She had dark hair, blue eyes, a clear skin and a stunning
figure. Lucy Lambert Hale was the second
eldest daughter of US Senator John Parker Hale, an Abolitionist from New
Hampshire. Born on January 1, 1841, Lucy
was sent to boarding school in Boston.
Known as Bessie, she was receiving love poems from William Chandler, a
Harvard University student by age 12 and was engaged in romantic correspondence
when she was 17 years old. Lucy Hale was
described as “pretty, precocious, sweet and good.” She was involved with a sophomore at Harvard, Oliver Wendell
Holmes, Jr. son of the famous poet-physician and future Supreme Court Justice. Another suitor was Robert Todd Lincoln, eldest
son of the future president. In fact,
Senator Hale entertained the hope that Lucy would marry Robert.
When the Civil War broke out in April, 1861, her family
moved into the National Hotel in Washington, DC. Lucy became a fixture of Washington society
and was seen at many parties, dances and social functions. She even visited soldiers at the front during
lulls in the fighting. Once she rode
into Virginia in a horse-drawn ambulance accompanied by Captain Oliver W.
Holmes, Jr., who was stationed nearby. Lucy
found Holmes quite handsome with his dark hair, deep set eyes, and bushy
mustache.
On Valentine’s Day of 1862, she received an anonymous
note from a new suitor, taking advantage of the traditions of the day:
“My dear Miss Hale, were it not for
the License with a
time-honored observance of this day
allows, I had not written you this poor note. ... You resemble in a most
remarkable degree a lady, very dear to me, now dead and your close resemblance
to her surprised me the first time I saw you. This must be my apology for any
apparent rudeness noticeable. To see you has indeed afforded me a melancholy pleasure, if you can conceive of such, and
should we never meet nor I see you again believe me, I shall always
associate you in my
memory, with her, who was very beautiful, and whose face, like your own I
trust, was a faithful index of gentleness and amiability. With a Thousand kind
wishes for your future happiness I am, to you,
A
Stranger”
In that pre-war era of romance, this letter from a secret
admirer must have had quite an impact on twenty-one-year-old Lucy Hale, especially
when she discovered the true identity of the author. Considered by many to be the most
handsome man in Washington, he conducted his courtship with Lucy with much
secrecy. And it seems that Lucy
succumbed slowly and surely to his charms.
Marriage to a Senator’s daughter would have been a big step up for
him.
By early 1865, they were often openly seen together. The pair became surreptitiously engaged to be
married. He wrote to his mother and she
grudgingly gave her blessing. On March
4, 1865, they attended the Second Inauguration of Abraham Lincoln with a ticket
Lucy had gotten from her father. They
exchanged poems and rings and other trinkets of love. There were reports of them kissing and
touching. It is even possible that they
occasionally shared a room at the National Hotel, where he customarily stayed
when in Washington, but evidence is unclear.
By this time, her lover was engaged in a plot to do evil
deeds. Lucy knew nothing about it. By the spring of 1865, Lucy and her lover began
to quarrel and her fiancé had bouts of intense jealousy, especially becoming
enraged when he saw her dancing with her erstwhile admirer, the President’s
son, Robert Todd Lincoln.
On the morning of April 14, the couple met in a public
room of the hotel. Lucy informed her
affianced that her father, since losing re-election in 1864, had been appointed
Ambassador to Spain. This may have been
a way for her father to get Lucy away from Washington. She told her lover that the family would soon
set sail for Spain. Lucy and her mother
spent the rest of the morning preparing to accompany the Ambassador. Lucy then spent the afternoon practicing
Spanish with Robert Lincoln and another admirer, John Hay, the President’s
assistant private secretary.
Lucy and her mother dined with her betrothed that evening. He looked at his watch, stood to leave and,
taking her hand in his, he recited from Hamlet, “Nymph, in thy orisons
(prayers), be all my sins remembered.”
He knew Shakespeare quite well and his love for Lucy Lambert
Hale seemed sincere, but his obsession with other things became paramount and he
left Lucy’s side to do an awful deed.
Her fiancé was John Wilkes Booth.
