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Title: The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II.
Author: Carlyle, Thomas, 1795-1881, Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1803-1882
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II." ***
THE CORRESPONDENCE OF THOMAS CARLYLE AND RALPH WALDO EMERSON
1834-1872
VOLUME II
"To my friend I write a letter, and from him I receive a letter.
It is a spiritual gift, worthy of him to give, and of me to
receive."--Emerson
"What the writer did actually mean, the thing he then thought of,
the thing he then was."--Carlyle
CONTENTS OF VOLUME II
LXXVI. Emerson. Concord, 1 July, 1842. Remittance of L51.--
Alcott.--Editorship of the _Dial._--Projected essay on Poetry.--
Stearns Wheeler.
LXXVII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 19 July, 1842. Acknowledgment of
remittance.--Change of publishers.--Work on _Cromwell._--
Sterling.--Alcott.
LXXVIII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 29 August, 1842. Impotence of
speech.--Heart-sick for his own generation.--Transcendentalism of
the _Dial._
LXXIX. Emerson. Concord, 15 October, 1842. The coming book on
Cromwell.--Alcott.--The _Dial_ and its sins.--Booksellers'
accounts.
LXXX. Carlyle. Chelsea, 17 November, 1842. Accounts.--Alcott.--
Sect-founders.--Man the Reformer.--James Stephen.--Gambardella.
LXXXI. Carlyle. Chelsea, 11 March, 1843. _Past and Present._--
How to prevent pirated republication.--The _Dial._--Alcott's
English Tail.
LXXXII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 1 April, 1843. Copy of _Past and
Present_ forwarded.--Prospect of pirated edition.
LXXXIII. Emerson. Concord, 29 April, 1843. Carlyle's star.--
Lectures on "New England" at Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New
York.--Politics in Washington.--_Past and Present._--Effect of
cheap press in America.--Reprint of the book.--The _Dial_ does
not pay expenses.
Extract from Emerson's Diary concerning _Past and Present._
LXXXIV. Carlyle. 27 August, 1843. Introduction of Mr. Macready.
LXXXV. Emerson. Concord, 30 October, 1843. Remittance of L25.--
Piratical reprint of _Past and Present._--E.P. Clark, a
Carlylese, to be asked to take charge of accounts.--Henry James.
--Ellery Channing's Poems.
LXXXVI. Carlyle. Chelsea, 31 October, 1843. Summer wanderings.
--The _Dial_ at the London Library.--Growth of Emerson's public
in England.--Piratical reprint of his Essays in London.--of
_Past and Present_ in America.--Criticism of Carlyle in the
Dial.--Dr. Russell.--Theodore Parker.--Book about Cromwell.--
_Commons Journals._
LXXXVII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 17 November, 1843. Receipt of L25.--
E.P. Clark.--Henry James.--Channing's Poems.--Reverend W.H.
Channing.--"Progress of the Species."--Emerson.--The Cromwell
business.
LXXXVIII. Emerson. Concord, 31 December, 1843. Macready.--
Railroad to Concord.--Margaret Fuller's Review of Sterling's
Poems in the _Dial._--Remittance of L32.
LXXXIX. Carlyle. Chelsea, 31 January, 1844. Remittance received
and made.--Criticism of Emerson by Gilfillan.--John Sterling.--
Cromwell book.--Hexameters from Voss.
XC. Emerson. Concord, 29 February, 1844. Acknowledgment of
remittance.--A new collection of Essays.--Faith in Writers as a
class.--Remittance of L36.--Proposal concerning publication in
America of _Cromwell._
XCI. Carlyle. Chelsea, 3 April, 1844. Acknowledgment of
remittance.--Piratical reprints.--Professor Ferrier.
XCII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 5 August, 1844. Fear for Sterling.--
Tennyson.--Work on _Cromwell_ frightful.
XCIII. Emerson. Concord, 1 September, 1844. Sends proof sheets
of new book of Essays.--Sterling.
XCIV. Carlyle. Chelsea, 29 September, 1844. Death of Sterling.
XCV. Emerson. Concord, 30 September, 1844. Remittance of L30--
Sterling.--Tennyson.--Regrets having troubled Carlyle about
proof-sheets.--Birth of Edward Emerson.--Purchase of land on
Walden Pond.
XCVI. Carlyle. Chelsea, 3 November, 1844. Thanks for
remittance.--London edition of _Essays,_ Second Series.--
Criticism on them.
XCVII. Emerson. Concord, 31 December, 1844. Sterling's death.--
London edition of _Essays._--Carlyle's Preface and strictures.
XCVIII. Emerson. Concord, 31 January, 1845. Bargain about
_Miscellanies_ with Carey and Hart.--Portrait of Carlyle
desired.--E.P. Clark's "Illustrations of Carlyle".
XCIX. Carlyle. Chelsea, 16 February, 1845. Bargain with Carey &
Co.--Portrait.--Emerson's public in England.--Work on Cromwell.
C. Emerson. Concord, 29 June, 1845. Death of Mr. Carey.--
Portrait.--His own occupations.--Preparing to print _Poems._--
Lectures in prospect.
CI. Carlyle. Chelsea, 29 August, 1845. _Cromwell's Letters and
Speeches_ finished.--Nature of the book.--New book from Emerson
welcome.--Imperfection of all modes of utterance.--Forbids
further plague with booksellers.
CII. Emerson. Concord, 15 September, 1845. Payment sure from
Carey and Hart.--Lectures on "Representative Men".
CIII. Emerson. Concord, 30 September, 1845. Congratulations on
completion of _Cromwell_ book.--Clark.
CIV. Carlyle. Chelsea, 11 November, 1845. Cromwell book sent.--
Visit to Scotland.--Changes there.--His mother.--Impatience with
the times.--Weariness with the Cromwell book.--Visit to the
Ashburtons.
CV. Carlyle. Chelsea, 3 January, 1846. Thanks to Mr. Hart, Mr.
Furness, and others.--_Cromwell proves popular.--New letters of
Cromwell.
CVI. Carlyle. Chelsea, 3 February, 1846. Second edition of
Cromwell.--Emerson to do what he will concerning republication.--
Anti-Corn-Law.--Aristocracy and Millocracy.
CVII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 3 March, 1846. Cromwell lumber.--Sheets
of new edition sent.-Essay on Emerson in an Edinburgh Magazine.--
Mr. Everett.--Jargon in Newspapers and Parliament.
CVIII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 18 April, 1846. Arrangements
concerning reprint of _Cromwell._--Promise of Daguerrotype
likeness.--Fifty years old.--Rides.--Emerson's voice wholly
human.--Blessedness in work.
CIX. Carlyle. Chelsea, 30 April, 1846. Photograph sent.--
Arrangements with Wiley and Putnam for republication of
_Cromwell_ and other books.--Photographs of Emerson and himself.
--Remembrance of Craigenputtock.
CX. Emerson. Concord, 14 May, 1846. Daguerrotype likeness.--
Wood-lot on Walden Pond.
CXI. Emerson. Concord, 31 May, 1846. Photograph of Carlyle
received.--One of himself sent in return.--Bargain with Wiley
and Putnam.
CXII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 18 June, 1846. Bargain with Wiley and
Putnam.--Emerson's photograph expected.
CXIII. Emerson. Concord, 15 July, 1846. Wiley and Putnam.--
Dealings with booksellers.--Accounts.--E.P. Clark and his
Illustrations of Carlyle's Writings.--Margaret Fuller going to
Europe.
CXIV. Carlyle. Chelsea, 17 July, 1846. Photograph of Emerson
unsatisfactory.--Revision of his own books.--Spleen against
books.--Going to Scotland.--Reading in American history.--
Marshall and Sparks.--Michelet.--Beriah Green.
CXV. Emerson. Concord, 31 July, 1846. Thanks for copy of new
edition of Cromwell.--Margaret Fuller.--Desires Carlyle to see
her.
CXVI. Carlyle. Chelsea, 18 December, 1846. Long silence.--
Disconsolate two months in Scotland.--Visit to Ireland.--A
country cast into the melting-pot.--O'Connell.--Young Ireland.--
Returned home sad.--Miss Fuller; estimate of her.--What she
thought of Carlyle.--Emerson's Poems.
CXVII. Emerson. Concord, 31 January, 1847. Margaret Fuller's
visit to Chelsea.--Speculates on going to England to lecture.--
His _Poems._
CXVIII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 2 March, 1847. Visit to Hampshire.--
Emerson's _Poems._--Prospect of Emerson's Lectures in England.--
Miss Fuller.
CXIX. Carlyle. Chelsea, 18 March, 1847. Remittance received.--
Alexander Ireland.--Advice concerning lectures.
CXX. Emerson. Concord, 30 April, 1847. Prospect of lecturing in
England.--Works in garden and orchard.
CXXI. Carlyle. Chelsea, 18 May, 1847. Thoreau's Lecture on
Carlyle.--Visit from E.R. Hoar.--Emerson's visit to England.
CXXII. Emerson. Concord, 4 June, 1847. Prospect of visit to
England.--F.H. Hedge.
CXXIII. Emerson. Concord, 31 July, 1847. Visit to England
decided upon.--Portrait of Sterling.
CXXIV. Carlyle. Rawdon, Yorkshire, 31 August, 1847.
Journeyings.--Emerson's expected visit.--Hedge.--Dr. Jacobson.--
Quaker hosts.
CXXV. Emerson. Concord, 30 September, 1847. Plans for England.
CXXVI. Carlyle. Chelsea, 15 October, 1847. Delay of Emerson's
letter announcing his coming.--Welcome to Chelsea.
Emerson--Extracts from his Diary concerning Carlyle.
CXXVIl. Emerson. Manchester, 5 November, 1847. His reception
and occupations.
CXXVIII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 13 November, 1847. Messages.--
Occupations.--Bancroft.
CXXIX. Carlyle. Chelsea., 30 November, 1847. Messages.--Mr.
Forster, &c.
CXXX. Emerson. Manchester, 28 December, 1847. Message from Miss
Fuller.--Hospitality shown him.--The English.
CXXXI. Carlyle. Chelsea, 30 December, 1847. The Pepolis.--
Milnes.--Tennyson.--Idleness.--Visit to Hampshire.--Massachusetts
Review.
CXXXII. Emerson. Ambleside, 26 February, 1848. At Miss
Martineau's.--Wordsworth.--Proposed return to Chelsea.
CXXXIII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 28 February, 1848. Welcome ready at
Chelsea.--His own conditions.--The new French Republic.
CXXXIV. Emerson. Manchester, 2 March, 1848. Return to London.
CXXXV. Emerson. [London,] 19 June, 1848. Proposed call with
Mrs. Crowe.
CXXXVI. Carlyle. Chelsea, 20 June, 1848. Mrs. Crowe.--Luncheon
with the Duchess.
CXXXVII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 23 June, 1848. Invitation to dinner.
CXXXVIII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 6 December, 1848. Long silence.--
Questions concerning Indian meal.--Death of Charles Buller, and
of Lord Ashburton's mother.--Neuberg and others.
CXXXIX. Emerson. Boston, 23 January, 1849. John Carlyle's
translation of the Inferno.--Indian corn.--Clough's Bothie.
CXL. Carlyle. Chelsea, 19 April, 1849. Indian corn from
Concord; trial of it, reflections upon it.--No writing at
present.--Macaulay's _History._--Political outlook.--Clough.--
Sterling Club.
CXLI. Carlyle. Scotsbrig, 13 August, 1849. Indian corn again.--
Tour in Ireland.--Letter from Miss Fuller.--Message to Thoreau.
CXLII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 19 July, 1850. A year's silence.--
Latter Day Pamphlets.--Divergence from Emerson.--_Representative
Men._--Prescott lionized.
CXLIII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 14 November, 1850. "Eighteen million
bores."--Emerson on Latter Day Pamphlets.--Autumn Journey.--
Disordered nerves.
CXLIV. Carlyle. Chelsea, 8 July, 1851. Appeal for news.--_Life
of Sterling._--Crystal Palace.--Bossu's _Journal,_ Bartram's
_Travels._--Margaret Fuller.--Mazzini.--Dr. Carlyle.
CXLV. Emerson. Concord, 28 July, 1851. Story of the year.--
Journey in the West.--Memoir of Margaret Fuller.--_Life of
Sterling._--English friends.
CXLVI. Carlyle. Great Malvern, 25 August, 1851. _Life of
Sterling._--Bossu's _Journal._--Water-cure.--Twisleton.--Milnes
married.--Tennyson.--Browning on Miss Fuller.
CXLVII. Emerson. Concord, 14 April, 1852. Browning's
Reminiscences of Margaret Fuller.--Books on the Indians.--_Life
of Sterling._
CXLVIII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 7 May, 1852. Correspondence must be
revived.--Margaret Fuller.--Memoirs of her.
CXLIX. Emerson. Concord, May, 1852. Relations with Carlyle.--
Carlyle's genius and his own.--Margaret Fuller.
CL. Carlyle. Chelsea, 25 June, 1852. Emerson and himself.--
Reading about Frederick the Great.
CLI. Emerson. Concord, 19 April, 1853. Excuses for not
writing.--Chapter on Fate.--Visit to the West.--Conditions of
American life.--Clough.
CLII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 13 May, 1853. Blessing of letters from
Emerson.--Coming on of old age.--Modern democracy.--Visit to
Germany.--Still reading about Fritz.
CLIIa. Emerson. Concord, 10 August, 1853. Slowness to write.--
Regret at Clough's return to England.--Miss Bacon.--Carlyle's
visit to Germany.--Thackeray in America.--New York and its society.
CLIII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 9 September, 1853. Regrets for old
days.--Not left town.--A new top story.--Miss Bacon, her Quixotic
enterprise.--Clough.--Thackeray.--To Concord?
CLIV. Emerson. Concord, 11 March, 1854. Laurence, the artist.--
Reading Latter Day Pamphlets.--Death of Carlyle's, and of
Emerson's mother.--Miss Bacon.--His English Notes.--Lecturing
tour in the West.--Speed _Frederick!_
CLV. Carlyle. Chelsea, 8 April, 1854. Thankful for Emerson's
letter.--Death of his mother.--Makes no way in Prussian History.
--The insuperable difficulty with _Frederick._--Literature in
these days.--Emerson's picture of America.--Battle of Freedom and
Slavery.--Emerson's book on England desired.--Miss Bacon.
CLVI. Emerson. Concord, 17 April, 1855. Excuses for not
writing.--Unchanged feeling for Carlyle.--The American.--True
measure of life.--Musings of indolence.
CLVII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 13 May, 1855. Emerson's letters
indispensable; his complete understanding of Carlyle.--A grim
and lonely year.--Never had such a business as _Frederick._--
Frederick himself.--"Balaklava."--Persistence of the English.--
Urges Emerson to print his book on England.
CLVIII. Emerson. Concord, 6 May, 1856. Letter-writing.--Leaves
of Grass.--Mrs. ---.
CLIX. Carlyle. Chelsea, 20 July, 1856. Emerson's letter
welcome.--Life a burden.--Going to Scotland.--_Life of Frederick_
to go to press.--Mrs. ---.--Miss Bacon.--Browning.
CLX. Carlyle. The Gill, Cummertrees, Annan, 28 August, 1856.
The debt of America to Emerson.--_English Traits_ will be
welcome.--Grateful for whatever Emerson may have said of
himself.--In retreat in Annan.
CLXI. Carlyle. Chelsea, 2 December, 1856. Close of negotiations
for printing a complete edition of his Works in America.--
_English Traits._--Its excellence.
CLXII. Emerson. Concord, 17 May, 1858. Mr. and Mrs. Joseph
Longworth.--Inquires for the _Frederick._--Desires a _liber
veritatis._--Friendship of old gentlemen.
CLXIII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 2 June, 1858. Emerson's letter and
friends welcome.--First two volumes of Frederick just ready.--
Ugliness of the job.--Occasional tone of Emerson in the
Magazines.--Health.--Separation of Dickens from his wife.
CLXIII.* Carlyle. Chelsea, 9 April, 1859. Copy of _Frederick_
sent to Emerson.--Nearly choked by the job.--Self-pity.--
Emerson's speech on Burns.
CLXIV. Emerson. Concord, I May, 1859. Arrival of first volumes
of _Frederick._--Illusion of children.--His own children.--A
correspondent of twenty-five years not to be disused.
Extracts from Emerson's Diary respecting the _Frederick._
CLXV. Emerson. Concord, 16 April, 1860. Mr. O.W. Wight's new
edition of the _Miscellanies._--Sight at Toronto of two nephews
of Carlyle.--Carlyle commended to the Gods.
CLXVI. Carlyle. Chelsea, 30 April, 1860. Encouragement from
Emerson's words about _Frederick._--Message to Mr. Wight.
CLXVII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 29 January, 1861. Emerson's _Conduct
of Life._--Still twelve months from end of his task; nearly worn
out.
CLXVIII. Emerson. Concord, 16 April, 1861. Thanks for last
note.--_Frederick._
CLXIX. Emerson. Concord, 8 December, 1862. The third volume
of _Frederick._--The manner of it.--The war in America--Death
of Clough.
CLXX. Carlyle. Chelsea, 8 March, 1864. Introduction of the Hon.
Lyulph Stanley.--Mrs. Carlyle's ill-health.
CLXXI. Emerson. Concord, 26 September, 1864. Sympathy.--Fourth
volume of Frederick.--Nature of the war in America--Mr. Stanley.
CLXXII. Carlyle. Annandale, Scotland, 14 June, 1865. Completion
of _Frederick._--Saunterings.--Stay in Annandale.--Mrs. Carlyle.
--Photographs.--Mr. M.D. Conway.--The American Peacock.
CLXXIII. Emerson. Concord, 7 January, 1866. The last volumes of
Friedrich.--America.--Conduct of Americans in war and in peace.--
Photographs.--Little to tell of himself.
CLXXIV. Emerson. Concord, 16 May, 1866. Mrs. Carlyle's death.
CLXXV. Carlyle. Mentone, 27 January, 1867. Sad interval since
last writing.--His condition.--Mrs. Carlye's death.--Solace in
writing reminiscences.--Visit in Kent during summer.--Tennyson's
_Idyls._--Emerson's _English Traits._--Mentone.
CLXXVI. Carlyle. Chelsea, 18 November, 1869. Long abeyance of
correspondence.--Plan of bequeathing books to New England.--
Emerson's counsel desired.--His own condition.
CLXXVII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 4 January, 1870. Arrangements
respecting bequest of books to Harvard College.
CLXXVIII. Emerson. Concord, 23 January, 1870. Apologies for
delay.--Writing new book.--Delight in proposed bequest.--Advice
concerning.
CLXXIX. Carlyle. Melchet Court, Romsey, 14 February, 1870.
Acknowledgment of letter.
CLXXX. Carlyle. Chelsea, 24 February, 1870. Ending of the
Harvard business.
CLXXXI. Emerson. Concord, 21 March, 1870. Visit to President
Eliot concerning the bequest to Harvard.--Reflections on the
gift.--Speech about it to others.--Must renew correspondence.--
His own children.
CLXXXII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 24 March, 1870. Possible delay
of his last letter.--Society and Solitude not received.
CLXXXIII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 6 April, 1870. Emerson's letter
received.--Thankful for the conclusion of the little
Transaction.--Reflections on it.--Regrets that it has been spoken
of.--_Society and Solitude._--News from Concord.--The night cometh.
CLXXXIV. Emerson. Concord, 17 June, 1870. Excuses for delay in
writing.--Lectures on Philosophy.--Steps taken to secure privacy
in regard to bequest.--Chapman's Homer.--Error in address of
books.--Report of Carlyle's coming to America.
CLXXXV. Carlyle. Chelsea, 28 September, 1870. Delay in
receiving Emerson's last letter.--Correction of error in address
of books.--Emerson's lectures.--Philosophies.--Too late for him
to come to America.
CLXXXVI. Emerson. Concord, 15 October, 1870. The victim of
miscellany.--Library Edition of Carlyle's Works received.--
Invitation.--The privilege of genius.--E.R. Hoar.--J.M. Forbes.--
The growing youth.--The Lowell race.
CLXXXVIa. Emerson. Concord, 10 April, 1871. Account of himself
and his work.--Introduction to Plutarch's _Morals._--Oration
before the New England Society in New York.--Lectures at
Cambridge.--Reprint of early writings.--About to go to California.
CLXXXVII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 4 June, 1871. Gap in
correspondence.--Unfriendly winter.--Completion of Library
Edition of his Works.--Significance of piracy of Emerson.--
Conditions in America.--Anti-Anarchy.--J. Lee Bliss.--Finis
of the Copper Captaincy.
CLXXXVIII. Emerson. Concord, 30 June, 1871. Return from
California.--California.--The plains.--Brigham Young.--Lucy
Garbett.--Carlyle's ill-health.
CLXXXIX. Emerson. Concord, 4 September, 1871. Introduction of
his son Edward.
CXC. Emerson. Baltimore, 5 January, 1872. Last instalment of
Library Edition of Carlyle's Works received.--Felicitations on
this completion.--Happiness in having been Carlyle's contemporary
and friend.--Carlyle's perversities.--Proposes to "retire and
read the authors."--Carlyle's talk.
CXCI. Carlyle. Chelsea, 2 April, 1872. Excuses for silence.--
Ill-health.--Emerson's letter about the West.--Aspect and meaning
of that Western World.--Ruskin.--Froude.--Write.
-----------
CORRESPONDENCE OF CARLYLE AND EMERSON
LXXVI. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 1 July, 1842
My Dear Carlyle,--I have lately received from our slow friends,
James Munroe & Co., $246 on account of their sales of the
_Miscellanies,_--and I enclose a bill of Exchange for L51, which
cost $246.50. It is a long time since I sent you any sketch of
the account itself, and indeed a long time since it was posted,
as the booksellers say; but I will find a time and a clerk also
for this.
I have had no word from you for a long space. You wrote me a
letter from Scotland after the death of your wife's mother, and
full of pity for me also; and since, I have heard nothing. I
confide that all has gone well and prosperously with you; that
the iron Puritan is emerging from the Past, in shape and stature
as he lived; and you are recruited by sympathy and content with
your picture; and that the sure repairs of time and love and
active duty have brought peace to the orphan daughter's heart.
My friend Alcott must also have visited you before this, and you
have seen whether any relation could subsist betwixt men so
differently excellent. His wife here has heard of his arrival on
your coast,--no more.
I submitted to what seemed a necessity of petty literary
patriotism,--I know not what else to call it,--and took charge of
our thankless little _Dial,_ here, without subscribers enough to
pay even a publisher, much less any laborer; it has no penny for
editor or contributor, nothing but abuse in the newspapers, or,
at best, silence; but it serves as a sort of portfolio, to carry
about a few poems or sentences which would otherwise be
transcribed and circulated; and always we are waiting when
somebody shall come and make it good. But I took it, as I said,
and it took me, and a great deal of good time, to a small
purpose. I am ashamed to compute how many hours and days these
chores consume for me. I had it fully in my heart to write at
large leisure in noble mornings opened by prayer or by readings
of Plato or whomsoever else is dearest to the Morning Muse, a
chapter on Poetry, for which all readings, all studies, are but
preparation; but now it is July, and my chapter is rudest
beginnings. Yet when I go out of doors in the summer night, and
see how high the stars are, I am persuaded that there is time
enough, here or somewhere, for all that I must do; and the good
world manifests very little impatience.
Stearns Wheeler, the Cambridge tutor, a good Grecian, and the
editor, you will remember, of your American Editions, is going to
London in August probably, and on to Heidelberg, &c. He means, I
believe, to spend two years in Germany, and will come to see you
on his way; a man whose too facile and good-natured manners do
some injustice to his virtues, to his great industry and real
knowledge. He has been corresponding with your Tennyson, and
editing his Poems here. My mother, my wife, my two little girls,
are well; the youngest, Edith, is the comfort of my days. Peace
and love be with you, with you both, and all that is yours.
--R. W. Emerson
In our present ignorance of Mr. Alcott's address I advised his
wife to write to your care, as he was also charged to keep you
informed of his place. You may therefore receive letters for him
with this.
LXXVII. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, London, 19 July, 1842
My Dear Emerson,--Lest Opportunity again escape me, I will take
her, this time, by the forelock, and write while the matter is
still hot. You have been too long without hearing of me; far
longer, at least, than I meant. Here is a second Letter from
you, besides various intermediate Notes by the hands of Friends,
since that Templand Letter of mine: the Letter arrived
yesterday; my answer shall get under way today.
First under the head of business let it be authenticated that the
Letter enclosed a Draft for L51; a new, unexpected munificence
out of America; which is ever and anon dropping gifts upon me,--
to be received, as indeed they partly are, like Manna dropped out
of the sky; the gift of unseen Divinities! The last money I got
from you changed itself in the usual soft manner from dollars
into sovereigns, and was what they call "all right,"--all except
the little Bill (of Eight Pounds and odds, I think) drawn on
Fraser's Executors by Brown (Little and Brown?); which Bill the
said Executors having refused for I know not what reason, I
returned it to Brown with note of the dishonor done it, and so
the sum still stands on his Books in our favor. Fraser's people
are not now my Booksellers, except in the matter of your _Essays_
and a second edition of _Sartor;_ the other Books I got
transferred to a certain pair of people named "Chapman and Hall,
186 Strand"; which operation, though (I understand) it was
transacted with great and vehement reluctance on the part of the
Fraser people, yet produced no _quarrel_ between them and me, and
they still forward parcels, &c., and are full of civility when I
see them:--so that whether this had any effect or none in their
treatment of Brown and his Bill I never knew; nor indeed, having
as you explained it no concern with Brown's and their affairs,
did I ever happen to inquire. I avoid all Booksellers; see them
rarely, the blockheads; study never to think of them at all.
Book-sales, reputation, profit, &c., &c.; all this at present is
really of the nature of an encumbrance to me; which I study, not
without success, to sweep almost altogether out of my head. One
good is still possible to me in Life, one only: To screw a
little more work out of myself, my miserable, despicable, yet
living, acting, and so far imperial and celestial _self;_ and
this, God knows, is difficulty enough without any foreign one!
You ask after _Cromwell:_ ask not of him; he is like to drive
me mad. There he lies, shining clear enough to me, nay glowing,
or painfully burning; but far down; sunk under two hundred
years of Cant, Oblivion, Unbelief, and Triviality of every kind:
through all which, and to the top of all which, what mortal
industry or energy will avail to raise him! A thousand times I
have rued that my poor activity ever took that direction. The
likelihood still is that I may abandon the task undone. I have
bored through the dreariest mountains of rubbish; I have visited
Naseby Field, and how many other unintelligible fields and
places; I have &c., &c.:--alas, what a talent have I for getting
into the Impossible! Meanwhile my studies still proceed; I even
take a ghoulish kind of pleasure in raking through these old
bone-houses and burial-aisles now; I have the strangest
fellowship with that huge Genius of DEATH (universal president
there), and catch sometimes, through some chink or other,
glimpses into blessed _ulterior_ regions,--blessed, but as yet
altogether _silent._ There is no use of writing of things past,
unless they can be made in fact things present: not yesterday at
all, but simply today and what it holds of fulfilment and of
promises is _ours:_ the dead ought to bury their dead, ought
they not? In short, I am very unfortunate, and deserve your
prayers,--in a quiet kind of way! If you lose tidings of me
altogether, and never hear of me more,--consider simply that I
have gone to my natal element, that the Mud Nymphs have sucked me
in; as they have done several in their time!
Sterling was here about the time your Letters to him came: your
American reprint of his pieces was naturally gratifying him
much.* He seems getting yearly more restless; necessitated to
find an outlet for himself, unable as yet to do it well. I think
he will now write Review articles for a while; which craft is
really, perhaps, the one he is fittest for hitherto. I love
Sterling: a radiant creature; but very restless;--incapable
either of rest or of effectual motion: aurora borealis and sheet
lightning; which if it could but _concentrate_ itself, as I
[say] always--!--We had much talk; but, on the whole, even
his talk is not much better for me than silence at present.
_Me miserum!_
--------
* "The Poetical Works of John Sterling," Philadelphia, 1842.
--------
Directly about the time of Sterling's departure came Alcott, some
two weeks after I had heard of his arrival on these shores. He
has been twice here, at considerable length; the second time,
all night. He is a genial, innocent, simple-hearted man, of much
natural intelligence and goodness, with an air of rusticity,
veracity, and dignity withal, which in many ways appeals to one.
The good Alcott: with his long, lean face and figure, with his
gray worn temples and mild radiant eyes; all bent on saving the
world by a return to acorns and the golden age; he comes before
one like a kind of venerable Don Quixote, whom nobody can even
laugh at without loving!....
My poor Wife is still weak, overshadowed with sorrow: her loss
is great, the loss almost as of the widow's mite; for except her
good Mother she had almost no kindred left; and as for friends--
they are not rife in this world.--God be thanked withal they are
not entirely non-extant! Have I not a Friend, and Friends,
though they too are in sorrow? Good be with you all.
--T. Carlyle.
By far the valuablest thing that Alcott brought me was the
Newspaper report of Emerson's last Lectures in New York. Really
a right wholesome thing; radiant, fresh as the _morning;_ a
thing _worth_ reading; which accordingly I clipped from the
Newspaper, and have in a state of assiduous circulation to the
comfort of many.--I cannot bid you quit the _Dial,_ though it,
too, alas, is Antinomian somewhat! _Perge, perge,_ nevertheless.
--And so now an end.
--T. C.
LXXVIII. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, London, 29 August, 1842
My Dear. Emerson,--This, morning your new Letter, of the 15th
August, has arrived;* exactly one fortnight old: thanks to the
gods and steam-demons! I already, perhaps six weeks ago,
answered your former Letter,--acknowledging the manna-gift of the
L51, and other things; nor do I think the Letter can have been
lost, for I remember putting it into the Post-Office myself.
Today I am on the eve of an expedition into Suffolk, and full of
petty business: however, I will throw you one word, were it only
to lighten my own heart a little. You are a kind friend to me,
and a precious;--and when I mourn over the impotence of Human
Speech, and how each of us, speak or write as he will, has to
stand _dumb,_ cased up in his own unutterabilities, before his
unutterable Brother, I feel always as if Emerson were the man I
could soonest _try_ to speak with,--were I within reach of him!
Well; we must be content. A pen is a pen, and worth something;
though it expresses about as much of a _man's_ meaning perhaps as
the stamping of a hoof will express of a horse's meaning; a very
poor expression indeed!
---------
* This letter of 15th August is missing.
---------
Your bibliopolic advice about Cromwell or my next Book shall be
carefully attended, if I live ever to write another Book! But I
have again got down into primeval Night; and live alone and mute
with the _Manes,_ as you say; uncertain whether I shall ever
more see day. I am partly ashamed of myself; but cannot help
it. One of my grand difficulties I suspect to be that I cannot
write _two Books at once;_ cannot be in the seventeenth century
and in the nineteenth at one and the same moment; a feat which
excels even that of the Irishman's bird: "Nobody but a bird can
be in two places at once!" For my heart is sick and sore in
behalf of my own poor generation; nay, I feel withal as if the
one hope of help for it consisted in the possibility of new
Cromwells and new Puritans: thus do the two centuries stand
related to me, the seventeenth _worthless_ except precisely in so
far as it can be made the nineteenth; and yet let anybody try
that enterprise! Heaven help me.--I believe at least that I
ought _to hold my tongue;_ more especially at present.
Thanks for asking me to write you a word in the _Dial._ Had such
a purpose struck me long ago, there have been many things passing
through my head,--march-marching as they ever do, in long drawn,
scandalous Falstaff-regiments (a man ashamed to be seen passing
through Coventry with such a set!)--some one of which, snatched
out of the ragged rank, and dressed and drilled a little, might
perhaps fitly have been saved from Chaos, and sent to the _Dial._
In future we shall be on the outlook. I love your _Dial,_ and
yet it is with a kind of shudder. You seem to me in danger of
dividing yourselves from the Fact of this present Universe, in
which alone, ugly as it is, can I find any anchorage, and soaring
away after Ideas, Beliefs, Revelations, and such like,--into
perilous altitudes, as I think; beyond the curve of perpetual
frost, for one thing! I know not how to utter what impression
you give me; take the above as some stamping of the fore-hoof.
Surely I could wish you _returned_ into your own poor nineteenth
century, its follies and maladies, its blind or half-blind, but
gigantic toilings, its laughter and its tears, and trying to
evolve in some measure the hidden Godlike that lies in it;--that
seems to me the kind of feat for literary men. Alas, it is so
easy to screw one's self up into high and ever higher altitudes
of Transcendentalism, and see nothing under one but the
everlasting snows of Himmalayah, the Earth shrinking to a Planet,
and the indigo firmament sowing itself with daylight stars; easy
for _you,_ for me: but whither does it lead? I dread always, To
inanity and mere injuring of the lungs!--"Stamp, Stamp, Stamp!"--
Well, I do believe, for one thing, a man has no right to say to
his own generation, turning quite away from it, "Be damned!" It
is the whole Past and the whole Future, this same cotton-spinning,
dollar-hunting, canting and shrieking, very wretched generation
of ours. Come back into it, I tell you;--and so for the present
will "stamp" no more....
Adieu, my friend; I must not add a word more. My Wife is out on
a visit; it is to bring her back that I am now setting forth for
Suffolk. I hope to see Ely too, and St. Ives, and Huntingdon,
and various _Cromwelliana._ My blessings on the Concord
Household now and always. Commend me expressly to your Wife and
your Mother. Farewell, dear friend.
--T. Carlyle
LXXIX. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 15 October, 1842
My Dear Carlyle,--I am in your debt for at least two letters
since I sent you any word. I should be well content to receive
one of these stringent epistles of bark and steel and mellow wine
with every day's post, but as there is no hope that more will be
sent without my writing to signify that these have come, I hereby
certify that I love you well and prize all your messages. I read
with special interest what you say of these English studies, and
I doubt not the Book is in steady progress again. We shall see
what change the changed position of the author will make in the
book. The first _History_ expected its public; the second is
written to an expecting people. The tone of the first was
proud,--to defiance; we will see if applauses have mitigated the
master's temper. This time he has a hero, and we shall have a
sort of standard to try, by the hero who fights, the hero who
writes. Well; may grand and friendly spirits assist the work in
all hours; may impulses and presences from that profound world
which makes and embraces the whole of humanity, keep your feet on
the Mount of Vision which commands the Centuries, and the book
shall be an indispensable Benefit to men, which is the surest
fame. Let me know all that can be told of your progress in it.
You shall see in the last _Dial_ a certain shadow or mask of
yours, "another Richmond," who has read your lectures and
profited thereby.* Alcott sent me the paper from London, but I
do not know the name of the writer.
As for Alcott, you have discharged your conscience of him
manfully and knightly; I absolve you well... He is a great man
and was made for what is greatest, but I now fear that he has
already touched what best he can, and through his more than a
prophet's egotism, and the absence of all useful reconciling
talents, will bring nothing to pass, and be but a voice in the
wilderness. As you do not seem to have seen in him his pure and
noble intellect, I fear that it lies under some new and denser
clouds.
--------
* An article on Cromwell, in the _Dial_ for October, 1842.
--------
For the _Dial_ and its sins, I have no defence to set up. We
write as we can, and we know very little about it. If the
direction of these speculations is to be deplored, it is yet a
fact for literary history, that all the bright boys and girls in
New England, quite ignorant of each other, take the world so, and
come and make confession to fathers and mothers,--the boys that
they do not wish to go into trade, the girls that they do not
like morning calls and evening parties. They are all religious,
but hate the churches; they reject all the ways of living of
other men, but have none to offer in their stead. Perhaps, one
of these days, a great Yankee shall come, who will easily do the
unknown deed.
The booksellers have sent me accounts lately, but--I know not
why--no money. Little and Brown from January to July had sold
very few books. I inquired of them concerning the bill of
exchange on Fraser's Estate, which you mention, and they said it
had not been returned to them, but only some information, as I
think, demanded by Fraser's administrator, which they had sent,
and, as they heard nothing again, they suppose that it is allowed
and paid to you. Inform me on this matter.
Munroe & Co. allow some credits, but charge more debits for
binding, &c., and also allege few sales in the hard times. I
have got a good friend of yours, a banking man, to promise that
he will sift all the account and see if the booksellers have kept
their promises. But I have never yet got all the papers in
readiness for him. I am looking to see if I have matter for new
lectures, having left behind me last spring some half-promises in
New York. If you can remember it, tell me who writes about
Loyola and Xavier in the _Edinburgh._ Sterling's papers--if he
is near you--are all in Mr. Russell's hands.* I played my part
of Fadladeen with great rigor, and sent my results to Russell,
but have not now written to J. S.
Yours,
R.W.E.
----------
* Mr. A.L. Russell, who had been instrumental in procuring the
American edition of Sterling's _Poetical Works._
---------
LXXX. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, London, 19 November, 1842
My Dear Emerson,--Your Letter finds me here today; busied with
many things, but not likely to be soon more at leisure;
wherefore I may as well give myself the pleasure of answering it
on the spot. The Fraser Bill by Brown and Little has come all
right; the Dumfries Banker apprises me lately that he has got
the cash into his hands. Pray do not pester yourself with these
Bookseller unintelligibilities: I suppose their accounts are all
reasonably correct, the cheating, such as it is, done according
to rule: what signifies it at any rate? I am no longer in any
vital want of money; alas, the want that presses far heavier on
me is a want of faculty, a want of _sense;_ and the feeling of
that renders one comparatively very indifferent to money! I
reflect many times that the wealth of the Indies, the fame of ten
Shakespeares or ten Mahomets, would at bottom do me no good at
all. Let us leave these poor slaves of the Ingot and slaves
of the Lamp to their own courses,--within a _certain_ extent
of halter!
What you say of Alcott seems to me altogether just. He is a man
who has got into the Highest intellectual region,--if that be the
Highest (though in that too there are many stages) wherein a man
can believe and discern for himself, without need of help from
any other, and even in opposition to all others: but I consider
him entirely unlikely to accomplish anything considerable, except
some kind of crabbed, semi-perverse, though still manful
existence of his own; which indeed is no despicable thing.
His "more than prophetic egoism,"--alas, yes! It is of such
material that Thebaid Eremites, Sect-founders, and all manner of
cross-grained fanatical monstrosities have fashioned themselves,
--in very _high,_ and in the highest regions, for that matter.
Sect-founders withal are a class I do not like. No truly great
man, from Jesus Christ downwards, as I often say, ever founded a
Sect,--I mean wilfully intended founding one. What a view must a
man have of this Universe, who thinks "_he_ can swallow it all,"
who is not doubly and trebly happy that he can keep it from
swallowing him! On the whole, I sometimes hope we have now done
with Fanatics and Agonistic Posture-makers in this poor world:
it will be an immense improvement on the Past; and the "New
Ideas," as Alcott calls them, will prosper greatly the better on
that account! The old gloomy Gothic Cathedrals were good; but
the great blue Dome that hangs over all is better than any
Cologne one.--On the whole, do not tell the good Alcott a word of
all this; but let him love me as he can, and live on vegetables
in peace; as I, living _partly_ on vegetables, will continue to
love him!
The best thing Alcott did while he staid among us was to
circulate some copies of your _Man the Reformer._* I did not get
a copy; I applied for one, so soon as I knew the right fountain;
but Alcott, I think, was already gone. And now mark,--for this I
think is a novelty, if you do not already know it: Certain
Radicals have reprinted your Essay in Lancashire, and it is
freely circulating there, and here, as a cheap pamphlet, with
excellent acceptance so far as I discern. Various Newspaper
reviews of it have come athwart me: all favorable, but all too
shallow for sending to you. I myself consider it a _truly
excellent_ utterance; one of the best words you have ever
spoken. Speak many more such. And whosoever will distort them
into any "vegetable" or other crotchet,--let it be at his own
peril; for the word itself is _true;_ and will have to make
itself a _fact_ therefore; though not a distracted _abortive_
fact, I hope! _Words_ of that kind are not born into Facts in
the _seventh month;_ well if they see the light full-grown (they
and their adjuncts) in the _second century;_ for old Time is a
most deliberate breeder!--But to speak without figure, I have
been very much delighted with the clearness, simplicity, quiet
energy and veracity of this discourse; and also with the fact of
its spontaneous appearance here among us. The prime mover of the
Printing, I find, is one Thomas Ballantyne, editor of a
Manchester Newspaper, a very good, cheery little fellow, once
a Paisley weaver as he informs me,--a great admirer of all
worthy things.
----------
* "A Lecture read before the Mechanics' Apprentices' Library
Association, Boston, January 25, 1841."
----------
My paper is so fast failing, let me tell you of the writer on
Loyola. He is a James Stephen, Head Under-Secretary of the
Colonial Office,--that is to say, I believe, real governor of the
British Colonies, so far as they have any governing. He is of
Wilberforce's creed, of Wilberforce's kin; a man past middle
age, yet still in full vigor; reckoned an enormous fellow for
"despatch of business," &c., especially by Taylor (_van
Artevelde_) and others who are with him or under him in Downing
Street.... I regard the man as standing on the confines of Genius
and Dilettantism,--a man of many really good qualities, and
excellent at the despatch of business. There we will leave
him. --A Mrs. Lee of Brookline near you has made a pleasant
Book about Jean Paul, chiefly by excerpting.* I am sorry to
find Gunderode & Co. a decided weariness!** Cromwell--Cromwell?
Do not mention such a word, if you love me! And yet--Farewell,
my Friend, tonight!
Yours ever,
T. Carlyle
I will apprise Sterling before long: he is at Falmouth, and
well; urging me much to start a Periodical here!
Gambardella promises to become a real Painter; there is a glow
of real fire in the wild southern man: next to no _articulate_
intellect or the like, but of inarticulate much, or I mistake.
He has tried to paint _me_ for you; but cannot, he says!
---------
* "Life of Jean Paul Frederic Richter. Compiled from various
Sources. Together with his Autobiography. Translated from the
German." In Two Volumes. Boston, 1842. This book, which is one
of the best in English concerning Jean Paul, was the work of the
late Mrs. Thomas (Eliza Buckminster) Lee.
** In the _Dial,_ for January, 1842, is an article by Miss Fuller
on "Bettine Brentano and Gunderode,"--a decided weariness. The
Canoness Gunderode was a friend of Bettine's, older and not much
wiser than herself.
---------
LXXXI. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, London, 11 March, 1848
Dear Emerson,--I know not whose turn it is to write; though a
suspicion has long attended me that it was yours, and above all
an indisputable wish that you would do it: but this present is a
cursory line, all on business,--and as usual all on business of
my own.
I have finished a Book, and just set the Printer to it; one
solid volume (rather bigger than one of the _French Revolution_
Volumes, as I compute); it is a somewhat fiery and questionable
"Tract for the Times," _not_ by a Puseyite, which the terrible
aspect of things here has forced from me,--I know not whether as
preliminary to _Oliver_ or not; but it had gradually grown to be
the preliminary of anything possible for me: so there it is
written; and I am a very sick, but withal a comparatively very
free man. The Title of the thing is to be _Past and Present:_
it is divided into Four Books, "Book I. Proem," "Book II. The
Ancient Monk," "Book III. The Modern Worker," and "Book IV.
Horoscope" (or some such thing):--the size of it I guessed
at above.
The practical business, accordingly, is: How to cut out that New
York scoundrel, who fancies that because there is no gallows it
is permitted to steal? I have a distinct desire to do that;--
altogether apart from the money to be gained thereby. A friend's
goodness ought not to be frustrated by a scoundrel destitute of
gallows.--You told me long since how to do the operation; and
here, according to the best way I had of fitting your scheme into
my materials, is my way of attempting it.
The Book will not be out here for six good weeks from this date;
it could be kept back for a week or two longer, if that were
indispensable: but I hope it may not. In three weeks, half of
it will be printed; I, in the meanwhile, get a correct
manuscript Copy of the latter half made ready: joining the
printed sheets and this manuscript, your Bookseller will have a
three weeks' start of any rival, if I instantly despatch the
Parcel to him. Will this do? this with the announcement of the
Title as given above? Pray write to me straightway, and say.
Your answer will be here before we can publish; and the Packet
of Proof-sheets and Manuscript may go off whether there be word
from you or none.--And so enough of _Past and Present._ And
indeed enough of all things, for my haste is excessive in
these hours.
The last _Dial_ came to me about three weeks ago _as a
Post-Letter,_ charged something like a guinea of postage, if
I remember; so it had to be rejected, and I have not yet seen
that Number; but will when my leeway is once brought up a little
again. The two preceding Numbers were, to a marked extent, more
like life than anything I had seen before of the _Dial._ There
was not indeed anything, except the Emersonian Papers alone,
which I know by the first ring of them on the tympanum of the
mind, that I properly speaking _liked;_ but there was much that
I did not dislike, and did half like; and I say, "_I fausto
pede;_ that will decidedly do better!" By the bye, it were as
well if you kept rather a strict outlook on Alcott and his
English _Tail,_--I mean so far as we here have any business with
it. Bottomless imbeciles ought not to be seen in company with
Ralph Waldo Emerson, who has already men listening to him on this
side of the water. The "Tail" has an individual or two of that
genus,--and the rest is mainly yet undecided. For example, I
knew old --- myself; and can testify, if you will believe me,
that few greater blockheads (if "blockhead" may mean "exasperated
imbecile" and the ninth part of a thinker) broke the world's
bread in his day. Have a care of such! I say always to myself,
--and to you, which you forgive me.
Adieu, my dear Emerson. May a good Genius guide you; for you
are _alone, alone;_ and have a steep pilgrimage to make,--
leading _high,_ if you do not slip or stumble!
Ever your affectionate,
T. Carlyle
LXXXII. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, 1 April, 1843
My Dear Carlyle,--Along with this Letter there will go from
Liverpool, on the 4th instant, the promised Parcel, complete Copy
of the Book called _Past and Present,_ of which you already had
two simultaneous announcements.* The name of the Steam Packet, I
understand, is the "Britannia." I have addressed the Parcel to
the care of "Messrs. Little and Brown, Booksellers, Boston," with
your name atop: I calculate it will arrive safe enough.
---------
* The letter making the second announcement, being very similar
to the preceding, is omitted.
---------
About one hundred pages of the Manuscript Copy have proved
superfluous, the text being there also in a printed shape; I had
misestimated the Printer's velocity; I was anxious too that
there should be no failure as to time. The Manuscript is very
indifferent in that section of it; the damage therefore is
smaller: your press-corrector can acquaint himself with the
_hand,_ &c. by means of it. A poor young governess, confined to
a horizontal posture, and many sad thoughts, by a disease of the
spine, was our artist in that part of the business: her writing
is none of the distinctest; but it was a work of Charity to give
it her. I hope the thing is all as correct as I could make it.
I do not bethink me of anything farther I have to add in the way
of explanation.
In fact, my prophecy rather is at present that the gibbetless
thief at New York, will beat us after all! Never mind if be do.
To say truth, I myself shall almost be glad: there has been a
botheration in this anxious arrangement of parts correcting of
scrawly manuscript copies of what you never wished to read more,
and insane terror withal of having your own Manuscript burnt or
lost,--that has exceeded my computation. Not to speak of this
trouble in which I involve you, my Friend; which, I truly
declare, makes me ashamed! True one _is_ bound to resist the
Devil in all shapes; if a man come to steal from you, you will
put on what locks and padlocks are at hand, and not on the whole
say, "Steal, then!" But if the locks prove insufficient, and the
thief do break through,--that side of the alternative also will
suit you very well; and, with perhaps a faint prayer for gibbets
when they are necessary, you will say to him, next time, "_Macte
virtute,_ my man."
All is in a whirl with me here today; no other topic but this
very poor one can be entered upon. I hope for a letter from your
own hand soon, and some news about still more interesting matters.
Adieu, my Friend; I feel still as if, in several senses, you
stood alone with me under the sky at present!*
-----------
* The signature to this letter has been cut off.
-----------
LXXXIII. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 29 April, 1843
My Dear Carlyle,--It is a pleasure to set your name once more at
the head of a sheet. It signifies how much gladness, how much
wealth of being, that the good, wise, man-cheering, man-helping
friend, though unseen, lives there yonder, just out of sight.
Your star burns there just below our eastern horizon, and fills
the lower and upper air with splendid and splendescent auroras.
By some refraction which new lenses or else steamships shall
operate, shall I not yet one day see again the disk of benign
Phosphorus? It is a solid joy to me, that whilst you work for
all, you work for me and with me, even if I have little to write,
and seldom write your name.
Since I last wrote to you, I found it needful, if only for the
household's sake, to set some new lectures in order, and go to
new congregations of men. I live so much alone, shrinking almost
cowardly from the contact of worldly and public men, that I need
more than others to quit home sometimes, and roll with the river
of travelers, and live in hotels. I went to Baltimore, where I
had an invitation, and read two lectures on New England. On my
return, I stopped at Philadelphia, and, my Course being now grown
to four lectures, read them there. At New York, my snowball was
larger, and I read five lectures on New England. 1. Religion;
2. Trade; 3. Genius, Manners and Customs; 4. Recent literary
and spiritual influences from abroad; 5. Domestic spiritual
history.--Perhaps I have not quite done with them yet, but may
make them the block of a new and somewhat larger structure for
Boston, next winter. The newspaper reports of them in New York
were such offensive misstatements, that I could not send you, as
I wished, a sketch. Between my two speeches at Baltimore, I went
to Washington, thirty-seven miles, and spent four days. The two
poles of an enormous political battery, galvanic coil on coil,
self-increased by series on series of plates from Mexico to
Canada, and from the sea westward to the Rocky Mountains, here
meet and play, and make the air electric and violent. Yet one
feels how little, more than how much, man is represented there.
I think, in the higher societies of the Universe, it will turn
out that the angels are molecules, as the devils were always
Titans, since the dulness of the world needs such mountainous
demonstration, and the virtue is so modest and concentrating.
But I must not delay to acknowledge the arrival of your Book. It
came ten or eleven days ago, in the "Britannia," with the three
letters of different dates announcing it.--I have read the
superfluous hundred pages of manuscript, and find it only too
popular. Beside its abundance of brilliant points and proverbs,
there is a deep, steady tide taking in, either by hope or by
fear, all the great classes of society,--and the philosophic
minority also, by the powerful lights which are shed on the
phenomenon. It is true contemporary history, which other books
are not, and you have fairly set solid London city aloft, afloat
in bright mirage in the air. I quarrel only with the popular
assumption, which is perhaps a condition of the Humor itself,
that the state of society is a new state, and was not the same
thing in the days of Rabelais and of Aristophanes, as of Carlyle.
Orators always allow something to masses, out of love to their
own art, whilst austere philosophy will only know the particles.
This were of no importance, if the historian did not so come to
mix himself in some manner with his erring and grieving nations,
and so saddens the picture; for health is always private and
original, and its essence is in its unmixableness.--But this
Book, with all its affluence of wit, of insight, and of daring
hints, is born for a longevity which I will not now compute.--In
one respect, as I hinted above, it is only too good, so sure of
success, I mean, that you are no longer secure of any respect to
your property in our freebooting America.
