The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872 Volume I Part 17

Dear Emerson,--It was a morning not like any other which lay round it, a morning to be marked white, that one, about a week ago, when your Letter came to me; a word from you yet again, after so long a silence! On the whole, I perceive you will not utterly give up answering me, but will rouse yourself now and then to a word of human brotherhood on my behalf, so long as we both continue in this Planet. And I declare, the Heavens will reward you; and as to me, I will be thankful for what I get, and submissive to delays and to all things: all things are good compared with flat want in that respect. It remains true, and will remain, what I have often told you, that properly there is no voice in this world which is completely human to me, which fully understands all I say and with clear sympathy and sense answers to me, but your voice only. That is a curious fact, and not quite a joyful one to me. The solitude, the silence of my poor soul, in the centre of this roaring whirlpool called Universe, is great, always, and sometimes strange and almost awful. I have two million talking bipeds without feathers, close at my elbow, too; and of these it is often hard for me to say whether the so-called "wise" or the almost professedly foolish are the more inexpressibly unproductive to me. "Silence, Silence!" I often say to myself: "Be silent, thou poor fool; and prepare for that Divine Silence which is now not far!"--On the whole, write to me whenever you can; and be not weary of well-doing.

I have had sad things to do and see since I wrote to you: the loss of my dear and good old Mother, which could not be spared me forever, has come more like a kind of total bankruptcy upon me than might have been expected, considering her age and mine. Oh those last two days, that last Christmas Sunday! She was a true, pious, brave, and n.o.ble Mother to me; and it is now all over; and the Past has all become pale and sad and sacred;--and the all-devouring potency of Death, what we call Death, has never looked so strange, cruel and unspeakable to me. Nay not _cruel_ altogether, let me say: huge, profound, _unspeakable,_ that is the word.--You too have lost your good old Mother, who stayed with you like mine, clear to the last: alas, alas, it is the oldest Law of Nature; and it comes on every one of us with a strange originality, as if it had never happened before.-- Forward, however; and no more lamenting; no more than cannot be helped. "Paradise is under the shadow of our swords," said the Emir: "Forward!"--

I make no way in my Prussian History; I bore and dig toilsomely through the unutterablest ma.s.s of dead rubbish, which is not even English, which is German and inhuman; and hardly from ten tons of learned inanity is there to be riddled one old rusty nail.

For I have been back as far as Pytheas who, first of speaking creatures, beheld the Teutonic Countries; and have questioned all manner of extinct German shadows,--who answer nothing but mumblings. And on the whole Fritz himself is not sufficiently divine to me, far from it; and I am getting old, and heavy of heart;--and in short, it oftenest seems to me I shall never write any word about that matter; and have again fairly got into the element of the IMPOSSIBLE. Very well: could I help it? I can at least be honestly silent; and "bear my indigence with dignity," as you once said. The insuperable difficulty of _Frederic_ is, that he, the genuine little ray of Veritable and Eternal that was in him, lay imbedded in the putrid Eighteenth Century, such an Ocean of sordid nothingness, shams, and scandalous hypocrisies, as never weltered in the world before; and that in everything I can find yet written or recorded of him, he still, to all intents and purposes, most tragically _lies_ THERE;--and ought not to lie there, if any use is ever to be had of him, or at least of _writing_ about him; for as to him, he with his work is safe enough to us, far elsewhere.--Pity me, pity me; I know not on what hand to turn; and have such a Chaos filling all my Earth and Heaven as was seldom seen in British or Foreign Literature! Add to which, the Sacred Ent.i.ty, Literature itself, is not growing more venerable to me, but less and ever less: good Heavens, I feel often as if there were no madder set of bladders tumbling on the billows of the general Bedlam at this moment than even the Literary ones,--dear at twopence a gross, I should say, unless one could _annihilate_ them by purchase on those easy terms! But do not tell this in Gath; let it be a sad family secret.

