The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872 Volume I Part 18

It pleases me much to know that this English [book], so long twinkling in our expectations and always drawn back again, is at last verily to appear: I wish I could get hold of my copy: there is no Book that would suit me better just now. But we must wait for four weeks till we get back to Chelsea,--unless I call find some trusty hand to extract it from the rubbish that will have acc.u.mulated there, and forward it by post. You speak as if there were something dreadful said of my own sacred self in that Book: Courage, my Friend, it will be a most miraculous occurrence to meet with anything said by you that does me _ill;_ whether the immediate taste of it be sweet or bitter, I will take it with grat.i.tude, you may depend,--nay even with pleasure, what perhaps is still more incredible. But an old man deluged for half a century with the brutally nonsensical vocables of his fellow-creatures (which he grows to regard soon as _rain,_ "rain of frogs" or the like, and lifts his umbrella against with indifference),--such an old gentleman, I a.s.sure you, is grateful for a word that he can recognize perennial sense in; as in this case is his sure hope. And so be the little Book thrice welcome; and let all England understand (as some choice portion of England will) that there has not been a man talking about us these very many years whose words are worth the least attention in comparison.

"Post pa.s.sing!" I must end, in mid-course; so much still untouched upon. Thanks for Sampson & Co., and let them go their course upon me. If I can see Mrs. --- about the end of September or after, I shall be right glad:--but I fear she will have fled before that?--

I am here in my native Country, riding, seabathing, living on country diet,--uttering no word,--now into the fifth week; have had such a "retreat" as no La Trappe hardly could have offered me. A "retreat" _without cilices,_ thistle-mattresses; and with _silent_ devotions (if any) instead of blockhead spoken ones to the Virgin and others! There is still an Excursion to the Highlands ahead, which cannot be avoided;--then home again to _peine forte et dure._ Good be with you always, dear friend.

--T. Carlyle

CLXI. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, 2 December, 1856

Dear Emerson,--I am really grieved to have hurt the feelings of Mr. Phillips;* a gentleman to whom I, on my side, had no feelings but those of respect and good will! I pray you smooth him down again, by all wise methods, into at least good-natured indifference to me. He may depend upon it I could not mean to irritate him; there lay no gain for me in that! Nor is there anything of business left now between us. It is doubly and trebly evident those Stereotype Plates are not to him worth their prime cost here, still less, their prime cost plus any vestige of definite motive for me to concern myself in them:--whereupon the Project falls on its face, and vanishes forever, with apologies all round. For as to that other method, that is a game I never thought, and never should think of playing at! You may also tell him this little Biographical fact, if you think it will any way help. Some ten or more years ago, I made a similar Bargain with a New York House (known to you, and now I believe extinct): "10"

or something "percent," of selling price on the Copies Printed, was to be my return--not for four or five hundred pounds money laid out, but for various things I did, which gratis would by no means have been done; in fine, it was their own Offer, made and accepted in due form; "10 percent on the copies printed."

--------- * This refers to a proposed arrangement, which fell through, for the publication in America by Messrs. Phillips and Sampson, of Boston, of a complete edition of Carlyle's works, to be printed from the stereotype plates of the English edition then in course of issue by Messrs. Chapman and Hall.

And how many were "printed," thinks Mr. Phillips? I saw one set; dreadfully ugly Books, errors in every page;--and to this hour I have never heard of any other! The amount remains zero net; and it would appear there was simply one copy "printed," the ugly one sent to myself, which I instantly despatched again somewhither!

On second thought perhaps you had better _not_ tell Mr. Phillips this story, at least not in this way. _His_ integrity I would not even question by insinuation, nor need I, at the point where we now are. I perceive he sees in extraordinary brilliancy of illumination his own side of the bargain; and thinks me ignorant of several things which I am well enough informed about. In brief, make a perfect peace between us, O friend, and man of peace; and let the wampums be all wrapped up, and especially the tomahawks entirely buried, and the thing end forever! To you also I owe apologies; but not to you do I pay them, knowing from of old what you are to me. Enough, enough!

