第14章 REVELATIONS(4)

Before the end of the month he wrote to his law partner apologizing for his inability to be coherent on business matters."For not giving you a general summary of news,you must pardon me;it is not in my power to do so.I am now the most miserable man living.If what I feel were distributed to the whole human family,there would not be one cheerful face on earth.Whether I shall ever be better,I can not tell.Iawfully forebode I shall not.To remain as I am is impossible.

I must die or be better,it appears to me ...a change of scene might help me."His friend Speed became his salvation.Speed closed out his business and carried Lincoln off to visit his own relations in Kentucky.It was the devotion of Bowlin Green and his wife over again.But the psychology of the event was much more singular.Lincoln,in the inner life,had progressed a long way since the death of Ann,and the progress was mainly in the way of introspection,of self-analysis.He had begun to brood.

As always,the change did not reveal itself until an event in the outward life called it forth like a rising ghost from the abyss of his silences.His friends had no suspicion that in his real self,beneath the thick disguise of his external sunniness,he was forever brooding,questioning,analyzing,searching after the hearts of things both within and without..

"In the winter of 1840and 1841,"writes Speed,"he was unhappy about the engagement to his wife--not being entirely satisfied that his heart was going with his hand.How much he suffered then on that account,none knew so well as myself;he disclosed his whole heart to me.In the summer of 1841I became engaged to my wife.He was here on a visit when I courted her;and strange to say,something of the same feeling which I regarded as so foolish in him took possession of me,and kept me very unhappy from the time of my engagement until I was married.

This will explain the deep interest he manifested in his letters on my account...One thing is plainly discernible;if I had not been married and happy,far more happy than I ever expected to be,he would not have married."Whether or not Speed was entirely right in his final conclusion,it is plain that he and Lincoln were remarkably alike in temperament;that whatever had caused the break in Lincoln's engagement was repeated in his friend's experience when the latter reached a certain degree of emotional tension;that this paralleling of Lincoln's own experience in the experience of the friend so like himself,broke tip for once the solitude of his inner life and delivered him from some dire inward terror.Both men were deeply introspective.Each had that overpowering sense of the emotional responsibilities of marriage,which is bred in the bone of certain hyper-sensitive types--at least in the Anglo-Saxon race.But neither realized this trait in himself until,having blithely pursued his impulse to the point of committal,his spiritual conscience suddenly awakened and he asked of his heart,"Do I truly love her?Am I perfectly sure the emotion is permanent?"It is on this speculation that the unique group of the intimate letters to Speed are developed.They were written after Lincoln's return to Springfield,while Speed was wrestling with the demon of self-analysis.In the period which they cover,Lincoln delivered himself from that same demon and recovered Serenity.Before long he was writing:"I know what the painful point with you is at all times when you are unhappy;it is an apprehension that you do not love her as you should.What nonsense!How came you to court her?Was it because you thought she deserved it and that you had given her reason to expect it?If it was for that,why did not the same reason make you court Ann Todd,and at least twenty others of whom you can think,to whom it would apply with greater force than to her?

Did you court her for her wealth?Why,you said she had none.

But you say you reasoned yourself into it.What do you mean by that?Was it not that you found yourself unable to reason yourself out of it?"And much more of the same shrewd sensible sort,--a picture unintentionally of his own state of mind no less than of his friend's.

This strange episode reveals also that amid Lincoln's silences,while the outward man appeared engrossed in everyday matters,the inward man had been seeking religion.His failure to accept the forms of his mother's creed did not rest on any lack of the spiritual need.Though undefined,his religion glimmers at intervals through the Speed letters.When Speed's fiancee fell ill and her tortured lover was in a paroxysm of remorse and grief,Lincoln wrote:"I hope and believe that your present anxiety and distress about her health and her life must and will forever banish those horrid doubts which I know you sometimes felt as to the truth of your affection for her.If they can once and forever be removed (and I feel a presentment that the Almighty has sent your present affliction expressly for that object)surely nothing can come in their stead to fill their immeasurable measure of misery...Should she,as you fear,be destined to an early grave,it is indeed a great consolation to know she is so well prepared to meet it."Again he wrote:"I was always superstitious.I believe God made me one of the instruments of bringing you and your Fanny together,which union I have no doubt lie had foreordained.

Whatever He designs He will do for me yet.'Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord'is my text now."The duality in self-torture of these spiritual brethren endured in all about a year and a half,and closed with Speed's marriage.Lincoln was now entirely delivered from his demon.

He wrote Speed a charming letter,serene,affectionate,touched with gentle banter,valiant though with a hint of disillusion as to their common type."I tell you,Speed,our forebodings (for which you and I are peculiar)are all the worst sort of nonsense..You say you much fear that that elysium of which you have dreamed so much is never to be realized.Well,if it shall not,I dare swear it will not be the fault of her who is now your wife.I have no doubt that it is the peculiar misfortune of both you and me to dream dreams of elysium far exceeding all that anything earthly can realize."[8]