The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II.
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Title: The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II.
Author: Thomas Carlyle
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Editor: Charles Eliot Norton
Release date: October 6, 2004 [eBook #13660]
Most recently updated: October 28, 2024
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13660
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 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
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