INT. THE EAST ROOM, WHITE HOUSE - LATE AFTERNOON
Mary, radiant, her charm turned to its brightest candlepower, is greeting the Blairs, who are part of a long receiving line. The Blairs proceed from Mary to Lincoln.
TITLE: GRAND RECEPTION
JANUARY 15
The enormous room is splendid, decked with garlands of flowers, tall candelabra burning, flags from Army divisions. An orchestra plays.
Lincoln and Tad stand together. Slade is near Lincoln. Mary's a distance away from Lincoln, to his right.
Robert takes his place next to his mother, as conspicuous as he'd feared he'd be in his civilian clothes. 55.
A sea of people surround the President and his family. Nicolay, Hay and several clerks channel the crowd waiting to greet the Lincolns into the line: wealthy people, many more middle-class people, some working people and farmers, and many officers and soldiers.
Tad watches his father shake hands. Lincoln is in his element. He stands close to each person, touches each one gently, stoops to be nearer them; he puts everyone at ease.
He's bothered only by the white kid gloves he's wearing. He tugs at the right-hand glove.
WILLIAM SLADE
(with a glance in Mary's) She's just ten feet yonder. I'd like to keep my job.
Lincoln takes off the right-hand glove - his hand-shaking hand - but keeps the other glove on.
Approaching Mary on the line, Stevens, Ashley, Senators Bluff Wade and CHARLES SUMNER, all in formal wear except Stevens.
MARY
Senator Sumner, it has been much too long.
CHARLES SUMNER
"Oh, who can look on that celestial face and -"
Cutting him off, she pretends not to recognize Ashley.
MARY
And...?
JAMES ASHLEY
(CONFUSED)
James Ashley, ma'am, we've met several times -
But she ignores him and greets Stevens.
MARY
(her Southern accent becoming more lustrous:) Praise Heavens, praise Heavens, just when I had abandoned hope of amusement, it's the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee!
Stevens bows to her. 56.
THADDEUS STEVENS
Mrs. Lincoln.
MARY
Madame President if you please! (LAUGHS) Oh, don't convene another subcommittee to investigate me, sir! I'm teasing! Smile, Senator Wade.
BLUFF WADE
(NOT SMILING:)
I believe I am smiling, Mrs. Lincoln.
MARY
I'll take your word for that, sir!
THADDEUS STEVENS
As long as your household accounts are in order, Madame, we'll have no need to investigate them.
MARY
You have always taken such a lively, even prosecutorial interest in my household accounts.
THADDEUS STEVENS
Your household accounts have always been so interesting.
MARY
Yes, thank you, it's true, the miracles I have wrought out of fertilizer bills and cutlery invoices. But I had to! Four years ago, when the President and I arrived, this was pure pigsty. Tobacco stains in the turkey carpets. Mushrooms, green as the moon, sprouting from ceilings! And a pauper's pittance allotted for improvements. As if your committee joined with all of Washington awaiting, in what you anticipated would be our comfort in squalor, further proof that my husband and I were prairie primitives, unsuited to the position to which an error of the people, a flaw in the democratic process, had elevated us. 57.
Lincoln, suddenly without anyone in line to receive, looks to see the backlog forming behind the radicals. He notes the exchange, but says nothing. Robert sees him looking.
MARY (CONT'D)
The past is the past, it's a new year now and we are all getting along, or so they tell me. I gather we are working together! The White House and the other House? Hatching little plans together?
Robert leans in to her.
ROBERT
Mother?
MARY
What?
ROBERT
You're creating a bottleneck.
MARY
Oh! (TO STEVENS:) Oh, I'm detaining you, and more important, the people behind you! How the people love my husband, they flock to see him, by their thousands on public days! They will never love you the way they love him. How difficult it must be for you to know that. And yet how important to remember it.
She gives him a slight, lethal smile. He holds the look; his poker-face yields to a barely perceptible smile, amused and perhaps a little admiring.