You must know that the cheap press has, within a few months, made
a total change in our book markets. Every English book of any
name or credit is instantly converted into a newspaper or coarse
pamphlet, and hawked by a hundred boys in the streets of all of
our cities for 25, 18, or 12 cents; Dickens's Notes for 12
cents, _Blackwood's Magazine_ for 18 cents, and so on. Three or
four great New York and Philadelphia printing-houses do this
work, with hot competition. One prints Bulwer's novel yesterday,
for 35 cents; and already, in twenty-four hours, another has a
coarser edition of it for 18 cents, in all thoroughfares.--What
to do with my sealed parcel of manuscripts and proofs? No
bookseller would in these perilous circumstances offer a dollar
for my precious parcel. I inquired of the lawyers whether I
could not by a copyright protect my edition from piracy until an
English copy arrived, and so secure a sale of a few weeks. They
said, no; yet advised the taking a certificate of copyright,
that we might try the case if we wished. After much consulting
and balancing for a few hours, I decided to print, as heretofore,
on our own account, an edition, but cheap, to make the temptation
less, to retail at seventy-five cents. I print fifteen hundred
copies, and announce to the public that it is your edition, and
all good men must buy this. I have written to the great
Reprinters, namely to Park Benjamin, and to the Harpers, of New
York, to request their forbearance; and have engaged Little and
Brown to publish, because, I think, they have something more of
weight with Booksellers, and are a little less likely to be
invaded than Munroe. If we sell a thousand copies at seventy-five
cents, it will only yield you about two hundred dollars; if we
should be invaded, we can then afford to sell the other five
hundred copies at twenty-five cents, without loss. In thus
doing, I involve you in some risk; but it was the best course
that occurred.--Hitherto, the _Miscellanies_ have not been
reprinted in the cheap forms; and in the last year, James Munroe
& Co. have sold few copies; all books but the cheapest being
unsold in the hard times; something has however accrued to your
credit there. J.M. & Co. fear that, if the new book is pirated
at New York and the pirate prospers, instantly the _Miscellanies_
will be plundered. We will hope better, or at least exult
in that which remains, to wit, a Worth unplunderable, yet
infinitely communicable.
I have hardly space left to say what I would concerning the
_Dial._ I heartily hoped I had done with it, when lately our
poor, good, publishing Miss Peabody,... wrote me that its
subscription would not pay its expenses (we all writing for
love). But certain friends are very unwilling it should die, and
I a little unwilling, though very unwilling to be the life of it,
as editor. And now that you are safely through your book, and
before the greater Sequel rushes to its conclusion, send me, I
pray you, that short chapter which hovers yet in the limbo of
contingency, in solid letters and points. Let it be, if that is
readiest, a criticism on the _Dial,_ and this too Elysian race,
not blood, and yet not ichor.--Let Jane Carlyle be on my part,
and, watchful of his hours, urge the poet in the golden one. I
think to send you a duplicate of the last number of the _Dial_ by
Mr. Mann,* who with his bride (sister of the above-mentioned Miss
Peabody) is going to London and so to Prussia. He is little
known to me, but greatly valued as a philanthropist in this
State. I must go to work a little more methodically this summer,
and let something grow to a tree in my wide straggling shrubbery.
With your letters came a letter from Sterling, who was too noble
to allude to his books and manuscript sent hither, and which
Russell all this time has delayed to print; I know not why, but
discouraged, I suppose, in these times by booksellers. I must
know precisely, and write presently to J.S.
Farewell.
R.W. Emerson**
-----------
* The late Horace Mann.
** The following passages from Emerson's Diary relating to _Past
and Present_ seem to have been written a few days after the
preceding letter:--"How many things this book of Carlyle gives us
to think! It is a brave grappling with the problem of the times,
no luxurious holding aloof, as is the custom of men of letters,
who are usually bachelors and not husbands in the state, but
Literature here has thrown off his gown and descended into the
open lists. The gods are come among us in the likeness of men.
An honest Iliad of English woes. Who is he that can trust
himself in the fray? Only such as cannot be familiarized, but
nearest seen and touched is not seen and touched, but remains
inviolate, inaccessible, because a higher interest, the politics
of a higher sphere, bring him here and environ him, as the
Ambassador carries his country with him. Love protects him from
profanation. What a book this in its relation to English
privileged estates! How shall Queen Victoria read this? how the
Primate and Bishops of England? how the Lords? how the Colleges?
how the rich? and how the poor? Here is a book as full of
treason as an egg is full of meat, and every lord and lordship
and high form and ceremony of English conservatism tossed like a
football into the air, and kept in the air with merciless
rebounds and kicks, and yet not a word in the book is punishable
by statute. The wit has eluded all official zeal, and yet these
dire jokes, these cunning thrusts,--this flaming sword of
cherubim waved high in air illuminates the whole horizon and
shows to the eyes of the Universe every wound it inflicts. Worst
of all for the party attacked, it bereaves them beforehand of
all sympathy by anticipating the plea of poetic and humane
conservation and impressing the reader with the conviction that
Carlyle himself has the truest love for everything old and
excellent, and a genuine respect for the basis of truth in those
whom he exposes. Gulliver among the Lilliputians...
"Carlyle must write thus or nohow, like a drunken man who can
run, but cannot walk. What a man's book is that! no prudences,
no compromises, but a thorough independence. A masterly
criticism on the times. Fault perhaps the excess of importance
given to the circumstance of today. The poet is here for this,
to dwarf and destroy all merely temporary circumstance, and to
glorify the perpetual circumstance of men, e.g. dwarf British
Debt and raise Nature and social life.
"But everything must be done well once; even bulletins and
almanacs must have one excellent and immortal bulletin and
almanac. So let Carlyle's be the immortal newspaper."
----------
LXXXIV. Carlyle to Emerson
27 August, 1843
Dear Emerson,--The bearer of this is Mr. Macready, our celebrated
Actor, now on a journey to America, who wishes to know you. In
the pauses of a feverish occupation which he strives honestly to
make a noble one, this Artist, become once more a man, would like
well to meet here and there a true American man. He loves Heroes
as few do; and can recognize them, you will find, whether they
have on the _Cothurnus_ or not. I recommend him to you; bid
you forward him as you have opportunity, in this department of
his pilgrimage.
Mr. Macready's deserts to the English Drama are notable here to
all the world; but his dignified, generous, and every-way
honorable deportment in private life is known fully, I believe,
only to a few friends. I have often said, looking at him as a
manager of great London theatres, "This Man, presiding over the
unstablest, most chaotic province of English things, is the one
public man among us who has dared to take his stand on what he
understood to be _the truth,_ and expect victory from that: he
puts to shame our Bishops and Archbishops." It is literally so.
With continued kind wishes, yours as of old.
T. Carlyle
LXXXV. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 30 October, 1843
My Dear Friend,--I seize the occasion of having this morsel of
paper for twenty-five pounds sterling from the booksellers to
send you, (and which fail not to find enclosed, as clerks say,)
to inquire whether you still exist in Chelsea, London, and what
is the reason that my generous correspondent has become dumb for
weary months. I must go far back to resume my thread. I think
in April last I received your Manuscript, &c. of the Book, which
I forthwith proceeded to print, after some perplexing debate with
the booksellers, as I fully informed you in my letter of April or
beginning of May. Since that time I have had no line or word
from you. I must think that my letter did not reach you, or that
you have written what has never come to me. I assure myself that
no harm has befallen you, not only because you do not live in a
corner, and what chances in your dwelling will come at least
to my ears, but because I have read with great pleasure the
story of Dr. Francia,* which gave the best report of your health
and vivacity.
----------
* Carlyle's article on Dr. Francia in the _Foreign Quarterly
Review,_ No. 62. Reprinted in his _Miscellanies._
----------
I wrote you in April or May an account of the new state of things
which the cheap press has wrought in our book market, and
specially what difficulties it put in the way of our edition of
_Past and Present._ For a few weeks I believed that the letters
I had written to the principal New York and Philadelphia
booksellers, and the Preface, had succeeded in repelling the
pirates. But in the fourth or fifth week appeared a mean edition
in New York, published by one Collyer (an unknown person and
supposed to be a mask of some other bookseller), sold for twelve
and one half cents, and of this wretched copy several thousands
were sold, whilst our seventy-five cents edition went off slower.
There was no remedy, and we must be content that there was no
expense from our edition, which before September had paid all its
cost, and since that time has been earning a little, I believe.
I am not fairly entitled to an account of the book from the
publishers until the 1st of January.... I have never yet done
what I have thought this other last week seriously to do, namely,
to charge the good and faithful E.P. Clark, a man of accounts as
he is a cashier in a bank, with the total auditing and analyzing
of these accounts of yours. My hesitation has grown from the
imperfect materials which I have to offer him to make up so long
a story. But he is a good man, and, do you know it? a Carlylese
of that intensity that I have often heard he has collected a sort
of album of several volumes, containing illustrations of every
kind, historical, critical, &c., to the _Sartor._ I must go to
Boston and challenge him. Once when I asked him, he seemed
willing to assume it. No more of accounts tonight.
I send you by this ship a volume of translations from Dante, by
Doctor Parsons of Boston, a practising dentist and the son of a
dentist. It is his gift to you. Lately went Henry James to
you with a letter from me. He is a fine companion from his
intelligence, valor, and worth, and is and has been a very
beneficent person as I learn. He carried a volume of poems from
my friend and nearest neighbor, W. Ellery Channing, whereof give
me, I pray you, the best opinion you can. I am determined he
shall be a poet, and you must find him such.* I have too many
things to tell you to begin at the end of this sheet, which after
all this waiting I have been compelled to scribble in a corner,
with company waiting for me. Send me instant word of yourself
if you love me, and of those whom you love, and so God keep you
and yours.
--R. Waldo Emerson
----------
* In the second number of the _Dial,_ in October, 1840, Emerson
had published, under the title of "New Poetry," an article warmly
commending Mr. Channing's then unpublished poems.
----------
LXXXVI. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, London, 31 October, 1843
My Dear Emerson,--It is a long weary time since I have had the
satisfaction of the smallest dialogue with you. The blame is all
my own; the reasons would be difficult to give,--alas, they are
properly no-reasons, children not of _Something,_ but of mere
Idleness, Confusion, Inaction, Inarticulation, of _Nothing_ in
short! Let us leave them there, and profit by the hour which
yet is.
I ran away from London into Bristol and, South Wales, when the
heats grew violent, at the end of June. South Wales, North
Wales, Lancashire, Scotland: I roved about everywhere seeking
some Jacob's-pillow on which to lay my head, and dream of things
heavenly;--yes, that at bottom was my modest prayer, though I
disguised it from myself and the result was, I could find no
pillow at all; but sank into ever meaner restlessness, blacker
and blacker biliary gloom, and returned in the beginning of
September thoroughly eclipsed and worn out, probably the weariest
of all men living under the sky. Sure enough I have a fatal
talent of converting all Nature into Preternaturalism for myself:
a truly horrible Phantasm-Reality it is to me; what of heavenly
radiances it has, blended in close neighborhood, in intimate
union, with the hideousness of Death and Chaos;--a very ghastly
business indeed! On the whole, it is better to hold one's peace
about it. I flung myself down on sofas here,--for my little Wife
had trimmed up our little dwelling-place into quite glorious
order in my absence, and I had only to lie down: there, in
reading books, and other make-believe employments, I could at
least keep silence, which was an infinite relief. Nay,
gradually, as indeed I anticipated, the black vortexes and
deluges have subsided; and now that it is past, I begin to feel
myself better for my travels after all. For one thing,
articulate speech having returned to me,--you see what use I make
of it.
On the table of the London Library, voted in by some unknown
benefactor whom I found afterwards to be Richard Milnes, there
lay one thing highly gratifying to me: the last two Numbers of
the _Dial._ It is to be one of our Periodicals henceforth; the
current Number lies on the Table till the next arrive; then the
former goes to the Binder; we have already, in a bound volume,
all of it that Emerson has had the editing of. This is right.
Nay, in Edinburgh, and indeed wherever ingenuous inquisitive
minds were met with, I have to report that the said Emerson could
number a select and most loving public; select, and I should say
fast growing: for good and indifferent reasons it may behove the
man to assure himself of this. Farther, to the horror of poor
Nickerson (Bookseller Fraser's Successor), a certain scoundrel
interloper here has reprinted _Emerson's Essays_ on grayish
paper, to be sold at two shillings,--distracting Nickerson with
the fear of change! I was glad at this, if also angry: it
indicates several things. Nickerson has taken his measures, will
reduce the price of his remaining copies; indeed, he informs me
the best part of his edition was already sold, and he has even
some color of money due from England to Emerson through me! With
pride enough will I transmit this mournful, noble peculium: and
after that, as I perceive, such chivalrous international doings
must cease between us. _Past and Present,_ some one told me,
was, in spite of all your precautions, straightway sent forth in
modest gray, and your benevolent speculation ruined. Here too,
you see, it is the same. Such chivalries, therefore, are now
impossible; for myself I say, "Well, let them cease; thank God
they once were, the Memory of that can never cease with us!"
In this last Number of the _Dial_ which by the bye your
Bookseller never forwarded to me, I found one little Essay, a
criticism on myself,* which, if it should do me mischief, may the
gods forgive you for! It is considerably the most dangerous
thing I have read for some years. A decided likeness of myself
recognizable in it, as in the celestial mirror of a friend's
heart; but so enlarged, exaggerated, all _transfigured,_--the
most delicious, the most dangerous thing! Well, I suppose I must
try to assimilate it also, to turn it also to good, if I be able.
Eulogies, dyslogies, in which one finds no features of one's own
natural face, are easily dealt with; easily left unread, as
stuff for lighting fires, such is the insipidity, the wearisome
_non_entity of pabulum like that: but here is another sort of
matter! "The beautifulest piece of criticism I have read for
many a day," says every one that speaks of it. May the gods
forgive you!--I have purchased a copy for three shillings, and
sent it to my Mother: one of the _indubitablest_ benefits I
could think of in regard to it.
---------
* A criticism by Emerson of _Past and Present,_ in the _Dial_
for July, 1843. It embodies a great part of the extract
from Emerson's Diary given in a preceding note, and is well
worth reading in full for its appreciation of Carlyle's powers
and defects.
---------
There have been two friends of yours here in these very days:
Dr. Russell, just returning from Paris; Mr. Parker, just bound
thither.* We have seen them rather oftener than common, Sterling
being in town withal. They are the best figures of strangers we
have had for a long time; possessions, both of them, to fall in
with in this pilgrimage of life. Russell carries friendliness in
his eyes, a most courteous, modest, intelligent man; an English
intelligence too, as I read, the best of it lying unspoken, not
as a logic but as an instinct. Parker is a most hardy, compact,
clever little fellow, full of decisive utterance, with humor and
good humor; whom I like much. They shine like suns, these two,
amid multitudes of watery comets and tenebrific constellations,
too sorrowful without such admixture on occasion!
------------
* Dr. Le Baron Russell; Theodore Parker.
------------
As for myself, dear Emerson, you must ask me no questions till--
alas, till I know not when! After four weary years of the most
unreadable reading, the painfulest poking and delving, I have
come at last to the conclusion--that I must write a Book on
Cromwell; that there is no rest for me till I do it. This point
fixed, another is not less fixed hitherto, That a Book on
Cromwell is _impossible._ Literally so: you would weep for me
if you saw how, between these two adamantine certainties, I am
whirled and tumbled. God only knows what will become of me in
the business. Patience, Patience!
By the bye, do you know a "Massachusetts Historical Society," and
a James Bowdoin, seemingly of Boston? In "Vol. II. third series"
of their _Collections,_ lately I met with a disappointment almost
ludicrous. Bowdoin, in a kind of dancing, embarrassed style,
gives long-winded, painfully minute account of certain precious
volumes, containing "Notes of the Long Parliament," which now
stand in the New York Library; poises them in his assaying
balance, speculates, prophesies, inquires concerning them: to me
it was like news of the lost Decades of Livy. Good Heavens, it
soon became manifest that these precious Volumes are nothing
whatever but a wretched broken old dead manuscript copy of part
of our printed _Commons Journals!_ printed since 1745, and known
to all barbers! If the Historical Society desired it, any Member
of Parliament could procure them the whole stock, _Lords and
Commons,_ a wheelbarrowful or more, with no cost but the
carriage. Every Member has the right to demand a copy, and few
do it, few will let such a mass cross their door-threshold! This
of Bowdoin's is a platitude of some magnitude.--Adieu, dear
Emerson. Rest not, haste not; you have work to do.
--T. Carlyle
LXXXVII. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, London, 17 November, 1843
Dear Emerson,--About this time probably you will be reading a
Letter I hurried off for you by Dr. Russell in the last steamer;
and your friendly anxieties will partly be set at rest. Had I
kept silence so very long? I knew it was a long while; but my
vague remorse had kept no date! It behoves me now to write again
without delay; to certify with all distinctness that I have
safely received your Letter of the 30th October, safely the Bill
for L25 it contained;--that you are a brave, friendly man, of
most serene, beneficient way of life; and that I--God help me!--
By all means appoint this Mr. Clark to the honorary office of
Account-keeper--if he will accept it! By Parker's list of
questions from him, and by earlier reminiscences recalled on that
occasion, I can discern that he is a man of lynx eyesight, of an
all-investigating curiosity: if he will accept this sublime
appointment, it will be the clearest case of elective affinity.
Accounts to you must be horrible; as they are to me: indeed, I
seldom read beyond the _last_ line of them, if I can find the
last; and one of the insupportabilities of Bookseller Accounts
is that nobody but a wizard, or regular adept in such matters,
can tell where the last line, and final net result of the whole
accursed babblement, is to be found! By all means solicit
Clark;--at all events, do you give it up, I pray you, and let the
Booksellers do their own wise way. It really is not material;
let the poor fellows have length of halter. Every new Bill from
America comes to me like a kind of heavenly miracle; a reaping
where I never sowed, and did not expect to reap: the quantity of
it is a thing I can never bring in question.--For your English
account with Nickerson I can yet say nothing more; perhaps about
Newyear's-day the poor man will enable me to say something. I
hear however that the Pirate has sold off, or nearly so, his
Two-shillings edition of the _Essays,_ and is preparing to print
another; this, directly in the teeth of Cash and double-entry
book-keeping, I take to be good news.
James is a very good fellow, better and better as we see him
more. Something shy and skittish in the man; but a brave
heart intrinsically, with sound, earnest sense, with plenty
of insight and even humor. He confirms an observation of mine,
which indeed I find is hundreds of years old, that a stammering
man is never a worthless one. Physiology can tell you why. It
is an excess of delicacy, excess of sensibility to the presence
of his fellow-creature, that makes him stammer. Hammond l'Estrange
says, "Who ever heard of a stammering man that was a fool?" Really
there is something in that.--James is now off to the Isle of Wight;
will see Sterling at Ventnor there; see whether such an Isle or
France will suit better for a winter residence.
W.E. Channing's _Poems_ are also a kind gift from you. I have
read the pieces _you had cut up for me:_ worthy indeed of
reading! That Poem _on Death_ is the utterance of a valiant,
noble heart, which in rhyme or prose I shall expect more news of
by and by. But at bottom "Poetry" is a most suspicious affair
for me at present! You cannot fancy the oceans of Twaddle that
human Creatures emit upon me, in these times; as if, when the
lines had a jingle in them, a Nothing could be Something, and the
point were gained! It is becoming a horror to me,--as all speech
without meaning more and more is. I said to Richard Milnes, "Now
in honesty what is the use of putting your accusative _before_
the verb, and otherwise entangling the syntax; if there really
is an image of any object, thought, or thing within you, for
God's sake let me have it the _shortest_ way, and I will so
cheerfully excuse the _omission_ of the jingle at the end:
cannot I do without that!"--Milnes answered, "Ah, my dear fellow,
it is because we have no thought, or almost none; a little
thought goes a great way when you put it into rhyme!" Let a man
try to the very uttermost to _speak_ what he means, before
_singing_ is had recourse to. Singing, in our curt English
speech, contrived expressly and almost exclusively for "despatch
of business," is terribly difficult. Alfred Tennyson, alone of
our time, has proved it to be possible in some measure. If
Channing will persist in melting such obdurate speech into music
he shall have my true wishes,--my augury that it will take an
enormous _heat_ from him!--Another Channing,* whom I once saw
here, sends me a Progress-of-the-Species Periodical from New
York. _Ach Gott!_ These people and their affairs seem all
"melting" rapidly enough, into thaw-slush or one knows not what.
Considerable madness is visible in them. _Stare super antiquas
vias:_ "No," they say, "we cannot stand, or walk, or do any good
whatever there; by God's blessing, we will fly,--will not you!--
here goes!" And their _flight,_ it is as the flight of the
unwinged,--of oxen endeavoring to fly with the "wings" of an ox!
By such flying, universally practised, the "ancient ways" are
really like to become very deep before long. In short, I am
terribly sick of all that;--and wish it would stay at home at
Fruitland, or where there is good pasture for it. Friend
Emerson, alone of all voices, out of America, has sphere-music in
him for me,--alone of them all hitherto; and is a prophecy and
sure dayspring in the East; immeasurably cheering to me. God
long prosper him; keep him duly apart from that bottomless
hubbub which is not, at all cheering! And so ends my Litany for
this day.
--------
* The Reverend William Henry Channing.
--------
The Cromwell business, though I punch daily at it with all manner
of levers, remains immovable as Ailsa Crag. Heaven alone knows
what I shall do with it. I see and say to myself, It is
heroical; Troy Town was probably not a more heroic business;
and this belongs to thee, to thy own people,--must it be dead
forever?--Perhaps yes,--and kill me too into the bargain. Really
I think it very shocking that we run to Greece, to Italy, to &c.,
&c., and leave all at home lying buried as a nonentity. Were I
absolute Sovereign and Chief Pontiff here, there should be a
study of the Old _English_ ages first of all. I will pit Odin
against any Jupiter of them; find Sea-kings that would have
given Jason a Roland for his Oliver! We are, as you sometimes
say, a book-ridden people,--a phantom-ridden people.--All this
small household is well; salutes you and yours with love old and
new. Accept this hasty messenger; accept my friendliest
farewell, dear Emerson.
Yours ever,
T. Carlyle
LXXXVIII. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 31 December, 1843
My Dear Friend,--I have had two good letters from you, and it is
fully my turn to write, so you shall have a token on this latest
day of the year. I rejoice in this good will you bear to so many
friends of mine,--if they will go to you, you must thank
yourself. Best when you are mutually contented. I wished lately
I might serve Mr. Macready, who sent me your letter.--I called on
him and introduced him to Sam G. Ward, my friend and the best man
in the city, and, besides all his personal merits, a master of
all the offices of hospitality. Ward was to keep himself
informed of Macready's times, and bring me to him when there was
opportunity. But he stayed but a few days in Boston, and, Ward
said, was in very good hands, and promised to see us when he
returns by and by. I saw him in Hamlet, but should much prefer
to see him as Macready.
I must try to entice Mr. Macready out here into my pines and
alder bushes. Just now the moon is shining on snow-drifts, four,
five, and six feet high, but, before his return, they will melt;
and already this my not native but ancestral village, which I
came to live in nearly ten years ago because it was the quietest
of farming towns, and off the road, is found to lie on the
directest line of road from Boston to Montreal, a railroad is
a-building through our secretest woodlands, and, tomorrow morning,
our people go to Boston in two hours instead of three, and, next
June, in one. This petty revolution in our country matters was
very odious to me when it began, but it is hard to resist the joy
of all one's neighbors, and I must be contented to be carted like
a chattel in the cars and be glad to see the forest fall. This
rushing on your journey is plainly a capital invention for our
spacious America, but it is more dignified and man-like to walk
barefoot.--But do you not see that we are getting to be
neighbors? a day from London to Liverpool; twelve or eleven to
Boston; and an hour to Concord; and you have owed me a visit
these ten years.
I mean to send with your January _Dial_ a copy of the number for
Sterling, as it contains a review of his tragedy and poems, by
Margaret Fuller. I have not yet seen the article, and the lady
affirms that it is very bad, as she was ill all the time she was
writing; but I hope and believe better. She, Margaret Fuller,
is an admirable person, whose writing gives feeble account of
her. But I was to say that I shall send this _Dial_ for J.S. to
your care, as I know not the way to the Isle of Wight.
Enclosed in this letter I send a bill of exchange for L32 8s. 2d.
payable by Baring & Co. It happens to represent an exact balance
on Munroe's books, and that slow mortal should have paid it
before. I have not yet got to Clark, I who am a slow mortal, but
have my eye fixed on him. Remember me and mine with kindest
salutations to your wife and brother.
Ever yours,
R.W. Emerson
LXXXIX. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, 31 January, 1844
Dear Emerson, Some ten days ago came your Letter with a new Draft
of L32 and odd money in it: all safe; the Draft now gone into
the City to ripen into gold and silver, the Letter to be
acknowledged by some hasty response now and here. America, I say
to myself looking at these money drafts, is a strange place; the
highest comes out of it and the lowest! Sydney Smith is singing
dolefully about doleful American repudiation, "_dis_owning of the
soft impeachment"; and here on the other hand is an American
man, in virtue of whom America has become definable withal as a
place from which fall heavenly manna-showers upon certain men, at
certain seasons of history, when perhaps manna-showers were not
the unneedfulest things!--We will take the good and the evil,
here as elsewhere, and heartily bless Heaven.
But now for the Draft at the top of this leaf. One Colman,* a
kind of Agricultural Missionary, much in vogue here at present,
has given it me; it is Emerson's, the net produce hitherto (all
but two cents) of _Emerson's Essays._ I enclose farther the
Bookseller's hieroglyph papers; unintelligible as all such are;
but sent over to you for scrutiny by the expert. I gather only
that there are some Five Hundred and odd of the dear-priced
edition sold, some Two Hundred and odd still to sell, which the
Bookseller says are (in spite of pirates) slowly selling; and
that the half profit upon the whole adventure up to this date has
been L24 15s. 11d. sterling,--equal, as I am taught, at $4.88 per
pound sterling, to $121.02, for which, all but the cents, here is
a draft on Boston, payable at sight. Pray have yourself
straightway _paid;_ that if there be any mistake or delay I may
rectify it while time yet is.--I add, for the intelligence of the
Bookseller-Papers, that Fraser, with whom the bargain originally
stood, was succeeded by Nickerson; these are the names of the
parties. And so, dear Friend; accept this munificent sum of
Money; and expect a blessing with it if good wishes from the
heart of man can give one. So much for that.
---------
* The Reverend Henry Colman.
---------
Did you receive a Dumfries Newspaper with a criticism in it? The
author is one Gilfillan, a young Dissenting Minister in Dundee;
a person of great talent, ingenuousness, enthusiasm, and other
virtues; whose position as a Preacher of bare old Calvinism
under penalty of death sometimes makes me tremble for him. He
has written in that same Newspaper about all the notablest men of
his time; Godwin, Corn-law Elliott and I know not all whom: if
he publish the Book, I will take care to send it you.* I saw the
man for the first time last autumn, at Dumfries; as I said, his
being a Calvinist Dissenting Minister, economically fixed, and
spiritually with such germinations in him, forces me to be very
reserved to him.
-----------
* The sketches were published the next year in a volume under
the title of _The Gallery of Literary Portraits._
-----------
John Sterling's _Dial_ shall be forwarded to Ventnor in the Isle
of Wight, whenever it arrives. He was here, as probably I told
you, about two months ago, the old unresting brilliantly
radiating man. He is now much richer in money than he was, and
poorer by the loss of a good Mother and good Wife: I understand
he is building himself a brave house, and also busy writing a
poem. He flings too much "sheet-lightning" and unrest into me
when we meet in these low moods of mine; and yet one always
longs for him back again: "No doing with him or without him,"
the dog!
My thrice unfortunate Book on Cromwell,--it is a real descent to
Hades, to Golgotha and Chaos! I feel oftenest as if it were
possibler to die one's self than to bring it into life. Besides,
my health is in general altogether despicable, my "spirits" equal
to those of the ninth part of a dyspeptic tailor! One needs to
be able to go on in all kinds of spirits, in climate sunny or
sunless, or it will never do. The planet Earth, says Voss,--take
four hexameters from Voss:
Journeys this Earth, her eye on a Sun, through the heavenly spaces;
Joyous in radiance, or joyless by fits and swallowed in tempests;
Falters not, alters not, equal advancing, home at the due hour:
So thou, weather-proof, constant, may, equal with day, March!
I have not a moment more tonight;--and besides am inclined to
write unprofitables if I persist. Adieu, my friend; all
blessings be with you always.
Yours ever truly,
T. Carlyle
XC. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 29 February, 1844
My Dear Carlyle,--I received by the last steamer your letter, and
its prefixed order for one hundred and twenty-one dollars, which
order I sent to Ward, who turned it at once into money. Thanks,
dear friend, for your care and activity, which have brought me
this pleasing and most unlooked for result. And I beg you, if
you know any family representative of Mr. Fraser, to express my
sense of obligation to that departed man. I feel a kindness not
without some wonder for those good-natured five hundred
Englishmen who could buy and read my miscellany. I shall not
fail to send them a new collection, which I hope they will like
better. My faith in the Writers, as an organic class, increases
daily, and in the possibility to a faithful man of arriving at
statements for which he shall not feel responsible, but which
shall be parallel with nature. Yet without any effort I fancy I
make progress also in the doctrine of Indifferency, and am
certain and content that the truth can very well spare me, and
have itself spoken by another without leaving it or me the worse.
Enough if we have learned that music exists, that it is proper to
us, and that we cannot go forth of it. Our pipes, however shrill
and squeaking, certify this our faith in Tune, and the eternal
Amelioration may one day reach our ears and instruments. It is a
poor second thought, this literary activity.
Perhaps I am not made obnoxious to much suffering, but I have had
happy hours enough in gazing from afar at the splendors of the
Intellectual Law, to overpay me for any pains I know. Existence
may go on to be better, and, if it have such insights, it never
can be bad. You sometimes charge me with I know not what sky-
blue, sky-void idealism. As far as it is a partiality, I fear I
may be more deeply infected than you think me. I have very
joyful dreams which I cannot bring to paper, much less to any
approach to practice, and I blame myself not at all for my
reveries, but that they have not yet got possession of my house
and barn. But I shall not lose my love for books. I only
worship Eternal Buddh in the retirements and intermissions of
Brahma.--But I must not egotize and generalize to the end of my
sheet, as I have a message or two to declare.
I enclose a bill of exchange on the Barings for thirty-six
pounds; which is the sum of two recent payments of Munroe and of
Little and Brown, whereof I do not despair you shall yet have
some account in booksellers' figures. I have got so far with
Clark as to have his consent to audit the accounts when I shall
get energy and time enough to compile them out of my ridiculous
Journal. Munroe begs me to say what possibly I have already
asked for him, that, when the _History of Cromwell_ is ready to
be seen of men, you will have an entire copy of the Manuscript
taken, and sent over to us. Then will he print a cheap edition
such as no one will undersell, and secure such a share of profit
to the author as the cheap press allows. Perhaps only thirty or
forty pounds would make it worth while to take the trouble. A
valued friend of mine wishes to know who wrote (perhaps three
years ago) a series of metaphysical articles in _Blackwood_ on
Consciousness. Can you remember and tell me? And now I commend
you to the good God, you and your History, and the true kind wife
who is always good to the eager Yankees, and am yours heartily,
--R.W. Emerson
XCI. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, 8 April, 1844
Dear Emerson,--Till within five minutes of the limit of my time,
I had forgotten that this was the 3d of the Month; that I
had a Letter to write acknowledging even money! Take the
acknowledgment, given in all haste, not without a gratitude that
will last longer: the Thirty-six pounds and odd shillings came
safe in your Letter, a new unlooked-for Gift. America, I think,
is like an amiable family teapot; you think it is all out long
since, and lo, the valuable implement yields you another cup, and
another! Many thanks to you, who are the heart of America to me.
Republishing for one's friend's sake, I find on consulting my
Bookseller, is out here; we have Pirates waiting for every
American thing of mark, as you have for every British; to the
tender mercies of these, on both sides, I fancy the business must
be committed. They do good too; as all does, even carrion:
they send you _faster_ abroad, if the world have any use for
you;--oftenest it only thinks it has. Your _Essays,_ the Pirated
_Essays,_ make an ugly yellow tatter of a Pamphlet, price 1s.
6d.; but the edition is all sold, I understand: and even
Nickerson has not entirely ceased to sell. The same Pirate who
pounced upon you made an attempt the other day on my poor _Life
of Schiller,_ but I put the due spoke in his wheel. They have
sent me Lowell's _Poems;_ they are bringing out Jean Paul's
Life, &c., &c.; the hungry _Canaille._ It is strange that men
should feel themselves so entirely at liberty to steal, simply
because there is no gallows to hang them for doing it. Your new
Book will be eagerly waited for by that class of persons; and
also by another class which is daily increasing here.
The only other thing I am "not to forget" is that of the _Essay
on Consciousness_ in _Blackwood._ The writer of those Papers is
one Ferrier, a Nephew of the Edinburgh Miss Ferrier who wrote
_Marriage_ and some other Novels; Nephew also of Professor
Wilson (Christopher North), and married to one of his daughters.
A man of perhaps five-and-thirty; I remember him in boyhood,
while he was boarded with an Annandale Clergyman; I have seen
him since manhood, and liked him well: a solid, square-visaged,
dark kind of man, more like your Theodore Parker than any mutual
specimen I can recollect.
He got the usual education of an Edinburgh Advocate; but found
no practice at the Bar, nor sought any with due anxiety, I
believe; addicted himself to logical meditations;--became,
the other year, Professor of Universal History, or some
such thing, in the Edinburgh University, and lectures with
hardly any audience: a certain _young_ public wanted me
to be that Professor there, but I knew better,--Is this
enough about Ferrier?
I will not add another word; the time being _past,_
irretrievable except by half-running!
Write us your Book; and be well and happy always!*
-------
* The signature has been cut off.
-------
XCII. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, 5 August, 1844
Dear Emerson,--There had been a long time without direct news
from you, till four days ago your Letter arrived. This day I
understand to be the ultimate limit of the American Mail;
yesterday, had it not been Sunday, would have been the limit: I
write a line, therefore, though in very great haste.
Poor Sterling, even I now begin to fear, is in a very bad way.
He had two successive attacks of spitting of blood, some three
months ago or more; the second attack of such violence, and his
previous condition then so weak, that the Doctor as good as gave
up hope,--the poor Patient himself had from the first given it
up. Our poor Friend has had so many attacks of that nature, and
so rapidly always rallied from them, I gave no ear to these
sinister prognostics; but now that I see the summer influences
passing over him without visible improvement, and our good
weather looking towards a close without so much strength added as
will authorize even a new voyage to Madeira;--I too am at last
joining in the general discouragement; all the sadder to me that
I shut it out so long. Sir James Clark, our best-accredited
Physician for such diseases, declares that Life, for certain
months, may linger, with great pain; but that recovery is not to
be expected. Great part of the lungs, it appears, is totally
unserviceable for respiration; from the remainder, especially in
times of coughing, it is with the greatest difficulty that breath
enough is obtained. Our poor Patient passes the night in a
sitting posture; cannot lie down: that fact sticks with me ever
since I heard it! He is very weak, very pale; still "writes a
great deal daily"; but does not wish to see anybody; declines
to "see even Carlyle," who offered to go to him. His only
Brother, Anthony Sterling, a hardy soldier, lately withdrawn from
the Army, and settled in this quarter, whom we often communicate
with, is about going down to the Isle of Wight this week: he saw
John four days ago, and brings nothing but bad news,--of which
indeed this removal of his to the neighborhood of the scene is a
practical testimony. The old Father, a Widower for the last two
years, and very lonely and dispirited, seems getting feebler and
feebler: he was here yesterday: a pathetic kind of spectacle to
us. Alas, alas! But what can be said? I say Nothing; I have
written only one Note to Sterling: I feel it probable that I
shall never see him more,--nor his like again in this world. His
disease, as I have from of old construed it, is a burning of him
up by his own fire. The restless vehemence of the man,
struggling in all ways these many years to find a legitimate
outlet, and finding, except for transitory, unsatisfactory
coruscations, none, has undermined its Clay Prison in the weakest
point (which proves to be the lungs), and will make outlet
_there._ My poor Sterling! It is an old tragedy; and very
stern whenever it repeats itself of new.
Today I get answer about Alfred Tennyson: all is right on that
side. Moxon informs me that the Russell Books and Letter arrived
duly, and were duly forwarded and safely received; nay, farther,
that Tennyson is now in Town, and means to come and see me. Of
this latter result I shall be very glad: Alfred is one of the
few British or Foreign Figures (a not increasing number I think!)
who are and remain beautiful to me;--a true human soul, or some
authentic approximation thereto, to whom your own soul can say,
Brother!--However, I doubt he will not come; he often skips me,
in these brief visits to Town; skips everybody indeed; being a
man solitary and sad, as certain men are, dwelling in an element
of gloom,--carrying a bit of Chaos about him, in short, which he
is manufacturing into Cosmos!
Alfred is the son of a Lincolnshire Gentleman Farmer, I think;
indeed, you see in his verses that he is a native of "moated
granges," and green, fat pastures, not of mountains and their
torrents and storms. He had his breeding at Cambridge, as if for
the Law or Church; being master of a small annuity on his
Father's decease, he preferred clubbing with his Mother and some
Sisters, to live unpromoted and write Poems. In this way he
lives still, now here, now there; the family always within reach
of London, never in it; he himself making rare and brief visits,
lodging in some old comrade's rooms. I think he must be under
forty, not much under it. One of the finest-looking men in the
world. A great shock of rough dusty-dark hair; bright-laughing
hazel eyes; massive aquiline face, most massive yet most
delicate; of sallow-brown complexion, almost Indian-looking;
clothes cynically loose, free-and-easy;--smokes infinite tobacco.
His voice is musical metallic,--fit for loud laughter and
piercing wail, and all that may lie between; speech, and
speculation free and plenteous: I do not meet, in these late
decades, such company over a pipe!--We shall see what he will
grow to. He is often unwell; very chaotic,--his way is through
Chaos and the Bottomless and Pathless; not handy for making out
many miles upon. (O Paper!)
I trust there is now joy in place of pain in the House at
Concord, and a certain Mother grateful again to the Supreme
Powers! We are all in our customary health here, or nearly so;
my Wife has been in Lancashire, among her kindred there, for a
month lately: our swollen City is getting empty and still; we
think of trying an Autumn _here_ this time.--Get your Book ready;
there are readers ready for it! And be busy and victorious!
Ever Yours,
T. Carlyle
My _History_ is frightful! If I live, it is like to be
completed; but whether I shall live, and not rather be buried
alive, broken-hearted, in the Serbonian Quagmires of English
Stupidity, and so sleep beside Cromwell, often seems uncertain.
Erebus has no uglier, brutaler element. Let us say nothing of
it. Let us do it, or leave it to the Devils. _Ay de mi!_
XCIII. Emerson to Carlyle
Boston, 1 September, 1844
My Dear Carlyle,--I have just learned that in an hour Mr.
Wilmer's mail-bag for London, by the "Acadia," closes, and I will
not lose the occasion of sending you a hasty line: though I had
designed to write you from home on sundry matters, which now must
wait. I send by this steamer some sheets, to the bookseller John
Chapman,--proofsheets of my new book of Essays. Chapman wrote to
me by the last steamer, urging me to send him some manuscript
that had not yet been published in America, and he thought he
could make an advantage from printing it, and even, in some
conditions, procure a copyright, and he would publish for me on
the plan of half-profits. The request was so timely, since I was
not only printing a book, but also a pamphlet (an Address to
citizens of some thirteen towns who celebrated in Concord the
negro Emancipation on 1st August last), that I came to town
yesterday, and hastened the printers, and have now sent him
proofs of all the Address, and of more than half the book. If
you can give Chapman any counsel, or save me from any nonsense by
enjoining on him careful correction, you shall.
I looked eagerly for a letter from you by the last steamer, to
give me exact tidings of Sterling. None came; but I received a
short note from Sterling himself, which intimated that he had but
a few more days to live. It is gloomy news. I beg you will
write me everything you can relate of him, by the next mail. If
you can learn from his friends whether the packet of his
Manuscripts and printed papers, returned by Russell and sent by
me through Harnden's Express to Ventnor, arrived safely, it would
be a satisfaction.
Yours affectionately,
R.W. Emerson
XCIV. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, 29 September, 1844
Dear Emerson,--There should a Letter have come for you by that
Steamer; for I wrote one duly, and posted it in good time
myself: I will hope therefore it was but some delay of some
subaltern official, such as I am told occasionally chances, and
that you got the Letter after all in a day or two. It would give
you notice, more or less, up to its date, of all the points you
had inquired about there is now little to be added; except
concerning the main point, That the catastrophe has arrived there
as we foresaw, and all is ended.
John Sterling died at his house in Ventnor on the night of
Wednesday, 18th September, about eleven o'clock; unexpectedly at
last, and to appearance without pain. His Sister-in-law, Mrs.
Maurice; had gone down to him from this place about a week
before; other friends were waiting as it were in view of him;
but he wished generally to be alone, to continue to the last
setting his house and his heart more and more in order for the
Great Journey. For about a fortnight back he had ceased to have
himself formally dressed; had sat only in his dressing-gown, but
I believe was still daily wheeled into his Library, and sat very
calmly sorting and working there. He sent me two Notes, and
various messages, and gifts of little keepsakes to my Wife and
myself: the Notes were brief, stern and loving; altogether
noble; never to be forgotten in this world. His Brother
Anthony, who had been in the Isle of Wight within call for
several weeks, had now come up to Town again; but, after about a
week, decided that he would run down again, and look. He arrived
on the Wednesday night, about nine o'clock; found no visible
change; the brave Patient calm as ever, ready to speak as ever,
--to say, in direct words which he would often do, or indirectly
as his whole speech and conduct did, "God is Great." Anthony and
he talked for a while, then took leave for the night; in
few minutes more, Anthony was summoned to the bedside, and
at eleven o'clock, as I said, the curtain dropt, and it was
all ended.--_Euge!_
Whether the American _Manuscripts_ had arrived I do not yet know,
but probably shall before this Letter goes; for Anthony is to
return hither on Tuesday, and I will inquire. Our Friend is
buried in Ventnor Churchyard; four big Elms overshadow the
little spot; it is situated on the southeast side of that green
Island, on the slope of steep hills (as I understand it) that
look toward the Sun, and are close within sight and hearing of
the Sea. There shall he rest, and have fit lullaby, this brave
one. He has died as a man should; like an old Roman, yet with
the Christian Bibles and all newest revelations present to him.
He refused to see friends; men whom I think he loved as well as
any,--me for one when I obliquely proposed it, he refused. He
was even a little stern on his nearest relatives when they came
to him: Do I need your help to die? Phocion-like he seemed to
feel degraded by physical decay; to feel that he ought to wrap
his mantle round him, and say, "I come, Persephoneia; it is not
I that linger!"--His Sister-in-law, Anthony's Wife, probably
about a month ago, while they were still in Wight, had begged
that she might see him yet once; her husband would be there too,
she engaged not to speak. Anthony had not yet persuaded him,
when she, finding the door half open, went in: his pale changed
countenance almost made her shriek; she stept forward silently,
kissed his brow in silence; he burst into tears. Let us speak
no more of this.--A great quantity of papers, I understand, are
left for my determination; what is to be done with them I will
sacredly endeavor to do.
I have visited your Bookseller Chapman; seen the Proof-sheets
lying on his table; taken order that the reprint shall be well
corrected,--indeed, I am to read every sheet myself, and in that
way get acquainted with it, before it go into stereotype.
Chapman is a tall, lank youth of five-and-twenty; full of good
will, but of what other equipment time must yet try. By a little
Book of his, which I looked at some months ago, he seemed to me
sunk very deep in the dust-hole of extinct Socinianism; a
painful predicament for a man! He is not sure of saving much
copyright for you; but he will do honestly what in that respect
is doable; and he will print the Book correctly, and publish it
decently, I saying _imprimatur_ if occasion be,--and your ever-
increasing little congregation here will do with the new word
what they can. I add no more today; reserving a little nook for
the answer I hope to get two days hence. Adieu, my Friend: it
is silent Sunday; the populace not yet admitted to their beer-
shops, till the respectabilities conclude their rubric-
mummeries,--a much more audacious feat than beer! We have
wet wind at Northeast, and a sky somewhat of the dreariest:--
Courage! a _little_ way above it reigns mere blue, and
sunshine eternally!--T.C.
_Wednesday, October 2d._--The Letter had to wait till today, and
is still in time. Anthony Sterling, who is yet at Ventnor,
apprises me this morning that according to his and the Governess's
belief the Russell Manuscripts arrived duly, and were spoken
of more than once by our Friend.--On Monday I received from
this same Anthony a big packet by Post; it contains among
other things all your Letters to John, wrapt up carefully, and
addressed in his hand, "Emerson's Letters, to be returned through
the hands of Carlyle": they shall go towards you next week, by
Mr. James, who is about returning. Among the other Papers was
one containing seven stanzas of verse addressed to T. Carlyle,
14th September; full of love and enthusiasm;--the Friday before
his death: I was visiting the old City of Winchester that day,
among the tombs of Canutes and eldest noble ones: you may judge
how sacred the memory of those hours now is!
I have read your Slavery Address; this morning the first _half_-
sheet, in Proof, of the _Essays_ has come: perfectly correct,
and right good reading.
Yours ever,
T. Carlyle
XCV. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 30 September, 1844
My Dear Friend,--I enclose a bill of exchange for thirty pounds
sterling which I procured in town today at $5 each pound, or
$150; so high, it seems, is the rate at present, higher, they
said, than for years. It is good booksellers' money from Little
and Brown, and James Munroe & Co., in unequal proportions. If
you wish for more accurate information and have a great deal of
patience, there is still hope that you may obtain it before
death; for I this day met E.P. Clark in Washington Street, and
he reported some progress in auditing of accounts, and said that
when presently his family should return to town for the winter,
he would see to the end of them, i.e. the accounts.
I received with great satisfaction your letter of July, which
came by a later steamer than it was written for, but gave me
exact and solid information on what I most wished to know. May
you live forever, and may your reports of men and things be
accessible to me whilst I live! Even if, as now in Sterling's
case, the news are the worst, or nearly so, yet let whatever
comes for knowledge be precise, for the direst tragedy that is
accurately true must share the blessing of the Universe. I have
no later tidings from Sterling, and I must still look to you to
tell me what you can. I dread that the story should be short.
May you have much good to tell of him, and for many a day to
come! The sketch you drew of Tennyson was right welcome, for he
is an old favorite of mine,--I owned his book before I saw your
face;--though I love him with allowance. O cherish him with love
and praise, and draw from him whole books full of new verses yet.
The only point on which you never give precise intelligence is
your own book; but you shall have your will in that; so only
you arrive on the shores of light at last, with your mystic
freight fished partly out of the seas of time, and partly out of
the empyrean deeps.
I have much regretted a sudden note I wrote you just before the
steamer of 1 September sailed, entreating you to cumber yourself
about my proofsheets sent to the London bookseller. I heartily
absolve you from all such vexations. Nothing could be more
inconsiderate. Mr. Chapman is undoubtedly amply competent to
ordinary correction, and I much prefer to send you my little book
in decent trim than in rags and stains and deformities more than
its own. I have just corrected and sent to the steamer the last
sheets for Mr. Chapman, who is to find English readers if he can.
I shall ask Mr. Chapman to send you a copy, for his edition will
be more correct than mine. What can I tell you better? Why even
this, that this house rejoices in a brave boy, now near three
months old. Edward we call him, and my wife calls him Edward
Waldo. When shall I show him to you? And when shall I show you
a pretty pasture and wood-lot which I bought last week on the
borders of a lake which is the chief ornament of this town,
called Walden Pond? One of these days, if I should have any
money, I may build me a cabin or a turret there high as the tree-
tops, and spend my nights as well as days in the midst of a
beauty which never fades for me.
Yours with love,
R.W. Emerson
XCVI. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, 3 November, 1844
Dear Emerson,--By the clearest law I am bound to write you a word
today, were my haste even greater than it is. The last American
fleet or ship, about the middle of last month, brought me a Draft
for Thirty Pounds; which I converted into ready cash, and have
here,--and am now your grateful debtor for, as of old. There
seems to be no end to those Boston Booksellers! I think the well
is dry; and straightway it begins to run again. Thanks to you:
--it is, I dare say, a thing you too are grateful for. We will
recognize it among the good things of this rather indifferent
world.--By the way, if that good Clark _like_ his business, let
him go on with it; but if not, stop him, poor fellow! It is to
me a matter of really small moment whether those Booksellers'
accounts be ever audited in this world, or left over to the
General Day of Audit. I myself shudder at the sight of such
things; and make my bargain here so always as to have no trade
with them, but to be _netto_ from the first. Why should I
plague poor Clark with them, if it be any plague to him? The
Booksellers will never _know_ but we examine them! The very
terror of Clark's name will be as the bark of chained Mastiff,--
and no need for actual biting! Have due pity on the man.
Your English volume of _Essays,_ as Chapman probably informs you
by this Post, was advertised yesterday, "with a Preface from me."
That is hardly accurate, that latter clause. My "Preface"
consists only of a certificate that the Book is correctly
printed, and sent forth by a Publisher of your appointment, whom
therefore all readers of yours ought to regard accordingly.
Nothing more. There proves, I believe, no visible real vestige
of a copyright obtainable here; only Chapman asserts that he
_has_ obtained one, and that he will take all contraveners into
Chancery,--which has a terrible sound; and indeed the Act he
founds on is of so distracted, inextricable a character, it may
mean anything and all things, and no Sergeant Talfourd whom we
could consult durst take upon him to say that it meant almost
anything whatever. The sound of "Chancery," the stereotype
character of this volume, and its cheap price, may perhaps deter
pirates,--who are but a weak body in this country as yet. I
judged it right to help in that; and impertinent, at this stage
of affairs, to go any farther. The Book is very fairly printed,
onward. at least to the Essay _New England Politics,_ where my
"perfect-copy" of the sheets as yet stops. I did not read any of
the Proofs except two; finding it quite superfluous, and a sad
waste of time to the hurried Chapman himself. I have found yet
but one error, and that a very correctable one, "narvest" for
"harvest";--no other that I recollect at present.
The work itself falling on me by driblets has not the right
chance yet--not till I get it in the bound state, and read it all
at once--to produce its due impression on me. But I will say
already of it, It is a _sermon_ to me, as all your other
deliberate utterances are; a real _word,_ which I feel to be
such,--alas, almost or altogether the one such, in a world all
full of jargons, hearsays, echoes, and vain noises, which cannot
pass with me for _words!_ This is a praise far beyond any
"literary" one; literary praises are not worth repeating in
comparison. For the rest, I have to object still (what you will
call objecting against the Law of Nature) that we find you a
Speaker indeed, but as it were a _Soliloquizer_ on the eternal
mountain-tops only, in vast solitudes where men and their affairs
lie all hushed in a very dim remoteness; and only the man and
the stars and the earth are visible,--whom, so fine a fellow
seems he, we could perpetually punch into, and say, "Why won't
you come and help us then? We have terrible need of one man like
you down among us! It is cold and vacant up there; nothing
paintable but rainbows and emotions; come down, and you shall do
life-pictures, passions, facts,--which _transcend_ all thought,
and leave it stuttering and stammering! To which he answers that
he won't, can't, and doesn't want to (as the Cockneys have it):
and so I leave him, and say, "You Western Gymnosophist! Well, we
can afford one man for that too. But--!--By the bye, I ought to
say, the sentences are very _brief;_ and did not, in my sheet
reading, always entirely cohere for me. Pure genuine Saxon;
strong and simple; of a clearness, of a beauty--But they did
not, sometimes, rightly stick to their foregoers and their
followers: the paragraph not as a beaten ingot, but as a
beautiful square _bag of duck-shot_ held together by canvas! I
will try them again, with the Book deliberately before me.--There
are also one or two utterances about "Jesus," "immortality," and
so forth, which will produce wide-eyes here and there. I do not
say it was wrong to utter them; a man obeys his own Daemon in
these cases as his supreme law. I dare say you are a little
bored occasionally with "Jesus," &c.,--as I confess I myself am,
when I discern what a beggarly Twaddle they have made of all
that, what a greasy Cataplasm to lay to their own poltrooneries;-
-and an impatient person may exclaim with Voltaire, in serious
moments: "_Au nom de Dieu, ne me parlez plus de cet homme-la!_
I have had enough of him;--I tell you I am alive too!"