I got your Book by post in the Highlands; and had such a day over it as falls rarely to my lot! Not for seven years and more have I got hold of such a Book;--Book by a real man, with eyes in his head; n.o.bleness, wisdom, humor, and many other things, in the heart of him. Such Books do not turn up often in the decade, in the century. In fact I believe it to be worth all the Books ever written by New England upon Old. Franklin might have written such a thing (in his own way); no other since! We do very well with it here, and the wise part of us _best._ That Chapter on the Church is inimitable; "the Bishop asking a troublesome gentleman to take wine,"--you should see the kind of grin it awakens here on our best kind of faces. Excellent the manner of that, and the matter too dreadfully _true_ in every part. I do not much seize your idea in regard to "Literature,"

though I do details of it, and will try again. Glad of that too, even in its half state; not "sorry" at _any_ part of it,--you Sceptic! On the whole, write _again,_ and ever again at greater length: there lies your only fault to me. And yet I know, that also is a right n.o.ble one, and rare in our day.

O my friend, save always for me some corner in your memory; I am very lonely in these months and years,--sunk to the centre of the Earth, like to be throttled by the Pythons and MudG.o.ds in my old days;--but shall get out again, too; and be a better boy! No "hurry" equals mine, and it is in permanence.

Yours ever, T. Carlyle

CLXII. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 17 May, 1858

My Dear Carlyle,--I see no way for you to avoid the Americans but to come to America. For, first or last, we are all embarking, and all steering straight to your door. Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Longworth of Cincinnati are going abroad on their travels.

Possibly, the name is not quite unknown to you. Their father, Nicholas Longworth, is one of the founders of the city of Cincinnati, a bigger town than Boston, where he is a huge land lord and planter, and patron of sculptors and painters. And his family are most favorably known to all dwellers and strangers, in the Ohio Valley, as people who have well used their great wealth.

His chief merit is to have introduced a systematic culture of the wine-grape and wine manufacture, by the importing and settlement of German planters in that region, and the trade is thriving to the general benefit. His son Joseph is a well-bred gentleman of literary tastes, whose position and good heart make him largely hospitable. His wife is a very attractive and excellent woman, and they are good friends of mine. It seems I have at some former time told her that, when she went to England, she should see you. And they are going abroad, soon, for the first time.

If you are in London, you must be seen of them.

But I hailed even this need of taxing once more your often taxed courtesy, as a means to break up my long contumacy to-you-ward.

Please let not the wires be rusted out, so that we cannot weld them again, and let me feel the subtle fluid streaming strong.

Tell me what is become of _Frederic,_ for whose appearance I have watched every week for months? I am better ready for him, since one or two books about Voltaire, Maupertuis, and company, fell in my way.

Yet that book will not come which I most wish to read, namely, the culled results, the quintessence of private conviction, a _liber veritatis,_ a few sentences, hints of the final moral you drew from so much penetrating inquest into past and present men.

All writing is necessitated to be exoteric, and written to a human should instead of to the terrible is. And I say this to you, because you are the truest and bravest of writers. Every writer is a skater, who must go partly where he would, and partly, where the skates carry him; or a sailor, who can only land where sails can be safely blown. The variations to be allowed for in the surveyor's compa.s.s are nothing like so large as those that must be allowed for in every book. And a friends.h.i.+p of old gentlemen who have got rid of many illusions, survived their ambition, and blushes, and pa.s.sion for euphony, and surface harmonies, and tenderness for their accidental literary stores, but have kept all their curiosity and awe touching the problems of man and fate and the Cause of causes,--a friends.h.i.+p of old gentlemen of this fortune is looking more comely and profitable than anything I have read of love. Such a dream flatters my incapacities for conversation, for we can all play at monosyllables, who cannot attempt the gay pictorial panoramic styles.

So, if ever I hear that you have betrayed the first symptom of age, that your back is bent a twentieth of an inch from the perpendicular, I shall hasten to believe you are shearing your prodigal overgrowths, and are calling in your troops to the citadel, and I may come in the first steamer to drop in of evenings and hear the central monosyllables.

Be good now again, and send me quickly--though it be the shortest autograph certificate of....*

-------- * The end of this letter is lost.

CLXIII. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, 2 June, 1858

Dear Emerson,--Glad indeed I am to hear of you on any terms, on any subject. For the last eighteen months I have pretty much ceased all human correspondence,--writing no Note that was not in a sense wrung from me; my one society the _Nightmares_ (Prussian and other) all that while:--but often and often the image of you, and the thoughts of old days between us, has risen sad upon me; and I have waited to get loose from the Nightmares to appeal to you again,--to edacious Time and you. Most likely in a couple of weeks you would have heard from me again at any rate.--Your friends shall be welcome to me; no friend of yours can be other at any time. Nor in fact did anybody ever sent by you prove other than pleasant in this house, so pray no apologies on that small score.--If only these Cincinnati Patricians can find me here when they come? For I am off to the deepest solitudes discoverable (native Scotland probably) so soon as I can shake the final tag rags of Printer people off me;--"surely within three weeks now!" I say to myself. But I shall be back, too, if all prosper; and your Longworths will be back; and Madam will stand to her point, I hope.