I smile, with a kind of grave joy, over your American speculations, and wild das.h.i.+ng portraitures of things as they are with you; and recognize well, under your light caricature, the outlines of a right true picture, which has often made me sad and grim in late years. Yes, I consider that the "Battle of Freedom and Slavery" is very far from ended; and that the fate of poor "Freedom" in the quarrel is very questionable indeed! Alas, there is but one _Slavery,_ as I wrote somewhere; and that, I think, is mounting towards a height, which may bring strokes to bear upon it again! Meanwhile, patience; for us there is nothing else appointed.--Tell me, however, what has become of your Book on England? We shall really be obliged to you for that. A piece of it went through all the Newspapers, some years ago; which was really unique for its quaint kindly insight, humor, and other qualities; like an etching by Hollar or Durer, amid the continents of vile smearing which are called "pictures" at present. Come on, Come on; give us the Book, and don't loiter!--

Miss Bacon has fled away to _St. Alban's_ (the _Great_ Bacon's place) five or six months ago; and is there working out her Shakespeare Problem, from the depths of her own mind, disdainful apparently, or desperate and careless, of all _evidence_ from Museums or Archives; I have not had an answer from her since before Christmas, and have now lost her address. Poor Lady: I sometimes silently wish she were safe home again; for truly there can no madder enterprise than her present one be well figured. Adieu, my Friend; I must stop short here. Write soon, if you have any charity. Good be with you ever.

--T. Carlyle

CLVI. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 17 April, 1855

My Dear Friend,--On this delicious spring day, I will obey the beautiful voices of the winds, long disobeyed, and address you; nor cloud the hour by looking at the letters in my drawer to know if a twelvemonth has been allowed to elapse since this tardy writing was due. Mr. Everett sent me one day a letter he had received from you, containing a kind message to me, which gave me pleasure and pain. I returned the letter with thanks, and with promises I would sin no more. Instantly, I was whisked, by "the stormy wing of Fate," out of my chain, and whirled, like a dry leaf, through the State of New York.

Now at home again, I read English Newspapers, with all the world, and claim an imaginary privilege over my compatriots, that I revolve therein my friend's large part. Ward said to me yesterday, that Carlyle's star was daily rising. For C. had said years ago, when all men thought him mad, that which the rest of mortals, including the Times Newspaper, have at last got near enough to see with eyes, and therefore to believe. And one day, in Philadelphia, you should have heard the wise young Philip Randolph defend you against objections of mine. But when I have such testimony, I say to myself, the high-seeing austerely exigent friend whom I elected, and who elected me, twenty years and more ago, finds me heavy and silent, when all the world elects and loves him. Yet I have not changed. I have the same pride in his genius, the same sympathy with the Genius that governs his, the old love with the old limitations, though love and limitation be all untold. And I see well what a piece of Providence he is, how material he is to the times, which must always have a solo Soprano to balance the roar of the Orchestra.

The solo sings the theme; the orchestra roars antagonistically but follows.--And have I not put him into my Chapter of "English Spiritual Tendencies," with all thankfulness to the Eternal Creator,--though the chapter lie unborn in a trunk?

'T is fine for us to excuse ourselves, and patch with promises.

We shall do as before, and science is a fatalist. I follow, I find, the fortunes of my Country, in my privatest ways. An American is pioneer and man of all work, and reads up his newspaper on Sat.u.r.day night, as farmers and foresters do. We admire the [Greek], and mean to give our boys the grand habit; but we only sketch what they may do. No leisure except for the strong, the nimble have none.--I ought to tell you what I do, or I ought to have to tell you what I have done. But what can I?

the same concession to the levity of the times, the noise of America comes again. I have even run on wrong topics for my parsimonious Muse, and waste my time from my true studies.

England I see as a roaring volcano of Fate, which threatens to roast or smother the poor literary Plinys that come too near for mere purpose of reporting.

I have even fancied you did me a harm by the valued gift of Antony Wood;--which, and the like of which, I take a lotophagous pleasure in eating. Yet this is measuring after appearance, measuring on hours and days; the true measure is quite other, for life takes its color and quality not from the days, but the dawns. The lucid intervals are like drowning men's moments, equivalent to the foregoing years. Besides, Nature uses us. We live but little for ourselves, a good deal for our children, and strangers. Each man is one more lump of clay to hold the world together. It is in the power of the Spirit meantime to make him rich reprisals,--which he confides will somewhere be done.--Ah, my friend, you have better things to send me word of, than these musings of indolence. Is Frederic recreated? Is Frederic the Great?