Well, I have scribbled at a great rate; regardless of Time's
flight!--My Wife thanks many times for M. Fuller's Book. I sent
by Mr. James a small Packet of _your_ letters--which will make
you sad to look at them! Adieu, dear friend.
--T. Carlyle
XCVII. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 31 December, 1844
My Dear Friend,--I have long owed you a letter and have much to
acknowledge. Your two letters containing tidings, the first of
the mortal illness, and the second of the death of Sterling, I
had no heart to answer. I had nothing to say. Alas! as in so
many instances heretofore, I knew not what to think. Life is
somewhat customary and usual; and death is the unusual and
astonishing; it kills in so far the survivor also, when it
ravishes from him friendship and the most noble and admirable
qualities. That which we call faith seems somewhat stoical and
selfish, if we use it as a retreat from the pangs this ravishment
inflicts. I had never seen him, but I held him fast; now I see
him not, but I can no longer hold him. Who can say what he yet
is and will be to me? The most just and generous can best divine
that. I have written in vain to James to visit me, or to send me
tidings. He sent me, without any note, the parcel you confided
to him, and has gone to Albany, or I know not whither.
I have your notes of the progress of my London printing, and, at
last, the book itself. It was thoughtless in me to ask your
attention to the book at all in the proof state; the printer
might have been fully trusted with corrected printed pages before
him. Nor should Chapman have taxed you for an advertisement;
only, I doubt not he was glad of a chance to have business with
you; and, of course, was too thankful for any Preface. Thanks
to you for the kind thought of a "Notice," and for its friendly
wit. You shall not do this thing again, if I should send you any
more books. A Preface from you is a sort of banner or oriflamme,
a little too splendid for my occasion, and misleads. I fancy my
readers to be a very quiet, plain, even obscure class,--men and
women of some religious culture and aspirations, young, or else
mystical, and by no means including the great literary and
fashionable army, which no man can count, who now read your
books. If you introduce me, your readers and the literary papers
try to read me, and with false expectations. I had rather have
fewer readers and only such as belong to me.
I doubt not your stricture on the book as sometimes unconnected
and inconsecutive is just. Your words are very gentle. I should
describe it much more harshly. My knowledge of the defects of
these things I write is all but sufficient to hinder me from
writing at all. I am only a sort of lieutenant here in the
deplorable absence of captains, and write the laws ill as
thinking it a better homage than universal silence. You
Londoners know little of the dignities and duties of country
lyceums. But of what you say now and heretofore respecting the
remoteness of my writing and thinking from real life, though I
hear substantially the same criticism made by my countrymen, I do
not know what it means. If I can at any time express the law and
the ideal right, that should satisfy me without measuring the
divergence from it of the last act of Congress. And though I
sometimes accept a popular call, and preach on Temperance or the
Abolition of Slavery, as lately on the 1st of August, I am sure
to feel, before I have done with it, what an intrusion it is into
another sphere, and so much loss of virtue in my own. Since I am
not to see you from year to year, is there never an Englishman
who knows you well, who comes to America, and whom you can send
to me to answer all my questions? Health and love and joy to you
and yours.
--R.W. Emerson
XCVIII. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 31 January, 1845
My Dear Carlyle,--Carey and Hart of Philadelphia, booksellers,
have lately proposed to buy the remainder of our Boston edition
of your _Miscellanies,_ or to give you a bonus for sanctioning an
edition of the same, which they propose to publish. On inquiry,
I have found that only thirteen entire sets of four volumes
remain to us unsold; whilst we have 226 copies of Volume III.,
and 243 copies of Volume IV., remaining.
In replying to Mr. Carey, I proposed that, besides the proposed
bonus, he should buy of me these old volumes, which are not bound
but folded, at 25 cents a volume, (Monroe having roughly computed
the cost at 40 cents a volume,) but this he declines to do, and
offers fifty pounds sterling for his bonus. I decided at once to
accept his offer, thinking it a more favorable winding up of our
account than I could otherwise look for; as Mr. Carey knows much
better how to defend himself from pirates than I do. So I am to
publish that his edition is edited with your concurrence. Our
own remaining copies of entire sets I shall sell at once to
Monroe, at a reduced price, and the odd volumes I think to
dispose of by giving them a new and independent title-page. In
the circumstances of the trade here, I think Mr. Carey's offer a
very liberal one, and he is reputed in his dealings eminently
just and generous.
My friend William Furness, who has corresponded with me on
Carey's behalf, has added now another letter to say that Mr.
Carey wishes to procure a picture of Mr. Carlyle to be engraved
for this edition. "He understands there is a good head by
Laurence, and he wishes to employ some London artist to make a
copy of it in oil or water colors, or in any way that will
suffice for the engraver; and he proposes to apply to Mr.
Carlyle for permission through Inman the American artist who is
now in England." Furness goes on to ask for my "good word" with
you in furtherance of this design. Well, I heartily hope you
will not resist so much good nature and true love; for Mr.
Furness and Mr. Griswold, and others who compose a sort
of advising committee to Mr. Carey, are sincere lovers of
yours. One more opportunity this crisis in our accounts will
give to that truest of all Carlylians, E.P. Clark, to make his
report. I called at his house two nights ago, in Boston; he
promised immediate attention, but quickly drew me aside to
his "Illustrations of Carlyle," an endless train of books, and
portfolios, and boxes of prints, in which every precious word of
that master is explained or confirmed.
Affectionately yours,
R.W. Emerson
XCIX. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, 16 February, 1845
Dear Emerson,--By the last Packet, which sailed on the 3d of the
month, I forgot to write to you, though already in your debt
one Letter; and there now has another Letter arrived, which on
the footing of mere business demands to be answered. I write
straightway; not knowing how the Post-Office people will
contrive the conveyance, or whether it can be sooner than by the
next Steam ship, but willing to give them a chance.
You have made another brave bargain for me with the Philadelphia
people; to all of which I can say nothing but _"Euge! Papae!"_
It seems to me strange, in the present state of Copyright, how my
sanction or the contrary can be worth L50 to any American
Bookseller; but so it is, to all appearance; let it be so,
therefore, with thanks and surprise. The Messrs. Carey and Lea
distinguish themselves by the beauty of their Editions; a poor
Author does not go abroad among his friends in dirty paper, full
of misprints, under their guidance; this is as handsome an item
of the business as any. As to the Portrait too, I will be as
"amiable" as heart could wish; truly it will be worth my while
to take a little pains that the kind Philadelphia Editors do once
for all get a faithful Portrait of me, since they are about it,
and so prevent counterfeits from getting into circulation. I
will endeavor to do in that matter whatsoever they require of me;
to the extent even of sitting two days for a Crayon Sketch such
as may be engraved,--though this new sacrifice of patience will
not be needed as matters are. It stands thus: there is no
Painter, of the numbers who have wasted my time and their own
with trying, that has indicated any capability of catching a true
Likeness, but one Samuel Lawrence; a young Painter of real
talent, not quite so young now, but still only struggling for
complete mastership in the management of colors. He does crayon
sketches in a way to please almost himself; but his oil
paintings, at least till within a year or two, have indicated
only a great faculty still crude in that particular. His oil
portrait of me, which you speak of, is almost terrible to behold!
It has the look of a Jotun, of a Scandinavian Demon, grim, sad,
as the angel of Death;--and the coloring is so _brick_ish, the
finishing so coarse, it reminds you withal of a flayed horse's
head! _"Dinna speak o't."_ But the preparatory crayon-sketch of
this, still in existence, is admired by some judges; poor John
Sterling bought it from the Painter, and it is now here in the
hands of his Brother, who will readily allow any authorized
person to take a drawing of it. Lawrence himself, I imagine,
would be the fittest man to employ; or your Mr. Ingham [Inman],
if he be here and a capable person: one or both of these might
superintend the Engraving of it here, and not part with the plate
till it were pronounced satisfactory. In short, I am willing to
do "anything in reason"! Only if a Portrait is to be, I confess
I should rather avoid going abroad under the hands of bunglers,
at least of bunglers sanctioned by myself. There is a Portrait
of me in some miserable farrago called _Spirit of the Age;_* a
farrago unknown to me, but a Portrait known, for poor Lawrence
brought it down to me with sorrow in his face; it professes to
be from his painting; is a "Lais _without_ the beauty" (as
Charles Lamb used to say); a flayed horse's head without the
spiritualism, good or bad,--and simply figures on my mind as a
detestability; which I had much rather never have seen. These
poor _Spirit of the Age_ people applied to me; I described
myself as "busy," &c.; shoved them off me; and this monster of
iniquity, resembling Nothing in the Earth or under it, is the
result. In short, I am willing, I am willing; and so let us not
waste another drop of ink on it at present!--On the whole, are
not you a strange fellow? You apologize as if with real pain for
"trouble" I had, or indeed am falsely supposed to have had, with
Chapman here; and forthwith engage again in correspondences, in
speculations, and negotiations, and I know not what, on my
behalf! For shame, for shame! Nay, you have done one very
ingenious thing; to set Clark upon the Boston Booksellers'
accounts: it is excellent; Michael Scott setting the Devil
to twist ropes of sand, "There, my brave one; see if you don't
find work there for a while!" I never think of this Clark
without love and laughter. Once more, _Euge!_ Chapman is fast
selling your Books here; striking off a new Five Hundred from
his Stereotypes. You are wrong as to your Public in this
Country; it is a very pretty public; extends pretty much,
I believe, through all ranks, and is a growing one,--and a truly
_aristocratic,_ being of the bravest inquiring minds we have.
All things are breaking up here, like Swedish Frost in the end of
March; _gachis epouvantable._ Deep, very serious eternal
instincts, are at work; but as yet no serious word at all that I
hear, except what reaches me from Concord at intervals. Forward,
forward! And you do not know what I mean by calling you
"unpractical," "theoretic." _0 caeca corda!_ But I have no room
for such a theme at present.
----------
* "A new Spirit of the Age. Edited by R.H. Horne." In Two
Volumes. London, 1844.
----------
The reason I tell you nothing about Cromwell is, alas, that there
is nothing to be told. I am day and night, these long months and
years, very miserable about it,--nigh broken-hearted often. Such
a scandalous accumulation of Human Stupidity in every form never
lay before on such a subject. No history of it can be written to
this wretched, fleering, sneering, canting, twaddling, God-
forgetting generation. How can you explain men to Apes by the
Dead Sea?* And I am very sickly too, and my Wife is ill all this
cold weather,--and I am sunk in the bowels of Chaos, and scarce
once in the three months or so see so much as a possibility of
ever getting out! Cromwell's own _Letters and Speeches_ I have
gathered together, and washed clean from a thousand ordures:
these I do sometimes think of bringing out in a legible shape;--
perhaps soon. Adieu, dear friend, with blessings always.
--T. Carlyle
Poor Sydney Smith is understood to be dying; water on the chest;
past hope of Doctors. Alas!
---------
* The dwellers by the Dead Sea who were changed to apes are
referred to in various places by Carlyle. He tells the story of
the metamorphosis, which he got from the introduction to Sale's
Koran, in _Past and Present,_ Book III. Ch. 3.
---------
C. Emerson to Carlyle*
Concord, June 29, 1845
My Dear Friend,--I grieve to think of my slackness in writing,
which suffers steamer after steamer to go without a letter. But
I have still hoped, before each of the late packets sailed, that
I should have a message to send that would enforce a letter. I
wrote you some time ago of Mr. Carey's liberal proposition in
relation to your _Miscellanies._ I wrote, of course, to Furness,
through whom it was made to me, accepting the proposition; and I
forwarded to Mr. Carey a letter from me to be printed at the
beginning of the book, signifying your good-will to the edition,
and acknowledging the justice and liberality of the publishers.
I have heard no more from them, and now, a fortnight since, the
newspaper announces the death of Mr. Carey. He died very
suddenly, though always an invalid and extremely crippled. His
death is very much regretted in the Philadelphia papers, where he
bore the reputation of a most liberal patron of good and fine
arts. I have not heard from Mr. Furness, and have thought I
should still expect a letter from him. I hope our correspondence
will stand as a contract which Mr. Carey's representatives will
feel bound to execute. They had sent me a little earlier a copy
of Mr. Sartain's engraving from their water-color copy of
Laurence's head of you. They were eager to have the engraving
pronounced a good likeness. I showed it to Sumner, and Russell,
and Theodore Parker, who have seen you long since I had, and they
shook their heads unanimously and declared that D'Orsay's profile
was much more like.
---------
** From the rough draft.
---------
I creep along the roads and fields of this town as I have done
from year to year. When my garden is shamefully overgrown with
weeds, I pull up some of them. I prune my apples and pears. I
have a few friends who gild many hours of the year. I sometimes
write verses. I tell you with some unwillingness, as knowing
your distaste for such things, that I have received so many
applications from readers and printers for a volume of poems that
I have seriously taken in hand the collection, transcription, or
scription of such a volume, and may do the enormity before New
Year's day. Fear not, dear friend, you shall not have to read
one line. Perhaps I shall send you an official copy, but I shall
appeal to the tenderness of Jane Carlyle, and excuse your
formidable self, for the benefit of us both. Where all writing
is such a caricature of the subject, what signifies whether the
form is a little more or less ornate and luxurious? Meantime, I
think to set a few heads before me, as good texts for winter
evening entertainments. I wrote a deal about Napoleon a few
months ago, after reading a library of memoirs. Now I have
Plato, Montaigne, and Swedenborg, and more in the clouds behind.
What news of Naseby and Worcester?
CI. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, 29 August, 1845
Dear Emerson,--Your Letter, which had been very long expected,
has been in my hand above a month now; and still no answer sent
to it. I thought of answering straightway; but the day went
by, days went by;--and at length I decided to wait till my
insupportable Burden (the "Stupidity of Two Centuries" as I call
it, which is a heavy load for one man!) were rolled off my
shoulders, and I could resume the habit of writing Letters, which
has almost left me for many months. By the unspeakable blessing
of Heaven that consummation has now arrived, about four days ago
I wrote my last word on _Cromwell's Letters and Speeches;_ and
one of the earliest uses I make of my recovered freedom is to
salute you again. The Book is nearly printed: two big volumes;
about a half of it, I think, my own; the real utterances of the
man Oliver Cromwell once more legible to earnest men. Legible
really to an unexpected extent: for the Book took quite an
unexpected figure in my hands; and is now a kind of Life of
Oliver, the best that circumstances would permit me to do:--
whether either I or England shall be, in my time, fit for a
better, remains submitted to the Destinies at present. I have
tied up the whole Puritan Paper-Litter (considerable masses of it
still unburnt) with tight strings, and hidden it at the bottom of
my deepest repositories: there shall _it,_ if Heaven please, lie
dormant for a time and times. Such an element as I have been in,
no human tongue can give account of. The disgust of my Soul has
been great; a really _pious_ labor: worth very little when I
have done it; but the best I could do; and that is quite
enough. I feel the liveliest gratitude to the gods that I have
got out of it alive. The Book is very dull, but it is actually
legible: all the ingenious faculty I had, and ten times as much
would have been useful there, has been employed in elucidation;
in saying, and chiefly in forbearing to say,--in annihilating
continents of brutal wreck and dung: _Ach Gott!_--But in fact
you will see it by and by; and then form your own conclusions
about it. They are going to publish it in October, I find: I
tried hard to get you a complete copy of the sheets by this
Steamer; but it proves to be flatly impossible;--perhaps
luckily; for I think you would have been bothering yourself with
some new Bookseller negotiation about it; and that, as copyright
and other matters now stand, is a thing I cannot recommend.
--Enough of it now: only let all my silences and other
shortcomings be explained thereby. I am now off for the North
Country, for a snatch still at the small remnants of Summer, and
a little free air and sunshine. I am really far from well,
though I have been riding diligently for three months back, and
doing what I could to help myself.
Very glad shall I be, my Friend, to have some new utterances from
you either in verse or in prose! What you say about the vast
_imperfection_ of all modes of utterance is most true indeed.
Let a man speak and sing, and do, and sputter and gesticulate as
he may,--the meaning of him is most ineffectually shown forth,
poor fellow; rather _indicated_ as if by straggling symbols,
than _spoken_ or visually expressed! Poor fellow! So the great
rule is, That he _have_ a good manful meaning, and then that he
take what "mode of utterance" is honestly the readiest for him.--
I wish you would take an American Hero, one whom you really love;
and give us a History of him,--make an artistic bronze statue (in
good _words_) of his Life and him! I do indeed.--But speak of
what you will, you are welcome to me. Once more I say, No other
voice in this wide waste world seems to my sad ear to be
_speaking_ at all at present. The more is the pity for us.
I forbid you to plague yourself any farther with those
Philadelphia or other Booksellers. If you could hinder them to
promulgate any copy of that frightful picture by Lawrence, or
indeed any picture at all, I had rather stand as a shadow than as
a falsity in the minds of my American friends: but this too we
are prepared to encounter. And as for the money of these men,--
if they will pay it, good and welcome; if they will not pay it,
let them keep it with what blessing there may be in it! I have
your noble offices in that and in other such matters already
unforgetably sure to me; and, in real fact, that is almost
exactly the whole of valuable that could exist for me in the
affair. Adieu, dear Friend. Write to me again; I will write
again at more leisure.
Yours always,
T. Carlyle
CII. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 15 September, 1845
My Dear Friend,--I have seen Furness of Philadelphia, who was,
last week, in Boston, and inquired of him what account I should
send you of the new Philadelphia edition. "Has not Mr. Carey
paid you?" he said.--No. "Then has he not paid Carlyle
directly?" No, as I believe, or I should have heard of it.--
Furness replied, that the promised fifty pounds were sure, and
that the debt would have been settled before this time, if Mr.
Carey had lived. So as this is no longer a Three Blind
Callenders' business of Arabian Nights, I shall rest secure. I
have doubted whether the bad name which Philadelphia has gotten
in these times would not have disquieted you in this long delay.
If you have ever heard directly from Carey and Hart, you will
inform me.
I am to read to a society in Boston presently some lectures,
--on Plato, or the Philosopher; Swedenborg, or the Mystic;
Montaigne, or the Sceptic; Shakespeare, or the Poet; Napoleon,
or the Man of the World;--if I dare, and much lecturing makes us
incorrigibly rash. Perhaps, before I end it, my list will be
longer, and the measure of presumption overflowed. I may take
names less reverend than some of these,--but six lectures I have
promised. I find this obligation usually a good spur to the
sides of that dull horse I have charge of. But many of its
advantages must be regarded at a long distance.
I have heard nothing from you for a long time,--so may your
writing prosper the more. I wish to hear, however, concerning
you, and your house, and your studies, when there is little to
tell. The steamers come so fast--to exchange cards would not be
nothing. My wife and children and my mother are well. Peace and
love to your household.
--R.W. Emerson
CIII. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 30 September, 1845
My Dear Friend,--I had hardly sent away my letter by the last
steamer, when yours full of good news arrived. I greet you
heartily on the achievement of your task, and the new days of
freedom obtained and deserved. Happiest, first, that you can
work, which seems the privilege of the great, and then, also,
that thereby you can come at the sweetness of victory and rest.
Yes, flee to the country, ride, run, leap, sit, spread yourself
at large; and in all ways celebrate the immense benevolence of
the Universe towards you; and never complain again of dyspepsia,
crosses, or the folly of men; for in giving you this potent
concentration, what has been withholden? I am glad with all men
that a new book is made, that the gentle creation as well as the
grosser goes ever on. Another month will bring it to me, and I
shall know the secrets of these late silent years. Welcome the
child of my friend! Why should I regret that I see you not, when
you are forced thus intimately to discover yourself beyond the
intimacy of conversation?
But you should have sent me out the sheets by the last steamer,
or a manuscript copy of the book. I do not know but Munroe would
have printed it at once, and defied the penny press. And slow
Time might have brought in his hands a most modest reward.
I wrote you the other day the little I had to say on affairs.
Clark, the financial Conscience, has never yet made any report,
though often he promised. Half the year he lives out of Boston,
and unless I go to his Bank I never see his face. I think he
will not die till he have disburdened himself of this piece of
arithmetic. I pray you to send me my copy of this book at the
earliest hour, and to offer my glad congratulations to Jane
Carlyle, on an occasion, I am sure, of great peace and relief to
her spirit. And so farewell.
--R.W. Emerson
CIV. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, 11 November, 1846
My Dear Emerson,--I have had two Letters from you since I wrote
any; the latest of them was lying here for me when I returned,
about three weeks ago; the other I had received in Scotland: it
was only the last that demanded a special answer;--which, alas, I
meant faithfully to give it, but did not succeed! With meet
despatch I made the Bookseller get ready for you a Copy of the
unpublished _Cromwell_ Book; hardly complete as yet, it was
nevertheless put together, and even some kind of odious rudiments
of a _Portrait_ were bound up with it; and the Packet inscribed
with your address was put into Wiley and Putnam's hands in time
for the Mail Steamer;--and I hope has duly arrived? If it have
not, pray set the Booksellers a-hunting. Wiley and Putnam was
the Carrier's name; this is all the indication I can give, but
this, I hope, if indeed any prove needful, will be enough. One
may hope you have the Book already in your hands, a fortnight
before this reaches you, a month before any other Copy can reach
America. In which case the Parcel, _without_ any Letter, must
have seemed a little enigmatic to you! The reason was this: I
miscounted the day of the month, unlucky that I was. Sitting
down one morning with full purpose to write at large, and
all my tools round me, I discover that it is no longer
the third of November; that it is already the _fourth,_
and the American Mail-Packet has already lifted anchor!
Irrevocable, irremediable! Nothing remained but to wait for
the 18th;--and now, as you see, to take Time by the forelock,--
_queue,_ as we all know, he has none.
My visit to Scotland was wholesome for me, tho' full of sadness,
as the like always is. Thirty years mow away a Generation of
Men. The old Hills, the old Brooks and Houses, are still there;
but the Population has marched away, almost all; it is not there
any more. I cannot enter into light talk with the survivors and
successors; I withdraw into silence, and converse with the old
dumb crags rather, in a melancholy and abstruse manner.--Thank
God, my good old Mother is still there; old and frail, but still
young of heart; as young and strong _there,_ I think, as ever.
It is beautiful to see affection survive where all else is
submitting to decay; the altar with its sacred fire still
burning when the outer walls are all slowly crumbling; material
Fate saying, "_They_ are mine!"--I read some insignificant Books;
smoked a great deal of tobacco; and went moping about among the
hills and hollow water-courses, somewhat like a shade in Hades.
The Gospel which this World of Fact does preach to one differs
considerably from the sugary twaddle one gets the offer of in
Exeter-Hall and other Spouting-places! Of which, in fact, I am
getting more and more weary; sometimes really impatient. It
seems to me the reign of Cant and Spoonyism has about lasted long
enough. Alas, in many respects, in this England I too often feel
myself sorrowfully in a "minority of one";--if in the whole
world, it amount to a minority of two, that is something! These
words of Goethe often come into my mind, _"Verachtung ja Nicht-
achtung."_ Lancashire, with its Titanic Industries, with its
smoke and dirt, and brutal stupor to all but money and the five
mechanical Powers, did not excite much admiration in me;
considerably less, I think, than ever! Patience, and shuffle
the cards!
The Book on Cromwell is not to come out till the 22d of this
month. For many weeks it has been a real weariness to me; my
hope, always disappointed, that now is the last time I shall have
any trade with it. Even since I began writing, there has been an
Engraver here, requiring new indoctrination,--poor fellow! Nay,
in about ten days it _must_ be over: let us not complain. I
feel it well to be worth _nothing,_ except for the little
fractions or intermittent fits of pious industry there really
were in it; and my one wish is that the human species would be
pleased to take it off my hands, and honestly let me hear no more
about it! If it please Heaven, I will rest awhile still, and
then try something better.
In three days hence, my Wife and I are off to the Hampshire coast
for a winter visit to kind friends there, if in such a place it
will prosper long with us. The climate there is greatly better
than ours; they are excellent people, well affected to us; and
can be lived with, though of high temper and ways! They are the
Lord Ashburtons, in fact; more properly the younger stratum of
that house; partly a kind of American people,--who know Waldo
Emerson, among other fine things, very well! I think we are to
stay some three weeks: the bustle of moving is already begun.
You promise us a new Book soon? Let it be soon, then. There are
many persons here that will welcome it now. To one man here it
is ever as an _articulate voice_ amid the infinite cackling and
cawing. That remains my best definition of the effect it has on
me. Adieu, my friend. Good be with you and your Household
always. _Vale._
--T.C.
CV. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, 3 January, 1846
Dear Emerson,--I received your Letter* by the last Packet three
or four days ago: this is the last day of answering, the monthly
Packet sails towards you again from Liverpool tomorrow morning;
and I am in great pressure with many writings, elsewhither and
thither: therefore I must be very brief. I have just written to
Mr. Hart of Philadelphia; his Draft (as I judge clearly by the
Banker's speech and silence) is accepted, all right; and in
fact, means _money_ at this time: for which I have written to
thank him heartily. Do you very heartily thank Mr. Furness for
me;--Furness and various friends, as Transatlantic matters now
are, must accept a _silent_ gratitude from me. The speech of men
and American hero-worshipers is grown such a babblement: in very
truth, _silence_ is the thing that chiefly has meaning,--there
or here....
---------
* Missing
---------
To my very great astonishment, the Book _Cromwell_ proves popular
here; and there is to be another edition very soon. Edition
with improvements--for some fifty or so of new (not _all_
insignificant) Letters have turned up, and I must try to do
something rational with them;--with which painful operation I am
again busy. It will make the two volumes about _equal_ perhaps,
--which will be one benefit! If any American possibility lie in
this, I will take better care of it.--Alas, I have not got one
word with you yet! Tell me of your Lectures;--of all things.
Ever yours,
T. Carlyle
We returned from Hampshire exactly a week ago; never passed
six so totally idle weeks in our lives.--Better in health a
little? Perhaps.
CVI. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, 3 February, 1848
Dear Emerson,--One word to you before the Packet sail;--on
business of my own, once more; in such a state of _haste_ as
could hardly be greater. The Printers are upon me, and I have
not a moment.
Contrary to all human expectation, this Book on Cromwell proves
salable to mankind here, and a second Edition is now going
forward with all speed. The publication of the First has brought
out from their recesses a _new_ heap of Cromwell Letters;--which
have been a huge embarrassment to me; for they are highly
unimportant for most part, and do not tend to alter or materially
modify anything. Some Fifty or Sixty new Letters in all (many of
them from Printed Books that had escaped me) the great majority,
with others yet that may come in future time, I determine to
print simply as an Appendix; but several too, I think about
twenty in all, are to be fitted into the Text, chiefly in the
early part of the First Volume, as tending to bring some matters
into greater clearness there. I am busy with that even now;
sunk deep into the Dust-abysses again!--Of course I have made
what provision I could for printing a Supplement, &c. to the
possessors of the First Edition: but I find this Second will be
the _Final_ standing Edition of the Book; decidedly preferable
to the First; not to be touched by me _again,_ except on
very good cause indeed. New letters, except they expressly
contradict me, shall go at once into the back apartment, or
Appendix, in future.
The Printers have sent me some five or six sheets, they send me
hitherto a sheet daily; but perhaps there are not above three or
two in a perfect state: so I trouble you with none of them by
this Packet. But by next Packet (3d of March), unless I hear to
the contrary, I will send you all the Sheets that are ready; and
so by the following Packets, till we are out of it;--that you, on
the scene there, may do with them once for all whatsoever you
like. If _nothing_ can be done with them, believe me I shall be
very glad of that result. But if you can so much as oblige any
honest Bookseller of your or my acquaintance by the gift of them,
let it be done; let Pirates and ravenous Bipeds of Prey
be excluded from participating: that of itself will be a
comfortable and a proper thing!--You are hereby authorized to
promulgate in any way you please, That the Second Edition will be
augmented, corrected, as aforesaid; and that Mr. (Any Son of
Adam you please to name) is, so far as I have any voice in the
matter, appointed by me, to the exclusion of all and sundry
others on what pretext soever, to print and vend the same to my
American Friends. And so it stands; and the Sheets (probably
near thirty in number) will be out with the March Packet:--
and if nothing can come of it, I for one shall be very glad!
The Book is to be in Three Volumes now; the first ends at
p. 403, Vol. I.; the third begins at p. 155, Vol. II., of
the present edition.
What are you doing? Write to me: how the Lectures went, how all
things went and go! We are over head and ears in Anti-Corn-Law
here; the Aristocracy struck almost with a kind of horror at
sight of that terrible Millocracy, rising like a huge hideous
Frankenstein up in Lancashire,--seemingly with boundless ready-
money in its pocket, and a very fierce humor in its stomach! To
me it is as yet almost uglier than the Aristocracy; and I will
not fire guns when this small victory is gained; I will
recommend a day of Fasting rather, that such a victory required
such gaining.
Adieu, my Friend. Is it likely we shall meet in "Oregon," think
you? That would be a beautiful affair, on the part of the most
enlightened Nation!
Yours ever,
T. Carlyle
CVII. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, 3 March, 1846
Dear Emerson,--I must write you a word before this Packet go,
tho' my haste is very great. I received your two Newspapers
(price only twopence); by the same Ship there came, and reached
me some days later, a Letter from Mr. Everett enclosing the
_Cromwell_ portions of the same printed-matter, clipt out by
scissors; written, it appeared, by Mr. Everett's nephew; some
of whose remarks, especially his wish that I might once be in New
England, and see people "praying," amused me much! The Cotton
Letter, &c., I have now got to the bottom of; Birch's copy is in
the Museum here,--a better edition than I had. Of "Levered" and
the other small American Documents--alas, I get cartloads of the
like or better tumbled down at my door, and my chief duty is to
front them resolutely with a _shovel._ "Ten thousand tons" is
but a small estimate for the quantity of loose and indurated
lumber I have had to send sounding, on each hand of me, down,
down to the eternal deeps, never to trouble _me_ more! The
jingle of it, as it did at last get under way, and go down, was
almost my one consolation in those unutterable operations.--I am
again over head and ears; but shall be out soon: never to
return more.
By this Packet, according to volunteer contract, there goes out
by the favor of your Chapman a number of sheets, how many I do
not exactly know, of the New Edition: Chapman First and Chapman
Second (yours and mine) have undertaken to manage the affair for
this month and for the following months;--many thanks to them
both for taking it out of my hands. What you are to do with the
Article you already know. If no other customer present himself,
can you signify to Mr. Hart of Philadelphia that the sheets are
much at his service,--his conduct on another occasion having
given him right to such an acknowledgment from me? Or at any
rate, _you_ will want a new Copy of this Book; and can retain
the sheets for that object.--Enough of them.
From Mr. Everett I learn that your Boston Lectures have been
attended with renown enough: when are the Lectures themselves to
get to print? I read, last night, an Essay on you, by a kind of
"Young Scotland," as we might call it, in an Edinburgh Magazine;
very fond of you, but shocked that you were Antichristian:--
really not so bad. The stupidities of men go crossing one
another; and miles down, at the bottom of all, there is a little
veinlet of sense found running at last!
If you see Mr. Everett, will you thank him for his kind
remembrance of me, till I find leisure (as I have vainly hoped
today to do) to thank him more in form. A dignified, compact
kind of man; whom I remember with real pleasure.
Jargon abounds in our Newspapers and Parliament Houses at
present;--with which "the present Editor," and indeed I think the
Public at large, takes little concern, beyond the regret of being
_bored_ by it. The Corn-Laws are going very quietly the way of
all deliriums; and then there will at least be one delirium
less, and we shall start upon new ones.
Not a word more today, but my blessings and regards. God be with
you and yours always.
Ever your affectionate,
T. Carlyle
CVIII. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, 18 April, 1846
Dear Emerson,--Your two Letters* have both come to hand, the last
of them only three days ago. One word in answer before the
Packet sail; one very hasty word, rather than none.
-----------
* Missing.
----------
You have made the best of Bargains for me; once again, with the
freest contempt of trouble on my behalf; which I cannot
sufficiently wonder at! Apparently it is a fixed-idea of yours
that the Bibliopolic Genus shall not cheat me; and you are
decided to make it good. Very well: let it be so, in as far as
the Fates will.
Certainly I will conform in all points to this Wiley-and-Putnam
Treaty, and faithfully observe the same. The London Wileys have
not yet sent me any tidings; but when they do, I will say Your
terms on the other side of the sea are the Law to us, and it is a
finished thing.--No sheets, I think, will go by this mid-month
Packet, the Printer and Bookseller were bidden not mind that:
but by the Packet of May 3d, I hope the Second Volume will go
complete; and, if the Printers make speed, almost the whole
remainder may go by the June one. There is to be a "Supplement
to the First Edition," containing all the new matter that is
_separable:_ of this too the Wileys shall have their due Copy to
reprint: it is what I could do to keep my faith with purchasers
of the First Edition here; but, on the whole, there will be no
emulating of the Second Edition except by a reprint of the whole
of it; changes great and small have had to introduce themselves
everywhere, as these new Letters were woven in.--I hope before
May 3d I shall have ascertained whether it will not be the
simplest way (as with my present light it clearly appears) to
give the sheets direct to the Wiley and Putnam here, and let
_them_ send them? In any case, the cargo shall come one way
or other.
Furthermore,--Yes, you shall have that sun-shadow, a
Daguerreotype likeness, as the sun shall please to paint it:
there has often been talk of getting me to that establishment,
but I never yet could go. If it be possible, we will have this
also ready for the 3d of May. _Provided_ you, as you promise, go
and do likewise! A strange moment that, when I look upon your
dead shadow again; instead of the living face, which remains
unchanged within me, enveloped in beautiful clouds, and emerging
now and then into strange clearness! Has your head grown
grayish? On me are "gray hairs here and there,"--and I do "know
it." I have lived half a century in this world, fifty years
complete on the 4th of December last: that is a solemn fact
for me! Few and evil have been the days of the years of
thy servant,--few for any good that was ever done in them.
_Ay de mi!_
Within late weeks I have got my Horse again; go riding through
the loud torrent of vehiculatory discords, till I get into the
fields, into the green lanes; which is intrinsically a great
medicine to me. Most comfortless riding it is, with a horse of
such _kangaroo_ disposition, till I do get to the sight of my old
ever-young green-mantled mother again; but for an hour there, it
is a real blessing to me. I have company sometimes, but
generally prefer solitude, and a dialogue with the trees and
clouds. Alas, the speech of men, especially the witty-speech of
men, is oftentimes afflictive to me: "in the wide Earth," I say
sometimes with a sigh, "there is none but Emerson that responds
to me with a voice wholly human!" All "Literature" too is become
I cannot tell you how contemptible to me. On the whole, one's
blessedness is to do as Oliver: Work while the sun is up; work
_well_ as if Eternities depended on it; and then sleep,--if
under the guano-mountains of Human Stupor, if handsomely
_forgotten_ all at once, that latter is the handsome thing! I
have often thought what W. Shakespeare would say, were he to sit
one night in a "Shakespeare Society," and listen to the empty
twaddle and other long-eared melody about him there!--Adieu, my
Friend. I fear I have forgotten many things: at all events, I
have forgotten the inexorable flight of the minutes, which are
numbered out to me at present.
Ever yours,
T. Carlyle
I think I recognize the Inspector of Wild-beasts, in the
little Boston Newspaper you send!* A small hatchet-faced, gray-
eyed, good-humored Inspector, who came with a Translated
Lafontaine; and took his survey not without satisfaction?
Comfortable too how rapidly he fathomed the animal, having just
poked him up a little. _Ach Gott!_ Man is forever interesting
to men;--and all men, even Hatchet-faces, are globular and complete!
---------
* This probably refers to a letter of Mr. Elizur Wright's,
describing a visit to Carlyle.
---------
CIX. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, 30 April, 1846
Dear Emerson,--Here is the _Photograph_ going off for you by
Bookseller Munroe of Boston; the Sheets of _Cromwell,_ all the
second and part of the last volume, are to go direct to New York:
both Parcels by the Putnam conveyance. For Putnam has been here
since I wrote, making large confirmations of what you conveyed to
me; and large Proposals of an ulterior scope,--which will
involve you in new trouble for me. But it is trouble you will
not grudge, inasmuch as it promises to have some issue of moment;
at all events the negotiation is laid entirely into your hands:
therefore I must with all despatch explain to you the essentials
of it, that you may know what Wiley says when he writes to you
from New York.
Mr. Putnam, really a very intelligent, modest, and reputable-
looking little fellow, got at last to sight of me about a week
ago;--explained with much earnestness how the whole origin of the
mistake about the First Edition of _Cromwell_ had lain with
Chapman, my own Bookseller (which in fact I had already perceived
to be the case); and farther set forth, what was much more
important, that he and his Partner were, and had been, ready and
desirous to _make good_ said mistake, in the amplest, most
satisfactory manner,--by the ready method of paying me _now_
ten percent on the selling-price of all the copies of _Cromwell_
sent into the market by them; and had (as I knew already)
covenanted with you to do so, in a clear, _bona-fide,_ and to
you satisfactory manner, in regard to that First Edition: in
consequence of which you had made a bargain with them of like
tenor in regard to the Second. To all which I could only answer,
that such conduct was that of men of honor, and would, in all
manner of respects, be satisfactory to me. Wherefore the new
Sheets of _Cromwell_ should now go by _his_ Package direct to New
York, and the other little Parcel for you he could send to
Munroe:--that as one consequence? "Yes, surely," intimated he;
but there were other consequences, of more moment, behind that.
Namely, that they wanted (the Wiley & Putnam house did) to
publish certain other Books of mine, the List of which I do not
now recollect; under similar conditions: viz. that I was to
certify, in a line or two prefixable to each Book, that I had
read it over in preparation for their Printer, and did authorize
them to print and sell it;--in return for which Ten percent on
the sale-price (and all manner of facilities, volunteered to
convince even Clark of Boston, the Lynx-eyed Friend now busy for
me looking through millstones, that all was straight, and said
Ten percent actually paid on every copy sold); This was Putnam's
Offer, stated with all transparency, and in a way not to be
misunderstood by either of us.
To which I answered that the terms seemed clear and square and
every way good, and such as I could comply with heartily,--so far
as I was at liberty, but not farther. Not farther: for example,
there was Hart of Philadelphia (I think the Wileys do not want
the _Miscellanies_), there were Munroe, Little and Brown, &c.;--
in short, there was R.W. Emerson, who knew in all ways how far I
was free and not free, and who would take care of my integrity
and interest at once, and do what was just and prudent; and to
_him_ I would refer the whole question, and whatever he engaged
for, that and no other than that I would do. So that you see how
it is, and what a coil you have again got into! Mr. Putnam would
have had some "Letter," some "exchange of Letters," to the effect
above-stated: but I answered, "It was better we did not write at
all till the matter was clear and liquid with you, and then we
could very swiftly write,--and act. I would apprise you how the
matter stood, and expect your answer, and bid you covenant with
Mr. Wiley what you found good, prompt I to fulfil whatever _you_
undertook for me."--This _is_ a true picture of the affair, the
very truest I can write in haste; and so I leave it with you--
_Ach Gott!_
If your Photograph succeed as well as mine, I shall be almost
_tragically_ glad of it. This of me is far beyond all pictures;
really very like: I got Laurence the Painter to go with me, and
he would not let the people off till they had actually made a
likeness. My Wife has got another, which she asserts to be much
"more amiable-looking," and even liker!* O my Friend, it is a
strange Phantasmagory of a Fact, this huge, tremendous World of
ours, Life of ours! Do you bethink you of Craigenputtock, and
the still evening there? I could burst into tears, if I had that
habit: but it is of no use. The Cromwell business will be ended
about the end of May,--I do hope!
You say not a word of your own affairs: I have vaguely been
taught to look for some Book shortly;--what of it? We are well,
or tolerably well, and the summer is come: adieu. Blessings on
you and yours.
--T.C.
----------
* The engraved portrait in the first volume of this
Correspondence is from a photograph taken from this daguerrotype.
----------
CX. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 14 May, 1846
Dear Friend,--I daily expect the picture, and wonder--so long as
I have wished it--I had never asked it before. I was in Boston
the other day, and went to the best reputed Daguerreotypist, but
though I brought home three transcripts of my face, the house-
mates voted them rueful, supremely ridiculous. I must sit again;
or, as true Elizabeth Hoar said, I must not sit again, not being
of the right complexion which Daguerre and iodine delight in. I
am minded to try once more, and if the sun will not take me, I
must sit to a good crayon sketcher, Mr. Cheney, and send you
his draught....
Good rides to you and the longest escapes from London streets. I
too have a new plaything, the best I ever had,--a wood-lot. Last
fall I bought a piece of more than forty acres, on the border of
a little lake half a mile wide and more, called Walden Pond,--a
place to which my feet have for years been accustomed to bring me
once or twice a week at all seasons. My lot to be sure is on the
further side of the water, not so familiar to me as the nearer
shore. Some of the wood is an old growth, but most of it has
been cut off within twenty years and is growing thriftily. In
these May days, when maples, poplars, oaks, birches, walnut, and
pine are in their spring glory, I go thither every afternoon, and
cut with my hatchet an Indian path through the thicket all along
the bold shore, and open the finest pictures.
My two little girls know the road now, though it is nearly two
miles from my house, and find their way to the spring at the foot
of a pine grove, and with some awe to the ruins of a village of
shanties, all overgrown with mullein, which the Irish who built
the railroad left behind them. At a good distance in from the
shore the land rises to a rocky head, perhaps sixty feet above
the water. Thereon I think to place a hut; perhaps it will have
two stories and be a petty tower, looking out to Monadnoc and
other New Hampshire Mountains. There I hope to go with book and
pen when good hours come. I shall think there, a fortnight might
bring you from London to Walden Pond.--Life wears on, and do you
say the gray hairs appear? Few can so well afford them. The
black have not hung over a vacant brain, as England and America
know; nor, white or black, will it give itself any Sabbath for
many a day henceforward, as I believe. What have we to do with
old age? Our existence looks to me more than ever initial. We
have come to see the ground and look up materials and tools. The
men who have any positive quality are a flying advance party for
reconnoitring. We shall yet have a right work, and kings for
competitors. With ever affectionate remembrance to your wife,
your friend,
--R.W. Emerson
CXI. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 31 May, 1846
My Dear Friend,--It is late at night and I have postponed writing
not knowing but that my parcel would be ready to go,--and now a
public meeting and the speech of a rarely honest and eloquent man
have left me but a span of time for the morning's messenger.
The photograph came safely, to my thorough content. I have what
I have wished. This head is to me out of comparison more
satisfying than any picture. I confirm my recollections and I
make new observations; it is life to life. Thanks to the Sun.
This artist remembers what every other forgets to report, and
what I wish to know, the true sculpture of the features, the
angles, the special organism, the rooting of the hair, the form
and the placing of the head. I am accustomed to expect of the
English a securing of the essentials in their work, and the sun
does that, and you have done it in this portrait, which gives me
much to think and feel.* I was instantly stirred to an emulation
of your love and punctuality, and, last Monday, which was my
forty-third birthday, I went to a new Daguerreotypist, who took
much pains to make his picture right. I brought home three
shadows not agreeable to my own eyes. The machine has a bad
effect on me. My wife protests against the imprints as
slanderous. My friends say they look ten years older, and, as I
think, with the air of a decayed gentleman touched with his first
paralysis. However I got yesterday a trusty vote or two for
sending one of them to you, on the ground that I am not likely to
get a better. But it now seems probable that it will not get
cased and into the hands of Harnden in time for the steamer
tomorrow. It will then go by that of the 16th.
---------
* From Emerson's Diary, May 23, 1846:--"In Carlyle's head
(photograph), which came last night, how much appears! How
unattainable this truth to any painter! Here have I the
inevitable traits which the sun forgets not to copy, and which I
thirst to see, but which no painter remembers to give me. Here
have I the exact sculpture, the form of the head, the rooting of
the hair, thickness of the lips, the man that God made. And all
the Laurences and D'Orsays now serve me well as illustration. I
have the form and organism, and can better spare the expression
and color. What would I not give for a head of Shakespeare by
the same artist? of Plato? of Demosthenes? Here I have the
jutting brow, and the excellent shape of the head. And here the
organism of the eye full of England, the valid eye, in which I
see the strong executive talent which has made his thought
available to the nations, whilst others as intellectual as he are
pale and powerless. The photograph comes dated 25 April, 1846,
and he writes, 'I am fifty years old."'
---------
I am heartily glad that you are in direct communication with
these really energetic booksellers, Wiley and Putnam. I
understood from Wiley's letter to me, weeks ago, that their
ambition was not less than to have a monopoly of your books. I
answered, it is very desirable for us too; saving always the
rights of Mr. Hart in Philadelphia.--I told him you had no
interest in Munroe's _Sartor,_ which from the first was his own
adventure, and Little and Brown had never reprinted _Past and
Present_ or _Chartism._ The _French Revolution, Past and
Present, Chartism,_ and the _Sartor,_ I see no reason why they
should not have. Munroe and L. & B. have no real claims, and I
will speak to them. But there is one good particular in Putnam's
proffer to you, which Wiley has not established in his (first and
last) agreement with me, namely, that you shall have an interest
in what is already sold of their first edition of _Cromwell._ By
all means close with Putnam of the good mind, exempting only
Hart's interest. I have no recent correspondence with Wiley and
Putnam. And I greatly prefer that they should deal directly
with you. Yet it were best to leave an American reference open
for audit and umpirage to the stanch E.P. Clark of the New
England Bank.
Ever yours,
R.W. Emerson
CXII. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, 18 June, 1846
Dear Emerson,--I have had two letters of yours, the last of them
(31st May) only two days, and have seen a third written to Wiley
of New York. Yesterday Putnam was here, and we made our
bargain,--and are to have it signed this day at his Shop: two
copies, one of which I mean to insert along with this, and give
up to your or E.P. Clark's keeping. For, as you will see, I have
appointed Clark my representative, economic plenipotentiary and
factotum, if he will consent to act in that sublime capacity,--
subject always to your advice, to your control in all _ultra_-
economic respects, of which you alone are cognizant of the
circumstances or competent to give a judgment. Pray explain this
with all lucidity to Mr. Clark: and endeavor to impress upon him
that it is (to all appearance) a real affair of business we are
now engaged in; that I would have him satisfy his own sharp eyes
(by such methods as he finds convenient and sufficient, by
examination at New York or how he can) that the conditions of
this bargain _are_ fairly complied with by the New York
Booksellers,--who promise "every facility for ascertaining _how
many_ copies are printed," &c., &c.; and profess to be of the
integrity of Israelites indeed, in all respects whatever! If so,
it may be really useful to us. And I would have Mr. Clark, if he
will allow me to look upon him as my _man of business_ in this
affair, take reasonable pains, be at any reasonable expense, &c.
(by himself or by deputy) to ascertain that it is so in very
fact! In that case, if something come of it, we shall get the
something and be thankful; if nothing come of it, we shall have
the pleasure of caring nothing about it.--I have given Putnam two
Books (_Heroes_ and _Sartor_) ready, corrected; the others I
think will follow in the course of next month;--F. _Revolution_
waits only for an Index which my man is now busy with. The
_Cromwell,_ Supplement and all, he has now got,--published two
days ago, after sorrowful delays. Your Copy will be ready _this
afternoon,_--too late, I fear, by just one day: it will lie, in
that case, for a fortnight, and then come. Wiley will find that
he has no resource but to reprint the Book; he will reprint the
Supplement too, in justice to former purchasers; but this is the
_final_ form of the Book, this second edition; and to this all
readers of it will come at last.
We expect the Daguerreotype by next Steamer; but you take good
care not to prepossess us on its behalf! In fact, I believe, the
only satisfactory course will be to get a Sketch done too; if
you have any Painter that can manage it tolerably, pray set about
that, as the true solution of the business--out of the two
together we shall make a likeness for ourselves that will do.
Let the Lady Wife be satisfied with it; then we shall pronounce
it genuine!--
I envy you your forest-work, your summer umbrages, and clear
silent lakes. The weather here is getting insupportable to us
for heat. Indeed, if rain do not come within two weeks, I
believe we must wind up our affairs, and make for some shady
place direct:--Scotland is perhaps likeliest; but nothing yet is
fixed: you shall duly hear.--Directly after this, I set off for
Putnam's in Waterloo Place; sign his paper there; stick one
copy under a cover for you, and despatch.--Send me word about all
that you are doing and thinking. Be busy, be still and happy.
Yours ever,
T. Carlyle
CXIII. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 15 July, 1846
My Dear Carlyle,--I received by the last steamer your letter with
the copy of the covenant with Wiley and Putnam, which seems
unexceptionable. I like the English side of those men very well;
that is, Putnam seems eager to stand well and rightly with his
fellow-men. Wiley at New York it was who provoked me, last
winter, to write him an angry letter when he declared his
intention to reprint our new matter without paying for it. When
he thought better of it, and came to terms, I had not got so far
as to be affectionate, and have never yet resumed the
correspondence I had with him a year ago, about my own books. I
hope you found my letter to them, though I do not remember which,
properly cross. I believe I only enumerated difficulties. I
have talked with Little and Brown about their editions of
_Chartism,_ and _Past and Present;_ they have made no new sales
of the books since they were printed on by the pirates, and say
that the books lie still on their shelves, as also do a few
copies of the London and Boston edition of _French Revolution._
I prayed them immediately to dispose of these things by auction,
or at their trade sales, at whatever prices would sell them, and
leave the market open for W. & P.; which they promise to do.
To Munroe I went, and learn that he has bought the stereotype-
plates of the New York pirate edition of _Sartor,_ and means to
print it immediately. He is willing to stop if W. & P. will buy
of him his plates at their cost. I wrote so to them, but they
say no. And I have not spoken again with Munroe. I was in town
yesterday, and carried the copy of the Covenant to E.P. Clark,
and read him your message. His Bank occupies him entirely just
now, for his President is gone to Europe, and Clark's duties are
the more onerous. But finding that the new responsibilities
delegated to him are light and tolerable, and, at any rate,
involve no retrospection, he very cheerfully signified his
readiness to serve you, and I graciously forbore all allusions to
my heap of booksellers' accounts which he has had in keeping now
--for years, I believe. He told me that he hopes at no distant
day to have a house of his own,--he and his wife are always at
board,--and, whenever that happens, he intends to devote a
chamber in it to his "Illustrations of Mr. Carlyle's Writings,"
which, I believe, I have told you before, are a very large and
extraordinary collection of prints, pictures, books, and
manuscripts. I sent you the promised Daguerrotype with all
unwillingness, by the steamer, I think of 16 June. On 1 August,
Margaret Fuller goes to England and the Continent; and I shall
not fail to write to you by her, and you must not fail to give a
good and faithful interview to this wise, sincere, accomplished,
and most entertaining of women. I wish to bespeak Jane Carlyle's
friendliest ear to one of the noblest of women. We shall send
you no other such.
