Mme. Mentelle’s School
Financial
difficulties and mental instability characterized the later years of First Lady
Mary Todd Lincoln, and are what we most remember about her. But it is her
formative qualities that prove most instructive. Her intelligence,
independence, and worldliness were precisely the qualities that attracted her
future spouse, Abraham Lincoln, and helped to make their partnership so
complementary.
Early
on, Robert Smith Todd of Lexington recognized the precocious intelligence of
his daughter Mary, and he furnished her a superior education that was extremely
rare for women of her day. At a time when most young women of her social class
ended their formal education after four or five years, Mary’s lasted nine
years. The first five she spent at
Through
Mme. Mentelle’s rigorous academic training, Mary excelled “in every branch of
good education.” Moreover, Mentelle became for Mary a living example of female
intelligence and independence. A vivid, excitable storyteller who deplored
“girlish frivolities,” Mentelle played the fiddle and was known to take
vigorous walks, reading and talking to herself along the way. If Lexingtonians
viewed the Mentelles as eccentrics, Mary found in their example an antidote to
the sedentary life imposed upon her female relatives and peers. Living with the
Mentelles, Mary gained a lifelong fluency in French, a love of reading and
learning, and knowledge of the world that fueled her desire to flee
The only
known image of Charlotte Victorie Leclere Mentelle is this porcelain miniature.
Mary Todd
Lincoln House,