Forget my short-comings and write to me. Miss Bacon sends me word, again and again, of your goodness. Against hope and sight she must be making a remarkable book. I have a letter from her, a few days ago, written in perfect a.s.surance of success! Kindest remembrances to your wife and to your brother.

Yours faithfully, R.W. Emerson

CLVII. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, 18 May, 1855

Dear Emerson,--Last Sunday, Clough was here; and we were speaking about you, (much to your discredit, you need not doubt,) and how stingy in the way of Letters you were grown; when, next morning, your Letter itself made its appearance. Thanks, thanks.

You know not in the least, I perceive, nor can be made to understand at all, how indispensable your Letters are to me. How you are, and have for a long time been, the one of all the sons of Adam who, I felt, completely understood what I was saying; and answered with a truly _human_ voice,--inexpressibly consolatory to a poor man, in his lonesome pilgrimage, towards the evening of the day! So many voices are not human; but more or less bovine, porcine, canine; and one's soul dies away in sorrow in the sound of them, and is reduced to a dialogue with the "Silences," which is of a very abstruse nature!--Well, whether you write to me or not, I reserve to myself the privilege of writing to you, so long as we both continue in this world! As the beneficent Presences vanish from me, one after the other, those that remain are the more precious, and I will not part with them, not with the chief of them, beyond all.

This last year has been a grimmer lonelier one with me than any I can recollect for a long time. I did not go to the Country at all in summer or winter; refused even my Christmas at The Grange with the Ashburtons,--it was too sad an anniversary for me;--I have sat here in my garret, wriggling and wrestling on the worst terms with a Task that I cannot do, that generally seems to me not worth doing, and yet _must_ be _done._ These are truly the terms. I never had such a business in my life before. Frederick himself is a pretty little man to me, veracious, courageous, invincible in his small sphere; but he does not rise into the empyrean regions, or kindle my heart round him at all; and his history, upon which there are wagon-loads of dull bad books, is the most dislocated, unmanageably incoherent, altogether dusty, barren and beggarly production of the modern Muses as given hitherto. No man of _genius_ ever saw him with eyes, except twice Mirabeau, for half an hour each time. And the wretched Books have no _indexes,_ no precision of detail; and I am far away from Berlin and the seat of information;--and, in brief, shall be beaten miserably with this unwise enterprise in my old days; _and_ (in fine) will consent to be so, and get through it if I can before I die. This of obstinacy is the one quality I still show; all my other qualities (hope, among them) often seem to have pretty much taken leave of me; but it is necessary to hold by this last. Pray for me; I will complain no more at present. General Was.h.i.+ngton gained the freedom of America-- chiefly by this respectable quality I talk of; nor can a history of Frederick be written, in Chelsea in the year 1855, except as _against_ hope, and by planting yourself upon it in an extremely dogged manner.

We are all wool-gathering here, with wide eyes and astonished minds, at a singular rate, since you heard last from me!

"Balaklava," I can perceive, is likely to be a substantive in the English language henceforth: it in truth expresses compendiously what an earnest mind will experience everywhere in English life; if his soul rise at all above cotton and scrip, a man has to p.r.o.nounce it all a _Balaklava_ these many years. A Balaklava now _yielding,_ under the pressure of rains and unexpected transit of heavy wagons; champing itself down into mere mud-gulfs,--towards the bottomless Pool, if some flooring be not found. To me it is not intrinsically a new phenomenon, only an extremely hideous one. _Altum Silentium,_ what else can I reply to it at present?

The Turk War, undertaken under pressure of the mere mobility, seemed to me an enterprise worthy of Bedlam from the first; and this method of carrying it on, _without_ any general, or with a mere sash and c.o.c.ked-hat for one, is of the same block of stuff.