I was lately inquired of again by an agent of a huge Boston
society of young men, whether Mr. Carlyle would not come to
America and read Lectures, on some terms which they could
propose. I advised them to make him an offer, and a better one
than they had in view. Joy and Peace to you in your new freedom.
--R.W.E.
CXIV. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, 17 July, 1846
Dear Emerson,--Since I wrote last to you, I think, with the
Wiley-and-Putnam Covenant enclosed,--the Photograph, after some
days of loitering at the Liverpool Custom-house, came safe to
hand. Many thanks to you for this punctuality: this poor
Shadow, it is all you could do at present in that matter!
But it must not rest there, no. This Image is altogether
unsatisfactory, illusive, and even in some measure tragical
to me! First of all, it is a bad Photograph; no _eyes_
discernible, at least one of the eyes not, except in rare
favorable lights then, alas, Time itself and Oblivion must have
been busy. I could not at first, nor can I yet with perfect
decisiveness, bring out any feature completely recalling to
me the old Emerson, that lighted on us from the Blue, at
Craigenputtock, long ago,--_eheu!_ Here is a genial, smiling,
energetic face, full of sunny strength, intelligence, integrity,
good humor; but it lies imprisoned in baleful shades, as of the
valley of Death; seems smiling on me as if in mockery. "Dost
know me, friend? I am dead, thou seest, and distant, and forever
hidden from thee;--I belong already to the Eternities, and thou
recognizest me not!" On the whole, it is the strangest feeling I
have:--and practically the thing will be, that you get us by the
earliest opportunity some _living_ pictorial sketch, chalk-
drawing or the like, from a trustworthy hand; and send _it_
hither to represent you. Out of the two I shall compile for
myself a likeness by degrees: but as for this present, we cannot
put up with it at all; to my Wife and me, and to sundry other
parties far and near that have interest in it, there is no
satisfaction in this. So there will be nothing for you but
compliance, by the first fair chance you have: furthermore, I
bargain that the _Lady_ Emerson have, within reasonable limits, a
royal veto in the business (not absolute, if that threaten
extinction to the enterprise, but absolute within the limits of
possibility); and that she take our case in hand, and graciously
consider what can and shall be done. That will answer, I think.
Of late weeks I have been either idle, or sunk in the
sorrowfulest cobbling of old shoes again; sorrowfully reading
over old Books for the Putnams and Chapmans, namely. It is
really painful, looking in one's own old face; said "old face"
no longer a thing extant now!--Happily I have at last finished
it; the whole Lumber-troop with clothes duly brushed (_French
Revolution_ has even got an Index too) travels to New York in the
Steamer that brings you this. _Quod faustum sit:_--or indeed I
do not much care whether it be faustum or not; I grow to care
about an astonishingly small number of things as times turn with
me! Man, all men seem radically _dumb;_ jabbering mere jargons
and noises from the teeth outwards; the inner meaning of them,--
of them and of me, poor devils,--remaining shut, buried forever.
If almost all Books were burnt (my own laid next the coal), I
sometimes in my spleen feel as if it really would be better with
us! Certainly could one generation of men be forced to live
without rhetoric, babblement, hearsay, in short with the tongue
well cut out of them altogether,--their fortunate successors
would find a most improved world to start upon! For Cant does
lie piled on us, high as the zenith; an Augean Stable with the
poisonous confusion piled so high: which, simply if there once
could be nothing said, would mostly dwindle like summer snow
gradually about its business, and leave us free to use our eyes
again! When I see painful Professors of Greek, poring in their
sumptuous Oxfords over dead _Greek_ for a thousand years or more,
and leaving live _English_ all the while to develop itself under
charge of Pickwicks and Sam Wellers, as if it were nothing and
the other were all things: this, and the like of it everywhere,
fills me with reflections! Good Heavens, will the people not
come out of their wretched Old-Clothes Monmouth-Streets, Hebrew
and other; but lie there dying of the basest pestilence,--dying
and as good as dead! On the whole, I am very weary of most
"Literature":--and indeed, in very sorrowful, abstruse humor
otherwise at present.
For remedy to which I am, in these very hours, preparing for a
sally into the green Country and deep silence; I know not
altogether how or whitherward as yet; only that I must tend
towards Lancashire; towards Scotland at last. My Wife already
waits me in Lancashire; went off, in rather poor case, much
burnt by the hot Town, some ten days ago; and does not yet
report much improvement. I will write to you somewhere in my
wanderings. The address, "Scotsbrig, Ecclefechan, N.B.," if you
chance to write directly or soon after this arrives, will,
likely, be the shortest: at any rate, that, or "Cheyne Row"
either, is always sure enough to find me in a day or two
after trying.
By a kind of accident I have fallen considerably into American
History in these days; and am even looking out for American
Geography to help me. Jared Sparks, Marshall, &c. are hickory
and buckskin; but I do catch a credible trait of human life from
them here and there; Michelet's genial champagne _froth,_--alas,
I could find no fact in it that would stand handling; and so
have broken down in the middle of _La France,_ and run over to
hickory and Jared for shelter! Do you know Beriah Green?* A
body of Albany newspapers represent to me the people quarreling
in my name, in a very vague manner, as to the propriety of being
"governed," and Beriah's is the only rational voice among them.
Farewell, dear Friend. Speedy news of you!
--T. Carlyle
---------
* The Reverend Beriah Green, President for some years of Oneida
Institute, a manual-labor school at Whitesboro, N.Y. He was an
active reformer, and a leading member of the National Convention
which met in Philadelphia, December 4th, 1833, to form the
American Antislavery Society. He died in 1874, seventy-nine
years old.
---------
CXV. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 31 July, 1846
My Dear Friend,--The new edition of _Cromwell_ in its perfect
form and in excellent dress, and the copy of the Appendix, came
munificently safe by the last steamer. When thought is best,
then is there most,--is a faith of which you alone among writing
men at this day will give me experience. If it is the right
frankincense and sandal-wood, it is so good and heavenly to give
me a basketful and not a pinch. I read proudly, a little at a
time, and have not yet got through the new matter. But I think
neither the new letters nor the commentary could be spared.
Wiley and Putnam shall do what they can, and we will see if
New England will not come to reckon this the best chapter in
her Pentateuch.
I send this letter by Margaret Fuller, of whose approach I
believe I wrote you some word. There is no foretelling how you
visited and crowded English will like our few educated men or
women, and in your learned populace my luminaries may easily be
overlooked. But of all the travelers whom you have so kindly
received from me, I think of none, since Alcott went to England,
whom I so much desired that you should see and like, as this dear
old friend of mine. For two years now I have scarcely seen her,
as she has been at New York, engaged by Horace Greeley as a
literary editor of his _Tribune_ newspaper. This employment was
made acceptable to her by good pay, great local and personal
conveniences of all kinds, and unbounded confidence and respect
from Greeley himself, and all other parties connected with this
influential journal (of 30,000 subscribers, I believe). And
Margaret Fuller's work as critic of all new books, critic of the
drama, of music, and good arts in New York, has been honorable to
her. Still this employment is not satisfactory to me. She is
full of all nobleness, and with the generosity native to her mind
and character appears to me an exotic in New England, a foreigner
from some more sultry and expansive climate. She is, I suppose,
the earliest reader and lover of Goethe in this Country, and
nobody here knows him so well. Her love too of whatever is good
in French, and specially in Italian genius, give her the best
title to travel. In short, she is our citizen of the world by
quite special diploma. And I am heartily glad that she has an
opportunity of going abroad that pleases her.
Mr. Spring, a merchant of great moral merits, (and, as I am
informed, an assiduous reader of your books,) has grown rich, and
resolves to see the world with his wife and son, and has wisely
invited Miss Fuller to show it to him. Now, in the first place,
I wish you to see Margaret when you are in special good humor,
and have an hour of boundless leisure. And I entreat Jane
Carlyle to abet and exalt and secure this satisfaction to me. I
need not, and yet perhaps I need say, that M.F. is the safest of
all possible persons who ever took pen in hand. Prince
Metternich's closet not closer or half so honorable. In the next
place, I should be glad if you can easily manage to show her the
faces of Tennyson and of Browning. She has a sort of right to
them both, not only because she likes their poetry, but because
she has made their merits widely known among our young people.
And be it known to my friend Jane Carlyle, whom, if I cannot see,
I delight to name, that her visitor is an immense favorite in the
parlor, as well as in the library, in all good houses where she
is known. And so I commend her to you.
Yours affectionately,
R.W. Emerson
CXVI. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, 18 December, 1846
Dear Emerson,--This is the 18th of the month, and it is a
frightful length of time, I know not how long, since I wrote to
you,--sinner that I am! Truly we are in no case for paying debts
at present, being all sick more or less, from the hard cold
weather, and in a state of great temporary puddle but, as the
adage says, "one should own debt, and crave days";--therefore
accept a word from me, such as it may be.
I went, as usual, to the North Country in the Autumn; passed
some two extremely disconsolate months,--for all things distress
a wretched thin-skinned creature like me,--in that old region,
which is at once an Earth and a Hades to me, an unutterable
place, now that I have become mostly a _ghost_ there! I saw
Ireland too on my return, saw black potato-fields, a ragged noisy
population, that has long in a headlong baleful manner followed
the _Devil's_ leading, listened namely to blustering shallow-
violent Impostors and Children of Darkness, saying, "Yes, we know
_you,_ you are Children of Light!"--and so has fallen all out at
elbows in body and in soul; and now having lost its _potatoes_
is come as it were to a crisis; all its windy nonsense cracking
suddenly to pieces under its feet: a very pregnant crisis
indeed! A country cast suddenly into the melting-pot,--say into
the Medea's-Caldron; to be boiled into horrid _dissolution;_
whether into new _youth,_ into sound healthy life, or into
eternal death and annihilation, one does not yet know! Daniel
O'Connell stood bodily before me, in his green Mullaghmart Cap;
haranguing his retinue of Dupables: certainly the most _sordid_
Humbug I have ever seen in this world; the emblem to me, he and
his talk and the worship and credence it found, of all the
miseries that can befall a Nation. I also conversed with Young
Ireland in a confidential manner; for Young Ireland, really
meaning what it says, is worth a little talk: the Heroism and
Patriotism of a new generation; welling fresh and new from the
breasts of Nature; and already poisoned by O'Connellism and the
_Old_ Irish atmosphere of bluster, falsity, fatuity, into one
knows not what. Very sad to see. On the whole, no man ought,
for any cause, to speak lies, or have anything to do with _lies;_
but either hold his tongue, or speak a bit of the truth: that is
the meaning of a _tongue,_ people used to know!--Ireland was not
the place to console my sorrows. I returned home very sad out of
Ireland;--and indeed have remained one of the saddest, idlest,
most useless of Adam's sons ever since; and do still remain so.
I care not to _write_ anything more,--so it seems to me at
present. I am in my vacant interlunar cave (I suppose that is
the truth);--and I ought to wrap my mantle round me, and lie, if
dark, _silent_ also. But, alas, I have wasted almost all your
poor sheet first!--
Miss Fuller came duly as you announced; was welcomed for your
sake and her own. A high-soaring, clear, enthusiast soul; in
whose speech there is much of all that one wants to find in
speech. A sharp, subtle intellect too; and less of that
shoreless Asiatic dreaminess than I have sometimes met with in
her writings. We liked one another very well, I think, and the
Springs too were favorites. But, on the whole, it could not be
concealed, least of all from the sharp female intellect, that
this Carlyle was a dreadfully heterodox, not to say a dreadfully
savage fellow, at heart; believing no syllable of all that
Gospel of Fraternity, Benevolence, and _new_ Heaven-on-Earth,
preached forth by all manner of "advanced" creatures, from George
Sand to Elihu Burritt, in these days; that in fact the said
Carlyle not only disbelieved all that, but treated it as
poisonous cant,--_sweetness_ of sugar-of-lead,--a detestable
_phosphorescence_ from the dead body of a Christianity, that
would not admit itself to be dead, and lie buried with all its
unspeakable putrescences, as a venerable dead one ought!--Surely
detestable enough.--To all which Margaret listened with much good
nature; though of course with sad reflections not a few.*--She
is coming back to us, she promises. Her dialect is very
vernacular,--extremely exotic in the London climate. If she do
not gravitate too irresistibly towards that class of New-Era
people (which includes whatsoever we have of prurient, esurient,
morbid, flimsy, and in fact pitiable and unprofitable, and is at
a sad discount among men of sense), she may get into good tracks
of inquiry and connection here, and be very useful to herself and
others. I could not show her Alfred (he has been here since) nor
Landor: but surely if I can I will,--that or a hundred times as
much as that,--when she returns.--They tell me you are about
collecting your Poems. Well, though I do not approve of rhyme at
all, yet it is impossible Emerson in rhyme or prose can put down
any thought that was in his heart but I should wish to get into
mine. So let me have the Book as fast as may be. And do others
like it if you will take circumbendibuses for sound's sake! And
excuse the Critic who seems to you so unmusical; and say, It is
the nature of beast! Adieu, dear Friend: write to me, write
to me.
Yours ever,
T. Carlyle
--------
* Miss Fullers impressions of Carlyle, much to this effect, may
be found in the "Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli," Boston,
1852, Vol. II. pp. 184-190.
---------
CXVII. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 31 January, 1847
My Dear Carlyle,--Your letter came with a blessing last week. I
had already learned from Margaret Fuller, at Paris, that you had
been very good and gentle to her;--brilliant and prevailing, of
course, but, I inferred, had actually restrained the volleys and
modulated the thunder, out of true courtesy and goodness of
nature, which was worthy of all praise in a spoiled conqueror at
this time of day. Especially, too, she expressed a true
recognition and love of Jane Carlyle; and thus her visit proved
a solid satisfaction; to me, also, who think that few people
have so well earned their pleasures as she.
She wrote me a long letter; she has been very happy in England,
and her time and strength fully employed. Her description of you
and your discourse (which I read with lively curiosity also) was
the best I have had on that subject.
I tried hard to write you by the December steamer, to tell you
how forward was my book of Poems; but a little affair makes me
much writing. I chanced to have three or four items of business
to despatch, when the steamer was ready to go, and you escaped
hearing of them. I am the trustee of Charles Lane, who came out
here with Alcott and bought land, which, though sold, is not
paid for.
Somebody or somebodies in Liverpool and Manchester* have proposed
once or twice, with more or less specification, that I should
come to those cities to lecture. And who knows but I may come
one day? Steam is strong, and Liverpool is near. I should
find my account in the strong inducement of a new audience to
finish pieces which have lain waiting with little hope for months
or years.
----------
* Mr. Alexander Ireland, who had made the acquaintance of Emerson
at Edinburgh, in 1833, was his Manchester correspondent. His
memorial volume on Emerson contains an interesting record of
their relations.
----------
Ah then, if I dared, I should be well content to add some golden
hours to my life in seeing you, now all full-grown and
acknowledged amidst your own people,--to hear and to speak is so
little yet so much. But life is dangerous and delicate. I
should like to see your solid England. The map of Britain is
good reading for me. Then I have a very ignorant love of
pictures, and a curiosity about the Greek statues and stumps in
the British Museum. So beware of me, for on that distant day
when I get ready I shall come.
Long before this time you ought to have received from John
Chapman a copy of Emerson's Poems, so called, which he was
directed to send you. Poor man, you need not open them. I know
all you can say. I printed them, not because I was deceived into
a belief that they were poems, but because of the softness or
hardness of heart of many friends here who have made it a point
to have them circulated.* Once having set out to print, I obeyed
the solicitations of John Chapman, of an ill-omened street in
London, to send him the book in manuscript, for the better
securing of copyright. In printing them here I have corrected
the most unpardonable negligences, which negligences must be all
stereotyped under his fair London covers and gilt paper to the
eyes of any curious London reader; from which recollection I
strive to turn away.
---------
* In the rough draft the following sentence comes in here "I
reckon myself a good beginning of a poet, very urgent and decided
in my bent, and in some coming millennium I shall yet sing."
---------
Little and Brown have just rendered me an account, by which it
appears that we are not quite so well off as was thought last
summer, when they said they had sold at auction the balance of
your books which had been lying unsold. It seems now that the
books supposed to be sold were not all taken, and are returned to
them; one hundred _Chartism,_ sixty-three _Past and Present._
Yet we are to have some eighty-three dollars ($83.68), which you
shall probably have by the next steamer.
Yours affectionately,
R.W. Emerson
CXVIII. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, London, 2 March, 1847
Dear Emerson,--The Steamer goes tomorrow; I must, though in a
very dim condition, have a little word for you conveyed by it.
In the miscellaneous maw of that strange Steamer shall lie, among
other things, a friendly _word!_
Your very kind Letter lay waiting me here, some ten days ago;
doubly welcome, after so long a silence. We had been in
Hampshire, with the Barings, where we were last year;--some four
weeks or more; totally idle: our winter had been, and indeed
still is, unusually severe; my Wife's health in consequence was
sadly deranged; but this idleness, these Isle-of-Wight sea-
breezes, have brought matters well round again; so we cannot
grudge the visit or the idleness, which otherwise too might have
its uses. Alas, at this time my normal state is to be altogether
_idle,_ to look out upon a very lonely universe, full of grim
sorrow, full of splendor too; and not to know at all, for the
moment, on what side I am to attack it again!--I read your Book
of Poems all faithfully, at Bay House (our Hampshire quarters);
where the obstinate people,--with whom you are otherwise, in
prose, a first favorite,--foolishly _refused_ to let me read
aloud; foolishly, for I would have made it mostly all plain by
commentary:--so I had to read for myself; and can say, in spite
of my hard-heartedness, I did gain, though under impediments, a
real satisfaction and some tone of the Eternal Melodies sounding,
afar off, ever and anon, in my ear! This is fact; a truth in
Natural History; from which you are welcome to draw inferences.
A grand View of the Universe, everywhere the sound (unhappily
_far of,_ as it were) of a valiant, genuine Human Soul: this,
even under rhyme, is a satisfaction worth some struggling for.
But indeed you are very perverse; and through this perplexed
undiaphanous element, you do not fall on me like radiant summer
rainbows, like floods of sunlight, but with thin piercing
radiances which affect me like the light of the _stars._ It is
so: I wish you would become _concrete,_ and write in prose the
straightest way; but under any form I must put up with you;
that is my lot.--Chapman's edition, as you probably know, is very
beautiful. I believe there are enough of ardent silent seekers
in England to buy up this edition from him, and resolutely study
the same: as for the review multitude, they dare not exactly
call it "unintelligible moonshine," and so will probably hold
their tongue. It is my fixed opinion that we are all at sea as
to what is called Poetry, Art, &c., in these times; laboring
under a dreadful incubus of _Tradition,_ and mere "Cant heaped
balefully on us up to the very Zenith," as men, in nearly all
other provinces of their Life, except perhaps the railway
province, do now labor and stagger;--in a word, that Goethe-and-
Schiller's _"Kunst"_ has far more brotherhood with Pusey-and-
Newman's _Shovelhattery,_ and other the like deplorable
phenomena, than it is in the least aware of! I beg you take
warning: I am more serious in this than you suppose. But no,
you will not; you whistle lightly over my prophecies, and go
your own stiff-necked road. Unfortunate man!--
I had read in the Newspapers, and even heard in speech from
Manchester people, that you were certainly coming this very
summer to lecture among us: but now it seems, in your Letter,
all postponed into the vague again. I do not personally know
your Manchester negotiators, but I know in general that they are
men of respectability, insight, and activity; much connected
with the lecturing department, which is a very growing one,
especially in Lancashire, at present;--men likely, for the rest,
to _fulfil_ whatsoever they may become engaged for to you. My
own ignorant though confident guess, moreover, is, that you
would, in all senses of the word, _succeed_ there; I think, also
rather confidently, we could promise you an audience of British
aristocracy in London here,--and of British commonalty all manner
of audiences that you liked to stoop to. I heard an ignorant
blockhead (or mainly so) called --- bow-wowing here, some months
ago, to an audience of several thousands, in the City, one
evening,--upon Universal Peace, or some other field of
balderdash; which the poor people seemed very patient of. In a
word, I do not see what is to hinder you to come whenever you can
resolve upon it. The adventure is perfectly promising: an
adventure familiar to you withal; for Lecturing is with us
fundamentally just what it is with you: Much prurient curiosity,
with some ingenuous love of wisdom, an element of real reverence
for the same: everywhere a perfect openness to any man speaking
in any measure things manful. Come, therefore; gird yourself
together, and come. With little or no peradventure, you will
realize what your modest hope is, and more;--and I, for my share
of it, shall see you once again under this Sun! O Heavens, there
_might_ be some good in that! Nay, if you will travel like a
private quiet person, who knows but I, the most unlocomotive of
mortals, might be able to escort you up and down a little; to
look at many a thing along with you, and even to open my long-
closed heart and speak about the same?--There is a spare-room
always in this House for you,--in this heart, in these two
hearts, the like: bid me hope in this enterprise, in all manner
of ways where I can; and on the whole, get it rightly put
together, and embark on it, and arrive!
The good Miss Fuller has painted us all _en beau,_ and your
smiling imagination has added new colors. We have not a
triumphant life here; very far indeed from that, _ach Gott!_--as
you shall see. But Margaret is an excellent soul: in real
regard with both of us here. Since she went, I have been reading
some of her Papers in a new Book we have got: greatly superior
to all I knew before; in fact the undeniable utterances (now
first undeniable to me) of a true heroic mind;--altogether
unique, so far as I know, among the Writing Women of this
generation; rare enough too, God knows, among the writing Men.
She is very narrow, sometimes; but she is truly high: honor to
Margaret, and more and more good-speed to her.--Adieu dear
Emerson. I am ever yours,
--T.C.
CXIX. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, 18 March, 1847
Dear Emerson,--Yesterday morning, setting out to breakfast with
Richard Milnes (Milnes's breakfast is a thing you will yet have
to experience) I met, by the sunny shore of the Thames, a
benevolent Son of Adam in blue coat and red collar, who thrust
into my hand a Letter from you. A truly miraculous Son of Adam
in red collar, in the Sunny Spring Morning!--The Bill of
Seventeen Pounds is already far on its way to Dumfries, there to
be kneaded into gold by the due artists: today is American Post-
day; and already in huge hurry about many things, I am
scribbling you some word of answer.... The night _before_
Milnes's morning, I had furthermore seen your Manchester
Correspondent, Ireland,--an old Edinborough acquaintance too, as
I found. A solid, dark, broad, rather heavy man; full of
energy, and broad sagacity and practicality;--infinitely well
affected to the man Emerson too. It was our clear opinion that
you might come at any time with ample assurance of "succeeding,"
so far as wages went, and otherwise; that you ought to come, and
must, and would,--as he, Ireland, would farther write to you.
There is only one thing I have to add of my own, and beg you to
bear in mind,--a date merely. _Videlicet,_ That the time for
lecturing to the London West-End, I was given everywhere to
understand, is _from the latter end of April_ (or say April
altogether) _to the end of May:_ this is a fixed Statistic fact,
all men told me: of this you are in all arrangements to keep
mind. For it will actually do your heart good to look into the
faces, and speak into minds, of really Aristocratic Persons,--
being one yourself, you Sinner,--and perhaps indeed this will be
the greatest of all the _novelties_ that await you in your
voyage. Not to be seen, I believe, at least never seen by me in
any perfection, except in London only. From April to the end of
May; during those weeks you must be _here,_ and free: remember
that date. Will you come in Winter then, next Winter,--or when?
Ireland professed to know you by the Photograph too; which I
never yet can.--I wrote by last Packet: enough here. Your
friend Cunningham has not presented himself; shall be right
welcome when he does,--as all that in the least belong to you may
well hope to be. Adieu. Our love to you all.
Ever Yours,
T. Carlyle
CXX. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 30 April, 1847
My Dear Carlyle,--I have two good letters from you, and until now
you have had no acknowledgment. Especially I ought to have told
you how much pleasure your noble invitation in March gave me.
This pleasing dream of going to England dances before me
sometimes. It would be, I then fancy, that stimulation which my
capricious, languid, and languescent study needs. At home, no
man makes any proper demand on me, and the audience I address is
a handful of men and women too widely scattered than that they
can dictate to me that which they are justly entitled to say.
Whether supercilious or respectful, they do not say anything that
can be heard. Of course, I have only myself to please, and my
work is slighted as soon as it has lost its first attraction. It
is to be hoped, if one should cross the sea, that the terror of
your English culture would scare the most desultory of Yankees
into precision and fidelity; and perhaps I am not yet too old to
be animated by what would have seemed to my youth a proud
privilege. If you shall fright me into labor and concentration,
I shall win my game; for I can well afford to pay any price to
get my work well done. For the rest, I hesitate, of course, to
rush rudely on persons that have been so long invisible angels to
me. No reasonable man but must hold these bounds in awe:--I--
much more,--who am of a solitary habit, from my childhood until
now.--I hear nothing again from Mr. Ireland. So I will let the
English Voyage hang as an afternoon rainbow in the East, and mind
my apples and pears for the present.
You are to know that in these days I lay out a patch of orchard
near my house, very much to the improvement, as all the household
affirm, of our homestead. Though I have little skill in these
things, and must borrow that of my neighbors, yet the works of
the garden and orchard at this season are fascinating, and will
eat up days and weeks, and a brave scholar should shun it like
gambling, and take refuge in cities and hotels from these
pernicious enchantments. For the present, I stay in the
new orchard.
Duyckinck, a literary man in New York, who advises Wiley and
Putnam in their publishing enterprises, wrote me lately, that
they had $600 for you, from _Cromwell._ So may it be.
Yours,
R.W.E.
CXXI. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, 18 May, 1847
Dear Emerson,--....My time is nearly up today; but I write a
word to acknowledge your last Letter (30 April), and various
other things. For example, you must tell Mr. Thoreau (is that
the exact name? for I have lent away the printed pages) that his
Philadelphia Magazine with the _Lecture_* in two pieces was
faithfully delivered here, about a fortnight ago; and carefully
read, as beseemed, with due entertainment and recognition. A
vigorous Mr. Thoreau,--who has formed himself a good deal upon
one Emerson, but does not want abundant fire and stamina of his
own;--recognizes us, and various other things, in a most admiring
great-hearted manner; for which, as for _part_ of the confused
voice from the jury bog (not yet summed into a verdict, nor
likely to be summed till Doomsday, nor needful to sum), the poor
prisoner at the bar may justly express himself thankful! In
plain prose, I like Mr. Thoreau very well; and hope yet to hear
good and better news of him:--only let him not "turn to
foolishness"; which seems to me to be terribly easy, at present,
both in New England and Old! May the Lord deliver us all from
_Cant;_ may the Lord, whatever else he do or forbear, teach us
to look Facts honestly in the face, and to beware (with a kind of
shudder) of smearing _them_ over with our despicable and damnable
palaver, into irrecognizability, and so _falsifying_ the Lord's
own Gospels to his unhappy blockheads of children, all staggering
down to Gehenna and the everlasting Swine's-trough for _want_ of
Gospels.--O Heaven, it is the most accursed sin of man; and done
everywhere, at present, on the streets and high places, at
noonday! Very seriously I say, and pray as my chief orison, May
the Lord deliver us from it.--
----------
* On Carlyle, published in _Graham's Magazine_ in March and
April, 1847.
----------
About a week ago there came your neighbor Hoar; a solid,
sensible, effectual-looking man, of whom I hope to see much more.
So soon as possible I got him under way for Oxford, where I
suppose he was, last week;--_both_ Universities was too much for
the limits of his time; so he preferred Oxford;--and now, this
very day, I think, he was to set out for the Continent; not to
return till the beginning of July, when he promises to call here
again. There was something really pleasant to me in this Mr.
Hoar: and I had innumerable things to ask him about Concord,
concerning which topic we had hardly got a word said when our
first interview had to end. I sincerely hope he will not fail to
keep his time in returning.
You do very well, my Friend, to plant orchards; and fair fruit
shall they grow (if it please Heaven) for your grandchildren to
pluck;--a beautiful occupation for the son of man, in all
patriarchal and paternal times (which latter are patriarchal
too)! But you are to understand withal that your coming hither
to lecture is taken as a settled point by all your friends here;
and for my share I do not reckon upon the smallest doubt about
the _essential_ fact of it, simply on some calculation and
adjustment about the circumstantials. Of Ireland, who I surmise
is busy in the problem even now, you will hear by and by,
probably in more definite terms: I did not see him again after
my first notice of him to you; but there is no doubt concerning
his determinations (for all manner of reasons) to get you to
Lancashire, to England;--and in fact it is an adventure which I
think you ought to contemplate as _fixed,_--say for this year and
the beginning of next? Ireland will help you to fix the dates;
and there is nothing else, I think, which should need fixing.--
Unquestionably you would get an immense quantity of food for
ideas, though perhaps not at all in the way you anticipate, in
looking about among us: nay, if you even thought us _stupid,_
there is something in the godlike indifference with which London
will accept and sanction even that verdict,--something highly
instructive at least! And in short, for the truth must be told,
London is properly your Mother City too,--verily you have about
as much to do with it, in spite of Polk and Q. Victory, as I had!
And you ought to come and look at it, beyond doubt; and say to
this land, "Old Mother, how are you getting on at all?" To which
the Mother will answer, "Thankee, young son, and you?"--in a way
useful to both parties! That is truth.
Adieu, dear Emerson; good be with you always. Hoar gave me your
_American_ Poems: thanks. _Vale et me ama._
--T. Carlyle
CXXII. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 4 June, 1847
Dear Carlyle,--I have just got your friendliest letter of May 18,
with its varied news and new invitations. Really you are a
dangerous correspondent with your solid and urgent ways of
speaking. No affairs and no studies of mine, I fear, will be
able to make any head against these bribes. Well, I will adorn
the brow of the coming months with this fine hope; then if the
rich God at last refuses the jewel, no doubt he will give
something better--to both of us. But thinking on this project
lately, I see one thing plainly, that I must not come to London
as a lecturer. If the plan proceed, I will come and see you,--
thankful to Heaven for that mercy, should such a romance looking
reality come to pass,--I will come and see you and Jane Carlyle,
and will hear what you have to say. You shall even show me, if
you will, such other men and women as will suffer themselves to
be seen and heard, asking for nothing again. Then I will depart
in peace, as I came.
At Mr. Ireland's "Institutes," I will read lectures; and
possibly in London too, if, when there, you looking with your
clear eyes shall say that it is desired by persons who ought to
be gratified. But I wish such lecturing to be a mere
contingency, and nowise a settled purpose. I had rather stay at
home, and forego the happiness of seeing you, and the excitement
of England, than to have the smallest pains taken to collect an
audience for me. So now we will leave this egg in the desert for
the ostrich Time to hatch it or not.
It seems you are not tired of pale Americans, or will not own it.
You have sent our Country-Senator* where he wanted to go, and to
the best hospitalities as we learn today directly from him. I
cannot avoid sending you another of a different stamp. Henry
Hedge is a recluse but Catholic scholar in our remote Bangor, who
reads German and smokes in his solitary study through nearly
eight months of snow in the year, and deals out, every Sunday,
his witty apothegms to the lumber-merchants and township-owners
of Penobscot River, who have actually grown intelligent
interpreters of his riddles by long hearkening after them. They
have shown themselves very loving and generous lately, in making
a quite munificent provision for his traveling. Hedge has a true
and mellow heart,... and I hope you will like him.
--------
* The Hon. E. Rockwood Hoar.
--------
I have seen lately a Texan, ardent and vigorous, who assured me
that Carlyle's Writings were read with eagerness on the banks of
the Colorado. There was more to tell, but it is too late.
Ever yours,
R.W. Emerson
CXXIII. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 31 July, 1847
Dear Carlyle,--In my old age I am coming to see you. I have
written this day, in answer to sundry letters brought me by the
last steamer, from Mr. Ireland and Mr. Hudson of Leeds, that I
mean in good earnest to sail for Liverpool or for London about
the first of October; and I am disposing my astonished
household--astonished at such a Somerset of the sedentary master
--with that view.
My brother William was here this week from New York, and will
come again to carry my mother home with him for the winter; my
wife and children three are combining for and against me; at all
events, I am to have my visit. I pray you to cherish your good
nature, your mercy. Let your wife cherish it,--that I may see, I
indolent, this incredible worker, whose toil has been long since
my pride and wonder,--that I may see him benign and unexacting,--
he shall not be at the crisis of some over-labor. I shall not
stay but an hour. What do I care for his fame? Ah! how gladly I
hoped once to see Sterling as mediator and amalgam, when my turn
should come to see the Saxon gods at home: Sterling, who had
certain American qualities in his genius;--and now you send me
his shade. I found at Munroe's shop the effigy, which, he said,
Cunningham, whom I have not seen or heard from, had left there
for me; a front face, and a profile, both--especially the first
--a very welcome satisfaction to my sad curiosity, the face very
national, certainly, but how thoughtful and how friendly! What
more belongs to this print--whether you are editing his books, or
yourself drawing his lineaments--I know not.
I find my friends have laid out much work for me in Yorkshire and
Lancashire. What part of it I shall do, I cannot yet tell. As
soon as I know how to arrange my journey best, I shall write
you again.
Yours affectionately,
R.W. Emerson
CXXIV. Carlyle to Emerson
Rawdon, Near Leeds, Yorkshire
31 August, 1847
Dear Emerson,--Almost ever since your last Letter reached me, I
have been wandering over the country, enveloped either in a
restless whirl of locomotives, view-hunting, &c., or sunk in the
deepest torpor of total idleness and laziness, forgetting, and
striving to forget, that there was any world but that of dreams;
--and though at intervals the reproachful remembrance has arisen
sharply enough on me, that I ought, on all accounts high and low,
to have written you an answer, never till today have I been able
to take pen in hand, and actually begin that operation! Such is
the naked fact. My Wife is with me; we leave no household
behind us but a servant; the face of England, with its mad
electioneerings, vacant tourist dilettantings, with its shady
woods, green yellow harvest-fields and dingy mill-chimneys, so
new and old, so beautiful and ugly, every way so _abstruse_ and
_un_speakable, invites to silence; the whole world, fruitful yet
disgusting to this human soul of mine, invites me to silence; to
sleep, and dreams, and stagnant indifference, as if for the time
one had _got_ into the country of the Lotos-Eaters, and it made
no matter what became of anything and all things. In good truth,
it is a wearied man, at least a dreadfully slothful and
slumberous man, eager for _sleep_ in any quantity, that now
addresses you! Be thankful for a few half-dreaming words, till
we awake again.
As to your visit to us, there is but one thing to be said and
repeated: That a prophet's chamber is ready for you in Chelsea,
and a brotherly and sisterly welcome, on whatever day at whatever
hour you arrive: this, which is all of the Practical that I can
properly take charge of, is to be considered a given quantity
always. With regard to Lecturing, &c., Ireland, with whom I
suppose you to be in correspondence, seems to have awakened all
this North Country into the fixed hope of hearing you,--and God
knows they have need enough to hear a man with sense in his
head;--it was but the other day I read in one of their
Newspapers, "We understand that Mr. Emerson the distinguished &c.
is certainly &c. this winter," all in due Newspaper phrase, and I
think they settled your arrival for "October" next. May it prove
so! But on the whole there _is_ no doubt of your coming; that
is a great fact. And if so, I should say, Why not come at once,
even as the Editor surmises? You will evidently do no other
considerable enterprise till this voyage to England is achieved.
Come therefore;--and we shall see; we shall hear and speak! I
do not know another man in all the world to whom I can _speak_
with clear hope of getting adequate response from him: if I
speak to you, it will be a breaking of my silence for the last
time perhaps,--perhaps for the first time, on some points!
_Allons._ I shall not always be so roadweary, lifeweary, sleepy,
and stony as at present. I even think there is yet another Book
in me; "Exodus from Houndsditch" (I think it might be called),
a peeling off of fetid _Jewhood_ in every sense from myself and
my poor bewildered brethren: one other Book; and, if it were a
right one, rest after that, the deeper the better, forevermore.
_Ach Gott!_--
Hedge is one of the sturdiest little fellows I have come across
for many a day. A face like a rock; a voice like a howitzer;
only his honest kind gray eyes reassure you a little. We have
met only once; but hope (mutually, I flatter myself) it may be
often by and by. That hardy little fellow too, what has he to do
with "Semitic tradition" and the "dust-hole of extinct
Socinianism," George-Sandism, and the Twaddle of a thousand
Magazines? Thor and his Hammer, even, seem to me a little more
respectable; at least, "My dear Sir, endeavor to clear your mind
of Cant." Oh, we are all sunk, much deeper than any of us
imagines. And our worship of "beautiful sentiments," &c., &c. is
as contemptible a form of long-ears as any other, perhaps the
most so of any. It is in fact damnable.--We will say no more of
it at present. Hedge came to me with tall lank Chapman at his
side,--an innocent flail of a creature, with considerable impetus
in him: the two when they stood up together looked like a circle
and tangent,--in more senses than one.
Jacobson, the Oxford Doctor, who welcomed your Concord Senator in
that City, writes to me that he has received (with blushes, &c.)
some grand "Gift for his Child" from that Traveler; whom I am
accordingly to thank, and blush to,--Jacobson not knowing his
address at present. The "address" of course is still more
unknown to _me_ at present: but we shall know it, and the man it
indicates, I hope, again before long. So, much for that.
And now, dear Emerson, Adieu. Will your next Letter tell us the
_when?_ O my Friend! We are here with Quakers, or Ex-Quakers
rather; a very curious people, "like water from the crystal
well"; in a very curious country too, most beautiful and very
ugly: but why write of it, or of anything more, while half
asleep and lotos-eating! Adieu, my Friend; come soon, and let
us meet again under this Sun.
Yours,
T. Carlyle
CXXV. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 30 September, 1847
My Dear Carlyle,--The last steamer brought, as ever, good tidings
from you, though certainly from a new habitat, at Leeds, or near
it. If Leeds will only keep you a little in its precinct, I will
search for you there; for it is one of the parishes in the
diocese which Mr. Ireland and his friends have carved out for me
on the map of England.
I have taken a berth in the packet-ship "Washington Irving,"
which leaves Boston for Liverpool next week, 5 October; having
decided, after a little demurring and advising, to follow my
inclination in shunning the steamer. The owners will almost take
oath that their ship cannot be out of a port twenty days. At
Liverpool and Manchester I shall take advice of Ireland and his
officers of the "Institutes," and perhaps shall remain for some
time in that region, if my courage and my head are equal to the
work they offer me. I will write you what befalls me in the
strange city. Who knows but I may have adventures--I who had
never one, as I have just had occasion to write to Mrs. Howitt,
who inquired what mine were?
Well, if I survive Liverpool, and Manchester, and Leeds, or
rather my errands thither, I shall come some fine day to see you
in your burly city, you in the centre of the world, and sun me a
little in your British heart. It seems a lively passage that I
am entering in the old Dream World, and perhaps the slumbers are
lighter and the Morning is near. Softly, dear shadows, do not
scatter yet. Knit your panorama close and well, till these rare
figures just before me draw near, and are greeted and known.
But there is no more time in this late night--and what need?
since I shall see you and yours soon.
Ever yours,
R.W.E.
CXXVI. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, 15 October, 1847
My Dear Emerson,--Your Letter from Concord, of the 31st of July,
had arrived duly in London; been duly forwarded to my transient
address at Buxton in Derbyshire,--and there, by the faithless
Postmaster, _retained_ among his lumber, instead of given to me
when I called on him! We staid in Buxton only one day and night;
two Newspapers, as I recollect, the Postmaster did deliver to me
on my demand; but your Letter he, with scandalous carelessness,
kept back, and left me to travel forwards without: there
accordingly it lay, week after week, for a month or more; and
only by half-accident and the extraordinary diligence and
accuracy of our Chelsea Postman, was it recovered at all, not
many days ago, after my Wife's return hither. Consider what kind
of fact this was and has been for us! For now, if all have gone
right, you are approaching the coast of England; Chelsea and
your fraternal House _hidden_ under a disastrous cloud to you;
and I know not so much as whitherward to write, and send you a
word of solution. It is one of the most unpleasant mistakes that
ever befell me; I have no resource but to enclose this Note to
Mr. Ireland, and charge him by the strongest adjurations to
have it ready for you the first thing when you set foot upon
our shores.*
------------
* Mr. Ireland, in his Recollections of Emerson's Visit to
England, p. 59, prints Carlyle's note to himself, enclosing this
letter, and adds: "The ship reached Liverpool on the 22d of
October, and Mr. Emerson at once proceeded to Manchester. After
spending a few hours in friendly talk, he was 'shot up,' as
Carlyle had desired, to Chelsea, and at the end of a week
returned to Manchester, to begin his lectures."
---------
Know then, my Friend, that in verity your Home while in England
is _here;_ and all other places, whither work or amusement may
call you, are but inns and temporary lodgings. I have returned
hither a day or two ago, and free from any urgent calls or
businesses of any kind; my Wife has your room all ready;--and
here surely, if anywhere in the wide Earth, there ought to be a
brother's welcome and kind home waiting you! Yes, by Allah!--An
"Express Train" leaves Liverpool every afternoon; and in some
six hours will set you down here. I know not what your
engagements are; but I say to myself, Why not come at once, and
rest a little from your sea-changes, before going farther? In
six hours you can be out of the unstable waters, and sitting in
your own room here. You shall not be bothered with talk till you
repose; and you shall have plenty of it, hot and hot, when the
appetite does arise in you. "No. 5 Great Cheyne Row, Chelsea":
come to the "London Terminus," from any side; say these magic
words to any Cabman, and by night or by day you are a welcome
apparition here,--foul befall us otherwise! This is the fact:
what more can I say? I make my affidavit of the same; and
require you in the name of all Lares and Penates, and Household
Gods ancient and modern which are sacred to men, to consider it
and take brotherly account of it!--
Shall we hear of you, then, in a day or two: shall we not
perhaps see you in a day or two! That depends on the winds and
the chances; but our affection is independent of such. Adieu;
_au revoir,_ it now is! Come soon; come at once.
Ever yours,
T. Carlyle
Extracts from Emerson's Diary
October, 1847
"I found at Liverpool, after a couple of days, a letter which had
been seeking me, from Carlyle, addressed to 'R.W.E. on the
instant when he lands in England,' conveying the heartiest
welcome and urgent invitation to house and hearth. And finding
that I should not be wanted for a week in the Lecture-rooms I
came down to London on Monday, and, at ten at night, the door was
opened by Jane Carlyle, and the man himself was behind her with a
lamp in the hall. They were very little changed from their old
selves of fourteen years ago (in August), when I left them at
Craigenputtock. 'Well,' said Carlyle, 'here we are shoveled
together again.' The floodgates of his talk are quickly opened,
and the river is a plentiful stream. We had a wide talk that
night until nearly one o'clock, and at breakfast next morning
again. At noon or later we walked forth to Hyde Park and the
Palaces, about two miles from here, to the National Gallery, and
to the Strand, Carlyle melting all Westminster and London into
his talk and laughter, as he goes. Here, in his house, we
breakfast about nine, and Carlyle is very prone, his wife says,
to sleep till ten or eleven, if he has no company. An immense
talker, and altogether as extraordinary in that as in his
writing; I think, even more so; you will never discover his
real vigor and range, or how much more he might do than he has
ever done, without seeing him. My few hours discourse with him,
long ago, in Scotland, gave me not enough knowledge of him; and
I have now at last been taken by surprise by him."
"C. and his wife live on beautiful terms. Their ways are very
engaging, and, in her bookcase, all his books are inscribed to her,
as they came from year to year, each with some significant lines."
"I had a good talk with C. last night. He says over and over,
for months, for years, the same thing. Yet his guiding genius is
his moral sense, his perception of the sole importance of truth
and justice; and he, too, says that there is properly no
religion in England. He is quite contemptuous about _'Kunst,'_
also, in Germans, or English, or Americans;* and has a huge
respect for the Duke of Wellington, as the only Englishman, or
the only one in the Aristocracy, who will have nothing to do with
any manner of lie."
----------
* See _English Traits,_ Ch. XVI.; and _Life of Sterling,_ Part
II. Ch. VII. "Among the windy gospels addressed to our poor
century there are few louder than this of Art."
----------
The following sentences are of later date than the preceding:--
"Carlyle had all the _kleinstadtlich_ traits of an islander
and a Scotsman, and reprimanded with severity the rebellious
instincts of the native of a vast continent which made light of
the British Islands."
"Carlyle has a hairy strength which makes his literary vocation a
mere chance, and what seems very contemptible to him. I could
think only of an enormous trip-hammer with an 'Aeolian attachment."'
"In Carlyle as in Byron, one is more struck with the rhetoric
than with the matter. He has manly superiority rather than
intellectuality, and so makes good hard hits all the time. There
is more character than intellect in every sentence, herein
strongly resembling Samuel Johnson."
"England makes what a step from Dr. Johnson to Carlyle! what
wealth of thought and science, what expansion of views and
profounder resources does the genius and performance of this
last imply! If she can make another step as large, what new
ages open!"
CXXVII. Emerson to Carlyle
Mrs. Massey's, Manchester, 2 Fenny Place, Fenny St.
November 5, 1847
Ah! my dear friend, all these days have gone, and you have had no
word from me, when the shuttles fly so swiftly in your English
loom, and in so few hours we may have tidings of the best that
live. At last, and only this day for the first day, I am
stablished in my own lodgings on English ground, and have a fair
parlor and chamber, into both of which the sun and moon shine,
into which friendly people have already entered.
Hitherto I have been the victim of trifles,--which is the fate
and the chief objection to traveling. Days are absorbed in
precious nothings. But now that I am in some sort a citizen, of
Manchester, and also of Liverpool (for there also I am to enter
on lodgings tomorrow, at 56 Stafford Street, Islington), perhaps
the social heart of this English world will include me also in
its strong and healthful circulations. I get the best letters
from home by the last steamers, and was much occupied in
Liverpool yesterday in seeing Dr. Nichol of Glasgow, who was to
sail in the "Acadia," and in giving him credentials to some
Americans. I find here a very kind reception from your friends,
as they emphatically are,--Ireland, Espinasse, Miss Jewsbury, Dr.
Hodgson, and a circle expanding on all sides outward,--and Mrs.
Paulet at Liverpool. I am learning there also to know friendly
faces, and a certain Roscoe Club has complimented me with its
privileges. The oddest part of my new position is my alarming
penny correspondence, which, what with welcomes, invitations to
lecture, proffers of hospitality, suggestions from good
Swedenborgists and others for my better guidance touching the
titles of my discourses, &c., &c., all requiring answers,
threaten to eat up a day like a cherry. In this fog and
miscellany, and until the heavenly sun shall give me one beam,
will not you, friend and joy of so many years, send me a quiet
line or two now and then to say that you still smoke your pipe in
peace, side by side with wife and brother also well and smoking,
or able to smoke? Now that I have in some measure calmed down
the astonishment and consternation of seeing your dreams change
into realities, I mean, at my next approximation or perihelion,
to behold you with the most serene and sceptical calmness.
So give my thanks and true affectionate remembrance to Jane
Carlyle, and my regards also to Dr. Carlyle, whose precise
address please also to send me.
Ever your loving
R.W.E.
The address at the top of this note is the best for the present,
as I mean to make this my centre.
CXXVIII. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, 13 November, 1847
Dear Emerson,--Your Book-parcels were faithfully sent off,
directly after your departure: in regard to one of them I had a
pleasant visit from the proprietor in person,--the young
Swedenborgian Doctor, whom to my surprise I found quite an
agreeable, accomplished secular young gentleman, much given to
"progress of the species," &c., &c.; from whom I suppose you have
yourself heard. The wandering umbrella, still short of an owner,
hangs upon its peg here, without definite outlook. Of yourself
there have come news, by your own Letter, and by various excerpts
from Manchester Newspapers. _Gluck zu!_--
This Morning I received the Enclosed, and send it off to you
without farther response. Mudie, if I mistake not, is some small
Bookseller in the Russell-Square region; pray answer him, if you
think him worthy of answer. A dim suspicion haunts me that
perhaps he was the Republisher (or Pirate) of your first set of
_Essays:_ but probably he regards this as a mere office of
untutored friendship on his part. Or possibly I do the poor man
wrong by misremembrance? Chapman could tell.
I am sunk deep here, in effete Manuscripts, in abstruse
meditations, in confusions old and new; sinking, as I may
describe myself, through stratum after stratum of the Inane,--
down to one knows not what depth! I unfortunately belong to
the Opposition Party in many points, and am in a minority of
one. To keep silence, therefore, is among the principal duties
at present.
We had a call from Bancroft, the other evening. A tough Yankee
man; of many worthy qualities more tough than musical; among
which it gratified me to find a certain small under-current of
genial _humor,_ or as it were _hidden laughter,_ not noticed
heretofore.
My Wife and all the rest of us are well; and do all salute you
with our true wishes, and the hope to have you here again before
long. Do not bother yourself with other than voluntary writing
to me, while there is so much otherwise that you are obliged to
write. If on any point you want advice, information, or other
help that lies within the limits of my strength, command me, now
and always. And so Good be with you; and a happy meeting to us
soon again.
Yours ever truly,
T. Carlyle
CXXIX. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, 30 November, 1847
Dear Emerson,--Here is a word for you from Miss Fuller; I send
you the Cover also, though I think there is little or nothing in
that. It contained another little Note for Mazzini; who is
wandering in foreign parts, on paths unknown to me at present.
Pray send my regards to Miss Fuller, when you write.
We hear of you pretty often, and of your successes with the
Northern populations. We hope for you in London again before
long.--I am busy, if at all, altogether _inarticulately_ in these
days. My respect for _silence,_ my distrust of _Speech,_ seem to
grow upon me. There is a time for both, says Solomon; but we,
in our poor generation, have forgotten one of the "times."
Here is a Mr. Forster* of Rawdon, or Bradford, in Yorkshire; our
late host in the Autumn time; who expects and longs to be yours
when you come into those parts.
I am busy with William Conqueror's _Domesday Book_ and with the
commentaries of various blockheads on it:--Ah me!
All good be with you, and happy news from those dear to you.
Yours ever,
T. Carlyle
-----------
* Now the Rt. Hon. W E. Forster, M.P.
-----------
CXXX. Emerson to Carlyle
2 Fenny Street, Higher Broughton, Manchester
28 December, 1847
Dear Carlyle,--I am concerned to discover that Margaret Fuller in
the letter which you forwarded prays me to ask you and Mrs.
Carlyle respecting the Count and Countess Pepoli, who are in Rome
for the winter, whether they would be good for her to know?--That
is pretty nearly the form of her question. As one third of the
winter is gone, and one half will be, before her question can be
answered, I fear, it will have lost some of its pertinence.
Well, it will serve as a token to pass between us, which will
please me if it do not Margaret.--I have had nothing to send you
tidings of. Yet I get the best accounts from home of wife and
babes and friends. I am seeing this England more thoroughly than
I had thought was possible to me. I find this lecturing a key
which opens all doors. I have received everywhere the kindest
hospitality from a great variety of persons. I see many
intelligent and well-informed persons, and some fine geniuses. I
have every day a better opinion of the English, who are a very
handsome and satisfactory race of men, and, in the point of
material performance, altogether incomparable. I have made some
vain attempts to end my lectures, but must go on a little longer.
With kindest regards to the Lady Jane,
Your friend,
R.W.E.
Margaret Fuller's address, if anything is to be written, is, Care
of Maquay, Pakenham & Co., Rome.
