Rubenstein Center Scholarship
An Uneasy Reaction to a White House Servant's Memoir
Elizabeth Keckly. Frontispiece, Behind the Scenes, 1868.
One of the most important 19th-century accounts of life in the White House was Behind the Scenes, or Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House. Behind the Scenes was the memoir of Elizabeth Keckly, dressmaker to Mary Todd Lincoln. Keckly (her name on some documents is spelled “Keckley”) was an independent businesswoman, and not technically a member of the White House staff. Her memoir, published in 1868, gives many details of Mrs. Lincoln's personality and behavior. The book also contains the text of personal letters Keckly apparently received from Mrs. Lincoln.
Keckly herself seemed aware that her book might raise a public outcry. Her preface states, "If I have betrayed confidence in anything I have published, it has been to place Mrs. Lincoln in a better light before the world [. . .]."1
Behind the Scenes did meet with a great deal of criticism, and even a parody, whose title, Behind the Seams, lampooned Keckly's profession as a seamstress. One reviewer called Keckly's book "'the latest, and decidedly weakest production of the sensational press.'"2
In the 20th century, Behind the Scenes has been reprinted many times. Scholars have evaluated the narrative from various angles. Some believe it to represent the voice of a brave and talented woman who bought herself out of slavery and designed gowns for a fashionable first lady. Others believe that Keckly’s unscrupulous editor tricked her into lending him Mrs. Lincoln’s letters, which he then included in the book.
Additional Information
Read more: Jennifer Fleischner, Mrs Lincoln and Mrs. Keckly. New York: Broadway Books, 2003. Elizabeth Keckley, Behind the Scenes, or Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House. 1868. Reprinted with an introduction by James Olney: Oxford University Press, 1988. Carolyn Sorisio, "Unmasking the Genteel Performer: Elizabeth Keckley's Behind the Scenes and the Politics of Public Wrath," African American Review 34 (Spring 2000): 19–38.
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