to them.
    “Elizabeth, I am invited to dine at Willard’s next Sunday,” Mrs. McLean declared by way of a greeting. “I positively have
not
a dress fit towear on the occasion. I have just purchased material, and you must commence work on it right away.”
    Elizabeth did not allow even the smallest sigh of exasperation to escape her lips. “I have more