CXXXI. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, 30 December, 1847
My Dear Emerson,--We are very glad to see your handwriting again,
and learn that you are well, and doing well. Our news of you
hitherto, from the dim Lecture-element, had been satisfactory
indeed, but vague. Go on and prosper.
I do not much think Miss Fuller would do any great good with the
Pepolis,--even if they are still in Rome, and not at Bologna as
our advices here seemed to indicate. Madam Pepoli is an elderly
Scotch lady, of excellent commonplace vernacular qualities,
hardly of more; the Count, some years younger, and a much airier
man, is on all sides a beautiful _Dilettante,_--little suitable,
I fear, to the serious mind that can recognize him as such!
However, if the people are still in Rome, Miss Fuller can easily
try: Bid Miss Fuller present my Wife's compliments, or mine, or
even _yours_ (for they know all our domesticities here, and are
very intimate, especially Madam with _My_ dame); upon which the
acquaintance is at once made, and can be continued if useful.
This morning Richard Milnes writes to me for your address; which
I have sent. He is just returned out of Spain; home swiftly to
"vote for the Jew Bill"; is doing hospitalities at Woburn Abbey;
and I suppose will be in Yorkshire (home, near Pontefract) before
long. See him if you have opportunity: a man very easy to _see_
and get into flowing talk with; a man of much sharpness of
faculty, well tempered by several inches of "Christian _fat_" he
has upon his ribs for covering. One of the idlest, cheeriest,
most gifted of fat little men.
Tennyson has been here for three weeks; dining daily till he is
near dead;--setting out a Poem withal. He came in to us on
Sunday evening last, and on the preceding Sunday: a truly
interesting Son of Earth, and Son of Heaven,--who has almost lost
his way, among the will-o'-wisps, I doubt; and may flounder ever
deeper, over neck and nose at last, among the quagmires that
abound! I like him well; but can do next to nothing for him.
Milnes, with general co-operation, got him a Pension; and he has
bread and tobacco: but that is a poor outfit for such a soul.
He wants a _task;_ and, alas, that of spinning rhymes, and
naming it "Art" and "high Art," in a Time like ours, will never
furnish him.
For myself I have been entirely _idle,_--I dare not even say, too
abstrusely _occupied;_ for I have merely been _looking_ at the
Chaos even, not by any means working in it. I have not even read
a Book,--that I liked. All "Literature" has grown inexpressibly
unsatisfactory to me. Better be silent than talk farther in
this mood.
We are going off, on Saturday come a week, into Hampshire, to
certain Friends you have heard me speak of. Our address, till
the beginning of February, is "Hon. W.B. Baring, Alverstoke,
Gosport, Hants." My Wife sends you many kind regards; remember
us across the Ocean too;--and be well and busy till we meet.
Yours ever,
T. Carlyle
Last night there arrived No. 1 of the _Massachusetts Review:_
beautiful paper and print; and very promising otherwise. In the
Introduction I well recognized the hand; in the first Article
too,--not in any of the others. _Faustum sit._
CXXXII. Emerson to Carlyle
Ambleside, 26 February, 1848
My Dear Carlyle,--I am here in Miss Martineau's house, and having
seen a good deal of England, and lately a good deal of Scotland
too, I am tomorrow to set forth again for Manchester, and
presently for London. Yesterday, I saw Wordsworth for a good
hour and a half, which he did not seem to grudge, for he talked
freely and fast, and--bating his cramping Toryism and what
belongs to it--wisely enough. He is in rude health, and, though
seventy-seven years old, says he does not feel his age in any
particular. Miss Martineau is in excellent health and spirits,
though just now annoyed by the hesitations of Murray to publish
her book;* but she confides infinitely in her book, which is the
best fortune. But I please myself not a little that I shall in a
few days see you again, and I will give you an account of my
journey. I have heard almost nothing of your late weeks,--but
that is my fault,--only I heard with sorrow that your wife had
been ill, and could not go with you on your Christmas holidays.
Now may her good days have come again! I say I have heard
nothing of your late days; of your early days, of your genius,
of your influence, I cease not to hear and to see continually,
yea, often am called upon to resist the same with might and main.
But I will not pester you with it now.--Miss Martineau, who is
most happily placed here, and a model of housekeeping, sends
kindest remembrances to you both.
Yours ever,
R. W. Emerson.
---------
* "Eastern Life, Past and Present."
---------
CXXXIII. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, 28 February, 1848
Dear Emerson,--We are delighted to hear of you again at first
hand: our last traditions represented you at Edinburgh, and left
the prospect of your return hither very vague. I have only time
for one word tonight: to say that your room is standing vacant
ever since you quitted it,--ready to be lighted up with all
manner of physical and moral _fires_ that the place will yield;
and is in fact _your_ room, and expects to be accounted such.--I
know not specially what your operations in this quarter are to
be; but whatever they are, or the arrangements necessary for
them, surely it is here that you must alight again in the big
Babel, and deliberately adjust what farther is to be done.
Write to us what day you are to arrive; and the rest is all
already managed.
Jane has never yet got out since the cold took her; but she has
at no time been so ill as is frequent with her in these winter
disorders; she is now steadily improving, and we expect will
come out with the sun and the green leaves,--as she usually does.
I too caught an ugly cold, and, what is very uncommon with me, a
kind of cough, while down in Hampshire; which, with other
inarticulate matters, has kept me in a very mute abstruse
condition all this while; so that, for many weeks past, I have
properly had no history,--except such as trees in winter, and
other merely passive objects may have. That is not an agreeable
side of the page; but I find it indissolubly attached to the
other: no historical leaf with me but has them _both!_ Reading
does next to nothing for me at present, neither will thinking or
even dreaming rightly prosper; of no province can I be quite
master except of the _silent_ one, in such a case. One feels
there, at last, as if quite annihilated; and takes up arms again
(the poor goose-quill is no great things of a weapon to arm
with!) as if in a kind of sacred despair.
All people are in a sort of joy-dom over the new French Republic,
which has descended suddenly (or shall we say, _ascended_ alas?)
out of the Immensities upon us; showing once again that the
righteous Gods do yet live and reign! It is long years since I
have felt any such deep-seated pious satisfaction at a public
event. Adieu: come soon; and warn us when.
Yours ever,
T. Carlyle
CXXXIV. Emerson to Carlyle
2 Fenny St., Manchester, 2 March, Thursday [1848]
Dear Friend,--I hope to set forward today for London, and to
arrive there some time tonight. I am to go first to Chapman's
house, where I shall lodge for a time. If it is too noisy, I
shall move westward. But I hope you are to be at home tomorrow,
for if I prosper, I shall come and beg a dinner with you,--is it
not at five o'clock? I am sorry you have no better news to tell
me of your health,--your own and your wife's. Tell her I shall
surely report you to Alcott, who will have his revenge. Thanks
that you keep the door so wide open for me still. I shall always
come in.
Ever yours,
R.W.E.
CXXXV. Emerson to Carlyle
Monday, P.M., 19 June, 1848
Dear Carlyle,--Mrs. Crowe of Edinburgh, an excellent lady, known
to you and to many good people, wishes me to go to you with her.
I tell her that I believe you relax the reins of labor as early
as one hour after noon, and I propose one o'clock on Thursday for
the invasion. If you are otherwise engaged, you must send me
word. Otherwise, we shall come.
It was sad to hear no good news last evening from Jane Carlyle.
I heartily hope the night brought sleep, and the morning better
health to her.
Yours always,
R.W. Emerson
CXXXVI. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, 20 June, 1848
Dear Emerson,--We shall be very glad to become acquainted with
Mrs. Crowe, of whom already by report we know many favorable
things. Brown (of Portobello, Edinburgh) had given us intimation
of her kind purposes towards Chelsea; and now on Thursday you
(please the Pigs) shall see the adventure achieved. Two o'clock,
not one, is the hour when labor ceases here,--if, alas, there be
any "labor" so much as got begun; which latter is often enough
the sad case. But at either hour we shall be ready for you.
I hope you penetrated the Armida Palace, and did your devoir to
the sublime Duchess and her Luncheon yesterday! I cannot without
a certain internal amusement (foreign enough to my present humor)
represent to myself such a conjunction of opposite stars! But you
carry a new image off with you, and are a gainer, you. _Allons._
My Papers here are in a state of distraction, state of despair!
I see not what is to become of them and me.
Yours ever truly,
T. Carlyle
My Wife arose without headache on Monday morning; but feels
still a good deal beaten;--has not had "such a headache" for
several years.
CXXXVII. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, Friday [23 June, 1848]
Dear Emerson,--I forgot to say, last night, that you are to dine
with us on Sunday; that after our call on the Lady Harriet* we
will take a stroll through the Park, look at the Sunday
population, and find ourselves here at five o'clock for the
above important object. Pray remember, therefore, and no excuse!
In haste.
Yours ever truly,
T. Carlyle
-------------
* Lady Ashburton
-------------
CXXXVIII. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, 6 December, 1848
Dear Emerson,--We received your Letter* duly, some time ago, with
many welcomes; and have as you see been too remiss in answering
it. Not from forgetfulness, if you will take my word; no, but
from many causes, too complicated to articulate, and justly
producing an indisposition to put pen to paper at all! Never was
I more silent than in these very months; and, with reason too,
for the world at large, and my own share of it in small, are both
getting more and more unspeakable with any convenience! In
health we of this household are about as well as usual;--and look
across to the woods of Concord with more light than we had,
realizing for ourselves a most mild and friendly picture there.
Perhaps it is quite as well that you are left alone of foreign
interference, even of a Letter from Chelsea, till you get your
huge bale of English reminiscences assorted a little. Nobody
except me seems to have heard from you; at least the rest, in
these parts, all plead destitution when I ask for news. What you
saw and suffered and enjoyed here will, if you had once got it
properly warehoused, be new wealth to you for many years. Of one
impression we fail not here: admiration of your pacific virtues,
of gentle and noble tolerance, often sorely tried in this place!
Forgive me my ferocities; you do not quite know what I suffer in
these latitudes, or perhaps it would be even easier for you.
Peace for me, in a Mother of Dead Dogs like this, there is not,
was not, will not be,--till the battle itself end; which,
however, is a sure outlook, and daily growing a nearer one.
----------
* The letter is missing, but a fragment of the rough draft of it
exists, dated Concord, 2 October, 1848. Emerson had returned
home in July, and he begins: "'T is high time, no doubt, long
since, that you heard from me, and if there were good news in
America for you, you would be sure to hear. All goes at heavy
trot with us... I fell again quickly into my obscure habits, more
fit for me than the fine things I had seen. I made my best
endeavor to praise the rich country I had seen, and its
excellent, energetic, polished people. And it is very easy for
me to do so. England is the country of success, and success has
a great charm for me, more than for those I talk with at home.
But they were obstinate to know if the English were superior to
their possessions, and if the old religion warmed their hearts,
and lifted a little the mountain of wealth. So I enumerated the
list of brilliant persons I had seen, and the [break in MS.].
But the question returned. Did you find kings and priests? Did
you find sanctities and beauties that took away your memory, and
sent you home a changed man with new aims, and with a discontent
of your old pastures?"
Here the fragment ends. Emerson's answer to these questions may be
found in the chapter entitled "Results," in his _English Traits._
----------
Nay, there is another practical question,--but it is from the
female side of the house to the female side,--and in fact
concerns Indian meal, upon which Mrs. Emerson, or you, or the
Miller of Concord (if he have any tincture of philosophy) are now
to instruct us! The fact is, potatoes having vanished here, we
are again, with motives large and small, trying to learn the use
of Indian meal; and indeed do eat it daily to meat at dinner,
though hitherto with considerable despair. Question _first,_
therefore: Is there by nature a _bitter_ final taste, which
makes the throat smart, and disheartens much the apprentice in
Indian meal;--or is it accidental, and to be avoided? We surely
anticipate the latter answer; but do not yet see how. At first
we were taught the meal, all ground on your side of the water,
had got fusty, _raw;_ an effect we are well used to in oaten and
other meals but, last year, we had a bushel of it ground _here,_
and the bitter taste was there as before (with the addition of
much dirt and sand, our millstones I suppose being too soft);--
whereupon we incline to surmise that there is, perhaps, as in the
case of oats, some pellicle or hull that ought to be _rejected_
in making the meal? Pray ask some philosophic Miller, if Mrs.
Emerson or you do not know;--and as a corollary this _second_
question: What is the essential difference between _white_ (or
brown-gray-white) Indian Meal and _yellow_ (the kind we now have;
beautiful as new Guineas, but with an ineffaceable tastekin of
_soot_ in it)?--And question _third,_ which includes all: How to
cook _mush_ rightly, at least without bitter? _Long_-continued
boiling seems to help the bitterness, but does not cure it. Let
some oracle speak! I tell all people, our staff of life is in
the Mississippi Valley henceforth;--and one of the truest
benefactors were an American Minerva who could teach us to cook
this meal; which our people at present (I included) are
unanimous in finding nigh uneatable, and loudly exclaimable
against! Elihu Burritt had a string of recipes that went through
all newspapers three years ago; but never sang there oracle of
longer ears than that,--totally destitute of practical
significance to any creature here!
And now enough of questioning. Alas, alas, I have a quite other
batch of sad and saddest considerations,--on which I must not so
much as enter at present! Death has been very busy in this
little circle of ours within these few days. You remember
Charles Buller, to whom I brought you over that night at the
Barings' in Stanhope Street? He died this day week, almost quite
unexpectedly; a sore loss to all that knew him personally, and
his gladdening sunny presence in many circles here; a sore loss
to the political people too, for he was far the cleverest of all
Whig men, and indeed the only genial soul one can remember in
that department of things.* We buried him yesterday; and now
see what new thing has come. Lord Ashburton, who had left his
mother well in Hampshire ten hours before, is summoned from poor
Buller's funeral by telegraph; hurries back, finds his mother,
whom he loved much, already dead! She was a Miss Bingham, I
think, from Pennsylvania, perhaps from Philadelphia itself. You
saw her; but the first sight by no means told one all or the
best worth that was in that good Lady. We are quite bewildered
by our own regrets, and by the far painfuler sorrow of those
closely related to these sudden sorrows. Of which let me be
silent for the present;--and indeed of all things else, for
_speech,_ inadequate mockery of one's poor meaning, is quite a
burden to me just now!
---------
* The reader of Carlyle's _Reminiscences,_ and of Froude's
volumes of his biography, is familiar with the close relations
that had existed between Buller and Carlyle.
----------
Neuberg* comes hither sometimes; a welcome, wise kind of man.
Poor little Espinasse still toils cheerily at the oar, and
various friends of yours are about us. Brother John did send
through Chapman all the _Dante,_ which we calculate you have
received long ago: he is now come to Town; doing a Preface,
&c., which also will be sent to you, and just about publishing.--
Helps, who has been alarmingly ill, and touring on the Rhine
since we were his guests, writes to me yesterday from Hampshire
about sending you a new Book of his. I instructed him How.
Adieu, dear Emerson; do not forget us, or forget to think
as kindly as you can of us, while we continue in this
world together.
Yours ever affectionately,
T. Carlyle
---------
* Mr. Ireland, in his _Recollections,_ p. 62, gives an
interesting account of Mr. Neuberg,--a highly cultivated German,
who assisted Carlyle in some of the later literary labors of his
life. Neuberg died in 1867, and in a letter to his sister of
that year Carlyle says: "No kinder friend had I in this world;
no man of my day, I believe, had so faithful, loyal, and willing
a helper as he generously was to me for the last twenty or
more years."
-----------
CXXXIX. Emerson to Carlyle
Boston, 28 January, 1849
My Dear Carlyle,--Here in Boston for the day, though in no fit
place for writing, you shall have, since the steamer goes
tomorrow, a hasty answer to at least one of your questions....
You tell me heavy news of your friends, and of those who were
friendly to me for your sake. And I have found farther
particulars concerning them in the newspapers. Buller I have
known by name ever since he was in America with Lord Durham, and
I well remember his face and figure at Mr. Baring's. Even
England cannot spare an accomplished man.
Since I had your letter, and, I believe, by the same steamer,
your brother's _Dante,_* complete within and without, has come to
me, most welcome. I heartily thank him. 'T is a most
workmanlike book, bearing every mark of honest value. I thank
him for myself, and I thank him, in advance, for our people, who
are sure to learn their debt to him, in the coming months and
years. I sent the book, after short examination, the same day,
to New York, to the Harpers, lest their edition should come out
without Prolegomena. But they answered, the next day, that they
had already received directly the same matter;--yet have not up
to this time returned my book. For the Indian corn,--I have been
to see Dr. Charles T. Jackson (my wife's brother, and our best
chemist, inventor of etherization), who tells me that the reason
your meal is bitter is, that all the corn sent to you from us is
kiln-dried here, usually at a heat of three hundred degrees,
which effectually kills the starch or diastase (?) which would
otherwise become sugar. This drying is thought necessary to
prevent the corn from becoming musty in the contingency of a long
voyage. He says, if it should go in the steamer, it would arrive
sound without previous drying. I think I will try that
experiment, shortly on a box or a barrel of our Concord maize, as
Lidian Emerson confidently engages to send you accurate recipes
for johnny-cake, mush, and hominy.
---------
* The _Inferno_ of Dante, a translation in prose by John Carlyle;
an excellent piece of work, still in demand.
---------
Why did you not send me word of Clough's hexameter poem, which I
have now received and read with much joy.* But no, you will
never forgive him his metres. He is a stout, solid, reliable man
and friend,--I knew well; but this fine poem has taken me by
surprise. I cannot find that your journals have yet discovered
its existence. With kindest remembrances to Jane Carlyle, and
new thanks to John Carlyle, your friend,
--R.W. Emerson
----------
* "The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich."
----------
CXL. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, 19 April, 1849
My Dear Emerson,--Today is American Postday; and by every rule
and law,--even if all laws but those of Cocker were abolished
from this universe,--a word from me is due to you! Twice I have
heard since I spoke last: prompt response about the Philadelphia
Bill; exact performance of your voluntary promise,--Indian Corn
itself is now here for a week past....
Still more interesting is the barrel of genuine Corn ears,--
Indian Cobs of edible grain, from the Barn of Emerson himself!
It came all safe and right, according to your charitable program;
without cost or trouble to us of any kind; not without curious
interest and satisfaction! The recipes contained in the
precedent letter, duly weighed by the competent jury of
housewives (at least by my own Wife and Lady Ashburton), were
judged to be of decided promise, reasonable-looking every one of
them; and now that the stuff itself is come, I am happy to
assure you that it forms a new epoch for us all in the Maize
department: we find the grain _sweet,_ among the sweetest, with
a touch even of the taste of _nuts_ in it, and profess with
contrition that properly we have never tasted Indian Corn before.
Millers of due faculty (with millstones of _iron_) being scarce
in the Cockney region, and even cooks liable to err, the
Ashburtons have on their resources undertaken the brunt of the
problem one of their own Surrey or Hampshire millers is to grind
the stuff, and their own cook, a Frenchman commander of a whole
squadron, is to undertake the dressing according to the rules.
Yesterday the Barrel went off to their country place in Surrey,--
a small Bag of select ears being retained here, for our own
private experimenting;--and so by and by we shall see what comes
of it.--I on my side have already drawn up a fit proclamation of
the excellences of this invaluable corn, and admonitions as to
the benighted state of English eaters in regard to it;--to appear
in _Fraser's Magazine,_ or I know not where, very soon. It is
really a small contribution towards World-History, this small act
of yours and ours: there is no doubt to me, now that I taste the
real grain, but all Europe will henceforth have to rely more and
more upon your Western Valleys and this article. How beautiful
to think of lean tough Yankee settlers, tough as gutta-percha,
with most occult unsubduable fire in their belly, steering over
the Western Mountains, to annihilate the jungle, and bring bacon
and corn out of it for the Posterity of Adam! The Pigs in about
a year eat up all the rattlesnakes for miles round: a most
judicious function on the part of the Pigs. Behind the Pigs
comes Jonathan with his all-conquering ploughshare,--glory to him
too! Oh, if we were not a set of Cant-ridden blockheads, there
is no _Myth_ of Athene or Herakles equal to this _fact;_--which I
suppose _will_ find its real "Poets" some day or other; when
once the Greek, Semitic, and multifarious other Cobwebs are swept
away a little! Well, we must wait.--For the rest, if this
skillful Naturalist and you will make any more experiments on
Indian Corn for us, might I not ask that you would try for a
method of preserving _the meal_ in a sound state for us?
Oatmeal, which would spoil directly too, is preserved all year by
kiln-drying the grain before it is ground,--parching it till it
is almost _brown,_ sometimes the Scotch Highlanders, by intense
parching, can keep their oatmeal good for a series of years. No
Miller here at present is likely to produce such beautiful meal
as some of the American specimens I have seen:--if possible, we
must learn to get the grain over in the shape of proper durable
meal. At all events, let your Friend charitably make some
inquiry into the process of millerage, the possibilities of it
for meeting our case;--and send us the result some day, on a
separate bit of paper. With which let us end, for the present.
Alas, I have yet written nothing; am yet a long way off writing,
I fear! Not for want of matter, perhaps, but for redundance of
it; I feel as if I had the whole world to write yet, with the
day fast bending downwards on me, and did not know where to
begin,--in what manner to address the deep-sunk populations of
the Theban Land. Any way my Life is very _grim,_ on these terms,
and is like to be; God only knows what farther quantity of
braying in the mortar this foolish clay of mine may yet need!--
They are printing a third Edition of _Cromwell;_ that bothered
me for some weeks, but now I am over with that, and the Printer
wholly has it: a sorrowful, not now or ever a joyful thing to
me, that. The _stupor_ of my fellow blockheads, for Centuries
back, presses too heavy upon that,--as upon many things, O
Heavens! People are about setting up some _Statue of Cromwell,_
at St. Ives, or elsewhere: the King-Hudson Statue is never yet
set up; and the King himself (as you may have heard) has been
_discovered_ swindling. I advise all men not to erect a statue
for Cromwell just now. Macaulay's _History_ is also out, running
through the fourth edition: did I tell you last time that I had
read it,--with wonder and amazement? Finally, it seems likely
Lord John Russell will shortly walk out (forever, it is hoped),
and Sir R. Peel come in; to make what effort is in him towards
delivering us from the _pedant_ method of treating Ireland. The
_beginning,_ as I think, of salvation (if he can prosper a
little) to England, and to all Europe as well. For they will all
have to learn that man does need government, and that an able-
bodied starving beggar is and remains (whatever Exeter Hall may
say to it) a _Slave_ destitute of a _Master;_ of which facts
England, and convulsed Europe, are fallen foundly ignorant in
these bad ages, and will plunge ever deeper till they rediscover
the same. Alas, alas, the Future for us is not to be made of
_butter,_ as the Platforms prophesy; I think it will be harder
than steel for some ages! No noble age was ever a soft one, nor
ever will or can be.--Your beautiful curious little discourse
(report of a discourse) about the English was sent me by Neuberg;
I thought it, in my private heart, one of the best words (for
_hidden_ genius lodged in it) I had ever heard; so sent it to
the _Examiner,_ from which it went to the _Times_ and all the
other Papers: an excellent sly little word.
Clough has gone to Italy; I have seen him twice,--could not
manage his hexameters, though I like the man himself, and
hope much of him. "Infidelity" has broken out in Oxford
itself,--immense emotion in certain quarters in consequence,
virulent outcries about a certain "Sterling Club," altogether
a secular society!
Adieu, dear Emerson; I had much more to say, but there is no
room. O, forgive me, forgive me all trespasses,--and love me
what you can!
Yours ever,
T. Carlyle
CXLI. Carlyle to Emerson
Scotsbrig, Ecclefechan, N.B., 13 August, 1849
Dear Emerson,--By all laws of human computation, I owe you a
letter, and have owed, any time these seven weeks: let me now
pay a little, and explain. Your _second_ Barrel of Indian Corn
arrived also perfectly fresh, and of admirable taste and quality;
the very bag of new-ground meal was perfect; and the "popped
corn" ditto, when it came to be discovered: with the whole of
which admirable materials such order was taken as promised to
secure "the greatest happiness to the greatest number"; and due
silent thanks were tendered to the beneficence of the unwearied
Sender:--but all this, you shall observe, had to be done in the
thick of a universal packing and household bustle; I just on the
wing for a "Tour in Ireland," my Wife too contemplating a run to
Scotland shortly after, there to meet me on my return. All this
was seven good weeks ago: I hoped somewhere in my Irish
wayfarings to fling you off a Letter; but alas, I reckoned there
quite without my host (strict "host," called _Time_), finding
nowhere half a minute left to me; and so now, having got home to
my Mother, not to see my Wife yet for some days, it is my
_earliest_ leisure, after all, that I employ in this purpose. I
have been terribly knocked about too,--jolted in Irish cars,
bothered almost to madness with Irish balderdash, above all kept
on dreadfully short allowance of sleep;--so that now first, when
fairly down to rest, all aches and bruises begin to be fairly
sensible; and my clearest feeling at this present is the
uncomfortable one, "that I am not Caliban, but a Cramp":
terribly cramped indeed, if I could tell you everything!
What the other results of this Irish Tour are to be for me I
cannot in the least specify. For one thing, I seem to be farther
from _speech_ on any subject than ever: such masses of chaotic
ruin everywhere fronted me, the general fruit of long-continued
universal falsity and folly; and such mountains of delusion yet
possessing all hearts and tongues I could do little that was not
even _noxious,_ except _admire_ in silence the general
"Bankruptcy of Imposture" as one there finds and sees it come to
pass, and think with infinite sorrow of the tribulations, futile
wrestlings, tumults, and disasters which yet await that
unfortunate section of Adam's Posterity before any real
improvement can take place among them. Alas, alas! The Gospels
of Political Economy, of _Laissez-faire,_ No-Government, Paradise
to all comers, and so many fatal Gospels,--generally, one may
say, all the Gospels of this blessed "New Era,"--will first have
to be tried, and found wanting. With a quantity of written and
uttered nonsense, and of suffered and inflicted misery, which one
sinks fairly dumb to estimate! A kind of comfort it is, however,
to see that "Imposture" _has_ fallen openly "bankrupt," here as
everywhere else in our old world; that no dexterity of human
tinkering, with all the Parliamentary Eloquence and Elective
Franchises in nature, will ever set it on its feet again, to go
many yards more; but that _its_ goings and currencies in this
Earth have as good as ceased for ever and ever! God is great;
all Lies do now, as from the first, travel incessantly towards
Chaos, and there at length lodge! In some parts of Ireland (the
Western "insolvent Unions," some twenty-seven of them in all),
within a trifle of _one half_ of the whole population are on
Poor-Law rations (furnished by the British Government, L1,100 a
week furnished here, L1,300 there, L800 there); the houses stand
roofless, the lands unstocked, uncultivated, the landlords hidden
from bailiffs, living sometimes "on the hares of their domain":
such a state of things was never witnessed under this sky before;
and, one would humbly expect, cannot last long!--What is to be
done? asks every one; incapable of _hearing_ any answer, were
there even one ready for imparting to him. "_Blacklead_ these
two million idle beggars," I sometimes advised, "and sell them in
Brazil as Niggers,--perhaps Parliament, on sweet constraint, will
allow you to advance them to be Niggers!" In fact, the
Emancipation Societies should send over a deputation or two to
look at _these_ immortal Irish "Freemen," the _ne plus ultra_ of
their class it would perhaps moderate the windpipe of much
eloquence one hears on that subject! Is not this the most
illustrious of all "ages"; making progress of the species at a
grand rate indeed? Peace be with it.
Waiting for me here, there was a Letter from Miss Fuller in Rome,
written about a month ago; a dignified and interesting Letter;
requesting help with Booksellers for some "History of the late
Italian Revolution" she is about writing; and elegiacally
recognizing the worth of Mazzini and other cognate persons and
things. I instantly set about doing what little seemed in my
power towards this object,--with what result is yet hidden, and
have written to the heroic Margaret: "More power to her elbow!"
as the Irish say. She has a beautiful enthusiasm; and is
perhaps in the right stage of insight for doing that piece of
business well.--Of other persons or interests I will say nothing
till a calmer opportunity; which surely cannot be very long
in coming.
In four days I am to rejoin my wife; after which some bits of
visits are to be paid in this North Country; necessary most of
them, not likely to be profitable almost any. In perhaps a month
I expect to be back in Chelsea; whither direct a word if you are
still beneficent enough to think of such a Castaway!
Yours ever,
T. Carlyle
I got Thoreau's Book; and meant well to read it, but have not
yet succeeded, though it went with me through all Ireland: tell
him so, please. Too Jean-Paulish, I found it hitherto.
CXLII. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, 19 July, 1850
My Dear Emerson, My Friend, my Friend,--You behold before you a
remorseful man! It is well-nigh a year now since I despatched
some hurried rag of paper to you out of Scotland, indicating
doubtless that I would speedily follow it with a longer letter;
and here, when gray Autumn is at hand again, I have still written
nothing to you, heard nothing from you! It is miserable to think
of:--and yet it is a fact, and there is no denying of it; and so
we must let it lie. If it please Heaven, the like shall not
occur again. "Ohone Arooh!" as the Irish taught me to say,
"Ohone Arooh!"
The fact is, my life has been black with care and toil,--labor
above board and far worse labor below;--I have hardly had a
heavier year (overloaded too with a kind of "health" which may be
called frightful): to "burn my own smoke" in some measure, has
really been all I was up to; and except on sheer immediate
compulsion I have not written a word to any creature.--
Yesternight I finished the last of these extraordinary
_Pamphlets;_ am about running off somewhither into the deserts,
of Wales or Scotland, Scandinavia or still remoter deserts;--and
my first signal of revived reminiscence is to you.
Nay I have not at any time forgotten you, be that justice done
the unfortunate: and though I see well enough what a great deep
cleft divides us, in our ways of practically looking at this
world,--I see also (as probably you do yourself) where the rock-
strata, miles deep, unite again; and the two poor souls are at
one. Poor devils!--Nay if there were no point of agreement at
all, and I were more intolerant "of ways of thinking" than I even
am,--yet has not the man Emerson, from old years, been a Human
Friend to me? Can I ever forget, or think otherwise than
lovingly of the man Emerson? No more of this. Write to me in
your first good hour; and say that there is still a brother-soul
left to me alive in this world, and a kind thought surviving far
over the sea!--Chapman, with due punctuality at the time of
publication, sent me the _Representative Men;_ which I read in
the becoming manner: you now get the Book offered you for a
shilling, at all railway stations; and indeed I perceive the
word "representative man"' (as applied to the late tragic loss we
have had in Sir Robert Peel) has been adopted by the Able-
Editors, and circulates through Newspapers as an appropriate
household word, which is some compensation to you for the piracy
you suffer from the Typographic Letter-of-marque men here. I
found the Book a most finished clear and perfect set of
_Engravings in the line manner;_ portraitures full of
_likeness,_ and abounding in instruction and materials for
reflection to me: thanks always for such a Book; and Heaven
send us many more of them. _Plato,_ I think, though it is the
most admired by many, did least for me: little save Socrates
with his clogs and big ears remains alive with me from it.
_Swedenborg_ is excellent in _likeness;_ excellent in many
respects;--yet I said to myself, on reaching your general
conclusion about the man and his struggles: "_Missed_ the
consummate flower and divine ultimate elixir of Philosophy, say
you? By Heaven, in clutching at _it,_ and almost getting it, he
has tumbled into Bedlam,--which is a terrible _miss,_ if it were
never so _near!_ A miss fully as good as a mile, I should say!"
--In fact, I generally dissented a little about the _end_ of all
these Essays; which was notable, and not without instructive
interest to me, as I had so lustily shouted "Hear, hear!" all the
way from the beginning up to that stage.--On the whole, let us
have another Book with your earliest convenience: that is the
modest request one makes of you on shutting this.
I know not what I am now going to set about: the horrible
barking of the universal dog-kennel (awakened by these
_Pamphlets_) must still itself again; my poor nerves must
recover themselves a little:--I have much more to say; and
by Heaven's blessing must try to get it said in some way if
I live.--
Bostonian Prescott is here, infinitely _lionized_ by a mob of
gentlemen; I have seen him in two places or three (but forbore
speech): the Johnny-cake is good, the twopence worth of currants
in it too are good; but if you offer it as a bit of baked
Ambrosia, _Ach Gott!_--
Adieu, dear Emerson, forgive, and love me a little.
Yours ever,
T. Carlyle
CXLIII. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, 14 November, 1850
Dear Emerson,--You are often enough present to my thoughts; but
yesterday there came a little incident which has brought you
rather vividly upon the scene for me. A certain "Mr. ---" from
Boston sends us, yesterday morning by post, a Note of yours
addressed to Mazzini, whom he cannot find; and indicates that he
retains a similar one addressed to myself, and (in the most
courteous, kindly, and dignified manner, if Mercy prevent not) is
about carrying it off with him again to America! To give Mercy a
chance, I by the first opportunity get under way for Morley's
Hotel, the address of Mr. ---; find there that Mr.--, since
morning, _has been_ on the road towards Liverpool and America,
and that the function of Mercy is quite extinct in this instance!
My reflections as I wandered home again were none of the
pleasantest. Of this Mr. --- I had heard some tradition, as of
an intelligent, accomplished, and superior man; such a man's
acquaintance, of whatever complexion he be, is and was always a
precious thing to me, well worth acquiring where possible; not
to say that any friend of yours, whatever his qualities
otherwise, carries with him an imperative key to all bolts and
locks of mine, real or imaginary. In fact I felt punished;--and
who knows, if the case were seen into, whether I deserve it?
What "business" it was that deprived me of a call from Mr. ---,
or of the possibility of calling on him, I know very well,--and
---, the little dog, and others know! But the fact in that
matter is very far different indeed from the superficial
semblance; and I appeal to all the _gentlemen_ that are in
America for a candid interpretation of the same. "Eighteen
million bores,"--good Heavens don't I know how many of that
species we also have; and how with us, as with you, the
difference between them and the Eighteen thousand noble-men and
non-bores is immeasurable and inconceivable; and how, with us as
with you, the _latter_ small company, sons of the Empyrean, will
have to fling the former huge one, sons of Mammon and Mud, into
some kind of chains again, reduce them to some kind of silence
again,--unless the old Mud-Demons are to rise and devour us all?
Truly it is so I construe it: and if --- and the Eighteen
millions are well justified in their anger at me, and the
Eighteen thousand owe me thanks and new love. That is my decided
opinion, in spite of you all! And so, along with ---, probably
in the same ship with him, there shall go my protest against the
conduct of ---; and the declaration that to the last I will
protest! Which will wind up the matter (without any word of
yours on it) at this time.--For the rest, though --- sent me his
Pamphlet, it is a fact I have not read a word of it, nor shall
ever read. My Wife read it; but I was away, with far other
things in my head; and it was "lent to various persons" till it
died!--Enough and ten times more than enough of all that. Let me
on this last slip of paper give you some response to the Letter*
I got in Scotland, under the silence of the bright autumn sun, in
my Mother's house, and read there.
--------
* This letter is missing.
--------
You are bountiful abundantly in your reception of those _Latter
Day Pamphlets;_ and right in all you say of them;--and yet
withal you are not right, my Friend, but I am! Truly it does
behove a man to know the inmost resources of this universe, and,
for the sake both of his peace and of his dignity, to possess his
soul in patience, and look nothing doubting (nothing wincing
even, if that be his humor) upon all things. For it is most
indubitable there is good in all;--and if you even see an Oliver
Cromwell assassinated, it is certain you may get a cartload of
turnips from his carcass. Ah me, and I suppose we had too much
forgotten all this, or there had not been a man like you sent to
show it us so emphatically! Let us well remember it; and yet
remember too that it is _not_ good always, or ever, to be "at
ease in Zion"; good often to be in fierce rage in Zion; and
that the vile Pythons of this Mud-World do verily require to have
sun-arrows shot into them and red-hot pokers struck through them,
according to occasion: woe to the man that carries either of
these weapons, and does not use it in their presence! Here, at
this moment, a miserable Italian organ-grinder has struck up the
_Marseillaise_ under my window, for example: was the
_Marseillaise_ fought out on a bed of down, or is it worth
nothing when fought? On those wretched _Pamphlets_ I set no
value at all, or even less than none: to me their one benefit
is, my own heart is clear of them (a benefit not to be despised,
I assure you!)--and in the Public, athwart this storm of curses,
and emptyings of vessels of dishonor, I can already perceive that
it is all well enough there too in reference to them; and the
controversy of the Eighteen millions _versus_ the Eighteen
thousands, or Eighteen units, is going on very handsomely in that
quarter of it, for aught I can see! And so, Peace to the brave
that are departed; and, Tomorrow to fresh fields and pastures new!--
I was in Wales, as well as Scotland, during Autumn time; lived
three weeks within wind of St. Germanus's old "College" (Fourteen
Hundred years of age or so) and also not far from _Merthyr
Tydvil,_ Cyclops' Hell, sootiest and horridest avatar of the
Industrial Mammon I had ever anywhere seen; went through the
Severn Valley; at Bath stayed a night with Landor (a proud and
high old man, who charged me with express remembrances for you);
saw Tennyson too, in Cumberland, with his new Wife; and other
beautiful recommendable and 'questionable things;--and was
dreadfully tossed about, and torn almost to tatters by the
manifold brambles of my way: and so at length am here, a much-
lamed man indeed! Oh my Friend, have tolerance for me, have
sympathy with me; you know not quite (I imagine) what a burden
mine is, or perhaps you would find this duty, which you always
do, a little easier done! Be happy, be busy beside your still
waters, and think kindly of me there. My nerves, health I call
them, are in a sad state of disorder: alas, that is nine tenths
of all the battle in this world. Courage, courage!--My Wife
sends salutations to you and yours. Good be with you all always.
Your affectionate,
T. Carlyle
CXLIV. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, 8 July, 1851
Dear Emerson,--Don't you still remember very well that there is
such a man? I know you do, and will do. But it is a ruinously
long while since we have heard a word from each other;--a state
of matters that ought immediately to _cease._ It was your turn,
I think, to write? It was somebody's turn! Nay I heard lately
you complained of bad eyes; and were grown abstinent of writing.
Pray contradict me this. I cannot do without some regard from
you while we are both here. Spite of your many sins, you are
among the most human of all the beings I now know in the world;--
who are a very select set, and are growing ever more so, I can
inform you!
In late months, feeling greatly broken and without heart for
anything weighty, I have been upon a _Life of John Sterling;_
which will not be good for much, but will as usual gratify me by
taking itself off my hands: it was one of the things I felt a
kind of obligation to do, and so am thankful to have done. Here
is a patch of it lying by me, if you will look at a specimen.
There are four hundred or more pages (prophesies the Printer), a
good many _Letters_ and Excerpts in the latter portion of the
volume. Already half printed, wholly written; but not to come
out for a couple of months yet,--all trade being at a stand till
this sublime "Crystal Palace" go its ways again.--And now since
we are upon the business, I wish you would mention it to E.P.
Clark (is not that the name?) next time you go to Boston: if
that friendly clear-eyed man have anything to say in reference to
it and American Booksellers, let him say and do; he may have a
Copy for anybody in about a month: if _he_ have nothing to say,
then let there be nothing anywhere said. For, mark O
Philosopher, I expressly and with emphasis prohibit _you_ at this
stage of our history, and henceforth, unless I grow poor again.
Indeed, indeed, the commercial mandate of the thing (Nature's
little order on that behalf) being once fulfilled (by speaking to
Clark), I do not care a snuff of tobacco how it goes, and will
prefer, here as elsewhere, my night's rest to any amount of
superfluous money.
This summer, as you may conjecture, has been very noisy with us,
and productive of little,--the "Wind-dust-ry of all Nations"
involving everything in one inane tornado. The very shopkeepers
complain that there is no trade. Such a sanhedrim of windy fools
from all countries of the Globe were surely never gathered in one
city before. But they will go their ways again, they surely
will! One sits quiet in that faith;--nay, looks abroad with a
kind of pathetic grandfatherly feeling over this universal
Children's Ball which the British Nation in these extraordinary
circumstances is giving it self! Silence above all, silence is
very behoveful! I read lately a small old brown French
duodecimo, which I mean to send you by the first chance there is.
The writer is a Capitaine Bossu; the production, a Journal of
his experiences in "La Louisiane," "Oyo" (_Ohio_), and those
regions, which looks very genuine, and has a strange interest to
me, like some fractional Odyssey or letter.* Only a hundred
years ago, and the Mississippi has changed as never valley did:
in 1751 older and stranger, looked at from its present date, than
Balbec or Nineveh! Say what we will, Jonathan is doing miracles
(of a sort) under the sun in these times now passing.--Do you
know _Bartram's Travels?_ This is of the Seventies (1770) or so;
treats of _Florida_ chiefly, has a wondrous kind of floundering
eloquence in it; and has also grown immeasurably _old._ All
American libraries ought to provide themselves with that kind of
book; and keep them as a kind of future _biblical_ article.--
Finally on this head, can you tell me of any _good_ Book on
California? Good: I have read several bad. But that too is
worthy of some wonder; that too, like the Old Bucaniers, hungers
and thirsts (in ingenuous minds) to have some true record and
description given of it.
----------
* Bossu wrote two books which are known to the student of the
history of the settlement of America; one, "Nouveaux Voyages aux
Indes occidentales," Paris, 1768; the other, "Nouveaux Voyages
dans l'Amerique septentrionale," Amsterdam (Paris), 1777.
----------
And poor Miss Fuller, was there any _Life_ ever published of her?
or is any competent hand engaged on it? Poor Margaret, I often
remember her; and think how she is asleep now under the surges
of the sea. Mazzini, as you perhaps know, is with us this
summer; comes across once in the week or so, and tells me, or at
least my Wife, all his news. The Roman revolution has made a man
of him,--quite brightened up ever since;--and the best friend
_he_ ever saw, I believe, was that same Quack-President of
France, who relieved him while it was still time.
My Brother is in Annandale, working hard over _Dante_ at last;
talks of coming up hither shortly; I am myself very ill and
miserable in the _liver_ regions; very tough otherwise,--though
I have now got spectacles for small print in the twilight. _Eheu
fugaces,_--and yet why _Eheu?_ In fact it is better to be
silent.--Adieu, dear Emerson; I expect to get a great deal
brisker by and by,--and in the first place to have a Missive from
Boston again. My Wife sends you many regards. I am as ever,--
affectionately Yours,
--T. Carlyle
CXLV. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 28 July, 1851
My Dear Carlyle,--You must always thank me for silence, be it
never so long, and must put on it the most generous
interpretations. For I am too sure of your genius and goodness,
and too glad that they shine steadily for all, to importune you
to make assurance sure by a private beam very often. There is
very little in this village to be said to you, and, with all my
love of your letters, I think it the kind part to defend you from
our imbecilities,--my own, and other men's. Besides, my eyes are
bad, and prone to mutiny at any hint of white paper.
And yet I owe you all my story, if story I have. I have been
something of a traveler the last year, and went down the Ohio
River to its mouth; walked nine miles into, and nine miles out
of the Mammoth Cave, in Kentucky,--walked or sailed, for we
crossed small underground streams,--and lost one day's light;
then steamed up the Mississippi, five days, to Galena. In the
Upper Mississippi, you are always in a lake with many islands.
"The Far West" is the right name for these verdant deserts. On
all the shores, interminable silent forest. If you land, there
is prairie behind prairie, forest behind forest, sites of
nations, no nations. The raw bullion of nature; what we call
"moral" value not yet stamped on it. But in a thousand miles the
immense material values will show twenty or fifty Californias;
that a good ciphering head will make one where he is. Thus at
Pittsburg, on the Ohio, the "Iron" City, whither, from want of
railroads, few Yankees have penetrated, every acre of land has
three or four bottoms; first of rich soil; then nine feet of
bituminous coal; a little lower, fourteen feet of coal; then
iron, or salt; salt springs, with a valuable oil called
petroleum floating on their surface. Yet this acre sells for the
price of any tillage acre in Massachusetts; and, in a year, the
railroads will reach it, east and west.--I came home by the great
Northern Lakes and Niagara.
No books, a few lectures, each winter, I write and read. In the
spring, the abomination of our Fugitive Slave Bill drove me to
some writing and speech-making, without hope of effect, but to
clear my own skirts. I am sorry I did not print whilst it was
yet time. I am now told that the time will come again, more's
the pity. Now I am trying to make a sort of memoir of Margaret
Fuller, or my part in one;--for Channing and Ward are to do
theirs. Without either beauty or genius, she had a certain
wealth and generosity of nature which have left a kind of claim
on our consciences to build her a cairn. And this reminds me
that I am to write a note to Mazzini on this matter; and, as you
say you see him, you must charge yourself with delivering it.
What we do must be ended by October. You too are working for
Sterling. It is right and kind. I learned so much from the New
York _Tribune,_ and, a few days after, was on the point of
writing to you, provoked by a foolish paragraph which appeared in
Rufus Griswold's Journal, (New York,) purporting that R.W.E.
possessed important letters of Sterling, without which Thomas
Carlyle could not write the Life. What scrap of hearsay about
contents of Sterling's letters to me, or that I had letters, this
paltry journalist swelled into this puff-ball, I know not. He
once came to my house, and, since that time, may have known
Margaret Fuller in New York; but probably never saw any letter
of Sterling's or heard the contents of any. I have not read
again Sterling's letters, which I keep as good Lares in a special
niche, but I have no recollection of anything that would be
valuable to you. For the American Public for the Book, I think
it important that you should take the precise step of sending
Phillips and Sampson the early copy, and at the earliest. I saw
them, and also E.P. Clark, and put them in communication, and
Clark is to write you at once.
Having got so far in my writing to you, I do not know but I shall
gain heart, and write more letters over sea. You will think my
sloth suicidal enough. So many men as I learned to value in your
country,--so many as offered me opportunities of intercourse,--
and I lose them all by silence. Arthur Helps is a chief
benefactor of mine. I wrote him a letter by Ward,--who brought
the letter back. I ought to thank John Carlyle, not only for me,
but for a multitude of good men and women here who read his
_Inferno_ duly. W.E. Forster sent me his Penn Pamphlet; I sent
it to Bancroft, who liked it well, only he thought Forster might
have made a still stronger case. Clough I prize at a high rate,
the man and his poetry, but write not. Wilkinson I thought a man
of prodigious talent, who somehow held it and so taught others to
hold it cheap, as we do one of those bushel-basket memories which
school-boys and school-girls often show,--and we stop their
mouths lest they be troublesome with their alarming profusion.
But there is no need of beginning to count the long catalogue.
Kindest, kindest remembrance to my benefactress, also in your
house, and health and strength and victory to you.
Your affectionate,
Waldo Emerson
CXLVI. Carlyle to Emerson
Great Malvern, Worcestershire, 25 August, 1851
Dear Emerson,--Many thanks for your Letter, which found me here
about a week ago, and gave a full solution to my bibliopolic
difficulties. However sore your eyes, or however taciturn your
mood, there is no delay of writing when any service is to be done
by it! In fact you are very good to me, and always were, in all
manner of ways; for which I do, as I ought, thank the Upper
Powers and you. That truly has been and is one of the
possessions of my life in this perverse epoch of the world....
I have sent off by John Chapman a Copy of the _Life of Sterling,_
which is all printed and ready, but is not to appear till the
first week of October.... Along with the _Sheets_ was a poor
little French Book for you,--Book of a poor Naval _Mississippi_
Frenchman, one "Bossu," I think; written only a Century ago, yet
which already seemed old as the Pyramids in reference to those
strange fast-growing countries. I read it as a kind of defaced
_romance;_ very thin and lean, but all _true,_ and very
marvelous as such.
It is above three weeks since my Wife and I left London, (the
Printer having done,) and came hither with the purpose of a month
of what is called "Water Cure"; for which this place, otherwise
extremely pleasant and wholesome, has become celebrated of late
years. Dr. Gully, the pontiff of the business in our Island,
warmly encouraged my purpose so soon as he heard of it; nay,
urgently offered at once that both of us should become his own
guests till the experiment were tried: and here accordingly we
are; I water-curing, assiduously walking on the sunny mountains,
drinking of the clear wells, not to speak of wet wrappages,
solitary sad _steepages,_ and other singular procedures; my Wife
not meddling for her own behoof, but only seeing me do it. These
have been three of the idlest weeks I ever spent, and there is
still one to come: after which we go northward to Lancashire,
and across the Border where my good old Mother still expects me;
and so, after some little visiting and dawdling, hope to find
ourselves home again before September end, and the inexpressible
Glass Palace with its noisy inanity have taken itself quite away
again. It was no increase of ill-health that drove me hither,
rather the reverse; but I have long been minded to try this
thing: and now I think the result will be,--_zero_ pretty
nearly, and one imagination the less. My long walks, my
strenuous idleness, have certainly done me good; nor has the
"water" done me any _ill,_ which perhaps is much to say of it.
For the rest, it is a strange quasi-monastic--godless and yet
_devotional_--way of life which human creatures have here, and
useful to them beyond doubt. I foresee, this "Water Cure," under
better forms, will become the _Ramadhan_ of the overworked
unbelieving English in time coming; an institution they were
dreadfully in want of, this long while!--We had Twisleton* here
(often speaking of you), who is off to America again; will sail,
I think, along with this Letter; a semi-articulate but solid-
minded worthy man. We have other officials and other
_litterateurs_ (T.B. Macaulay in his hired villa for one): but
the mind rather shuns than seeks them, one finds solitary quasi-
devotion preferable, and [Greek], as Pindar had it!
-----------
* The late Hon. Edward Twisleton, a man of high character and
large attainments, and with a personal disposition that won the
respect and affection of a wide circle of friends on both sides
of the Atlantic. He was the author of a curious and learned
treatise entitled "The Tongue not Essential to Speech," and his
remarkable volume on "The Handwriting of Junius" seems to have
effectually closed a long controversy.
---------
Richard Milnes is married, about two weeks ago, and gone to
Vienna for a jaunt. His wife, a Miss Crewe (Lord Crewe's
sister), about forty, pleasant, intelligent, and rather rich:
that is the end of Richard's long first act. Alfred
Tennyson, perhaps you heard, is gone to Italy with his wife:
their baby died or was dead-born; they found England wearisome:
Alfred has been taken up on the top of the wave, and a good deal
jumbled about since you were here. Item Thackeray; who is
coming over to lecture to you: a mad world, my Masters! Your
Letter to Mazzini was duly despatched; and we hear from him that
he will write to you, on the subject required, without delay.
Browning and his wife, home from Florence, are both in London at
present; mean to live in Paris henceforth for some time. They
had seen something both of Margaret and her d'Ossoli, and
appeared to have a true and lively interest in them; Browning
spoke a long while to me, with emphasis, on the subject: I think
it was I that had introduced poor Margaret to them. I said he
ought to send these reminiscences to America,--that was the night
before we left London, three weeks ago; his answer gave me the
impression there had been some hindrance somewhere. Accordingly,
when your Letter and Mazzini's reached me here, I wrote to
Browning urgently on the subject: but he informs me that they
_have_ sent all their reminiscences, at the request of Mr. Story;
so that it is already all well.--Dear Emerson, you see I am at
the bottom of my paper. I will write to you again before long;
we cannot let you lie fallow in that manner altogether. Have you
got proper _spectacles_ for your eyes? I have adopted that
beautiful symbol of old age, and feel myself very venerable:
take care of your eyes!