_Ach Gott!_ Is not Anarchy, and parliamentary eloquence instead of work, continued for half a century everywhere, a beautiful piece of business? We are in alliance with Louis Napoleon (a gentleman who has shown only _housebreaker_ qualities. .h.i.therto, and is required now to show heroic ones, _or_ go to the Devil); and under Marechal Saint-Arnaud (who was once a dancing-master in this city, and continued a _thief_ in all cities), a Commander of the Playactor-Pirate description, resembling a _General_ as Alexander Dumas does Dante Alighieri,--we have got into a very strange problem indeed!--But there is something almost grand in the stubborn thickside patience and persistence of this English People; and I do not question but they will work themselves through in one fas.h.i.+on or another; nay probably, get a great deal of benefit out of this astonis.h.i.+ng slap on the nose to their self-complacency before all the world. They have not _done_ yet, I calculate, by any manner of means: they are, however, admonished in an ignominious and convincing manner, amid the laughter of nations, that they are altogether on the wrong road this great while (two hundred years, as I have been calculating often),--and I shudder to think of the plunging and struggle they will have to get into the approximately right one again. Pray for them also, poor stupid overfed heavy-laden souls!--Before my paper quite end, I must in my own name, and that of a select company of others, inquire rigorously of R.W.E. why he does not _give_ us that little Book on England he has promised so long? I am very serious in saying, I myself want much to see it;--and that I can see no reason why we all should not, without delay.

Bring it out, I say, and print it, _tale quale._ You will never get it in the least like what _you_ wish it, clearly no! But I venture to warrant, it is good enough,--far too good for the readers that are to get it. Such a pack of blockheads, and disloyal and bewildered unfortunates who know not their right hand from their left, as fill me with astonishment, and are more and more forfeiting all respect from me. Publish the Book, I say; let us have it and so have done! Adieu, my dear friend, for this time. I had a thousand things more to write, but have wasted my sheet, and must end. I will take another before long, whatever you do. In my lonely thoughts you are never long absent: _Valete_ all of you at Concord!

--T. Carlyle

CLVIII. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 6 May, 1856

Dear Carlyle,--There is no escape from the forces of time and life, and we do not write letters to the G.o.ds or to our friends, but only to attorneys, landlords, and tenants. But the planes and platforms on which all stand remain the same, and we are ever expecting the descent of the heavens, which is to put us into familiarity with the first named. When I ceased to write to you for a long time, I said to myself,--If anything really good should happen here,--any stroke of good sense or virtue in our politics, or of great sense in a book,--I will send it on the instant to the formidable man; but I will not repeat to him every month, that there are no news. Thank me for my resolution, and for keeping it through the long night.--One book, last summer, came out in New York, a nondescript monster which yet had terrible eyes and buffalo strength, and was indisputably American,--which I thought to send you; but the book throve so badly with the few to whom I showed it, and wanted good morals so much, that I never did. Yet I believe now again, I shall. It is called _Leaves of Gra.s.s,_--was written and printed by a journeyman printer in Brooklyn, New York, named Walter Whitman; and after you have looked into it, if you think, as you may, that it is only an auctioneer's inventory of a warehouse, you can light your pipe with it.

By tomorrow's steamer goes Mrs. --- to Liverpool, and to Switzerland and Germany, by the advice of physicians, and I cannot let her go without praying you to drop your pen, and shut up German history for an hour, and extend your walk to her chambers, wherever they may be. _There's_ a piece of republicanism for you to see and hear! That person was, ten or fifteen years ago, the loveliest of women, and her speech and manners may still give you some report of the same. She has always lived with good people, and in her position is a centre of what is called good society, wherein her large heart makes a certain glory and refinement. She is one of nature's ladies, and when I hear her tell I know not what stories of her friends, or her children, or her pensioners, I find a pathetic eloquence which I know not where to match. But I suppose you shall never hear it. Every American is a little displaced in London, and, no doubt, her company has grown to her. Her husband is a banker connected in business with your ---, and is a man of elegant genius and tastes, and his house is a resort for fine people.

Thorwaldsen distinguished Mrs. --- in Rome, formerly, by his attentions. Powers the sculptor made an admirable bust of her; Clough and Thackeray will tell you of her. Jenny Lind, like the rest, was captivated by her, and was married at her house. Is not Henry James in London? he knows her well. If Tennyson comes to London, whilst she is there, he should see her for his "Lays of Good Women." Now please to read these things to the wise and kind ears of Jane Carlyle, and ask her if I have done wrong in giving my friend a letter to her? I could not ask more than that each of those ladies might appear to the other what each has appeared to me.

