Of course, the whole topic should have been veiled in that privacy which ought always to be accorded to such relations; but Lincoln, like Carlyle, was not shown such respect. Though Herndon, as he assures us, was on the side of the wife, he records the facts with merciless fidelity, perhaps because so much was said about her on this score during her lifetime. She was never popular as "the first lady of the land," but that is no reason why her unfortunate traits should be emphasized to the neglect of others which were not only more numerous, but lovely and winning. Pitiful was her grief after the last great tragedy, which so shattered her mind that she was never herself again. Yet to the end she was pursued by a prying press in a manner so unmanly, so unchivalric, that one can find no words severe enough for rebuke.2 III Mention has been made of the descriptive powers of Mr. Herndon, and they certainly deserve mention, for they are remarkable alike for swiftness of stroke and vividness of detail. Examples are many, such as the picture of the wedding scene in 1841, of the murder trials, of Lincoln the story-teller, of the speech before the Bloomington convention in 1856, of Lincoln's mannerisms in oratory at the beginning of the great debates; and others of like kind. But surely his masterpiece is his sketch of Lincoln as a man, his figure, features, movements, manners, and personal traits, which appeared first in a lecture 1 Recollections of a Busy Life, by Horace Greeley, p. 408 (1869). 2 Life of Lincoln, by I. N. Arnold, pp. 433-40 (1884). In rebuke of a gossiping press Mr. Arnold recalls the words of the Earl of Oxford, in Sir Walter Scott's Anne of Geierstein, when the Duke of Burgundy was jesting about Margaret of Anjou: "Whatever may have been the defects of my mistress, she is in distress, and almost in desolation.' The death of her son Thomas in 1871 deepened the anguish of this beshadowed woman. Rather tardily, through the influence of Sumner, Congress gave her a pension, which ought to have been larger than it was, as Greeley urged. She died at the home of her sister, Mrs. Ninian Edwards, in Springfield, Ill., July 16, 1882. So dark had been her life since the great tragedy that death seemed like dawn. |