Yours ever,
T. Carlyle
CXLVII. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 14 April, 1852
My Dear Carlyle,--I have not grown so callous by my sulky habit,
but that I know where my friends are, and who can help me, in
time of need. And I have to crave your good offices today, and
in a matter relating once more to Margaret Fuller.... You were
so kind as to interest yourself, many months ago, to set Mazzini
and Browning on writing their Reminiscences for us. But we never
heard from either of them. Lately I have learned, by way of Sam
Longfellow, in Paris, brother of our poet Longfellow, that
Browning assured him that he did write and send a memoir to this
country,--to whom, I know not. It never arrived at the hands of
the Fullers, nor of Story, Channing, or me;--though the book was
delayed in the hope of such help. I hate that his paper should
be lost.
The little French _Voyage,_ &c. of Bossu, I got safely, and
compared its pictures with my own, at the Mississippi, the
Illinois, and Chicago. It is curious and true enough, no doubt,
though its Indians are rather dim and vague, and "Messieurs
Sauvages" Good Indians we have in Alexander Henry's _Travels in
Canada,_ and in our modern Catlin, and the best Western America,
perhaps, in F.A. Michaux, _Voyage a l'ouest des monts
Alleghanis,_ and in Fremont. But it was California I believe you
asked about, and, after looking at Taylor, Parkman, and the rest,
I saw that the only course is to read them all, and every private
letter that gets into the newspapers. So there was nothing
to say.
I rejoiced with the rest of mankind in the _Life of Sterling,_
and now peace will be to his Manes, down in this lower sphere.
Yet I see well that I should have held to his opinion, in all
those conferences where you have so quietly assumed the palms.
It is said: here, that you work upon Frederick the Great??
However that be, health, strength, love, joy, and victory to you.
--R.W. Emerson
CXLVIII. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, 7 May, 1852
Dear Emerson,--I was delighted at the sight of your hand again.
My manifold sins against you, involuntary all of them I may well
say, are often enough present to my sad thoughts; and a kind of
remorse is mixed with the other sorrow,--as if I could have
_helped_ growing to be, by aid of time and destiny, the grim
Ishmaelite I am, and so shocking your serenity by my ferocities!
I admit you were like an angel to me, and absorbed in the
beautifulest manner all thunder-clouds into the depths of your
immeasurable a ether;--and it is indubitable I love you very
well, and have long done, and mean to do. And on the whole you
will have to rally yourself into some kind of Correspondence with
me again; I believe you will find that also to be a commanded
duty by and by! To me at any rate, I can say, it is a great
want, and adds perceptibly to the sternness of these years: deep
as is my dissent from your Gymnosophist view of Heaven and Earth,
I find an agreement that swallows up all conceivable dissents;
in the whole world I hardly get, to my spoken human word, any
other word of response which is authentically _human._ God help
us, this is growing a very lonely place, this distracted dog-
kennel of a world! And it is no joy to me to see it about to
have its throat cut for its immeasurable devilries; that is not
a pleasant process to be concerned in either more or less,--
considering above all how many centuries, base and dismal all of
them, it is like to take! Nevertheless _Marchons,_--and swift
too, if we have any speed, for the sun is sinking.... Poor
Margaret, that is a strange tragedy that history of hers; and
has many traits of the Heroic in it, though it is wild as the
prophecy of a Sibyl. Such a predetermination to _eat_ this big
Universe as her oyster or her egg, and to be absolute empress of
all height and glory in it that her heart could conceive, I have
not before seen in any human soul. Her "mountain me" indeed:--
but her courage too is high and clear, her chivalrous nobleness
indeed is great; her veracity, in its deepest sense, _a toute
epreuve._--Your Copy of the Book* came to me at last (to my joy):
I had already read it; there was considerable notice taken of it
here; and one half-volume of it (and I grieve to say only one,
written by a man called Emerson) was completely approved by me
and innumerable judges. The rest of the Book is not without
considerable geniality and merits; but one wanted a clear
concise Narrative beyond all other merits; and if you ask here
(except in that half-volume) about any fact, you are answered (so
to speak) not in words, but by a symbolic tune on the bagpipe,
symbolic burst of wind-music from the brass band;--which is not
the plan at all!--What can have become of Mazzini's Letter, which
he certainly did write and despatched to you, is not easily
conceivable. Still less in the case of Browning: for Browning
and his Wife did also write; I myself in the end of last July,
having heard him talk kindly and well of poor Margaret and her
Husband, took the liberty on your behalf of asking him to put
something down on paper; and he informed me, then and repeatedly
since, he had already done it,--at the request of Mrs. Story, I
think. His address at present is, "No. 138 Avenue des Champs
Elysees, a Paris," if your American travelers still thought of
inquiring.--Adieu, dear Emerson, till next week.
Yours ever,
T. Carlyle
--------
* "The Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli."
--------
CXLIX. Emerson to Carlyle*
Concord, May [?], 1852
You make me happy with your loving thoughts and meanings towards
me. I have always thanked the good star which made us early
neighbors, in some sort, in time and space. And the beam is
twice warmed by your vigorous good-will, which has steadily kept
clear, kind eyes on me.
--------
* From an imperfect rough draft.
--------
It is good to be born in good air and outlook, and not less with
a civilization, that is, with one poet still living in the world.
O yes, and I feel all the solemnity and vital cheer of the
benefit.--If only the mountains of water and of land and the
steeper mountains of blighted and apathized moods would permit a
word to pass now and then. It is very fine for you to tax
yourself with all those incompatibilities. I like that Thor
should make comets and thunder, as well as Iduna apples, or
Heimdal his rainbow bridge, and your wrath and satire has all too
much realism in it, than that we can flatter ourselves by
disposing of you as partial and heated. Nor is it your fault
that you do a hero's work, nor do we love you less if we cannot
help you in it. Pity me, O strong man! I am of a puny
constitution half made up, and as I from childhood knew,--not a
poet but a lover of poetry, and poets, and merely serving as
writer, &c. in this empty America, before the arrival of the
poets. You must not misconstrue my silences, but thank me
for them all, as a true homage to your diligence which I love
to defend...
She* had such reverence and love for Landor that I do not know
but at any moment in her natural life she would have sunk in the
sea, for an ode from him; and now this most propitious cake is
offered to her Manes. The loss of the notes of Browning and of
Mazzini, which you confirm, astonishes me.
---------
* Margaret Fuller. The break in continuity is in the rough draft.
---------
CL. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, 25 June, 1852
Dear Emerson...... You are a born _enthusiast,_ as quiet as you
are; and it will continue so, at intervals, to the end. I
admire your sly low-voiced sarcasm too;--in short, I love the
sternly-gentle close-buttoned man very well, as I have always
done, and intend to continue doing!--Pray observe therefore, and
lay it to heart as a practical fact, that you are bound to
persevere in writing to me from time to time; and will never get
it given up, how sulky soever you grow, while we both remain in
this world. Do not I very well understand all that you say about
"apathized moods," &c.? The gloom of approaching old age
(approaching, nay arriving with some of us) is very considerable
upon a man; and on the whole one contrives to take the very
ugliest view, now and then, of all beautifulest things; and to
shut one's lips with a kind of grim defiance, a kind of imperial
sorrow which is almost like felicity,--so completely and
composedly wretched, one is equal to the very gods! These too
are necessary, moods to a man. But the Earth withal is verdant,
sun-beshone; and the Son of Adam has his place on it, and his
tasks and recompenses in it, to the close;--as one remembers by
and by, too. On the whole, I am infinitely solitary; but not
more heavy laden than I have all along been, perhaps rather less
so; I could fancy even old age to be beautiful, and to have a
real divineness: for the rest, I say always, I cannot part with
you, however it go; and so, in brief, you must get into the way
of holding yourself obliged as formerly to a kind of _dialogue_
with me; and speak, on paper since not otherwise, the oftenest
you can. Let that be a point settled.
I am not _writing_ on Frederic the Great; nor at all practically
contemplating to do so. But, being in a reading mood after those
furious _Pamphlets_ (which have procured me showers of abuse from
all the extensive genus Stupid in this country, and not done me
any other mischief, but perhaps good), and not being capable of
reading except in a train and _about_ some object of interest to
me,--I took to reading, near a year ago, about Frederick, as I
had twice in my life done before; and have, in a loose way,
tumbled up an immense quantity of shot rubbish on that field, and
still continue. Not with much decisive approach to Frederick's
_self,_ I am still afraid! The man looks brilliant and noble to
me; but how _love_ him, or the sad wreck he lived and worked in?
I do not even yet _see_ him clearly; and to try making others
see him--?--Yet Voltaire and he _are_ the celestial element of
the poor Eighteenth Century; poor souls. I confess also to a
real love for Frederick's dumb followers: the Prussian
_Soldiery._--I often say to myself, "Were not _here_ the real
priests and virtuous martyrs of that loud-babbling rotten
generation!" And so it goes on; when to end, or in what to end,
God knows.
Adieu, dear Emerson. A blockhead (by mistake) has been let in,
and has consumed all my time. Good be ever with you and yours.
--T. Carlyle
CLI. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 19 April, 1853
My Dear Friend,--As I find I never write a letter except at the
dunning of the Penny Post,--which is the pest of the century,--I
have thought lately of crossing to England to excuse to you my
negligence of your injunction, which so flattered me by its
affectionateness a year ago. I was to write once a month. My
own disobedience is wonderful, and explains to me all the sins of
omission of the whole world. The levity with which we can let
fall into disuse such a sacrament as the exchange of greeting at
short periods, is a kind of magnanimity, and should be an
astonishing argument of the "Immortality"; and I wonder how it
has escaped the notice of philosophers. But what had I, dear
wise man, to tell you? What, but that life was still tolerable;
still absurdly sweet; still promising, promising, to credulous
idleness;--but step of mine taken in a true direction, or clear
solution of any the least secret,--none whatever. I scribble
always a little,--much less than formerly,--and I did within a
year or eighteen months write a chapter on Fate, which--if we all
live long enough, that is, you, and I, and the chapter--I hope to
send you in fair print. Comfort yourself--as you will--you will
survive the reading, and will be a sure proof that the nut is not
cracked. For when we find out what Fate is, I suppose, the
Sphinx and we are done for; and Sphinx, Oedipus, and world
ought, by good rights, to roll down the steep into the sea.
But I was going to say, my neglect of your request will show you
how little saliency is in my weeks and months. They are hardly
distinguished in memory other than as a running web out of a
loom, a bright stripe for day, a dark stripe for night, and, when
it goes faster, even these run together into endless gray... I
went lately to St. Louis and saw the Mississippi again. The
powers of the River, the insatiate craving for nations of men to
reap and cure its harvests, the conditions it imposes,--for it
yields to no engineering,--are interesting enough. The Prairie
exists to yield the greatest possible quantity of adipocere. For
corn makes pig, pig is the export of all the land, and you shall
see the instant dependence of aristocracy and civility on the fat
four legs. Workingmen, ability to do the work of the River,
abounded. Nothing higher was to be thought of. America is
incomplete. Room for us all, since it has not ended, nor given
sign of ending, in bard or hero. 'T is a wild democracy, the
riot of mediocrities, and none of your selfish Italies and
Englands, where an age sublimates into a genius, and the whole
population is made into Paddies to feed his porcelain veins, by
transfusion from their brick arteries. Our few fine persons are
apt to die. Horatio Greenough, a sculptor, whose tongue was far
cunninger in talk than his chisel to carve, and who inspired
great hopes, died two months ago at forty-seven years. Nature
has only so much vital force, and must dilute it, if it is to be
multiplied into millions. "The beautiful is never plentiful."
On the whole, I say to myself, that our conditions in America are
not easier or less expensive than the European. For the poor
scholar everywhere must be compromise or alternation, and, after
many remorses, the consoling himself that there has been
pecuniary honesty, and that things might have been worse. But
no; we must think much better things than these. Let Lazarus
believe that Heaven does not corrupt into maggots, and that
heroes do not succumb.
Clough is here, and comes to spend a Sunday with me, now and
then. He begins to have pupils, and, if his courage holds out,
will have as many as he wants.... I have written hundreds of
pages about England and America, and may send them to you
in print. And now be good and write me once more, and I think
I will never cease to write again. And give my homage to
Jane Carlyle.
Ever yours,
R.W. Emerson
CLII. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, 13 May, 1853
Dear Emerson,--The sight of your handwriting was a real blessing
to me, after so long an abstinence. You shall not know all the
sad reflections I have made upon your silence within the last
year. I never doubted your fidelity of heart; your genial deep
and friendly recognition of my bits of merits, and my bits of
sufferings, difficulties and obstructions; your forgiveness of
my faults; or in fact that you ever would forget me, or cease to
think kindly of me: but it seemed as if practically _Old Age_
had come upon the scene here too; and as if upon the whole one
must make up one's mind to know that all this likewise had fallen
silent, and could be possessed henceforth only on those new
terms. Alas, there goes much over, year after year, into the
regions of the Immortals; inexpressibly beautiful, but also
inexpressibly sad. I have not many voices to commune with in the
world. In fact I have properly no voice at all; and yours, I
have often said, was the _unique_ among my fellow-creatures, from
which came full response, and discourse of reason: the
_solitude_ one lives in, if one has any spiritual thought at all,
is very great in these epochs!--The truth is, moreover, I bought
spectacles to myself about two years ago (bad print in candle-
light having fairly become troublesome to me); much may lie in
that! "The buying of your first pair of spectacles," I said to
an old Scotch gentleman, "is an important epoch; like the buying
of your first razor."--"Yes," answered he, "but not quite so
joyful perhaps!"--Well, well, I have heard from you again; and
you promise to be again constant in writing. Shall I believe
you, this time? Do it, and shame the Devil! I really am
persuaded it will do yourself good; and to me I know right well,
and have always known, what it will do. The gaunt lonesomeness
of this Midnight Hour, in the ugly universal _snoring_ hum of the
overfilled deep-sunk Posterity of Adam, renders an articulate
speaker precious indeed! Watchman, what sayest thou, then?
Watchman, what of the night?--
Your glimpses of the huge unmanageable Mississippi, of the huge
ditto Model Republic, have here and there something of the _epic_
in them,--_ganz nach meinem Sinne._ I see you do not dissent
from me in regard to that latter enormous Phenomenon, except on
the outer surface, and in the way of peaceably instead of
_un_peaceably accepting the same. Alas, all the world is a
"republic of the Mediocrities," and always was;--you may see what
_its_ "universal suffrage" is and has been, by looking into all
the ugly mud-ocean (with some old weathercocks atop) that now
_is:_ the world wholly (if we think of it) is the exact stamp of
men wholly, and of the _sincerest_ heart-tongue-and-hand
"suffrage" they could give about it, poor devils!--I was much
struck with Plato, last year, and his notions about Democracy:
mere Latter-Day Pamphlet _saxa et faces_ (read _faeces,_ if you
like) refined into empyrean radiance and lightning of the gods!--
I, for my own part, perceive the use of all this too, the
inevitability of all this; but perceive it (at the present
height it has attained) to be disastrous withal, to be horrible
and even damnable. That Judas Iscariot should come and slap
Jesus Christ on the shoulder in a familiar manner; that all
heavenliest nobleness should be flung out into the muddy streets
there to jostle elbows with all thickest-skinned denizens of
chaos, and get itself at every turn trampled into the gutters and
annihilated:--alas, the _reverse_ of all this was, is, and ever
will be, the strenuous effort and most solemn heart-purpose of
every good citizen in every country of the world,--and will
_reappear_ conspicuously as such (in New England and in Old,
first of all, as I calculate), when once this malodorous
melancholy "Uncle Tommery" is got all well put by! Which will
take some time yet, I think.--And so we will leave it.
I went to Germany last autumn; not _seeking_ anything very
definite; rather merely flying from certain troops of
carpenters, painters, bricklayers, &c., &c., who had made a
lodgment in this poor house; and have not even yet got their
incalculable riot quite concluded. Sorrow on them,--and no
return to these poor premises of mine till I have quite left!--In
Germany I found but little; and suffered, from six weeks of
sleeplessness in German beds, &c., &c., a great deal. Indeed I
seem to myself never yet to have quite recovered. The Rhine
which I honestly ascended from Rotterdam to Frankfort was, as I
now find, my chief Conquest the beautifulest river in the Earth,
I do believe; and my first idea of a World-river. It is many
fathoms deep, broader twice over than the Thames here at high
water; and rolls along, mirror-smooth (except that, in looking
close, you will find ten thousand little eddies in it),
voiceless, swift, with trim banks, through the heart of Europe,
and of the Middle Ages wedded to the Present Age: such an image
of calm _power_ (to say nothing of its other properties) I find I
had never seen before. The old Cities too are a little beautiful
to me, in spite of my state of nerves; honest, kindly people
too, but sadly short of our and your _despatch-of-business_
talents,--a really painful defect in the long run. I was on two
of Fritz's Battle-fields, moreover: Lobositz in Bohemia, and
Kunersdorf by Frankfurt on the Oder; but did not, especially in
the latter case, make much of that. Schiller's death-chamber,
Goethe's sad Court-environment; above all, Luther's little room
in the _Wartburg_ (I believe I actually had tears in my eyes
there, and kissed the old oak-table, being in a very flurried
state of nerves), my belief was that under the Canopy there was
not at present so _holy_ a spot as that same. Of human souls I
found none specially beautiful to me at all, at all,--such my sad
fate! Of learned professors, I saw little, and that little was
more than enough. Tieck at Berlin, an old man, lame on a Sofa, I
did love, and do; he is an exception, could I have seen much of
him. But on the whole _Universal Puseyism_ seemed to me the
humor of German, especially of Berlin thinkers;--and I had some
quite portentous specimens of that kind,--unconscious specimens
of four hundred quack power! Truly and really the Prussian
Soldiers, with their intelligent _silence,_ with the touches of
effective Spartanism I saw or fancied in them, were the class of
people that pleased me best. But see, my sheet is out! I am
still reading, reading, most nightmare Books about Fritz; but as
to writing,--_Ach Gott!_ Never, never.--Clough is coming home, I
hope.--Write soon, if you be not enchanted!
Yours ever,
T. Carlyle
CLIIa. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 10 August, 1853
My Dear Carlyle,--Your kindest letter, whose date I dare not
count back to,--perhaps it was May,--I have just read again, to
be deeply touched by its noble tragic tone of goodness to me, not
without new wonder at my perversity, and terror at what both may
be a-forging to strike me. My slowness to write is a distemper
that reaches all my correspondence, and not that with you only,
though the circumstance is not worth stating, because, if I
ceased to write to all the rest, there would yet be good reason
for writing to you. I believe the reason of this recusancy is
the fear of disgusting my friends, as with a book open always at
the same page. For I have some experiences, that my interest in
thoughts--and to an end, perhaps, only of new thoughts and
thinking--outlasts that of all my reasonable neighbors, and
offends, no doubt, by unhealthy pertinacity. But though rebuked
by a daily reduction to an absurd solitude, and by a score of
disappointments with intellectual people, and in the face of a
special hell provided for me in the Swedenborg Universe, I am yet
confirmed in my madness by the scope and satisfaction I find in a
conversation once or twice in five years, if so often; and so we
find or pick what we call our proper path, though it be only from
stone to stone, or from island to island, in a very rude,
stilted, and violent fashion. With such solitariness and
frigidities, you may judge I was glad to see Clough here, with
whom I had established some kind of robust working-friendship,
and who had some great permanent values for me. Had he not taken
me by surprise and fled in a night, I should have done what I
could to block his way. I am too sure he will not return. The
first months comprise all the shocks of disappointment that are
likely to disgust a new-comer. The sphere of opportunity opens
slowly, but to a man of his abilities and culture--rare enough
here--with the sureness of chemistry. The Giraffe entering Paris
wore the label, "Eh bien, messieurs, il n'y a qu'une bete de
plus!" And Oxonians are cheap in London; but here, the eternal
economy of sending things where they are wanted makes a
commanding claim. Do not suffer him to relapse into London. He
had made himself already cordially welcome to many good people,
and would have soon made his own place. He had just established
his valise at my house, and was to come--the gay deceiver--once a
fortnight for his Sunday; and his individualities and his
nationalities are alike valuable to me. I beseech you not to
commend his unheroic retreat.
I have lately made, one or two drafts on your goodness,--which I
hate to do, both because you meet them so generously, and because
you never give me an opportunity of revenge,--and mainly in the
case of Miss Bacon, who has a private history that entitles her
to high respect, and who could be helped only by facilitating her
Shakespeare studies, in which she has the faith and ardor of a
discoverer. Bancroft was to have given her letters to Hallam,
but gave one to Sir H. Ellis. Everett, I believe, gave her one
to Mr. Grote; and when I told her what I remembered hearing of
Spedding, she was eager to see him; which access I knew not how
to secure, except through you. She wrote me that she prospers in
all things, and had just received at once a summons to meet
Spedding at your house. But do not fancy that I send any one to
you heedlessly; for I value your time at its rate to nations,
and refuse many more letters than I give. I shall not send you
any more people without good reason.
Your visit to Germany will stand you in stead, when the
annoyances of the journey are forgotten, and, in spite of your
disclaimers, I am preparing to read your history of Frederic.
You are an inveterate European, and rightfully stand for your
polity and antiquities and culture: and I have long since
forborne to importune you with America, as if it were a humorous
repetition of Johnson's visit to Scotland. And yet since
Thackeray's adventure, I have often thought how you would bear
the pains and penalties; and have painted out your march
triumphal. I was at New York, lately, for a few days, and fell
into some traces of Thackeray, who has made a good mark in this
country by a certain manly blurting out of his opinion in various
companies, where so much honesty was rare and useful. I am sorry
never once to have been in the same town with him whilst he was
here. I hope to see him, if he comes again. New York would
interest you, as I am told it did him; you both less and more.
The "society" there is at least self-pleased, and its own; it
has a contempt of Boston, and a very modest opinion of London.
There is already all the play and fury that belong to great
wealth. A new fortune drops into the city every day; no end is
to palaces, none to diamonds, none to dinners and suppers. All
Spanish America discovers that only in the U. States, of all the
continent, is safe investment; and money gravitates therefore to
New York. The Southern naphtha, too, comes in as an ingredient,
and lubricates manners and tastes to that degree, that Boston is
hated for stiffness, and excellence in luxury is rapidly
attained. Of course, dining, dancing, equipaging, etc. are the
exclusive beatitudes,--and Thackeray will not cure us of this
distemper. Have you a physician that can? Are you a physician,
and will you come? If you will come, cities will go out to
meet you.
And now I see I have so much to say to you that I ought to write
once a month, and I must begin at this point again incontinently.
Ever yours,
R.W. Emerson
CLIII. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, London, 9 September, 1853
Dear Emerson,--Your Letter came ten days ago; very kind, and
however late, surely right welcome! You ought to stir yourself
up a little, and actually begin to speak to me again. If we are
getting old, that is no reason why we should fall silent, and
entirely abstruse to one another. Alas, I do not find as I grow
older that the number of articulate-speaking human souls
increases around me, in proportion to the inarticulate and
palavering species! I am often abundantly solitary in heart;
and regret the old days when we used to speak oftener together.
I have not quitted Town this year at all; have resisted calls to
Scotland both of a gay and a sad description (for the Ashburtons
are gone to John of Groat's House, or the Scottish _Thule,_ to
rusticate and hunt; and, alas, in poor old Annandale a tragedy
seems preparing for me, and the thing I have dreaded all my days
is perhaps now drawing nigh, ah me!)--I felt so utterly broken
and disgusted with the jangle of last year's locomotion, I judged
it would be better to sit obstinately still, and let my thoughts
_settle_ (into sediment and into clearness, as it might be); and
so, in spite of great and peculiar noises moreover, here I am and
remain. London is not a bad place at all in these months,--with
its long clean streets, green parks, and nobody in them, or
nobody one has ever seen before. Out of La Trappe, which does
not suit a Protestant man, there is perhaps no place where one
can be so perfectly alone. I might study even but, as I said,
there are noises going on; a _last_ desperate spasmodic effort
of building,--a new top-story to the house, out of which is to be
made one "spacious room" (so they call it, though it is under
twenty feet square) where there shall be air _ad libitum,_ light
from the sky, and no _sound,_ not even that of the Cremorne
Cannons, shall find access to me any more! Such is the prophecy;
may the gods grant it! We shall see now in about a month;--then
adieu to mortar-tubs to all Eternity:--I endure the thing,
meanwhile, as well as I can; might run to a certain rural
retreat near by, if I liked at any time; but do not yet: the
worst uproar here is but a trifle to that of German inns, and
horrible squeaking, choking railway trains; and one does not go
to seek this, _this_ is here of its own will, and for a purpose!
Seriously, I had for twelve years had such a sound-proof
inaccessible apartment schemed out in my head; and last year,
under a poor, helpless builder, had finally given it up: but
Chelsea, as London generally, swelling out as if it were mad,
grows every year noisier; a _good_ builder turned up, and with a
last paroxysm of enthusiasm I set him to. My notion is, he will
succeed; in which case, it will be a great possession to me for
the rest of my life. Alas, this is not the kind of _silence_ I
could have coveted, and could once get,--with green fields and
clear skies to accompany it! But one must take such as can be
had,--and thank the gods. Even so, my friend. In the course of
about a year of that garret sanctuary, I hope to have swept away
much litter from my existence: in fact I am already, by dint of
mere obstinate quiescence in such circumstances as there are,
intrinsically growing fairly sounder in nerves. What a business
a poor human being has with those nerves of his, with that crazy
clay tabernacle of his! Enough, enough; there will be all
Eternity to rest in, as Arnauld said: "Why in such a fuss,
little sir?"
You "apologize" for sending people to me: O you of little faith!
Never dream of such a thing nay, whom _did_ you send? The
Cincinnati Lecturer* I had provided for with Owen; they would
have been glad to hear him, on the Cedar forests, on the pigs
making rattlesnakes into bacon, and the general adipocere
question, under any form, at the Albemarle Street rooms;--and he
never came to hand. As for Miss Bacon, we find her, with her
modest shy dignity, with her solid character and strange
enterprise, a real acquisition; and hope we shall now see more
of her, now that she has come nearer to us to lodge. I have not
in my life seen anything so tragically _quixotic_ as her
Shakespeare enterprise: alas, alas, there can be nothing but
sorrow, toil, and utter disappointment in it for her! I do
cheerfully what I can;--which is far more than she _asks_ of me
(for I have not seen a prouder silent soul);--but there is not
the least possibility of truth in the notion she has taken up:
and the hope of ever proving it, or finding the least document
that countenances it, is equal to that of vanquishing the
windmills by stroke of lance. I am often truly sorry about the
poor lady: but she troubles nobody with her difficulties, with
her theories; she must try the matter to the end, and charitable
souls must further her so far.
---------
* Mr. O.M. Mitchell, the astronomer.
---------
Clough is settled in his Office; gets familiarized to it rapidly
(he says), and seems to be doing well. I see little of him
hitherto; I did not, and will not, try to influence him in his
choice of countries; but I think he is now likely to continue
here, and here too he may do us some good. Of America, at least
of New England, I can perceive he has brought away an altogether
kindly, almost filial impression,--especially of a certain man
who lives in that section of the Earth. More power to his
elbow!--Thackeray has very rarely come athwart me since his
return: he is a big fellow, soul and body; of many gifts and
qualities (particularly in the Hogarth line, with a dash of
Sterne superadded), of enormous _appetite_ withal, and very
uncertain and chaotic in all points except his _outer breeding,_
which is fixed enough, and _perfect_ according to the modern
English style. I rather dread explosions in his history. A
_big,_ fierce, weeping, hungry man; not a strong one. _Ay de
mi!_ But I must end, I must end. Your Letter awakened in me,
while reading it, one mad notion. I said to myself: Well, if I
live to finish this Frederic impossibility, or even to fling it
fairly into the fire, why should not I go, in my old days, and
see Concord, Yankeeland, and that man again, after all!--Adieu,
dear friend; all good be with you and yours always.
--T. Carlyle
CLIV. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 11 March, 1854
My Dear Carlyle,--The sight of Mr. Samuel Laurence, the day
before yesterday, in New York, and of your head among his
sketches, set me on thinking which had some pain where should be
only cheer. For Mr. Laurence I hailed his arrival, on every
account. I wish to see a good man whom you prize; and I like to
have good Englishmen come to America, which, of all countries,
after their own, has the best claim to them. He promises to come
and see me, and has begun most propitiously in New York. For
you,--I have too much constitutional regard and ---, not to feel
remorse for my short-comings and slow-comings, and I remember the
maxim which the French stole from our Indians,--and it was worth
stealing,--"Let not the grass grow on the path of friendship."
Ah! my brave giant, you can never understand the silence and
forbearances of such as are not giants. To those to whom we owe
affection, let us be dumb until we are strong, though we should
never be strong. I hate mumped and measled lovers. I hate cramp
in all men,--most in myself.
And yet I should have been pushed to write without Samuel
Laurence; for I lately looked into _Jesuitism,_ a Latter-Day
Pamphlet, and found why you like those papers so well. I think
you have cleared your skirts; it is a pretty good minority of
one, enunciating with brilliant malice what shall be the
universal opinion of the next edition of mankind. And the sanity
was so manifest, that I felt that the over-gods had cleared their
skirts also to this generation, in not leaving themselves without
witness, though without this single voice perhaps I should not
acquit them. Also I pardon the world that reads the book as
though it read it not, when I see your inveterated humors. It
required courage and required conditions that feuilletonists are
not the persons to name or qualify, this writing Rabelais in
1850. And to do this alone.--You must even pitch your tune to
suit yourself. We must let Arctic Navigators and deepsea divers
wear what astonishing coats, and eat what meats--wheat or whale--
they like, without criticism.
I read further, sidewise and backwards, in these pamphlets,
without exhausting them. I have not ceased to think of the great
warm heart that sends them forth, and which I, with others,
sometimes tag with satire, and with not being warm enough for
this poor world;--I too,--though I know its meltings to-me-ward.
Then I learned that the newspapers had announced the death of
your mother (which I heard of casually on the Rock River,
Illinois), and that you and your brother John had been with her
in Scotland. I remembered what you had once and again said of
her to me, and your apprehensions of the event which has come. I
can well believe you were grieved. The best son is not enough a
son. My mother died in my house in November, who had lived with
me all my life, and kept her heart and mind clear, and her own,
until the end. It is very necessary that we should have
mothers,--we that read and write,--to keep us from becoming
paper. I had found that age did not make that she should die
without causing me pain. In my journeying lately, when I think
of home the heart is taken out.
Miss Bacon wrote me in joyful fulness of the cordial kindness and
aid she had found at your hands, and at your wife's; and I have
never thanked you, and much less acknowledged her copious
letter,--copious with desired details. Clough, too, wrote about
you, and I have not written to him since his return to England.
You will see how total is my ossification. Meantime I have
nothing to tell you that can explain this mild palsy. I worked
for a time on my English Notes with a view of printing, but was
forced to leave them to go read some lectures in Philadelphia and
some Western towns. I went out Northwest to great countries
which I had not visited before; rode one day, fault of broken
railroads, in a sleigh, sixty-five miles through the snow, by
Lake Michigan, (seeing how prairies and oak-openings look in
winter,) to reach Milwaukee; "the world there was done up in
large lots," as a settler told me. The farmer, as he is now a
colonist and has drawn from his local necessities great doses of
energy, is interesting, and makes the heroic age for Wisconsin.
He lives on venison and quails. I was made much of, as the only
man of the pen within five hundred miles, and by rarity worth
more than venison and quails.
Greeley of the _New York Tribune_ is the right spiritual father
of all this region; he prints and disperses one hundred and ten
thousand newspapers in one day,--multitudes of them in these very
parts. He had preceded me, by a few days, and people had flocked
together, coming thirty and forty miles to hear him speak; as
was right, for he does all their thinking and theory for them,
for two dollars a year. Other than Colonists, I saw no man.
"There are no singing birds in the prairie," I truly heard. All
the life of the land and water had distilled no thought. Younger
and better, I had no doubt been tormented to read and speak their
sense for them. Now I only gazed at them and their boundless land.
One good word closed your letter in September, which ought to
have had an instant reply, namely, that you might come westward
when Frederic was disposed of. Speed Frederic, then, for all
reasons and for this! America is growing furiously, town and
state; new Kansas, new Nebraska looming up in these days,
vicious politicians seething a wretched destiny for them already
at Washington. The politicians shall be sodden, the States
escape, please God! The fight of slave and freeman drawing
nearer, the question is sharply, whether slavery or whether
freedom shall be abolished. Come and see. Wealth, which is
always interesting, for from wealth power refuses to be divorced,
is on a new scale. Californian quartz mountains dumped down in
New York to be repiled architecturally along shore from Canada to
Cuba, and thence west to California again. John Bull interests
you at home, and is all your subject. Come and see the
Jonathanization of John. What, you scorn all this? Well, then,
come and see a few good people, impossible to be seen on any
other shore, who heartily and always greet you. There is a very
serious welcome for you here. And I too shall wake from sleep.
My wife entreats that an invitation shall go from her to you.
Faithfully yours,
R.W. Emerson
CLV. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, 8 April, 1854
Dear Emerson,--It was a morning not like any other which lay
round it, a morning to be marked white, that one, about a week
ago, when your Letter came to me; a word from you yet again,
after so long a silence! On the whole, I perceive you will not
utterly give up answering me, but will rouse yourself now and
then to a word of human brotherhood on my behalf, so long as we
both continue in this Planet. And I declare, the Heavens will
reward you; and as to me, I will be thankful for what I get, and
submissive to delays and to all things: all things are good
compared with flat want in that respect. It remains true, and
will remain, what I have often told you, that properly there is
no voice in this world which is completely human to me, which
fully understands all I say and with clear sympathy and sense
answers to me, but your voice only. That is a curious fact, and
not quite a joyful one to me. The solitude, the silence of my
poor soul, in the centre of this roaring whirlpool called
Universe, is great, always, and sometimes strange and almost
awful. I have two million talking bipeds without feathers, close
at my elbow, too; and of these it is often hard for me to say
whether the so-called "wise" or the almost professedly foolish
are the more inexpressibly unproductive to me. "Silence,
Silence!" I often say to myself: "Be silent, thou poor fool;
and prepare for that Divine Silence which is now not far!"--On
the whole, write to me whenever you can; and be not weary of
well-doing.
I have had sad things to do and see since I wrote to you: the
loss of my dear and good old Mother, which could not be spared me
forever, has come more like a kind of total bankruptcy upon me
than might have been expected, considering her age and mine. Oh
those last two days, that last Christmas Sunday! She was a true,
pious, brave, and noble Mother to me; and it is now all over;
and the Past has all become pale and sad and sacred;--and the
all-devouring potency of Death, what we call Death, has never
looked so strange, cruel and unspeakable to me. Nay not _cruel_
altogether, let me say: huge, profound, _unspeakable,_ that is
the word.--You too have lost your good old Mother, who stayed
with you like mine, clear to the last: alas, alas, it is the
oldest Law of Nature; and it comes on every one of us with a
strange originality, as if it had never happened before.--
Forward, however; and no more lamenting; no more than cannot be
helped. "Paradise is under the shadow of our swords," said the
Emir: "Forward!"--
I make no way in my Prussian History; I bore and dig toilsomely
through the unutterablest mass of dead rubbish, which is not even
English, which is German and inhuman; and hardly from ten tons
of learned inanity is there to be riddled one old rusty nail.
For I have been back as far as Pytheas who, first of speaking
creatures, beheld the Teutonic Countries; and have questioned
all manner of extinct German shadows,--who answer nothing but
mumblings. And on the whole Fritz himself is not sufficiently
divine to me, far from it; and I am getting old, and heavy of
heart;--and in short, it oftenest seems to me I shall never write
any word about that matter; and have again fairly got into the
element of the IMPOSSIBLE. Very well: could I help it? I can
at least be honestly silent; and "bear my indigence with
dignity," as you once said. The insuperable difficulty of
_Frederic_ is, that he, the genuine little ray of Veritable and
Eternal that was in him, lay imbedded in the putrid Eighteenth
Century, such an Ocean of sordid nothingness, shams, and
scandalous hypocrisies, as never weltered in the world before;
and that in everything I can find yet written or recorded of him,
he still, to all intents and purposes, most tragically _lies_
THERE;--and ought not to lie there, if any use is ever to be had
of him, or at least of _writing_ about him; for as to him, he
with his work is safe enough to us, far elsewhere.--Pity me, pity
me; I know not on what hand to turn; and have such a Chaos
filling all my Earth and Heaven as was seldom seen in British or
Foreign Literature! Add to which, the Sacred Entity, Literature
itself, is not growing more venerable to me, but less and ever
less: good Heavens, I feel often as if there were no madder set
of bladders tumbling on the billows of the general Bedlam at this
moment than even the Literary ones,--dear at twopence a gross, I
should say, unless one could _annihilate_ them by purchase on
those easy terms! But do not tell this in Gath; let it be a sad
family secret.
I smile, with a kind of grave joy, over your American
speculations, and wild dashing portraitures of things as they are
with you; and recognize well, under your light caricature, the
outlines of a right true picture, which has often made me sad and
grim in late years. Yes, I consider that the "Battle of Freedom
and Slavery" is very far from ended; and that the fate of poor
"Freedom" in the quarrel is very questionable indeed! Alas,
there is but one _Slavery,_ as I wrote somewhere; and that, I
think, is mounting towards a height, which may bring strokes to
bear upon it again! Meanwhile, patience; for us there is
nothing else appointed.--Tell me, however, what has become of
your Book on England? We shall really be obliged to you for
that. A piece of it went through all the Newspapers, some years
ago; which was really unique for its quaint kindly insight,
humor, and other qualities; like an etching by Hollar or Durer,
amid the continents of vile smearing which are called "pictures" at
present. Come on, Come on; give us the Book, and don't loiter!--
Miss Bacon has fled away to _St. Alban's_ (the _Great_ Bacon's
place) five or six months ago; and is there working out her
Shakespeare Problem, from the depths of her own mind, disdainful
apparently, or desperate and careless, of all _evidence_ from
Museums or Archives; I have not had an answer from her since
before Christmas, and have now lost her address. Poor Lady: I
sometimes silently wish she were safe home again; for truly
there can no madder enterprise than her present one be well
figured. Adieu, my Friend; I must stop short here. Write soon,
if you have any charity. Good be with you ever.
--T. Carlyle
CLVI. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 17 April, 1855
My Dear Friend,--On this delicious spring day, I will obey the
beautiful voices of the winds, long disobeyed, and address you;
nor cloud the hour by looking at the letters in my drawer to know
if a twelvemonth has been allowed to elapse since this tardy
writing was due. Mr. Everett sent me one day a letter he had
received from you, containing a kind message to me, which gave me
pleasure and pain. I returned the letter with thanks, and with
promises I would sin no more. Instantly, I was whisked, by "the
stormy wing of Fate," out of my chain, and whirled, like a dry
leaf, through the State of New York.
Now at home again, I read English Newspapers, with all the world,
and claim an imaginary privilege over my compatriots, that I
revolve therein my friend's large part. Ward said to me
yesterday, that Carlyle's star was daily rising. For C. had said
years ago, when all men thought him mad, that which the rest of
mortals, including the Times Newspaper, have at last got near
enough to see with eyes, and therefore to believe. And one day,
in Philadelphia, you should have heard the wise young Philip
Randolph defend you against objections of mine. But when I have
such testimony, I say to myself, the high-seeing austerely
exigent friend whom I elected, and who elected me, twenty years
and more ago, finds me heavy and silent, when all the world
elects and loves him. Yet I have not changed. I have the same
pride in his genius, the same sympathy with the Genius that
governs his, the old love with the old limitations, though love
and limitation be all untold. And I see well what a piece of
Providence he is, how material he is to the times, which must
always have a solo Soprano to balance the roar of the Orchestra.
The solo sings the theme; the orchestra roars antagonistically
but follows.--And have I not put him into my Chapter of "English
Spiritual Tendencies," with all thankfulness to the Eternal
Creator,--though the chapter lie unborn in a trunk?
'T is fine for us to excuse ourselves, and patch with promises.
We shall do as before, and science is a fatalist. I follow, I
find, the fortunes of my Country, in my privatest ways. An
American is pioneer and man of all work, and reads up his
newspaper on Saturday night, as farmers and foresters do. We
admire the [Greek], and mean to give our boys the grand habit;
but we only sketch what they may do. No leisure except for the
strong, the nimble have none.--I ought to tell you what I do, or
I ought to have to tell you what I have done. But what can I?
the same concession to the levity of the times, the noise of
America comes again. I have even run on wrong topics for my
parsimonious Muse, and waste my time from my true studies.
England I see as a roaring volcano of Fate, which threatens to
roast or smother the poor literary Plinys that come too near for
mere purpose of reporting.
I have even fancied you did me a harm by the valued gift of
Antony Wood;--which, and the like of which, I take a lotophagous
pleasure in eating. Yet this is measuring after appearance,
measuring on hours and days; the true measure is quite other,
for life takes its color and quality not from the days, but the
dawns. The lucid intervals are like drowning men's moments,
equivalent to the foregoing years. Besides, Nature uses us. We
live but little for ourselves, a good deal for our children, and
strangers. Each man is one more lump of clay to hold the world
together. It is in the power of the Spirit meantime to make him
rich reprisals,--which he confides will somewhere be done.--Ah,
my friend, you have better things to send me word of, than
these musings of indolence. Is Frederic recreated? Is Frederic
the Great?
Forget my short-comings and write to me. Miss Bacon sends me
word, again and again, of your goodness. Against hope and sight
she must be making a remarkable book. I have a letter from her,
a few days ago, written in perfect assurance of success! Kindest
remembrances to your wife and to your brother.
Yours faithfully,
R.W. Emerson
CLVII. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, 18 May, 1855
Dear Emerson,--Last Sunday, Clough was here; and we were
speaking about you, (much to your discredit, you need not doubt,)
and how stingy in the way of Letters you were grown; when, next
morning, your Letter itself made its appearance. Thanks, thanks.
You know not in the least, I perceive, nor can be made to
understand at all, how indispensable your Letters are to me. How
you are, and have for a long time been, the one of all the sons
of Adam who, I felt, completely understood what I was saying;
and answered with a truly _human_ voice,--inexpressibly
consolatory to a poor man, in his lonesome pilgrimage, towards
the evening of the day! So many voices are not human; but more
or less bovine, porcine, canine; and one's soul dies away in
sorrow in the sound of them, and is reduced to a dialogue with
the "Silences," which is of a very abstruse nature!--Well,
whether you write to me or not, I reserve to myself the privilege
of writing to you, so long as we both continue in this world! As
the beneficent Presences vanish from me, one after the other,
those that remain are the more precious, and I will not part with
them, not with the chief of them, beyond all.
This last year has been a grimmer lonelier one with me than any I
can recollect for a long time. I did not go to the Country at
all in summer or winter; refused even my Christmas at The Grange
with the Ashburtons,--it was too sad an anniversary for me;--I
have sat here in my garret, wriggling and wrestling on the worst
terms with a Task that I cannot do, that generally seems to me
not worth doing, and yet _must_ be _done._ These are truly the
terms. I never had such a business in my life before. Frederick
himself is a pretty little man to me, veracious, courageous,
invincible in his small sphere; but he does not rise into the
empyrean regions, or kindle my heart round him at all; and his
history, upon which there are wagon-loads of dull bad books, is
the most dislocated, unmanageably incoherent, altogether dusty,
barren and beggarly production of the modern Muses as given
hitherto. No man of _genius_ ever saw him with eyes, except
twice Mirabeau, for half an hour each time. And the wretched
Books have no _indexes,_ no precision of detail; and I am far
away from Berlin and the seat of information;--and, in brief,
shall be beaten miserably with this unwise enterprise in my old
days; _and_ (in fine) will consent to be so, and get through it
if I can before I die. This of obstinacy is the one quality I
still show; all my other qualities (hope, among them) often seem
to have pretty much taken leave of me; but it is necessary to
hold by this last. Pray for me; I will complain no more at
present. General Washington gained the freedom of America--
chiefly by this respectable quality I talk of; nor can a history
of Frederick be written, in Chelsea in the year 1855, except as
_against_ hope, and by planting yourself upon it in an extremely
dogged manner.
We are all wool-gathering here, with wide eyes and astonished
minds, at a singular rate, since you heard last from me!
"Balaklava," I can perceive, is likely to be a substantive in the
English language henceforth: it in truth expresses compendiously
what an earnest mind will experience everywhere in English life;
if his soul rise at all above cotton and scrip, a man has to
pronounce it all a _Balaklava_ these many years. A Balaklava now
_yielding,_ under the pressure of rains and unexpected transit of
heavy wagons; champing itself down into mere mud-gulfs,--towards
the bottomless Pool, if some flooring be not found. To me it is
not intrinsically a new phenomenon, only an extremely hideous
one. _Altum Silentium,_ what else can I reply to it at present?
The Turk War, undertaken under pressure of the mere mobility,
seemed to me an enterprise worthy of Bedlam from the first; and
this method of carrying it on, _without_ any general, or with a
mere sash and cocked-hat for one, is of the same block of stuff.
_Ach Gott!_ Is not Anarchy, and parliamentary eloquence instead
of work, continued for half a century everywhere, a beautiful
piece of business? We are in alliance with Louis Napoleon (a
gentleman who has shown only _housebreaker_ qualities hitherto,
and is required now to show heroic ones, _or_ go to the Devil);
and under Marechal Saint-Arnaud (who was once a dancing-master in
this city, and continued a _thief_ in all cities), a Commander of
the Playactor-Pirate description, resembling a _General_ as
Alexander Dumas does Dante Alighieri,--we have got into a very
strange problem indeed!--But there is something almost grand in
the stubborn thickside patience and persistence of this English
People; and I do not question but they will work themselves
through in one fashion or another; nay probably, get a great
deal of benefit out of this astonishing slap on the nose to their
self-complacency before all the world. They have not _done_ yet,
I calculate, by any manner of means: they are, however,
admonished in an ignominious and convincing manner, amid the
laughter of nations, that they are altogether on the wrong road
this great while (two hundred years, as I have been calculating
often),--and I shudder to think of the plunging and struggle they
will have to get into the approximately right one again. Pray
for them also, poor stupid overfed heavy-laden souls!--Before my
paper quite end, I must in my own name, and that of a select
company of others, inquire rigorously of R.W.E. why he does not
_give_ us that little Book on England he has promised so long? I
am very serious in saying, I myself want much to see it;--and
that I can see no reason why we all should not, without delay.
Bring it out, I say, and print it, _tale quale._ You will never
get it in the least like what _you_ wish it, clearly no! But I
venture to warrant, it is good enough,--far too good for the
readers that are to get it. Such a pack of blockheads, and
disloyal and bewildered unfortunates who know not their right
hand from their left, as fill me with astonishment, and are more
and more forfeiting all respect from me. Publish the Book, I
say; let us have it and so have done! Adieu, my dear friend,
for this time. I had a thousand things more to write, but have
wasted my sheet, and must end. I will take another before long,
whatever you do. In my lonely thoughts you are never long
absent: _Valete_ all of you at Concord!
--T. Carlyle
CLVIII. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 6 May, 1856
Dear Carlyle,--There is no escape from the forces of time and
life, and we do not write letters to the gods or to our friends,
but only to attorneys, landlords, and tenants. But the planes
and platforms on which all stand remain the same, and we are ever
expecting the descent of the heavens, which is to put us into
familiarity with the first named. When I ceased to write to you
for a long time, I said to myself,--If anything really good
should happen here,--any stroke of good sense or virtue in our
politics, or of great sense in a book,--I will send it on the
instant to the formidable man; but I will not repeat to him
every month, that there are no news. Thank me for my resolution,
and for keeping it through the long night.--One book, last
summer, came out in New York, a nondescript monster which yet had
terrible eyes and buffalo strength, and was indisputably
American,--which I thought to send you; but the book throve so
badly with the few to whom I showed it, and wanted good morals so
much, that I never did. Yet I believe now again, I shall. It is
called _Leaves of Grass,_--was written and printed by a
journeyman printer in Brooklyn, New York, named Walter Whitman;
and after you have looked into it, if you think, as you may, that
it is only an auctioneer's inventory of a warehouse, you can
light your pipe with it.
By tomorrow's steamer goes Mrs. --- to Liverpool, and to
Switzerland and Germany, by the advice of physicians, and I
cannot let her go without praying you to drop your pen, and shut
up German history for an hour, and extend your walk to her
chambers, wherever they may be. _There's_ a piece of
republicanism for you to see and hear! That person was, ten or
fifteen years ago, the loveliest of women, and her speech and
manners may still give you some report of the same. She has
always lived with good people, and in her position is a centre of
what is called good society, wherein her large heart makes a
certain glory and refinement. She is one of nature's ladies, and
when I hear her tell I know not what stories of her friends, or
her children, or her pensioners, I find a pathetic eloquence
which I know not where to match. But I suppose you shall never
hear it. Every American is a little displaced in London, and, no
doubt, her company has grown to her. Her husband is a banker
connected in business with your ---, and is a man of elegant
genius and tastes, and his house is a resort for fine people.
Thorwaldsen distinguished Mrs. --- in Rome, formerly, by his
attentions. Powers the sculptor made an admirable bust of her;
Clough and Thackeray will tell you of her. Jenny Lind, like the
rest, was captivated by her, and was married at her house. Is
not Henry James in London? he knows her well. If Tennyson comes
to London, whilst she is there, he should see her for his "Lays
of Good Women." Now please to read these things to the wise and
kind ears of Jane Carlyle, and ask her if I have done wrong in
giving my friend a letter to her? I could not ask more than that
each of those ladies might appear to the other what each has
appeared to me.
I saw Thackeray, in the winter, and he said he would come and see
me here, in April or May; but he is still, I believe, in the
South and West. Do not believe me for my reticency less hungry
for letters. I grieve at the want and loss, and am about writing
again, that I may hear from you.
Ever affectionately yours,
R.W. Emerson
CLIX. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, 20 July, 1856
Dear Emerson;--Welcome was your Letter to me, after the long
interval; as welcome as any human Letter could now well be.
These many months and years I have been sunk in what disastrous
vortexes of foreign wreck you know, till I am fallen sick and
almost broken-hearted, and my life (if it were not this one
interest, of doing a problem which I see to be impossible, and of
smallish value if found doable!) is burdensome and without
meaning to me. It is so rarely I hear the voice of a magnanimous
Brother Man addressing any word to me: ninety-nine hundredths of
the Letters I get are impertinent clutchings of me by the button,
concerning which the one business is, How to get handsomely loose
again; What to say that shall soonest _end_ the intrusion,--if
saying Nothing will not be the best way. Which last I often in
my sorrow have recourse to, at what ever known risks. "We must
pay our tribute to Time": ah yes, yes;--and yet I will believe,
so long as we continue together in this sphere of things there
will always be a _potential_ Letter coming out of New England for
me, and the world not fallen irretrievably dumb.--The best is, I
am about going into Scotland, in two days, into deep solitude,
for a couple of months beside the Solway sea: I absolutely need
to have the dust blown out of me, and my mad nerves rested (there
is nothing else quite gone wrong): this unblest _Life of
Frederick_ is now actually to get along into the Printer's hand;
--a good Book being impossible upon it, there shall a bad one be
done, and one's poor existence rid of it:--for which great object
two months of voluntary torpor are considered the fair
preliminary. In another year's time, (if the Fates allow me to
live,) I expect to have got a great deal of rubbish swept into
chaos again. Unlucky it should ever have been dug up, much
of it!--
Your Mrs. --- should have had our best welcome, for the sake of
him who sent her, had there been nothing more: but the Lady
never showed face at all; nor could I for a long time get any
trace--and then it was a most faint and distant one as if by
_double_ reflex--of her whereabout: too distant, too difficult
for me, who do not make a call once in the six months lately. I
did mean to go in quest (never had an _address_); but had not
yet rallied for the Enterprise, when Mrs. --- herself wrote that
she had been unwell, that she was going directly for Paris, and
would see us on her return. So be it:--pray only I may not be
absent next! I have not seen or distinctly heard of Miss Bacon
for a year and half past: I often ask myself, what has become of
that poor Lady, and wish I knew of her being safe among her
friends again. I have even lost the address (which at any rate
was probably not a lasting one); perhaps I could find it by the
eye,--but it is five miles away; and my _non-plus-ultra_ for
years past is not above half that distance. Heigho!