That book on Friedrich of Prussia--first half of it, two swoln unlovely volumes, which treat mainly of his Father, &c., and leave him at his accession--is just getting out of my hands. One packet more of Proofs, and I have done with it,--thanks to all the G.o.ds! No job approaching in ugliness to it was ever cut out for me; nor had I any motive to go on, except the sad negative one, "Shall we be beaten in our old days, then?"--But it has thoroughly humbled me,--trampled me down into the _mud,_ there to wrestle with the acc.u.mulated stupidities of Mankind, German, English, French, and other, for _all_ have borne a hand in these sad centuries;--and here I emerge at last, not _killed,_ but almost as good. Seek not to look at the Book,--nay in fact it is "not to be _published_ till September" (so the man of affairs settles with me yesterday, "owing to the political &c., to the season," &c.); my only stipulation was that in ten days I should be utterly out of it,--not to hear of it again till the Day of Judgment, and if possible not even then! In fact it is a bad book, poor, misshapen, feeble, _nearly_ worthless (thanks to _past_ generations and to me); and my one excuse is, I could not make it better, all the world having played such a game with it.

Well, well!--How true is that you say about the skater; and the rider too depending on his vehicles, on his roads, on his et ceteras! Dismally true have I a thousand times felt it, in these late operations; never in any so much. And in short the business of writing has altogether become contemptible to me; and I am become confirmed in the notion that n.o.body ought to write,--unless sheer Fate force him to do it;--and then he ought (if _not_ of the mountebank genus) to beg to be shot rather.

That is deliberately my opinion,--or far nearer it than you will believe.

Once or twice I caught some tone of you in some American Magazine; utterances highly noteworthy to me; in a sense, the only thing that is _speech_ at all among my fellow-creatures in this time. For the years that remain, I suppose we must continue to grumble out some occasional utterance of that kind: what can we do, at this late stage? But in the _real_ "Model Republic,"

it would have been different with two good boys of this kind!--

Though shattered and trampled down to an immense degree, I do not think any bones are broken yet,--though age truly is here, and you may engage your berth in the steamer whenever you like. In a few months I expect to be sensibly improved; but my poor Wife suffers sadly the last two winters; and I am much distressed by that item of our affairs. Adieu, dear Emerson: I have lost many things; let me not lose you till I must in some way!

Yours ever, T. Carlyle

P.S. If you read the Newspapers (which I carefully abstain from doing) they will babble to you about d.i.c.kens's "Separation from Wife," &c., &c.; fact of Separation I believe is true; but all the rest is mere lies and nonsense. No crime or misdemeanor specifiable on either side; _unhappy_ together, these good many years past, and they at length end it.--Sulzer said, "Men are by nature _good._" "Ach, mein lieber Sulzer, Er kennt nicht diese verdammte Race," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Fritz, at hearing such an axiom.

CLXIII.* Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 9 April, 1859

Dear Emerson,--Long months ago there was sent off for you a copy of _Friedrich_ of Prussia, two big red volumes (for which Chapman the Publisher had found some "safe, swift" vehicle); and _now_ I have reason to fear they are still loitering somewhere, or at least have long loitered sorrow on them! This is to say: If you have not _yet_ got them, address a line to "Saml. F. Flower, Esq, Librarian of Antiquarian Society, _Worcester,_ Ma.s.s." (forty miles from you, they say), and that will at once bring them. In the Devil's name! I never in my life was so near choked; swimming in this mother of Dead Dogs, and a long spell of it still ahead! I profoundly _pity myself_ (if no one else does).

You shall hear of me again if I survive,--but really that is getting beyond a joke with me, and I ought to hold my peace (even to you), and swim what I can. Your little touch of Human Speech on _Burns'_* was charming; had got into the papers here (and been clipt out by me) before your copy came, and has gone far and wide since. Newberg was to give it me in German, from the _Allgemeine Zeitung,_ but lost the leaf. Adieu, my Friend; very dear to me, tho' dumb.

--T. Carlyle (in such haste as seldom was).**

--------- * Emerson's fine speech was made at the celebration of the Burns Centenary, Boston, January 25, 1859. See his _Miscellanies_ (Works, vol. xi.), p. 363.

** The preceding letter was discovered in 1893, in a little package of letters put aside by Mr. Emerson and marked "Autographs."