I saw Thackeray, in the winter, and he said he would come and see me here, in April or May; but he is still, I believe, in the South and West. Do not believe me for my reticency less hungry for letters. I grieve at the want and loss, and am about writing again, that I may hear from you.

Ever affectionately yours, R.W. Emerson

CLIX. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, 20 July, 1856

Dear Emerson;--Welcome was your Letter to me, after the long interval; as welcome as any human Letter could now well be.

These many months and years I have been sunk in what disastrous vortexes of foreign wreck you know, till I am fallen sick and almost broken-hearted, and my life (if it were not this one interest, of doing a problem which I see to be impossible, and of smallish value if found doable!) is burdensome and without meaning to me. It is so rarely I hear the voice of a magnanimous Brother Man addressing any word to me: ninety-nine hundredths of the Letters I get are impertinent clutchings of me by the b.u.t.ton, concerning which the one business is, How to get handsomely loose again; What to say that shall soonest _end_ the intrusion,--if saying Nothing will not be the best way. Which last I often in my sorrow have recourse to, at what ever known risks. "We must pay our tribute to Time": ah yes, yes;--and yet I will believe, so long as we continue together in this sphere of things there will always be a _potential_ Letter coming out of New England for me, and the world not fallen irretrievably dumb.--The best is, I am about going into Scotland, in two days, into deep solitude, for a couple of months beside the Solway sea: I absolutely need to have the dust blown out of me, and my mad nerves rested (there is nothing else quite gone wrong): this unblest _Life of Frederick_ is now actually to get along into the Printer's hand; --a good Book being impossible upon it, there shall a bad one be done, and one's poor existence rid of it:--for which great object two months of voluntary torpor are considered the fair preliminary. In another year's time, (if the Fates allow me to live,) I expect to have got a great deal of rubbish swept into chaos again. Unlucky it should ever have been dug up, much of it!--

Your Mrs. --- should have had our best welcome, for the sake of him who sent her, had there been nothing more: but the Lady never showed face at all; nor could I for a long time get any trace--and then it was a most faint and distant one as if by _double_ reflex--of her whereabout: too distant, too difficult for me, who do not make a call once in the six months lately. I did mean to go in quest (never had an _address_); but had not yet rallied for the Enterprise, when Mrs. --- herself wrote that she had been unwell, that she was going directly for Paris, and would see us on her return. So be it:--pray only I may not be absent next! I have not seen or distinctly heard of Miss Bacon for a year and half past: I often ask myself, what has become of that poor Lady, and wish I knew of her being safe among her friends again. I have even lost the address (which at any rate was probably not a lasting one); perhaps I could find it by the eye,--but it is five miles away; and my _non-plus-ultra_ for years past is not above half that distance. Heigho!

My time is all up and more; and Chaos come again is lying round me, in the shape of "packing," in a thousand shapes!--Browning is coming tonight to take leave. Do you know Browning at all? He is abstruse, but worth knowing.--And what of the _Discourse on England_ by a certain man? Shame! We always hear of it again as "out"; and it continues obstinately _in._ Adieu, my friend.

Ever yours, T. Carlyle

CLX. Carlyle to Emerson

The Gill, c.u.mmertrees, Annan, N.B.

28 August, 1856

Dear Emerson,--Your Letter alighted here yesterday;* like a winged Mercury, bringing "airs from Heaven" (in a sense) along with his news. I understand very well your indisposition to write; we must conform to it, as to the law of _Chronos_ (oldest of the G.o.ds); but I will murmur always, "It is such a pity as of almost no other man!"--You are citizen of a "Republic," and perhaps fancy yourself republican in an eminent degree: nevertheless I have remarked there is no man of whom I am so certain always to get something _kingly:_--and whenever your huge inarticulate America gets settled into _kingdoms,_ of the New Model, fit for these Ages which are all upon the _Moult_ just now, and dreadfully like going to the Devil in the interim,--then will America, and all nations through her, owe the man Emerson a _debt,_ far greater than either they or he are in the least aware of at present! That I consider (for myself) to be an ascertained fact. For which I myself at least am thankful and have long been.

--------- * It is missing now.