My time is all up and more; and Chaos come again is lying round
me, in the shape of "packing," in a thousand shapes!--Browning is
coming tonight to take leave. Do you know Browning at all? He
is abstruse, but worth knowing.--And what of the _Discourse on
England_ by a certain man? Shame! We always hear of it again as
"out"; and it continues obstinately _in._ Adieu, my friend.
Ever yours,
T. Carlyle
CLX. Carlyle to Emerson
The Gill, Cummertrees, Annan, N.B.
28 August, 1856
Dear Emerson,--Your Letter alighted here yesterday;* like a
winged Mercury, bringing "airs from Heaven" (in a sense) along
with his news. I understand very well your indisposition to
write; we must conform to it, as to the law of _Chronos_ (oldest
of the gods); but I will murmur always, "It is such a pity as of
almost no other man!"--You are citizen of a "Republic," and
perhaps fancy yourself republican in an eminent degree:
nevertheless I have remarked there is no man of whom I am so
certain always to get something _kingly:_--and whenever your huge
inarticulate America gets settled into _kingdoms,_ of the New
Model, fit for these Ages which are all upon the _Moult_ just
now, and dreadfully like going to the Devil in the interim,--then
will America, and all nations through her, owe the man Emerson a
_debt,_ far greater than either they or he are in the least aware
of at present! That I consider (for myself) to be an ascertained
fact. For which I myself at least am thankful and have long been.
---------
* It is missing now.
---------
It pleases me much to know that this English [book], so long
twinkling in our expectations and always drawn back again, is at
last verily to appear: I wish I could get hold of my copy:
there is no Book that would suit me better just now. But we must
wait for four weeks till we get back to Chelsea,--unless I call
find some trusty hand to extract it from the rubbish that will
have accumulated there, and forward it by post. You speak as if
there were something dreadful said of my own sacred self in that
Book: Courage, my Friend, it will be a most miraculous
occurrence to meet with anything said by you that does me _ill;_
whether the immediate taste of it be sweet or bitter, I will take
it with gratitude, you may depend,--nay even with pleasure, what
perhaps is still more incredible. But an old man deluged for
half a century with the brutally nonsensical vocables of his
fellow-creatures (which he grows to regard soon as _rain,_ "rain
of frogs" or the like, and lifts his umbrella against with
indifference),--such an old gentleman, I assure you, is grateful
for a word that he can recognize perennial sense in; as in this
case is his sure hope. And so be the little Book thrice welcome;
and let all England understand (as some choice portion of England
will) that there has not been a man talking about us these very
many years whose words are worth the least attention in comparison.
"Post passing!" I must end, in mid-course; so much still
untouched upon. Thanks for Sampson & Co., and let them go their
course upon me. If I can see Mrs. --- about the end of September
or after, I shall be right glad:--but I fear she will have fled
before that?--
I am here in my native Country, riding, seabathing, living on
country diet,--uttering no word,--now into the fifth week; have
had such a "retreat" as no La Trappe hardly could have offered
me. A "retreat" _without cilices,_ thistle-mattresses; and with
_silent_ devotions (if any) instead of blockhead spoken ones to
the Virgin and others! There is still an Excursion to the
Highlands ahead, which cannot be avoided;--then home again to
_peine forte et dure._ Good be with you always, dear friend.
--T. Carlyle
CLXI. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, 2 December, 1856
Dear Emerson,--I am really grieved to have hurt the feelings of
Mr. Phillips;* a gentleman to whom I, on my side, had no
feelings but those of respect and good will! I pray you smooth
him down again, by all wise methods, into at least good-natured
indifference to me. He may depend upon it I could not mean to
irritate him; there lay no gain for me in that! Nor is there
anything of business left now between us. It is doubly and
trebly evident those Stereotype Plates are not to him worth their
prime cost here, still less, their prime cost plus any vestige of
definite motive for me to concern myself in them:--whereupon the
Project falls on its face, and vanishes forever, with apologies
all round. For as to that other method, that is a game I never
thought, and never should think of playing at! You may also tell
him this little Biographical fact, if you think it will any way
help. Some ten or more years ago, I made a similar Bargain with
a New York House (known to you, and now I believe extinct): "10"
or something "percent," of selling price on the Copies Printed,
was to be my return--not for four or five hundred pounds money
laid out, but for various things I did, which gratis would by no
means have been done; in fine, it was their own Offer, made and
accepted in due form; "10 percent on the copies printed."
---------
* This refers to a proposed arrangement, which fell through, for
the publication in America by Messrs. Phillips and Sampson, of
Boston, of a complete edition of Carlyle's works, to be printed
from the stereotype plates of the English edition then in course
of issue by Messrs. Chapman and Hall.
---------
And how many were "printed," thinks Mr. Phillips? I saw one set;
dreadfully ugly Books, errors in every page;--and to this hour I
have never heard of any other! The amount remains zero net; and
it would appear there was simply one copy "printed," the ugly one
sent to myself, which I instantly despatched again somewhither!
On second thought perhaps you had better _not_ tell Mr. Phillips
this story, at least not in this way. _His_ integrity I would
not even question by insinuation, nor need I, at the point where
we now are. I perceive he sees in extraordinary brilliancy of
illumination his own side of the bargain; and thinks me ignorant
of several things which I am well enough informed about. In
brief, make a perfect peace between us, O friend, and man of
peace; and let the wampums be all wrapped up, and especially the
tomahawks entirely buried, and the thing end forever! To you
also I owe apologies; but not to you do I pay them, knowing from
of old what you are to me. Enough, enough!
I got your Book by post in the Highlands; and had such a day
over it as falls rarely to my lot! Not for seven years and more
have I got hold of such a Book;--Book by a real man, with eyes in
his head; nobleness, wisdom, humor, and many other things, in
the heart of him. Such Books do not turn up often in the decade,
in the century. In fact I believe it to be worth all the Books
ever written by New England upon Old. Franklin might have
written such a thing (in his own way); no other since! We do
very well with it here, and the wise part of us _best._ That
Chapter on the Church is inimitable; "the Bishop asking a
troublesome gentleman to take wine,"--you should see the kind of
grin it awakens here on our best kind of faces. Excellent the
manner of that, and the matter too dreadfully _true_ in every
part. I do not much seize your idea in regard to "Literature,"
though I do details of it, and will try again. Glad of that too,
even in its half state; not "sorry" at _any_ part of it,--you
Sceptic! On the whole, write _again,_ and ever again at greater
length: there lies your only fault to me. And yet I know, that
also is a right noble one, and rare in our day.
O my friend, save always for me some corner in your memory; I am
very lonely in these months and years,--sunk to the centre of the
Earth, like to be throttled by the Pythons and Mudgods in my old
days;--but shall get out again, too; and be a better boy! No
"hurry" equals mine, and it is in permanence.
Yours ever,
T. Carlyle
CLXII. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 17 May, 1858
My Dear Carlyle,--I see no way for you to avoid the Americans but
to come to America. For, first or last, we are all embarking,
and all steering straight to your door. Mr. and Mrs. Joseph
Longworth of Cincinnati are going abroad on their travels.
Possibly, the name is not quite unknown to you. Their father,
Nicholas Longworth, is one of the founders of the city of
Cincinnati, a bigger town than Boston, where he is a huge land
lord and planter, and patron of sculptors and painters. And his
family are most favorably known to all dwellers and strangers, in
the Ohio Valley, as people who have well used their great wealth.
His chief merit is to have introduced a systematic culture of the
wine-grape and wine manufacture, by the importing and settlement
of German planters in that region, and the trade is thriving to
the general benefit. His son Joseph is a well-bred gentleman of
literary tastes, whose position and good heart make him largely
hospitable. His wife is a very attractive and excellent woman,
and they are good friends of mine. It seems I have at some
former time told her that, when she went to England, she should
see you. And they are going abroad, soon, for the first time.
If you are in London, you must be seen of them.
But I hailed even this need of taxing once more your often taxed
courtesy, as a means to break up my long contumacy to-you-ward.
Please let not the wires be rusted out, so that we cannot weld
them again, and let me feel the subtle fluid streaming strong.
Tell me what is become of _Frederic,_ for whose appearance I have
watched every week for months? I am better ready for him, since
one or two books about Voltaire, Maupertuis, and company, fell in
my way.
Yet that book will not come which I most wish to read, namely,
the culled results, the quintessence of private conviction, a
_liber veritatis,_ a few sentences, hints of the final moral you
drew from so much penetrating inquest into past and present men.
All writing is necessitated to be exoteric, and written to a
human should instead of to the terrible is. And I say this to
you, because you are the truest and bravest of writers. Every
writer is a skater, who must go partly where he would, and
partly, where the skates carry him; or a sailor, who can only
land where sails can be safely blown. The variations to be
allowed for in the surveyor's compass are nothing like so large
as those that must be allowed for in every book. And a
friendship of old gentlemen who have got rid of many illusions,
survived their ambition, and blushes, and passion for euphony,
and surface harmonies, and tenderness for their accidental
literary stores, but have kept all their curiosity and awe
touching the problems of man and fate and the Cause of causes,--a
friendship of old gentlemen of this fortune is looking more
comely and profitable than anything I have read of love. Such a
dream flatters my incapacities for conversation, for we can all
play at monosyllables, who cannot attempt the gay pictorial
panoramic styles.
So, if ever I hear that you have betrayed the first symptom of
age, that your back is bent a twentieth of an inch from the
perpendicular, I shall hasten to believe you are shearing your
prodigal overgrowths, and are calling in your troops to the
citadel, and I may come in the first steamer to drop in of
evenings and hear the central monosyllables.
Be good now again, and send me quickly--though it be the shortest
autograph certificate of....*
--------
* The end of this letter is lost.
--------
CLXIII. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, 2 June, 1858
Dear Emerson,--Glad indeed I am to hear of you on any terms, on
any subject. For the last eighteen months I have pretty much
ceased all human correspondence,--writing no Note that was not in
a sense wrung from me; my one society the _Nightmares_ (Prussian
and other) all that while:--but often and often the image of you,
and the thoughts of old days between us, has risen sad upon me;
and I have waited to get loose from the Nightmares to appeal to
you again,--to edacious Time and you. Most likely in a couple of
weeks you would have heard from me again at any rate.--Your
friends shall be welcome to me; no friend of yours can be other
at any time. Nor in fact did anybody ever sent by you prove
other than pleasant in this house, so pray no apologies on that
small score.--If only these Cincinnati Patricians can find me
here when they come? For I am off to the deepest solitudes
discoverable (native Scotland probably) so soon as I can shake
the final tag rags of Printer people off me;--"surely within
three weeks now!" I say to myself. But I shall be back, too, if
all prosper; and your Longworths will be back; and Madam will
stand to her point, I hope.
That book on Friedrich of Prussia--first half of it, two swoln
unlovely volumes, which treat mainly of his Father, &c., and
leave him at his accession--is just getting out of my hands. One
packet more of Proofs, and I have done with it,--thanks to all
the gods! No job approaching in ugliness to it was ever cut out
for me; nor had I any motive to go on, except the sad negative
one, "Shall we be beaten in our old days, then?"--But it has
thoroughly humbled me,--trampled me down into the _mud,_ there to
wrestle with the accumulated stupidities of Mankind, German,
English, French, and other, for _all_ have borne a hand in these
sad centuries;--and here I emerge at last, not _killed,_ but
almost as good. Seek not to look at the Book,--nay in fact it is
"not to be _published_ till September" (so the man of affairs
settles with me yesterday, "owing to the political &c., to the
season," &c.); my only stipulation was that in ten days I should
be utterly out of it,--not to hear of it again till the Day of
Judgment, and if possible not even then! In fact it is a bad
book, poor, misshapen, feeble, _nearly_ worthless (thanks to
_past_ generations and to me); and my one excuse is, I could not
make it better, all the world having played such a game with it.
Well, well!--How true is that you say about the skater; and the
rider too depending on his vehicles, on his roads, on his et
ceteras! Dismally true have I a thousand times felt it, in these
late operations; never in any so much. And in short the
business of writing has altogether become contemptible to me;
and I am become confirmed in the notion that nobody ought to
write,--unless sheer Fate force him to do it;--and then he ought
(if _not_ of the mountebank genus) to beg to be shot rather.
That is deliberately my opinion,--or far nearer it than you
will believe.
Once or twice I caught some tone of you in some American
Magazine; utterances highly noteworthy to me; in a sense, the
only thing that is _speech_ at all among my fellow-creatures in
this time. For the years that remain, I suppose we must continue
to grumble out some occasional utterance of that kind: what can
we do, at this late stage? But in the _real_ "Model Republic,"
it would have been different with two good boys of this kind!--
Though shattered and trampled down to an immense degree, I do not
think any bones are broken yet,--though age truly is here, and
you may engage your berth in the steamer whenever you like. In a
few months I expect to be sensibly improved; but my poor Wife
suffers sadly the last two winters; and I am much distressed by
that item of our affairs. Adieu, dear Emerson: I have lost many
things; let me not lose you till I must in some way!
Yours ever,
T. Carlyle
P.S. If you read the Newspapers (which I carefully abstain from
doing) they will babble to you about Dickens's "Separation from
Wife," &c., &c.; fact of Separation I believe is true; but all
the rest is mere lies and nonsense. No crime or misdemeanor
specifiable on either side; _unhappy_ together, these good many
years past, and they at length end it.--Sulzer said, "Men are by
nature _good._" "Ach, mein lieber Sulzer, Er kennt nicht diese
verdammte Race," ejaculated Fritz, at hearing such an axiom.
CLXIII.* Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, London, 9 April, 1859
Dear Emerson,--Long months ago there was sent off for you a copy
of _Friedrich_ of Prussia, two big red volumes (for which Chapman
the Publisher had found some "safe, swift" vehicle); and _now_ I
have reason to fear they are still loitering somewhere, or at
least have long loitered sorrow on them! This is to say: If you
have not _yet_ got them, address a line to "Saml. F. Flower, Esq,
Librarian of Antiquarian Society, _Worcester,_ Mass." (forty
miles from you, they say), and that will at once bring them. In
the Devil's name! I never in my life was so near choked;
swimming in this mother of Dead Dogs, and a long spell of it
still ahead! I profoundly _pity myself_ (if no one else does).
You shall hear of me again if I survive,--but really that is
getting beyond a joke with me, and I ought to hold my peace (even
to you), and swim what I can. Your little touch of Human Speech
on _Burns'_* was charming; had got into the papers here (and
been clipt out by me) before your copy came, and has gone far and
wide since. Newberg was to give it me in German, from the
_Allgemeine Zeitung,_ but lost the leaf. Adieu, my Friend; very
dear to me, tho' dumb.
--T. Carlyle (in such haste as seldom was).**
---------
* Emerson's fine speech was made at the celebration of the Burns
Centenary, Boston, January 25, 1859. See his _Miscellanies_
(Works, vol. xi.), p. 363.
** The preceding letter was discovered in 1893, in a little
package of letters put aside by Mr. Emerson and marked "Autographs."
---------
CLXIV. Emerson to Carlyle*
Concord, 1 May, 1859
Dear Carlyle,--Some three weeks ago came to me a note from Mr.
Haven of Worcester, announcing the arrival there of "King
Friedrich," and, after a fortnight, the good book came to my
door. A week later, your letter arrived. I was heartily glad to
get the crimson Book itself. I had looked for it with the first
ships. As it came not, I had made up my mind to that hap also.
It was quite fair: I had disentitled myself. He, the true
friend, had every right to punish me for my sluggish contumacy,--
backsliding, too, after penitence. So I read with resignation
our blue American reprint, and I enclose to you a leaf from my
journal at the time, which leaf I read afterwards in one of my
lectures at the Music Hall in Boston. But the book came from the
man himself. He did not punish me. He is loyal, but royal as
well, and, I have always noted, has a whim for dealing _en grand
monarque._ The book came, with its irresistible inscription, so
that I am all tenderness and all but tears. The book too is
sovereignly written. I think you the true inventor of the
stereoscope, as having exhibited that art in style, long before
we had heard of it in drawing.
-------
* This letter and the Extract from the Diary are printed from a
copy of the original supplied to me by the kindness of Mr.
Alexander Ireland, who first printed a portion of the letter in
his "Ralph Waldo Emerson, a Biographical Sketch," London, 1882.
One or two words missing in the copy are inserted from the rough
draft, which, as usual, varies in minor points from the letter
as sent.
--------
The letter came also. Every child of mine knows from far that
handwriting, and brings it home with speed. I read without alarm
the pathetical hints of your sad plight in the German labyrinth.
I know too well what invitations and assurance brought you in
there, to fear any lack of guides to bring you out. More
presence of mind and easy change from the microscopic to the
telescopic view does not exist. I await peacefully your issue
from your pretended afflictions.
What to tell you of my coop and byre? Ah! you are a very poor
fellow, and must be left with your glory. You hug yourself on
missing the illusion of children, and must be pitied as having
one glittering toy the less. I am a victim all my days to
certain graces of form and behavior, and can never come into
equilibrium. Now I am fooled by my own young people, and grow
old contented. The heedless children suddenly take the keenest
hold on life, and foolish papas cling to the world on their
account, as never on their own. Out of sympathy, we _make
believe_ to value the prizes of their ambition and hope. My, two
girls, pupils once or now of Agassiz, are good, healthy,
apprehensive, decided young people, who love life. My boy
divides his time between Cicero and cricket, knows his boat, the
birds, and Walter Scott--verse and prose, through and through,--
and will go to College next year. Sam Ward and I tickled each
other the other day, in looking over a very good company of young
people, by finding in the new comers a marked improvement on
their parents. There, I flatter myself, I see some emerging of
our people from the prison of their politics. The insolvency of
slavery shows and stares, and we shall perhaps live to see that
putrid Black-vomit extirpated by mere dying and planting.
I am so glad to find myself speaking once more to you, that I
mean to persist in the practice. Be as glad as you have been.
You and I shall not know each other on this platform as long as
we have known. A correspondence even of twenty-five years should
not be disused unless through some fatal event. Life is too
short, and, with all our poetry and morals, too indigent to allow
such sacrifices. Eyes so old and wary, and which have learned to
look on so much, are gathering an hourly harvest,--and I cannot
spare what on noble terms is offered me.
With congratulations to Jane Carlyle on the grandeur of the Book,
Yours affectionately,
R.W. Emerson
Extract From Diary*
Here has come into the country, three or four months ago, a
_History of Frederick,_ infinitely the wittiest book that ever
was written,--a book that one would think the English people
would rise up in mass and thank the author for, by cordial
acclamation, and signify, by crowning him with oakleaves, their
joy that such a head existed among them, and sympathizing and
much-reading America would make a new treaty or send a Minister
Extraordinary to offer congratulation of honoring delight to
England, in acknowledgment of this donation,--a book holding so
many memorable and heroic facts, working directly on practice;
with new heroes, things unvoiced before;--the German Plutarch
(now that we have exhausted the Greek and Roman and British
Plutarchs), with a range, too, of thought and wisdom so large and
so elastic, not so much applying as inosculating to every need
and sensibility of man, that we do not read a stereotype page,
rather we see the eyes of the writer looking into ours, mark his
behavior, humming, chuckling, with under-tones and trumpet-tones
and shrugs, and long-commanding glances, stereoscoping every
figure that passes, and every hill, river, road, hummock, and
pebble in the long perspective. With its wonderful new system of
mnemonics, whereby great and insignificant men are ineffaceably
ticketed and marked and modeled in memory by what they were, had,
and did; and withal a book that is a Judgment Day, for its moral
verdict on the men and nations and manners of modern times.
---------
* In the first edition, this extract was printed from the
original Diary; it is now printed according to the copy
sent abroad.
--------
And this book makes no noise; I have hardly seen a notice of it
in any newspaper or journal, and you would think there was no
such book. I am not aware that Mr. Buchanan has sent a special
messenger to Great Cheyne Row, Chelsea, or that Mr. Dallas has
been instructed to assure Mr. Carlyle of his distinguished
consideration. But the secret wits and hearts of men take note
of it, not the less surely. They have said nothing lately in
praise of the air, or of fire, or of the blessing of love, and
yet, I suppose, they are sensible of these, and not less of this
book, which is like these.
CLXV. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 16 April, 1860
My Dear Carlyle,--Can booksellers break the seal which the gods
do not, and put me in communication again with the loyalest of
men? On the ground of Mr. Wight's honest proposal to give you a
benefit from his edition,* I, though unwilling, allowed him to
copy the Daguerre of your head. The publishers ask also some
expression of your good will to their work....
--------
* Mr. O.W. Wight of New York, an upright "able editor," who, had
just made arrangements for the publication of a very satisfactory
edition of Carlyle's _Miscellaneous Essays._
--------
I commend you to the gods who love and uphold you, and who do not
like to make their great gifts vain, but teach us that the best
life-insurance is a great task. I hold you to be one of those to
whom all is permitted, and who carry the laws in their hand.
Continue to be good to your old friends. 'T is no matter whether
they write to you or not. If not, they save your time. When
_Friedrich_ is once despatched to gods and men, there was once
some talk that you should come to America! You shall have an
ovation such, and on such sincerity, as none have had.
Ever affectionately yours,
R.W. Emerson
I do not know Mr. Wight, but he sends his open letter, which I
fear is already old, for me to write in: and I will not keep it,
lest it lose another steamer.
CLXVI. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, London, 30 April, 1860
Dear Emerson,--It is a special favor of Heaven to me that I hear
of you again by this accident; and am made to answer a word _de
Profundis._ It is constantly among the fairest of the few hopes
that remain for me on the other side of this Stygian Abyss of a
_Friedrich_ (should I ever get through it alive) that I _shall
then_ begin writing to you again, who knows if not see you in the
body before quite taking wing! For I feel always, what I have
some times written, that there is (in a sense) but one completely
human voice to me in the world; and that you are it, and have
been,--thanks to you, whether you speak or not! Let me say also,
while I am at it, that the few words you sent me about those
first Two volumes are present with me in the far more frightful
darknesses of these last Two; and indeed are often almost my one
encouragement. That is a fact, and not exaggerated, though you
think it is. I read some criticisms of my wretched Book, and
hundreds of others I in the gross refused to read; they were in
praise, they were in blame; but not one of them looked into the
eyes of the object, and in genuine human fashion responded to its
human strivings, and recognized it,--completely right, though
with generous exaggeration! That was well done, I can tell you:
a human voice, far out in the waste deeps, among the inarticulate
sea-krakens and obscene monsters, loud-roaring, inexpressibly
ugly, dooming you as if to eternal solitude by way of wages,--
"hath exceeding much refreshment in it," as my friend Oliver used
to say.
Having not one spare moment at present, I will answer to _you_
only the whole contents of that letter; you in your charity will
convey to Mr. Wight what portion belongs to him. Wight, if you
have a chance of him, is worth knowing; a genuine bit of metal,
too thin and ringing for my tastes (hammered, in fact, upon the
Yankee anvils), but recognizably of steel and with a keen fire-
edge. Pray signify to him that he has done a thing agreeable to
me, and that it will be pleasant if I find it will not hurt
_him._ Profit to me out of it, except to keep his own soul clear
and sound (to his own sense, as it always will be to mine), is
perfectly indifferent; and on the whole I thank him heartily for
showing me a chivalrous human brother, instead of the usual
vulturous, malodorous, and much avoidable phenomenon, in
Transatlantic Bibliopoly! This is accurately true; and so far
as his publisher and he can extract encouragement from this, in
the face of vested interests which I cannot judge of, it is
theirs without reserve....
Adieu, my friend; I have not written so much in the Letter way,
not, I think, since you last heard of me. In my despair it often
seems as if I should never write more; but be sunk here, and
perish miserably in the most undoable, least worthy, most
disgusting and heart breaking of all the labors I ever had. But
perhaps also not, not quite. In which case--
Yours ever truly at any rate,
T. Carlyle
No time to re-read. I suppose you can decipher.
CLXVII. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, 29 January, 1861
Dear Emerson,--The sight of my hand-writing will, I know, be
welcome again. Though I literally do not write the smallest Note
once in a month, or converse with anything but Prussian
Nightmares of a hideous [nature], and with my Horse (who is human
in comparison), and with my poor Wife (who is altogether human,
and heroically cheerful to me, in her poor weak state),--I must
use the five minutes, which have fallen to me today, in
acknowledgment, _du_e by all laws terrestrial and celestial, of
the last Book* that has come from you.
--------
* "The Conduct of Life."
--------
I read it a great while ago, mostly in sheets, and again read it
in the finely printed form,--I can tell you, if you do not
already guess, with a satisfaction given me by the Books of no
other living mortal. I predicted to your English Bookseller a
great sale even, reckoning it the best of all your Books. What
the sale was or is I nowhere learned; but the basis of my
prophecy remains like the rocks, and will remain. Indeed, except
from my Brother John, I have heard no criticism that had much
rationality,--some of them incredibly irrational (if that matter
had not altogether become a barking of dogs among us);--but I
always believe there are in the mute state a great number of
thinking English souls, who can recognize a Thinker and a Sayer,
of perennially human type and welcome him as the rarest of
miracles, in "such a spread of knowledge" as there now is:--one
English soul of that kind there indubitably is; and I certify
hereby, notarially if you like, that such is emphatically his
view of the matter. You have grown older, more pungent,
piercing;--I never read from you before such lightning-gleams of
meaning as are to be found here. The finale of all, that of
"Illusions" falling on us like snow-showers, but again of "the
gods sitting steadfast on their thrones" all the while,--what a
_Fiat Lux_ is there, into the deeps of a philosophy, which the
vulgar has not, which hardly three men living have, yet dreamt
of! _Well done,_ I say; and so let that matter rest.
I am still twelve months or so from the end of my Task; very
uncertain often whether I can, even at this snail's pace, hold
out so long. In my life I was never worn nearly so low, and seem
to get _weaker_ monthly. Courage! If I do get through, you
shall hear of me, again.
Yours forever,
T. Carlyle
CLXVIII. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 16 April, 1861
My Dear Carlyle,--...I have to thank you for the cordial note
which brought me joy, many weeks ago. It was noble and welcome
in all but its boding account of yourself and your task. But I
have had experience of your labors, and these deplorations I have
long since learned to distrust. We have settled it in America,
as I doubt not it is settled in England, that _Frederick_ is a
history which a beneficent Providence is not very likely to
interrupt. And may every kind and tender influence near you and
over you keep the best head in England from all harm.
Affectionately,
R.W. Emerson
CLXIX. Emerson to Carlyle*
Concord, 8 December, 1862
My Dear Friend,--Long ago, as soon as swift steamers could bring
the new book across the sea, I received the third volume of
_Friedrich,_ with your autograph inscription, and read it with
joy. Not a word went to the beloved author, for I do not write
or think. I would wait perhaps for happier days, as our
President Lincoln will not even emancipate slaves, until on the
heels of a victory, or the semblance of such. But he waited in
vain for his triumph, nor dare I in my heavy months expect bright
days. The book was heartily grateful, and square to the author's
imperial scale. You have lighted the glooms, and engineered away
the pits, whereof you poetically pleased yourself with
complaining, in your sometime letter to me, clean out of it,
according to the high Italian rule, and have let sunshine and
pure air enfold the scene. First, I read it honestly through for
the history; then I pause and speculate on the Muse that
inspires, and the friend that reports it. 'T is sovereignly
written, above all literature, dictating to all mortals what they
shall accept as fated and final for their salvation. It is
Mankind's Bill of Rights and Duties, the royal proclamation of
Intellect ascending the throne, announcing its good pleasure,
that, hereafter, _as heretofore,_ and now once for all, the World
shall be governed by Common Sense and law of Morals, or shall go
to ruin.
---------
* Portions of this and of the following letter of Emerson have
been printed by Mr. Alexander Ireland in his "Ralph Waldo
Emerson: Recollections of his Visits to England," &c. London,
1882.
----------
But the manner of it!--the author sitting as Demiurgus, trotting
out his manikins, coaxing and bantering them, amused with their
good performance, patting them on the back, and rating the
naughty dolls when they misbehave; and communicating his mind
ever in measure, just as much as the young public can understand;
hinting the future, when it would be useful; recalling now and
then illustrative antecedents of the actor, impressing, the
reader that he is in possession of the entire history centrally
seen, that his investigation has been exhaustive, and that he
descends too on the petty plot of Prussia from higher and
cosmical surveys. Better I like the sound sense and the absolute
independence of the tone, which may put kings in fear. And, as
the reader shares, according to his intelligence, the haughty
_coup d'oeil_ of this genius, and shares it with delight, I
recommend to all governors, English, French, Austrian, and other,
to double their guards, and look carefully to the censorship of
the press. I find, as ever in your books, that one man has
deserved well of mankind for restoring the Scholar's profession
to its highest use and dignity.* I find also that you are very
wilful, and have made a covenant with your eyes that they shall
not see anything you do not wish they should. But I was heartily
glad to read somewhere that your book was nearly finished in the
manuscript, for I could wish you to sit and taste your fame, if
that were not contrary to law of Olympus. My joints ache to
think of your rugged labor. Now that you have conquered to
yourself such a huge kingdom among men, can you not give yourself
breath, and chat a little, an Emeritus in the eternal university,
and write a gossiping letter to an old American friend or so?
Alas, I own that I have no right to say this last,--I who
write never.
--------
* As long before as 1843 Emerson wrote in his Diary: "Carlyle in
his new book" (_Past and Present_), "as everywhere, is a
continuer of the great line of scholars in the world, of Horace,
Varro, Pliny, Erasmus, Scaliger, Milton, and well sustains their
office in ample credit and honor."
---------
Here we read no books. The war is our sole and doleful
instructor. All our bright young men go into it, to be misused
and sacrificed hitherto by incapable leaders. One lesson they
all learn,--to hate slavery, _teterrima causa._ But the issue
does not yet appear. We must get ourselves morally right.
Nobody can help us. 'T is of no account what England or France
may do. Unless backed by our profligate parties, their action
would be nugatory, and, if so backed, the worst. But even the
war is better than the degrading and descending politics that
preceded it for decades of years, and our legislation has made
great strides, and if we can stave off that fury of trade which
rushes to peace at the cost of replacing the South in the _status
ante bellum,_ we can, with something more of courage, leave the
problem to another score of years,--free labor to fight with the
Beast, and see if bales and barrels and baskets cannot find out
that they pass more commodiously and surely to their ports
through free hands, than through barbarians.
I grieved that the good Clough, the generous, susceptible
scholar, should die. I read over his _Bothie_ again, full of the
wine of youth at Oxford. I delight in Matthew Arnold's fine
criticism in two little books. Give affectionate remembrances
from me to Jane Carlyle, whom ---'s happiness and accurate
reporting restored to me in brightest image.
Always faithfully yours,
R.W. Emerson
CLXX. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, 8 March, 1864
Dear Emerson,--This will be delivered to you by the Hon. Lyulph
Stanley, an excellent, intelligent young gentleman whom I have
known ever since his infancy,--his father and mother being among
my very oldest friends in London; "Lord and Lady Stanley of
Alderley" (not of Knowesley, but a cadet branch of it), whom
perhaps you did not meet while here.
My young Friend is coming to look with his own eyes at your huge
and hugely travailing Country;--and I think will agree with you,
better than he does with me, in regard to that latest phenomenon.
At all events, he regards "Emerson" as intelligent Englishmen all
do; and you will please me much by giving him your friendliest
reception and furtherance,--which I can certify that he deserves
for his own sake, not counting mine at all.
Probably _he_ may deliver you the Vol. IV. of _Frederic;_ he
will tell you our news (part of which, what regards my poor Wife,
is very bad, though God be thanked not yet the worst);--and, in
some six months, he may bring me back some human tidings from
Concord, a place which always inhabits my memory,--though it is
so dumb latterly!
Yours ever,
T. Carlyle
CLXXI. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 26 September, 1864
Dear Carlyle,--Your friend, young Stanley, brought me your letter
now too many days ago. It contained heavy news of your
household,--yet such as in these our autumnal days we must await
with what firmness we can. I hear with pain that your Wife, whom
I have only seen beaming goodness and intelligence, has suffered
and suffers so severely. I recall my first visit to your house,
when I pronounced you wise and fortunate in relations wherein
best men are often neither wise nor fortunate. I had already
heard rumors of her serious illness. Send me word, I pray you,
that there is better health and hope. For the rest, the Colonna
motto would fit your letter, "Though sad, I am strong."
I had received in July, forwarded by Stanley, on his flight
through Boston, the fourth Volume of _Friedrich,_ and it was my
best reading in the summer, and for weeks my only reading: One
fact was paramount in all the good I drew from it, that
whomsoever many years had used and worn, they had not yet broken
any fibre of your force:--a pure joy to me, who abhor the inroads
which time makes on me and on my friends. To live too long is
the capital misfortune, and I sometimes think, if we shall not
parry it by better art of living, we shall learn to include in
our morals some bolder control of the facts. I read once, that
Jacobi declared that he had some thoughts which--if he should
entertain them--would put him to death: and perhaps we have
weapons in our intellectual armory that are to save us from
disgrace and impertinent relation to the world we live in. But
this book will excuse you from any unseemly haste to make up your
accounts, nay, holds you to fulfil your career with all amplitude
and calmness. I found joy and pride in it, and discerned a
golden chain of continuity not often seen in the works of men,
apprising me that one good head and great heart remained in
England,--immovable, superior to his own eccentricities and
perversities, nay, wearing these, I can well believe, as a jaunty
coat or red cockade to defy or mislead idlers, for the better
securing his own peace, and the very ends which the idlers fancy
he resists. England's lease of power is good during his days.
I have in these last years lamented that you had not made the
visit to America, which in earlier years you projected or
favored. It would have made it impossible that your name should
be cited for one moment on the side of the enemies of mankind.
Ten days' residence in this country would have made you the organ
of the sanity of England and of Europe to us and to them, and
have shown you the necessities and aspirations which struggle up
in our Free States, which, as yet, have no organ to others, and
are ill and unsteadily articulated here. In our today's division
of Republican and Democrat, it is certain that the American
nationality lies in the Republican party (mixed and multiform
though that party be); and I hold it not less certain, that,
viewing all the nationalities of the world, the battle for
Humanity is, at this hour, in America. A few days here would
show you the disgusting composition of the Party which within the
Union resists the national action. Take from it the wild Irish
element, imported in the last twenty-five year's into this
country, and led by Romish Priests, who sympathize, of course,
with despotism, and you would bereave it of all its numerical
strength. A man intelligent and virtuous is not to be found on
that side. Ah! how gladly I would enlist you, with your
thunderbolt, on our part! How gladly enlist the wise,
thoughtful, efficient pens and voices of England! We want
England and Europe to hold our people stanch to their best
tendency. Are English of this day incapable of a great
sentiment? Can they not leave caviling at petty failures, and
bad manners, and at the dunce part (always the largest part in
human affairs), and leap to the suggestions and finger-pointings
of the gods, which, above the understanding, feed the hopes and
guide the wills of men? This war has been conducted over the
heads of all the actors in it; and the foolish terrors, "What
shall we do with the negro?" "The entire black population is
coming North to be fed," &c., have strangely ended in the fact
that the black refuses to leave his climate; gets his living and
the living of his employers there, as he has always done; is the
natural ally and soldier of the Republic, in that climate; now
takes the place of two hundred thousand white soldiers; and will
be, as the conquest of the country proceeds, its garrison, till
peace, without slavery, returns. Slaveholders in London have
filled English ears with their wishes and perhaps beliefs; and
our people, generals, and politicians have carried the like, at
first, to the war, until corrected by irresistible experience. I
shall always respect War hereafter. The cost of life, the dreary
havoc of comfort and time, are overpaid by the vistas it opens of
Eternal Life, Eternal Law, reconstructing and uplifting Society,
--breaks up the old horizon, and we see through the rifts a wider.
The dismal Malthus, the dismal DeBow, have had their night.
Our Census of 1860, and the War, are poems, which will, in the
next age, inspire a genius like your own. I hate to write you a
newspaper, but, in these times, 't is wonderful what sublime
lessons I have once and again read on the Bulletin-boards in the
streets. Everybody has been wrong in his guess, except good
women, who never despair of an Ideal right.
I thank you for sending to me so gracious a gentleman as Mr.
Stanley, who interested us in every manner, by his elegance, his
accurate information of that we wished to know, and his
surprising acquaintance with the camp and military politics on
our frontier. I regretted that I could see him so little. He
has used his time to the best purpose, and I should gladly have
learned all his adventures from so competent a witness. Forgive
this long writing, and keep the old kindness which I prize above
words. My kindest salutations to the dear invalid!
--R.W. Emerson
CLXXII. Carlyle to Emerson
Cummertrees, Annan, Scotland, 14 June, 1865
Dear Emerson,--Though my hand is shaking (as you sadly notice) I
determine to write you a little Note today. What a severance
there has been these many sad years past!--In the first days of
February I ended my weary Book; a totally worn-out man, got to
shore again after far the ugliest sea he had ever swam in. In
April or the end of March, when the book was published, I duly
handed out a Copy for Concord and you; it was to be sent by
mail; but, as my Publisher (a _new_ Chapman, very unlike the
_old_) discloses to me lately an incredible negligence on such
points, it is quite possible the dog may _not,_ for a long while,
have put it in the Post-Office (though he faithfully charged me
the postage of it, and was paid), and that the poor waif may
never yet have reached you! Patience: it will come soon
enough,--there are two thick volumes, and they will stand you a
great deal of reading; stiff rather than "light."
Since February last, I have been sauntering about in Devonshire,
in Chelsea, hither, thither; idle as a dry bone, in fact, a
creature sinking into deeper and deeper _collapse,_ after twelve
years of such mulish pulling and pushing; creature now good for
nothing seemingly, and much indifferent to being so in
permanence, if that be the arrangement come upon by the Powers
that made us. Some three or four weeks ago, I came rolling down
hither, into this old nook of my Birthland, to see poor old
Annandale again with eyes, and the poor remnants of kindred and
loved ones still left me there; I was not at first very lucky
(lost sleep, &c.); but am now doing better, pretty much got
adjusted to my new element, new to me since about six years
past,--the longest absence I ever had from it before. My Work
was getting desperate at that time; and I silently said to
myself, "We won't return till _it_ is done, or _you_ are done,
my man!"
This is my eldest living sister's house; one of the most rustic
Farmhouses in the world, but abounding in all that is needful to
me, especially in the truest, _silently_-active affection, the
humble generosity of which is itself medicine and balm. The
place is airy, on dry waving knolls cheerfully (with such _water_
as I never drank elsewhere, except at Malvern) all round me are
the Mountains, Cheviot and Galloway (three to fifteen miles off),
Cumberland and Yorkshire (say forty and fifty, with the Solway
brine and sands intervening). I live in total solitude,
sauntering moodily in thin checkered woods, galloping about, once
daily, by old lanes and roads, oftenest latterly on the wide
expanses of Solway shore (when the tide is _out!_) where I see
bright busy Cottages far off, houses over even in Cumberland, and
the beautifulest amphitheatre of eternal Hills,--but meet no
living creature; and have endless thoughts as loving and as sad
and sombre as I like. My youngest Brother (whom on the whole I
like best, a rustic man, the express image of my Father in his
ways of living and thinking) is within ten miles of me; Brother
John "the Doctor" has come down to Dumfries to a sister (twelve
miles off), and runs over to me by rail now and then in few
minutes. I have Books; but can hardly be troubled with them.
Pitiful temporary babble and balderdash, in comparison to what
the Silences can say to one. Enough of all that: you perceive
me sufficiently at this point of my Pilgrimage, as withdrawn to
_Hades_ for the time being; intending a month's walk there, till
the muddy semi-solutions settle into sediment according to what
laws they have, and there be perhaps a partial restoration of
clearness. I have to go deeper into Scotland by and by, perhaps
to try _sailing,_ which generally agrees with me; but till the
end of September I hope there will be no London farther. My poor
Wife, who is again poorly since I left (and has had frightful
sufferings, last year especially) will probably join me in this
region before I leave it. And see here, This is authentically
the way we figure in the eye of the Sun; and something like what
your spectacles, could they reach across the Ocean into these
nooks, would teach you of us. There are three Photographs which
I reckon fairly _like;_ _these_ are properly what I had to send
you today,--little thinking that so much surplusage would
accumulate about them; to which I now at once put an end. Your
friend Conway,* who is a boundless admirer of yours, used to come
our way regularly now and then; and we always liked him well. A
man of most gentlemanly, ingenious ways; turn of thought always
loyal and manly, though tending to be rather _winged_ than
solidly ambulatory. He talked of coming to Scotland too; but it
seems uncertain whether we shall meet. He is clearly rather a
favorite among the London people,--and tries to explain America
to them; I know not if with any success. As for me, I have
entirely lost count and reckoning of your enormous element, and
its enormous affairs and procedures for some time past; and can
only wish (which no man more heartily does) that all may issue in
as blessed a way as you hope. Fat--(if you know and his fat
commonplace at all) amused me much by a thing he had heard of
yours in some lecture a year or two ago. "The American Eagle is
a mighty bird; but what is he to the American Peacock." At
which all the audience had exploded into laughter. Very good.
Adieu, old Friend.
Yours ever,
T. Carlyle
---------
* Mr. Moncure D. Conway.
---------
CLXXIII. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 7 January, 1866
Dear Carlyle,--Is it too late to send a letter to your door to
claim an old right to enter, and to scatter all your convictions
that I had passed under the earth? You had not to learn what a
sluggish pen mine is. Of course, the sluggishness grows on me,
and even such a trumpet at my gate as a letter from you
heralding-in noble books, whilst it gives me joy, cannot heal the
paralysis. Yet your letter deeply interested me, with the
account of your rest so well earned. You had fought your great
battle, and might roll in the grass, or ride your pony, or shout
to the Cumberland or Scotland echoes, with largest leave of men
and gods. My lethargies have not dulled my delight in good
books. I read these in the bright days of our new peace, which
added a lustre to every genial work. Now first we had a right to
read, for the very bookworms were driven out of doors whilst the
war lasted. I found in the book no trace of age, which your
letter so impressively claimed. In the book, the hand does not
shake, the mind is ubiquitous. The treatment is so spontaneous,
self-respecting, defiant,--liberties with your hero as if he were
your client, or your son, and you were proud of him, and yet can
check and chide him, and even put him in the corner when he is
not a good boy, freedoms with kings, and reputations, and
nations, yes, and with principles too,--that each reader, I
suppose, feels complimented by the confidences with which he is
honored by this free-tongued, masterful Hermes.--Who knows what
the [Greek] will say next? This humor of telling the story in a
gale,--bantering, scoffing, at the hero, at the enemy, at the
learned reporters,--is a perpetual flattery to the admiring
student,--the author abusing the whole world as mad dunces,--all
but you and I, reader! Ellery Channing borrowed my Volumes V.
and VI., worked slowly through them,--midway came to me for
Volumes I., II., III., IV., which he had long already read, and
at last returned all with this word, "If you write to Mr.
Carlyle, you may say to him, that I _have_ read these books,
and they have made it impossible for me to read any other books
but his."
'T is a good proof of their penetrative force, the influence on
the new Stirling, who writes "The Secret of Hegel." He is quite
as much a student of Carlyle to learn treatment, as of Hegel for
his matter, and plays the same game on his essence-dividing
German, which he has learned of you on _Friedrich._ I have
read a good deal in this book of Stirling's, and have not done
with it.
One or two errata I noticed in the last volumes of _Friedrich,_
though the books are now lent, and I cannot indicate the pages.
Fort Pulaski, which is near Savannah, is set down as near
Charleston. Charleston, South Carolina, your printer has twice
called Charlestown, which is the name of the town in
Massachusetts in which Bunker Hill stands.--Bancroft told me
that the letters of Montcalm are spurious. We always write and
say Ticonderoga.
I am sorry that Jonathan looks so unamiable seen from your
island. Yet I have too much respect for the writing profession
to complain of it. It is a necessity of rhetoric that there
should be shades, and, I suppose, geography and government always
determine, even for the greatest wits, where they shall lay their
shadows. But I have always 'the belief that a trip across the
sea would have abated your despair of us. The world is laid out
here in large lots, and the swing of natural laws is shared by
the population, as it is not--or not as much--in your feudal
Europe. My countrymen do not content me, but they are
susceptible of inspirations. In the war it was humanity that
showed itself to advantage,--the leaders were prompted and
corrected by the intuitions of the people, they still demanding
the more generous and decisive measure, and giving their sons and
their estates as we had no example before. In this heat, they
had sharper perceptions of policy, of the ways and means and the
life of nations, and on every side we read or heard fate-words,
in private letters, in railway cars, or in the journals. We were
proud of the people and believed they would not go down from this
height. But Peace came, and every one ran back into his shop
again, and can hardly be won to patriotism more, even to the
point of chasing away the thieves that are stealing not only
the public gold, but the newly won rights of the slave, and
the new muzzles we had contrived to keep the planter from
sucking his blood.
Very welcome to me were the photographs,--your own, and Jane
Carlyle's. Hers, now seen here for the first time, was closely
scanned, and confirmed the better accounts that had come of her
improved health. Your earlier tidings of her had not been
encouraging. I recognized still erect the wise, friendly
presence first seen at Craigenputtock. Of your own--the hatted
head is good, but more can be read in the head leaning on the
hand, and the one in a cloak.
At the end of much writing, I have little to tell you of myself.
I am a bad subject for autobiography. As I adjourn letters, so I
adjourn my best tasks.... My wife joins me in very kind regards
to Mrs. Carlyle. Use your old magnanimity to me, and punish my
stony ingratitudes by new letters from time to time.
Ever affectionately and gratefully yours,
R.W. Emerson
CLXXIV. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 16 May, 1866
My Dear Carlyle,--I have just been shown a private letter from
Moncure Conway to one of his friends here, giving some tidings of
your sad return to an empty home. We had the first news last
week. And so it is. The stroke long threatened has fallen at
last, in the mildest form to its victim, and relieved to you by
long and repeated reprieves. I must think her fortunate also in
this gentle departure, as she had been in her serene and honored
career. We would not for ourselves count covetously the
descending steps after we have passed the top of the mount, or
grudge to spare some of the days of decay. And you will have the
peace of knowing her safe, and no longer a victim. I have found
myself recalling an old verse which one utters to the parting
soul,--
"For thou hast passed all chance of human life,
And not again to thee shall beauty die."
It is thirty-three years in July, I believe, since I first saw
her, and her conversation and faultless manners gave assurance of
a good and happy future. As I have not witnessed any decline, I
can hardly believe in any, and still recall vividly the youthful
wife, and her blithe account of her letters and homages from
Goethe, and the details she gave of her intended visit to Weimar,
and its disappointment. Her goodness to me and to my friends was
ever perfect, and all Americans have agreed in her praise.
Elizabeth Hoar remembers her with entire sympathy and regard.
I could heartily wish to see you for an hour in these lonely
days. Your friends, I know, will approach you as tenderly as
friends can; and I can believe that labor--all whose precious
secrets you know--will prove a consoler,--though it cannot quite
avail, for she was the rest that rewarded labor. It is good that
you are strong, and built for endurance. Nor will you shun to
consult the awful oracles which in these hours of tenderness are
sometimes vouchsafed. If to any, to you.
I rejoice that she stayed to enjoy the knowledge of your good day
at Edinburgh, which is a leaf we would not spare from your book
of life. It was a right manly speech to be so made, and is a
voucher of unbroken strength,--and the surroundings, as I learn,
were all the happiest,--with no hint of change.
I pray you bear in mind your own counsels. Long years you must
still achieve, and, I hope, neither grief nor weariness will let
you "join the dim choir of the bards that have been," until you
have written the book I wish and wait for,--the sincerest
confessions of your best hours.
My wife prays to be remembered to you with sympathy and affection.
Ever yours faithfully,
R.W. Emerson
CLXXV. Carlyle to Emerson
Mentone, France, Alpes Maritimes
27 January, 1867
My Dear Emerson,--It is along time since I last wrote to you;
and a long distance in space and in fortune,--from the shores of
the Solway in summer 1865, to this niche of the Alps and
Mediterranean today, after what has befallen me in the interim.
A longer interval, I think, and surely by far a sadder, than ever
occurred between us before, since we first met in the Scotch
moors, some five and thirty years ago. You have written me
various Notes, too, and Letters, all good and cheering to me,--
almost the only truly human speech I have heard from anybody
living;--and still my stony silence could not be broken; not
till now, though often looking forward to it, could I resolve on
such a thing. You will think me far gone, and much bankrupt in
hope and heart;--and indeed I am; as good as without hope and
without fear; a gloomily serious, silent, and sad old man;
gazing into the final chasm of things, in mute dialogue with
"Death, Judgment, and Eternity" (dialogue _mute_ on _both_
sides!), not caring to discourse with poor articulate-speaking
fellow creatures on their sorts of topics. It is right of me;
and yet also it is not right. I often feel that I had better be
dead than thus indifferent, contemptuous, disgusted with the
world and its roaring nonsense, which I have no thought farther
of lifting a finger to help, and only try to keep out of the way
of, and shut my door against. But the truth is, I was nearly
killed by that hideous Book on Friedrich,--twelve years in
continuous wrestle with the nightmares and the subterranean
hydras;--nearly _killed,_ and had often thought I should be
altogether, and must die leaving the monster not so much as
finished! This is one truth, not so evident to any friend or
onlooker as it is to myself: and then there is another, known to
myself alone, as it were; and of which I am best not to speak to
others, or to speak to them no farther. By the calamity of April
last, I lost my little all in this world; and have no soul left
who can make any corner of this world into a _home_ for me any
more. Bright, heroic, tender, true and noble was that lost
treasure of my heart, who faithfully accompanied me in all the
rocky ways and climbings; and I am forever poor without her.
She was snatched from me in a moment,--as by a death from the
gods. Very beautiful her death was; radiantly beautiful (to
those who understand it) had all her life been _quid plura?_ I
should be among the dullest and stupidest, if I were not among
the saddest of all men. But not a word more on all this.
All summer last, my one solacement in the form of work was
writing, and sorting of old documents and recollections;
summoning out again into clearness old scenes that had now closed
on me without return. Sad, and in a sense sacred; it was like a
kind of _worship;_ the only _devout_ time I had had for a great
while past. These things I have half or wholly the intention to
burn out of the way before I myself die:--but such continues
still mainly my employment,--so many hours every forenoon; what
I call the "work" of my day;--to me, if to no other, it is
useful; to reduce matters to writing means that you shall know
them, see them in their origins and sequences, in their essential
lineaments, considerably better than you ever did before. To set
about writing my own _Life_ would be no less than horrible to me;
and shall of a certainty never be done. The common impious
vulgar of this earth, what has it to do with my life or me? Let
dignified oblivion, silence, and the vacant azure of Eternity
swallow _me;_ for my share of it, that, verily, is the
handsomest, or one handsome way, of settling my poor account with
the _canaille_ of mankind extant and to come. "Immortal glory,"
is not that a beautiful thing, in the Shakespeare Clubs and
Literary Gazettes of our improved Epoch?--I did not leave London,
except for fourteen days in August, to a fine and high old Lady-
friend's in Kent; where, riding about the woods and by the sea-
beaches and chalk cliffs, in utter silence, I felt sadder than
ever, though a little less _miserably_ so, than in the intrusive
babblements of London, which I could not quite lock out of doors.
We read, at first, Tennyson's _Idyls,_ with profound recognition
of the finely elaborated execution, and also of the inward
perfection of _vacancy,_--and, to say truth, with considerable
impatience at being treated so very like infants, though the
lollipops were so superlative. We gladly changed for one
Emerson's _English Traits;_ and read that, with increasing and
ever increasing satisfaction every evening; blessing Heaven that
there were still Books for grown-up people too! That truly is a
Book all full of thoughts like winged arrows (thanks to the
Bowyer from us both):--my Lady-friend's name is Miss Davenport
Bromley; it was at Wooton, in her Grandfather's House, in
Staffordshire, that Rousseau took shelter in 1760; and one
hundred and six years later she was reading Emerson to me with a
recognition that would have pleased the man, had he seen it.
About that same time my health and humors being evidently so, the
Dowager Lady Ashburton (not the high Lady you saw, but a
Successor of Mackenzie-Highland type), who wanders mostly about
the Continent since her widowhood, for the sake of a child's
health, began pressing and inviting me to spend the blade months
of Winter here in her Villa with her;--all friends warmly
seconding and urging; by one of whom I was at last snatched off,
as if by the hair of the head, (in spite of my violent No, no!)
on the eve of Christmas last, and have been here ever since,--
really with improved omens. The place is beautiful as a very
picture, the climate superlative (today a sun and sky like very
June); the _hospitality_ of usage beyond example. It is likely
I shall be here another six weeks, or longer. If you please to
write me, the address is on the margin; and I will answer. Adieu.
--T. Carlyle
CLXXVI. Carlyle to Emerson
5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, 18 November, 1869
Dear Emerson,--It is near three years since I last wrote to you;
from Mentone, under the Ligurian Olive and Orange trees, and
their sombre foreign shadows, and still more sombre suggestings
and promptings; the saddest, probably, of all living men. That
you made no answer I know right well means only, "Alas, what can
I say to him of consolatory that he does not himself know!" Far
from a fault, or perhaps even a mistake on your part;--nor have I
felt it otherwise. Sure enough, among the lights that have gone
out for me, and are still going, one after one, under the
inexorable Decree, in this now dusky and lonely world, I count
with frequent regret that our Correspondence (not by absolute
hest of Fate) should have fallen extinct, or into such abeyance:
but I interpret it as you see; and my love and brotherhood to
you remain alive, and will while I myself do. Enough of this.
By lucky chance, as you perceive, you are again to get one
written Letter from me, and I a reply from you, before the final
Silence come. The case is this.
For many years back, a thought, which I used to check again as
fond and silly, has been occasionally present to me,--Of
testifying my gratitude to New England (New England, acting
mainly through one of her Sons called Waldo Emerson), _by
bequeathing to it my poor Falstaf Regiment, latterly two Falstaf
Regiments of Books,_ those I purchased and used in writing
_Cromwell,_ and ditto those on _Friedrich the Great._ "This
could be done," I often said to myself; "this _could_ perhaps;
and this would be a real satisfaction to me. But who then
would march through Coventry with such a set!" The extreme
insignificance of the Gift, this and nothing else, always gave
me pause.
Last Summer, I was lucky enough to meet with your friend C.E.
Norton, and renew many old Massachusetts recollections, in free
talk with [him]....; to him I spoke of the affair; candidly
describing it, especially the above questionable feature of it,
so far as I could; and his answer, then, and more deliberately
afterwards, was so hopeful, hearty, and decisive, that--in effect
it has decided me; and I am this day writing to him that such is
the poor fact, and that I need farther instructions on it so soon
as you two have taken counsel together.
To say more about the infinitesimally small value of the Books
would be superfluous: nay, in truth, many or most of them are
not without intrinsic value, one or two are even excellent as
Books; and all of them, it may perhaps be said, have a kind of
_symbolic_ or _biographic_ value; and testify (a thing not
useless) _on what slender commissariat stores_ considerable
campaigns, twelve years long or so, may be carried on in this
world. Perhaps you already knew of me, what the _Cromwell_ and
_Friedrich_ collection might itself intimate, that much _buying_
of Books was never a habit of mine,--far the reverse, even to
this day!
Well, my Friend, you will have a meeting with Norton so soon as
handy; and let me know what is next to be done. And that, in
your official capacity, is all I have to say to you at present.
Unofficially there were much,--much that is mournful, but perhaps
also something that is good and blessed, and though the saddest,
also the highest, the lovingest and best; as beseems Time's
sunset, now coming nigh. At present I will say only that, in
bodily health, I am not to be called Ill, for a man who will be
seventy-four next month; nor, on the spiritual side, has
anything been laid upon me that is quite beyond my strength.
More miserable I have often been; though as solitary, soft of
heart, and sad, of course never.
Publisher Chapman, when I question him whether you for certain
_get_ your Monthly Volume of what they call "The Library
Edition," assures me that "it is beyond doubt":--I confess I
should still like to be _better_ assured. If all is _right,_ you
should, by the time this Letter arrives, be receiving or have
received your thirteenth Volume, last of the _Miscellanies._
Adieu, my Friend.
Ever truly yours,
T. Carlyle
CLXXVII. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, 4 January, 1870
Dear Emerson,--A month ago or more I wrote, by the same post, to
you and to Norton about those Books for Harvard College; and in
late days have been expecting your joint answer. From Norton
yesternight I receive what is here copied for your perusal; it
has come round by Florence as you see, and given me real pleasure
and instruction. From you, who are possibly also away from home,
I have yet nothing; but expect now soon to have a few words.
There did arrive, one evening lately, your two pretty _volumes_
of _Collected Works,_ a pleasant salutation from you--which set
me upon reading again what I thought I knew well before:--but the
Letter is still to come.
Norton's hints are such a complete instruction to me that I see
my way straight through the business, and might, by Note of
"Bequest" and memorandum for the Barings, finish it in half an
hour: nevertheless I will wait for your Letter, and punctually
do nothing till your directions too are before me. Pray write,
therefore; all is lying ready here. Since you heard last, I
have got two Catalogues made out, approximately correct; one is
to lie here till the Bequest be executed; the other I thought of
sending to you against the day? This is my own invention in
regard to the affair since I wrote last. Approve of it, and you
shall have your copy by Book-post at once. "_Approximately_
correct"; absolutely I cannot get it to be. But I need not
doubt the Pious Purpose will be piously and even sacredly
fulfilled;--and your Catalogue will be a kind of evidence that it
is. Adieu, dear Emerson, till your Letter come.
Yours ever,
Thomas Carlyle
CLXXVIII. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 23 January, 1870*
My Dear Carlyle,--'T is a sad apology that I have to offer for
delays which no apology can retrieve. I received your first
letter with pure joy, but in the midst of extreme inefficiency.
I had suddenly yielded to a proposition of Fields & Co. to
manufacture a book for a given day. The book was planned, and
going on passably, when it was found better to divide the matter,
and separate, and postpone the purely literary portion (criticism
chiefly), and therefore to modify and swell the elected part.
The attempt proved more difficult than I had believed, for I only
write by spasms, and these ever more rare,--and daemons that have
no ears. Meantime the publication day was announced, and the
printer at the door. Then came your letter in the shortening
days. When I drudged to keep my word, _invita Minerva._
---------
* This letter is printed from an imperfect rough draft.
---------
I could not write in my book, and I could not write a letter.
Tomorrow and many morrows made things worse, for we have
indifferent health in the house, and, as it chanced, unusual
strain of affairs,--which always come when they should not. For
one thing--I have just sold a house which I once built opposite
my own. But I will leave the bad month, which I hope will not
match itself in my lifetime. Only 't is pathetic and remorseful
to me that any purpose of yours, especially, a purpose so
inspired, should find me imbecile.
Heartily I delight in your proposed disposition of the books. It
has every charm of surprise, and nobleness, and large affection.
The act will deeply gratify a multitude of good men, who will see
in it your real sympathy with the welfare of the country. I hate
that there should be a moment of delay in the completing of your
provisions,--and that I of all men should be the cause! Norton's
letter is perfect on his part, and needs no addition, I believe,
from me. You had not in your first letter named _Cambridge,_ and
I had been meditating that he would probably have divided your
attention between Harvard and the Boston Public Library,--now the
richest in the country, at first founded by the gifts of Joshua
Bates (of London), and since enriched by the city and private
donors, Theodore Parker among them. But after conversation with
two or three friends, I had decided that Harvard College was the
right beneficiary, as being the mother real or adoptive of a
great number of your lovers and readers in America, and because a
College is a seat of sentiment and cosmical relations. The
Library is outgrown by other libraries in the Country, counts
only 119,000 bound volumes in 1868; the several departments of
Divinity, Law, Medicine, and Natural Science in the University
having special libraries, that together add some 40,000 more.
The College is newly active (with its new President Eliot, a
cousin of Norton's) and expansive in all directions. And the
Library will be relieved through subscriptions now being
collected among the Alumni with the special purpose of securing
to it an adequate fund for annual increase.
I shall then write to Norton at once that I concur with him in
the destination of the books to Harvard College, and approve
entirely his advices in regard to details. And so soon as you
send me the Catalogue I shall, if you permit, communicate your
design to President Eliot and the Corporation.
One thing I shall add to the Catalogue now or later (perhaps only
by bequest), your own prized gift to me, in 1848, of Wood's
_Athenae Oxonienses,_ which I have lately had rebound, and in
which every pen and pencil mark of yours is notable.
The stately books of the New Edition have duly come from the
unforgetting friend. I have _Sartor, Schiller, French
Revolution,_ 3 vols., _Miscellanies,_ Numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,--ten
volumes in all, excellently printed and dressed, and full of
memories and electricity.
I have much to say, but of things not opportune at this moment,
and in spite of my long contumacy dare believe that I shall
quickly write again my proper letter to my friend, whose every
word I watchfully read and remember.
CLXXIX. Carlyle to Emerson
Melchet Court, Romsey, 14 February, 1870
Dear Emerson,--Three days ago I at last received your Letter;
with very great pleasure and thankfulness, as you may suppose.
Indeed, it is quite strangely interesting to see face to face my
old Emerson again, not a feature of him changed, whom I have
known all the best part of my life.
I am very glad, withal, to find that you agree completely with
Norton and myself in regard to that small Harvard matter.
This is not Chelsea, as you perceive, this is a hospitable
mansion in Hampshire; but I expect to be in Chelsea within about
a week; once there, I shall immediately despatch to you one of
the three Catalogues I have, with a more deliberate letter than I
at present have the means of writing or dictating.
Yours ever truly,
T. Carlyle
CLXXX. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, 24 February, 1870
Dear Emerson,--At length I have got home from those sumptuous
tumults ("Melchet Court" is the Dowager Lady Ashburton's House,
whose late Husband, an estimable friend of mine, and _half
American,_ you may remember here); and I devote to ending of our
small Harvard Business, small enough, but true and kindly,--the
first quiet hour I have.
Your Copy of the Catalogue, which accompanies by Book-Post of
today, is the correctest I could manage to get done; all the
Books mentioned in it I believe to be now here (and indeed,
except five or six _tiny_ articles, have _seen_ them all, in one
or other of the three rooms where my Books now stand, and where I
believe the insignificant trifle of "tinies" to be): all these I
can expect will be punctually attended to when the time comes,
and proceeded with according to Norton's scheme and yours;--and
if any more "tinies," which I could not even remember, should
turn up (which I hardly think there will), these also will
_class_ themselves (as _Cromwelliana_ or _Fredericana_), and be
faith fully sent on with the others. For benefit of my
_Survivors_ and _Representatives_ here, I retain an exact
_Copy_ of the Catalogue now put into your keeping; so that
everything may fall out square between them and you when the
Time shall arrive.
I mean to conform in every particular to the plan sketched out by
Norton and you,--unless, in your next Letter, you have something
other or farther to advise:--and so soon as I hear from you that
Harvard accepts my poor widow's mite of a _Bequest,_ I will
proceed to put it down in due form, and so finish this small
matter, which for long years has hovered in my thoughts as a
thing I should like to do. And so enough for this time.
I meant to write a longish Letter, touching on many other
points,--though you see I am reduced to _pencil,_ and "write"
with such difficulty (never yet could learn to "dictate," though
my little Niece here is promptitude itself, and is so swift and
legible,--useful here as a cheerful rushlight in this now sombre
element, sombre, sad, but also beautiful and tenderly solemn more
and more, in which she bears me company, good little "Mary"!).
But, in bar of all such purposes, Publisher Chapman has come in,
with Cromwell Engravings and their hindrances, with money
accounts, &c., &c.; and has not even left me a moment of time,
were nothing else needed!
Vol. XIV. (_Cromwell,_ I.) ought to be at Concord about as soon
as this. In our Newspapers I notice your Book announced, "half
of the Essays new,"--which I hope to get _quam primum,_ and
illuminate some evenings with,--_so_ as nothing else can, in my
present common mood.
Adieu, dear old Friend. I am and remain yours always,
--T. Carlyle
CLXXXI. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 21 March, 1870
My Dear Carlyle,--On receiving your letter and catalogue I wrote
out a little history of the benefaction and carried it last
Tuesday to President Eliot at Cambridge, who was heartily
gratified, and saw everything rightly, and expressed an anxiety
(most becoming in my eyes after my odious shortcomings) that
there should be no moment of delay on our part. "The Corporation
would not meet again for a fortnight:--but he would not wait,--
would call a special meeting this week to make the communication
to them." He did so: the meeting was held on Saturday and I
have received this (Monday) morning from him enclosed letter
and record.
It is very amiable and noble in you to have kept this surprise
for us in your older days. Did you mean to show us that you
could not be old, but immortally young? and having kept us all
murmuring at your satires and sharp homilies, will now melt us
with this manly and heart-warming embrace? Nobody could predict
and none could better it. And you shall even go your own gait
henceforward with a blessing from us all, and a trust exceptional
and unique. I do not longer hesitate to talk to such good men as
I see of this gift, and it has in every ear a gladdening effect.
People like to see character in a gift, and from rare character
the gift is more precious. I wish it may be twice blest in
continuing to give you the comfort it will give us.
I think I must mend myself by reclaiming my old right to send you
letters. I doubt not I shall have much to tell you, could I
overcome the hesitation to attempt a reasonable letter when one
is driven to write so many sheets of mere routine as sixty-six
(nearly sixty-seven) years enforce. I shall have to prate of my
daughters;--Edith Forbes, with her two children at Milton; Ellen
Emerson at home, herself a godsend to this house day by day; and
my son Edward studying medicine in Boston,--whom I have ever
meant and still mean to send that he may see your face when that
professional curriculum winds up.
I manage to read a few books and look into more. Herman Grimm
sent me lately a good one, Goethe's _Unterhaltungen_ with
Muller,--which set me on Varnhagen and others. My wife sends old
regards, and her joy in this occasion.
Yours ever,
R.W. Emerson
P.S. Mr. Eliot took my rough counting of Volumes as correct.
When he sends me back the catalogue, I will make it exact.--I
sent you last week a little book by book-post.
CLXXXII. Carlyle to Emerson
5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, 24 March, 1870
My Dear Emerson,--The day before yesterday, I heard incidentally
of an unfortunate Mail Steamer, bound for America, which had lost
its screw or some essential part of it; and so had, instead of
carrying its Letters forward to America, been drifting about like
a helpless log on the shores of Ireland till some three days ago,
when its Letters and Passengers were taken out, and actually
forwarded, thither. By industrious calculation, it appears
probable to us here that my Letter to you may have been tumbling
about in that helpless Steamer, instead of getting to Concord;
where, if so, said Letter cannot now arrive till the lingering of
it have created some astonishment there.
I hastily write this, however, to say that a Letter was duly
forwarded a few days after yours [of January 23] arrived,--
enclosing the _Harvard Catalogue,_ with all necessary _et
ceteras;_ indorsing all your proposals; and signifying that the
matter should be authentically completed the instant I should
hear from you again. I may add now that the thing is essentially
completed,--all signed and put on paper, or all but a word
or two, which, for form's sake, waits the actual arrival of
your Letter.
I have never yet received your Book;* and, if it linger only a
few days more, mean to provide myself with a copy such as the
Sampson and Low people have on sale everywhere.
I had from Norton, the other day, a very kind and friendly Letter.
This is all of essential that I had to say. I write in utmost
haste. But am always, dear Emerson,
Yours sincerely,
T. Carlyle
--------
* "Society and Solitude."
--------
CLXXXIII. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, 6 April, 1870
Dear Emerson,--The day before yesterday your welcome Letter came
to hand, with the welcome news in it; yesterday I put into my
poor Document here the few words still needed; locked everything
into its still repository (your Letter, President Eliot's,
Norton's, &c., &c.); and walked out into the sunshine, piously
thankful that a poor little whim, which had long lain fondly in
my heart, had realized itself with an emphasis I could never
hope, and was become (thanks to generous enthusiasm on New
England's part) a beautiful little fact, lying done there, so far
as I had to do with it. Truly your account of matters threw a
glow of _life_ into my thoughts which is very rare there now;
altogether a gratifying little Transaction to me,--and I must add
a surprising, for the enthusiasm of good-will is evidently great,
and the occasion is almost infinitesimally small! Well, well;
it is all finished off and completed,--(you can tell Mr. Eliot,
with many thanks from me, that I did introduce the proper style,
"President and Fellows," &c., and have forgotten nothing of what
he said, or of what he _did_);--and so we will say only, _Faustum
sit,_ as our last word on the subject;--and to me it will be, for
some days yet, under these vernal skies, something that is itself
connected with THE SPRING in a still higher sense; a little
white and red-lipped bit of _Daisy_ pure and poor, scattered into
TIME's Seedfield, and struggling above ground there, uttering
_its_ bit of prophecy withal, among the ox-hoofs and big jungles
that are everywhere about and not prophetic of much!--
One thing only I regret, that you _have_ spoken of the affair!
For God's sake don't; and those kindly people to whom you have,-
-swear them to silence for love of me! The poor little
_Daisy_kin will get into the Newspapers, and become the nastiest
of Cabbages:--silence, silence, I beg of you to the utmost
stretch of your power! Or is the case already irremediable? I
will hope not. Talk about such things, especially Penny Editor's
talk, is like vile coal-smoke filling your poor little world;
silence alone is azure, and has a _sky_ to it.--But, enough now.
The "little Book" never came; and, I doubt, never will: it is a
fate that seems to await three fourths of the Books that attempt
to reach me by the American Post; owing to some _informality in
wrapping_ (I have heard);--it never gave me any notable _regret_
till now. However, I had already bought myself an English copy,
rather gaudy little volume (probably intended for the _railways,_
as if _it_ were a Book to be read there), but perfectly printed,
ready to be read anywhere by the open eye and earnest mind;--
which I read here, accordingly, with great attention, clear
assent for most part, and admiring recognition. It seems to me
you are all your old self here, and something _more._ A calm
insight, piercing to the very centre; a beautiful sympathy, a
beautiful _epic_ humor; a soul peaceably irrefragable in this
loud-jangling world, of which it sees the ugliness, but _notices_
only the huge new _opulences_ (still so anarchic); knows the
electric telegraph, with all its vulgar botherations and
impertinences, accurately for what it is, and ditto ditto the
oldest eternal Theologies of men. All this belongs to the
Highest Class of thought (you may depend upon it); and again
seemed to me as, in several respects, the one perfectly Human
Voice I had heard among my fellow-creatures for a long time. And
then the "style," the treatment and expression,--yes, it is
inimitable, best--Emersonian throughout. Such brevity,
simplicity, softness, homely grace; with such a penetrating
meaning, _soft_ enough, but irresistible, going down to the
depths and up to the heights, as _silent electricity_ goes. You
have done _very well;_ and many will know it ever better by
degrees.--Only one thing farther I will note: How you go as if
altogether on the "Over-Soul," the Ideal, the Perfect or
Universal and Eternal in this life of ours; and take so little
heed of the frightful quantities of _friction_ and perverse
impediment there everywhere are; the reflections upon which in
my own poor life made me now and then very sad, as I read you.
Ah me, ah me; what a vista it is, mournful, beautiful,
_unfathomable_ as Eternity itself, these last fifty years of Time
to me.--
Let me not forget to thank you for that _fourth_ page of your
Note; I should say it was almost the most interesting of all.
News from yourself at first hand; a momentary glimpse into the
actual Household at Concord, face to face, as in years of old!
True, I get vague news of you from time to time; but what are
these in comparison?--If you _will,_ at the eleventh hour, turn
over a new leaf, and write me Letters again,--but I doubt _you
won't._ And yet were it not worth while, think you? [Greek]--
will be here _anon._--My kindest regards to your wife. Adieu, my
ever-kind Old Friend.
Yours faithfully always,
T. Carlyle
CLXXXIV. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 17 June, 1870
My Dear Carlyle,--Two* unanswered letters filled and fragrant and
potent with goodness will not let me procrastinate another
minute, or I shall sink and deserve to sink into my dormouse
condition. You are of the Anakim, and know nothing of the
debility and postponement of the blonde constitution. Well,
if you shame us by your reservoir inexhaustible of force,
you indemnify and cheer some of us, or one of us, by charges
of electricity.
--------
* One seems to be missing.
--------
Your letter of April came, as ever-more than ever, if possible--
full of kindness, and making much of our small doings and
writings, and seemed to drive me to instant acknowledgment; but
the oppressive engagement of writing and reading eighteen
lectures on Philosophy to a class of graduates in the College,
and these in six successive weeks, was a task a little more
formidable in prospect and in practice than any foregoing one.
Of course, it made me a prisoner, took away all rights of
friendship, honor, and justice, and held me to such frantic
devotion to my work as must spoil that also.
Well, it is now ended, and has no shining side but this one, that
materials are collected and a possibility shown me how a
repetition of the course next year--which is appointed--will
enable me partly out of these materials, and partly by large
rejection of these, and by large addition to them, to construct a
fair report of what I have read and thought on the subject. I
doubt the experts in Philosophy will not praise my discourses;--
but the topics give me room for my guesses, criticism,
admirations and experiences with the accepted masters, and also
the lessons I have learned from the hidden great. I have the
fancy that a realist is a good corrector of formalism, no matter
how incapable of syllogism or continuous linked statement. To
great results of thought and morals the steps are not many, and
it is not the masters who spin the ostentatious continuity.
I am glad to hear that the last sent book from me arrived safely.
You were too tender and generous in your first notice of it, I
fear. But with whatever deductions for your partiality, I know
well the unique value of Carlyle's praise. Many things crowd to
be said on this little paper. Though I could see no harm in the
making known the bequest of books to Cambridge,--no harm, but
sincere pleasure, and honor of the donor from all good men,--yet
on receipt of your letter touching that, I went back to President
Eliot, and told him your opinion on newspapers. He said it was
necessarily communicated to the seven persons composing the
Corporation, but otherwise he had been very cautious, and it
would not go into print.
You are sending me a book, and Chapman's Homer it is? Are you
bound by your Arabian bounty to a largess whenever you think of
your friend? And you decry the book too. 'T-is long since I
read it, or in it, but the apotheosis of Homer, in the dedication
to Prince Henry, "Thousands of years attending," &c., is one of
my lasting inspirations. The book has not arrived yet, as the
letter always travels faster, but shall be watched and received
and announced.
But since you are all bounty and care for me, where are the new
volumes of the Library Edition of Carlyle? I received duly, as I
wrote you in a former letter, nine Volumes,--_Sartor; Life of
Schiller;_ five Vols. of _Miscellanies; French Revolution;_
these books oddly addressed to my name, but at _Cincinnati,_
Massachusetts. Whether they went to Ohio, and came back to
Boston, I know not. Two volumes came later, duplicates of two
already received, and were returned at my request by Fields & Co.
with an explanation. But no following volume has come. I write
all this because you said in one letter that Mr. Chapman assured
you that every month a book was despatched to my address.
But what do I read in our Boston Newspapers twice in the last
three days? That "Thomas Carlyle is coming to America," and the
tidings cordially greeted by the editors; though I had just
received your letter silent to any such point. Make that story
true, though it had never a verisimilitude since thirty odd years
ago, and you shall make many souls happy and perhaps show you so
many needs and opportunities for beneficent power that you cannot
be allowed to grow old or withdraw. Was I not once promised a
visit? This house entreats you earnestly and lovingly to come
and dwell in it. My wife and Ellen and Edward E. are thoroughly
acquainted with your greatness and your loveliness. And it is
but ten days of healthy sea to pass.
So wishes heartily and affectionately,
R.W. Emerson
CLXXXV. Carlyle to Emerson
5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, 28 September, 1870
Dear Emerson,--Your Letter, dated 15 June, never got to me till
about ten days ago; when my little Niece and I returned out of
Scotland, and a long, rather empty Visit there! It had missed me
here only by two or three days; and my highly _in_felicitous
Selectress of Letters to be forwarded had left _it_ carefully
aside as undeserving that honor,--good faithful old Woman, one
hopes she is greatly stronger on some sides than in this
literary-selective one. Certainly no Letter was forwarded that
had the hundredth part of the right to be so; certainly, of all
the Letters that came to me, or were left waiting here, this was,
in comparison, the one which might _not_ with propriety have been
left to lie stranded forever, or to wander on the winds forever!--
One of my first journeys was to Chapman, with vehement _rebuke_
of this inconceivable "Cincinnati-Massachusetts" business.
_Stupiditas stupiditatum;_ I never in my life, not even in that
unpunctual House, fell in with anything that equaled it. Instant
amendment was at once undertaken for, nay it seems had been
already in part performed: "Ten volumes, following the nine you
already had, were despatched in Field & Co.'s box above two
months ago," so Chapman solemnly said and asseverated to me; so
that by this time you ought actually to have in hand nineteen
volumes; and the twentieth (first of _Friedrich_), which came
out ten days ago, is to go in Field & Co.'s Box this week, and
ought, not many days after the arrival of this Letter, to be in
Boston waiting for you there. The _Chapman's Homer_ (two
volumes) had gone with that first Field Packet; and would be
handed to you along with the ten volumes which were overdue. All
this was solemnly declared to me as on Affidavit; Chapman also
took extract of the Massachusetts passage in your Letter, in
order to pour it like ice-cold water on the head of his stupid
old Chief-Clerk, the instant the poor creature got back from his
rustication: alas, I am by no means certain that it will make a
new man of him, nor, in fact, that the whole of this amendatory
programme will get itself performed to equal satisfaction! But
you must write to me at once if it is not so; and done it shall
be in spite of human stupidity itself. Note, withal, these
things: Chapman sends no Books to America _except_ through Field
& Co.; he does not regularly send a Box at the middle of the
month; but he does "almost monthly send one Bog"; so that if
your monthly Volume do not start from London about the 15th, it
is due by the very _next_ Chapman-Field box; and if it at any
time don't come, I beg of you very much to make instant complaint
through Field & Co., or what would be still more effectual,
direct to myself. My malison on all Blockheadisms and torpid
stupidities and infidelities; of which this world is full!--
Your Letter had been anxiously enough waited for, a month before
my departure; but we will not mention the delay in presence of
what you were engaged with then. _Faustum sit;_ that truly was
and will be a Work worth doing your best upon; and I, if alive,
can promise you at least one reader that will do his best upon
your Work. I myself, often think of the Philosophies precisely
in that manner. To say truth, they do not otherwise rise in
esteem with me at all, but rather sink. The last thing I read of
that kind was a piece by Hegel, in an excellent Translation by
Stirling, right well translated, I could see, for every bit of it
was intelligible to me; but my feeling at the end of it was,
"Good Heavens, I have walked this road before many a good time;
but never with a Cannon-ball at each ankle before!" Science
also, Science falsely so called, is--But I will not enter upon
that with you just now.
The Visit to America, alas, alas, is pure Moonshine. Never had
I, in late years, the least shadow of intention to undertake that
adventure; and I am quite at a loss to understand how the rumor
originated. One Boston Gentleman (a kind of universal
Undertaker, or Lion's Provider of Lecturers I think) informed me
that _"the Cable"_ had told him; and I had to remark, "And who
the devil told the Cable?" Alas, no, I fear I shall never dare
to undertake that big Voyage; which has so much of romance and
of reality behind it to me; _zu spat, zu spat._ I do sometimes
talk dreamily of a long Sea-Voyage, and the good the Sea has
often done me,--in times when good was still possible. It may
have been some vague folly of that kind that originated this
rumor; for rumors are like dandelion-seeds; and _the Cable_ I
dare say welcomes them all that have a guinea in their pocket.
Thank you for blocking up that Harvard matter; provided it don't
go into the Newspapers, all is right. Thank you a thousand times
for that thrice-kind potential welcome, and flinging wide open
your doors and your hearts to me at Concord. The gleam of it is
like sunshine in a subterranean place. Ah me, Ah me! May God be
with you all, dear Emerson.
Yours ever,
T. Carlyle
CLXXXVI. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 15 October, 1870
My Dear Carlyle,--I am the ignoblest of all men in my perpetual
short-comings to you. There is no example of constancy like
yours, and it always stings my stupor into temporary recovery and
wonderful resolution to accept the noble challenge. But "the
strong hours conquer us," and I am the victim of miscellany,--
miscellany of designs, vast debility, and procrastination.
Already many days before your letter came, Fields sent me a
package from you, which he said he had found a little late,
because they were covered up in a box of printed sheets of other
character, and this treasure was not at first discovered. They
are,--_Life of Sterling; Latter Day Pamphlets; Past and
Present; Heroes;_ 5 Vols. _Cromwell's Letters and Speeches._
Unhappily, Vol. II. of _Cromwell_ is wanting, and there is a
duplicate of Vol. V. instead of it. Now, two days ago came your
letter, and tells me that the good old gods have also inspired
you to send me Chapman's Homer! and that it came--heroes with
heroes--in the same enchanted box. I went to Fields yesterday
and demanded the book. He ignored all,--even to the books he had
already sent me; called Osgood to council, and they agreed that
it must be that all these came in a bog of sheets of Dickens from
Chapman, which was sent to the Stereotypers at Cambridge; and
the box shall be instantly explored. We will see what tomorrow
shall find. As to the duplicates, I will say here, that I have
received two: first, the above-mentioned Vol. II. of _Cromwell;_
and, second, long before, a second copy of _Sartor Resartus,_
apparently instead of the Vol. I. of the _French Revolution,_
which did not come. I proposed to Fields to send back to Chapman
these two duplicates. But he said, "No, it will cost as much as
the price of the books." I shall try to find in New York who
represents Chapman and sells these books, and put them to his
credit there, in exchange for the volumes I lack. Meantime, my
serious thanks for all these treasures go to you,--steadily good
to my youth and my age.
Your letter was most welcome, and most in that I thought I read,
in what you say of not making the long-promised visit hither, a
little willingness to come. Think again, I pray you, of that
Ocean Voyage, which is probably the best medicine and restorative
which remains to us at your age and mine. Nine or ten days will
bring you (and commonly with unexpected comfort and easements on
the way) to Boston. Every reading person in America holds you in
exceptional regard, and will rejoice in your arrival. They have
forgotten your scarlet sins before or during the war. I have
long ceased to apologize for or explain your savage sayings about
American or other republics or publics, and am willing that
anointed men bearing with them authentic charters shall be laws
to themselves as Plato willed. Genius is but a large infusion of
Deity, and so brings a prerogative all its own. It has a right
and duty to affront and amaze men by carrying out its perceptions
defiantly, knowing well that time and fate will verify and
explain what time and fate have through them said. We must not
suggest to Michel Angelo, or Machiavel, or Rabelais, or Voltaire,
or John Brown of Osawatomie (a great man), or Carlyle, how they
shall suppress their paradoxes and check their huge gait to keep
accurate step with the procession on the street sidewalk. They
are privileged persons, and may have their own swing for me.
I did not mean to chatter so much, but I wish you would come out
hither and read our possibilities now being daily disclosed, and
our actualities which are not nothing. I shall like to show you
my near neighbors, topographically or practically. A near
neighbor and friend, E. Rockwood Hoar, whom you saw in his youth,
is now an inestimable citizen in this State, and lately, in
President Grant's Cabinet, Attorney-General of the United States.
He lives in this town and carries it in his hand. Another is
John M. Forbes, a strictly private citizen, of great executive
ability, and noblest affections, a motive power and regulator
essential to our City, refusing all office, but impossible to
spare; and these are men whom to name the voice breaks and the
eye is wet. A multitude of young men are growing up here of high
promise, and I compare gladly the social poverty of my youth with
the power on which these draw. The Lowell race, again, in our
War yielded three or four martyrs so able and tender and true,
that James Russell Lowell cannot allude to them in verse or prose
but the public is melted anew. Well, all these know you well,
have read and will read you, yes, and will prize and use your
benefaction to the College; and I believe it would add hope,
health, and strength to you to come and see them.
In my much writing I believe I have left the chief things unsaid.
But come! I and my house wait for you.
Affectionately,
R.W. Emerson
CLXXXVIa. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 10 April, 1871
My Dear Friend,--I fear there is no pardon from you, none from
myself, for this immense new gap in our correspondence. Yet no
hour came from month to month to write a letter, since whatever
deliverance I got from one web in the last year served only to
throw me into another web as pitiless. Yet what gossamer these
tasks of mine must appear to your might! Believe that the
American climate is unmanning, or that one American whom you know
is severely taxed by Lilliput labors. The last hot summer
enfeebled me till my young people coaxed me to go with Edward to
the White Hills, and we climbed or were dragged up Agiocochook,
in August, and its sleet and snowy air nerved me again for the
time. But the booksellers, whom I had long ago urged to reprint
Plutarch's _Morals,_ claimed some forgotten promise, and set me
on reading the old patriarch again, and writing a few pages about
him, which no doubt cost me as much time and pottering as it
would cost you to write a History. Then an "Oration" was due to
the New England Society in New York, on the 250th anniversary of
the Plymouth Landing,--as I thought myself familiar with the
story, and holding also some opinions thereupon. But in the
Libraries I found alcoves full of books and documents reckoned
essential; and, at New York, after reading for an hour to the
great assembly out of my massy manuscript, I refused to print a
line until I could revise and complete my papers;--risking, of
course, the nonsense of their newspaper reporters. This pill
swallowed and forgotten, it was already time for my Second
"Course on Philosophy" at Cambridge,--which I had accepted again
that I might repair the faults of the last year. But here were
eighteen lectures, each to be read sixteen miles away from my
house, to go and come,--and the same work and journey twice in
each week,--and I have just got through the doleful ordeal.
I have abundance of good readings and some honest writing on the
leading topics,--but in haste and confusion they are misplaced
and spoiled. I hope the ruin of no young man's soul will here or
hereafter be charged to me as having wasted his time or
confounded his reason.
Now I come to the raid of a London bookseller, Hotten, (of whom I
believe I never told you,) on my forgotten papers in the old
_Dials,_ and other pamphlets here. Conway wrote me that he could
not be resisted,--would certainly steal good and bad,--but might
be guided in the selection. I replied that the act was odious to
me, and I promised to denounce the man and his theft to any
friends I might have in England; but if, instead of printing
then, he would wait a year, I would make my own selection, with
the addition of some later critical papers, and permit the book.
Mr. Ireland in Manchester, and Conway in London, took the affair
kindly in hand, and Hotten acceded to my change. And that is the
next task that threatens my imbecility. But now, ten days ago or
less, my friend John M. Forbes has come to me with a proposition
to carry me off to California, the Yosemite, the Mammoth trees,
and the Pacific, and, after much resistance, I have surrendered
for six weeks, and we set out tomorrow. And hence this sheet of
confession,--that I may not drag a lengthening chain. Meantime,
you have been monthly loading me with good for evil. I have just
counted twenty-three volumes of Carlyle's Library Edition, in
order on my shelves, besides two, or perhaps three, which Ellery
Channing has borrowed. Add, that the precious Chapman's _Homer_
came safely, though not till months after you had told me of its
departure, and shall be guarded henceforward with joy.
_Wednesday, 13, Chicago._--Arrived here and can bring this little
sheet to the post-office here. My daughter Edith Forbes, and
her husband William H. Forbes, and three other friends, accompany me,
and we shall overtake Mr. Forbes senior tomorrow at Burlington, Iowa.
The widow of one of the noblest of our young martyrs in the War,
Col. Lowell,* cousin [nephew] of James Russell Lowell, sends me
word that she wishes me to give her a note of introduction to
you, confiding to me that she has once written a letter to you
which procured her the happiest reply from you, and I shall obey
her, and you will see her and own her rights. Still continue to
be magnanimous to your friend,
--R.W. Emerson
---------
* Charles Russell Lowell, to be remembered always with honor in
company with his brother James Jackson Lowell and his cousin
William Lowell Putnam,--a shining group among the youths who have
died for their country.
---------
CLXXXVII. Carlyle to Emerson
5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, 4 June, 1871
Dear Emerson,--Your Letter gave me great pleasure. A gleam of
sunshine after a long tract of lowering weather. It is not you
that are to blame for this sad gap in our correspondence; it is
I, or rather it is my misfortunes, and miserable inabilities,
broken resolutions, etc., etc. The truth is, the winter here was
very unfriendly to me; broke ruinously into my sleep; and
through that into every other department of my businesses,
spiritual and temporal; so that from about New-Year's Day last I
have been, in a manner, good for nothing,--nor am yet, though I
do again feel as if the beautiful Summer weather might perhaps do
something for me. This it was that choked every enterprise; and
postponed your Letter, week after week, through so many months.
Let us not speak of it farther!
Note, meanwhile, I have no disease about me; nothing but the
gradual decay of any poor digestive faculty I latterly had,--or
indeed ever had since I was three and twenty years of age. Let
us be quiet with it; accept it as a mode of exit, of which
always there must be _some_ mode.
I have got done with all my press-correctings, editionings, and
paltry bother of that kind: Vol. 30 will embark for you about
the middle of this month; there are then to follow ("uniform,"
as the printers call it, though in smaller type) a little volume
called _General Index;_ and three more volumes of _Translations
from the German;_ after which we two will reckon and count; and
if there is any _lacuna_ on the Concord shelf, at once make it
good. Enough, enough on that score.
The Hotten who has got hold of you here is a dirty little pirate,
who snatches at everybody grown fat enough to yield him a bite
(paltry, unhanged creature); so that in fact he is a symbol to
you of your visible rise in the world here; and, with Conway's
vigilance to help, will do you good and not evil. Glad am I, in
any case, to see so much new spiritual produce still ripening
around you; and you ought to be glad, too. Pray Heaven you may
long _keep your right hand_ steady: you, too, I can perceive,
will never, any more than myself, learn to "write by dictation"
in a manner that will be supportable to you. I rejoice, also, to
hear of such a magnificent adventure as that you are now upon.
Climbing the backbone of America; looking into the Pacific Ocean
too, and the gigantic wonders going on there. I fear you won't
see Brigham Young, however? He also to me is one of the products
out there;--and indeed I may confess to you that the doings in
that region are not only of a big character, but of a great;--and
that in my occasional explosions against "Anarchy," and my
inextinguishable hatred of _it,_ I privately whisper to myself,
"Could any Friedrich Wilhelm, now, or Friedrich, or most perfect
Governor you could hope to realize, guide forward what is
America's essential task at present faster or more completely
than 'anarchic America' herself is now doing?" _Such_ "Anarchy"
has a great deal to say for itself,--(would to Heaven ours of
England had as much!)--and points towards grand _anti_-Anarchies
in the future; in fact, I can already discern in it huge
quantities of Anti-Anarchy in the "impalpable-powder" condition;
and hope, with the aid of centuries, immense things from it, in
my private mind!
Good Mrs. --- has never yet made her appearance; but shall be
welcome whenever she does.
Did you ever hear the name of an aged, or elderly, fantastic
fellow-citizen of yours, called J. Lee Bliss, who designates
himself O.F. and A.K., i.e. "Old Fogey" and "Amiable Kuss"? He
sent me, the other night, a wonderful miscellany of symbolical
shreds and patches; which considerably amused me; and withal
indicated good-will on the man's part; who is not without humor,
in sight, and serious intention or disposition. If you ever did
hear of him, say a word on the subject next time you write.
And above all things _write._ The instant you get home from
California, or see this, let me hear from you what your
adventures have been and what the next are to be. Adieu,
dear Emerson.
Yours ever affectionately,
T. Carlyle
Mrs. --- sends a note from Piccadilly this new morning (June 5th);
_call_ to be made there today by Niece Mary, card left, etc.,
etc. Promises to be an agreeable Lady.
Did you ever hear of such a thing as this suicidal Finis of the
French "Copper Captaincy"; gratuitous Attack on Germany, and
ditto Blowing-up of Paris by its own hand! An event with
meanings unspeakable,--deep as the. _Abyss._--
If you ever write to C. Norton in Italy, send him my kind
remembrances.
--T. C. (with about the velocity of Engraving--on lead!)*
---------
* The letter was dictated, but the postscript, from the first
signature, was written in a tremulous hand by Carlyle himself.
---------
CLXXXVIII. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 30 June, 1871
My Dear Carlyle,--'T is more than time that you should hear from
me whose debts to you always accumulate. But my long journey to
California ended in many distractions on my return home. I found
Varioloid in my house... and I was not permitted to enter it for
many days, and could only talk with wife, son, and daughter from
the yard.... I had crowded and closed my Cambridge lectures in
haste, and went to the land of Flowers invited by John M. Forbes,
one of my most valued friends, father of my daughter Edith's
husband. With him and his family and one or two chosen guests,
the trip was made under the best conditions of safety, comfort,
and company, I measuring for the first time one entire line of
the Country.
California surprises with a geography, climate, vegetation,
beasts, birds, fishes even, unlike ours; the land immense; the
Pacific sea; Steam brings the near neighborhood of Asia; and
South America at your feet; the mountains reaching the altitude
of Mont Blanc; the State in its six hundred miles of latitude
producing all our Northern fruits, and also the fig, orange, and
banana. But the climate chiefly surprised me. The Almanac said
April; but the day said June;--and day after day for six weeks
uninterrupted sunshine. November and December are the rainy
months. The whole Country, was covered with flowers, and all of
them unknown to us except in greenhouses. Every bird that I know
at home is represented here, but in gayer plumes.
On the plains we saw multitudes of antelopes, hares, gophers,--
even elks, and one pair of wolves on the plains; the grizzly
bear only in a cage. We crossed one region of the buffalo, but
only saw one captive. We found Indians at every railroad
station,--the squaws and papooses begging, and the "bucks," as
they wickedly call them, lounging. On our way out, we left the
Pacific Railroad for twenty-four hours to visit Salt Lake;
called on Brigham Young--just seventy years old--who received us
with quiet uncommitting courtesy, at first,--a strong-built,
self-possessed, sufficient man with plain manners. He took early
occasion to remark that "the one-man-power really meant all-
men's-power." Our interview was peaceable enough, and rather
mended my impression of the man; and, after our visit, I read in
the Descret newspaper his Speech to his people on the previous
Sunday. It avoided religion, but was full of Franklinian good
sense. In one point, he says: "Your fear of the Indians is
nonsense. The Indians like the white men's food. Feed them
well, and they will surely die." He is clearly a sufficient
ruler, and perhaps civilizer of his kingdom of blockheads ad
interim; but I found that the San Franciscans believe that this
exceptional power cannot survive Brigham.
I have been surprised--but it is months ago--by a letter from
Lacy Garbett, the Architect, whom I do not know, but one of whose
books, about "Design in Architecture," I have always valued.
This letter, asking of me that Americans shall join Englishmen in
a Petition to Parliament against pulling down Ancient Saxon
buildings, is written in a way so wild as to suggest insanity,
and I have not known how to answer it. At my "Saturday Club" in
Boston I sat at dinner by an English lord,--whose name I have
forgotten,--from whom I tried to learn what laws Parliament had
passed for the repairs of old religious Foundations, that could
make them the victims of covetous Architects. But he assured me
there were none such, and that he himself was President of a
Society in his own County for the protection of such buildings.
So that I am left entirely in the dark in regard to the fact
and Garbett's letter. He claims to speak both for Ruskin
and himself.
I grieve to hear no better account of your health than your last
letter gives. The only contradiction of it, namely, the power of
your pen in this reproduction of thirty books,--and such books,--
is very important and very consoling to me. A great work to be
done is the best insurance, and I sleep quietly, notwithstanding
these sad bulletins,--believing that you cannot be spared.
Fare well, dear friend,
R.W. Emerson
CLXXXIX. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 4 September, 1871
My Dear Carlyle,--I hope you will have returned safely from the
Orkneys in time to let my son Edward W.E. see your face on his
way through London to Germany, whither he goes to finish his
medical studies,--no, not finish, but prosecute. Give him your
blessing, and tell him what he should look for in his few days in
London, and what in your Prussia. He is a good youth, and we can
spare him only for this necessity. I should like well to
accompany him as far as to your hearthstone, if only so I could
persuade you that it is but a ten-days ride for you thence to
mine,--a little farther than the Orkneys, and the outskirts of
land as good, and bigger. I read gladly in your letters some
relentings toward America,--deeper ones in your dealing with
Harvard College; and I know you could not see without interest
the immense and varied blossoming of our possibilities here,--of
all nationalities, too, besides our own. I have heard from Mrs.
--- twice lately, who exults in your kindness to her.
Always affectionately, Yours,
R.W. Emerson
CXC. Emerson to Carlyle
Baltimore, Md., 5 January, 1872
My Dear Carlyle,--I received from you through Mr. Chapman, just
before Christmas, the last rich instalment of your Library
Edition; viz. Vols. IV.-X. _Life of Friedrich;_ Vols. L-III.
_Translations from German;_ one volume General Index; eleven
volumes in all,--and now my stately collection is perfect.
Perfect too is your Victory. But I clatter my chains with joy,
as I did forty years ago, at your earliest gifts. Happy man you
should be, to whom the Heaven has allowed such masterly
completion. You shall wear your crown at the Pan-Saxon Games
with no equal or approaching competitor in sight,--well earned by
genius and exhaustive labor, and with nations for your pupils and
praisers. I count it my eminent happiness to have been so nearly
your contemporary, and your friend,--permitted to detect by its
rare light the new star almost before the Easterners had seen it,
and to have found no disappointment, but joyful confirmation
rather, in coming close to its orb. Rest, rest, now for a time;
I pray you, and be thankful. Meantime, I know well all your
perversities, and give them a wide berth. They seriously annoy a
great many worthy readers, nations of readers sometimes,--but I
heap them all as style, and read them as I read Rabelais's
gigantic humors which astonish in order to force attention, and
by and by are seen to be the rhetoric of a highly virtuous
gentleman who _swears._ I have been quite too busy with fast
succeeding _jobs_ (I may well call them), in the last year, to
have read much in these proud books; but I begin to see daylight
coming through my fogs, and I have not lost in the least my
appetite for reading,--resolve, with my old Harvard professor,
"to retire and read the Authors."
I am impatient to deserve your grand Volumes by reading in them
with all the haughty airs that belong to seventy years which I
shall count if I live till May, 1873. Meantime I see well that
you have lost none of your power, and I wish that you would let
in some good Eckermann to dine with you day by day, and competent
to report your opinions,--for you can speak as well as you can
write, and what the world to come should know...
Affectionately,
R.W. Emerson
CXCI. Carlyle to Emerson
5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, 2 April, 1872
Dear Emerson,--I am covered with confusion, astonishment, and
shame to think of my long silence. You wrote me two beautiful
letters; none friendlier, brighter, wiser could come to me from
any quarter of the world; and I have not answered even by a
sign. Promptly and punctually my poor heart did answer; but to
do it outwardly,--as if there had lain some enchantment on me,--
was beyond my power. The one thing I can say in excuse or
explanation is, that ever since Summer last, I have been in an
unusually dyspeptic, peaking, pining, and dispirited condition;
and have no right hand of my own for writing, nor, for several
months, had any other that was altogether agreeable to me. But
in fine I don't believe you lay any blame or anger on me at all;
and I will say no more about it, but only try to repent and do
better next time.
Your letter from the Far West was charmingly vivid and free; one
seemed to attend you personally, and see with one's own eyes the
_notabilia,_ human and other, of those huge regions, in your
swift flight through them to and from. I retain your little
etching of Brigham Young as a bit of real likeness; I have often
thought of your transit through Chicago since poor Chicago itself
vanished out of the world on wings of fire. There is something
huge, painful, and almost appalling to me in that wild Western
World of yours;--and especially I wonder at the gold-nuggeting
there, while plainly every gold-nuggeter is no other than a
criminal to Human Society, and has to _steal_ the exact value of
his gold nugget from the pockets of all the posterity of Adam,
now and for some time to come, in this world. I conclude it is a
bait used by All-wise Providence to attract your people out
thither, there to build towns, make roads, fell forests (or plant
forests), and make ready a Dwelling-place for new Nations, who
will find themselves called to quite other than nugget-hunting.
In the hideous stew of Anarchy, in which all English Populations
present themselves to my dismal contemplation at this day, it is
a solid consolation that there will verily, in another fifty
years, be above a hundred million men and women on this Planet
who can all read Shakespeare and the English Bible and the (also
for a long time biblical and noble) history of their Mother
Country,--and proceed again to do, unless the Devil be in them,
as their Forebears did, or better, if they have the heart!--
Except that you are a thousand times too kind to me, your second
Letter also was altogether charming....
Do you read Ruskin's _Fors Clavigera,_ which he cheerily tells me
gets itself reprinted in America? If you don't, _do,_ I advise
you. Also his _Munera Pulveris,_ Oxford-_Lectures_ on Art, and
whatever else he is now writing,--if you can manage to get them
(which is difficult here, owing to the ways he has towards the
bibliopolic world!). There is nothing going on among us as
notable to me as those fierce lightning-bolts Ruskin is copiously
and desperately pouring into the black world of Anarchy all
around him. No other man in England that I meet has in him the
divine rage against iniquity, falsity, and baseness that Ruskin
has, and that every man ought to have. Unhappily he is not a
strong man; one might say a weak man rather; and has not the
least prudence of management; though if he can hold out for
another fifteen years or so, he may produce, even in this way, a
great effect. God grant it, say I. Froude is coming to you in
October. You will find him a most clear, friendly, ingenious,
solid, and excellent man; and I am very glad to find you among
those who are to take care of him when he comes to your new
Country. Do your best and wisest towards him, for my sake,
withal. He is the valuablest Friend I now have in England,
nearly though not quite altogether the one man in talking with
whom I can get any real profit or comfort. Alas, alas, here is
the end of the paper, dear Emerson; and I had still a whole
wilderness of things to say. Write to me, or even do not write,
and I will surely write again.
I remain as ever Your Affectionate Friend,
T. Carlyle
In November, 1872, Emerson went to England, and the two friends
met again. After a short stay he proceeded to the Continent and
Egypt, returning to London in the spring of 1873. For the last
time Carlyle and he saw each other. In May, Emerson returned
home. After this time no letters passed between him and Carlyle.
They were both old men. Writing had become difficult to them;
and little was left to say.
Carlyle died, eighty-five years old, on the 5th of February,
1881. Emerson died, seventy-nine years old, on the 27th of
April, 1882.
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*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II." ***
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