The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872 Volume I Part 19

CLXIV. Emerson to Carlyle*

Concord, 1 May, 1859

Dear Carlyle,--Some three weeks ago came to me a note from Mr.

Haven of Worcester, announcing the arrival there of "King Friedrich," and, after a fortnight, the good book came to my door. A week later, your letter arrived. I was heartily glad to get the crimson Book itself. I had looked for it with the first s.h.i.+ps. As it came not, I had made up my mind to that hap also.

It was quite fair: I had disent.i.tled myself. He, the true friend, had every right to punish me for my sluggish contumacy,-- backsliding, too, after penitence. So I read with resignation our blue American reprint, and I enclose to you a leaf from my journal at the time, which leaf I read afterwards in one of my lectures at the Music Hall in Boston. But the book came from the man himself. He did not punish me. He is loyal, but royal as well, and, I have always noted, has a whim for dealing _en grand monarque._ The book came, with its irresistible inscription, so that I am all tenderness and all but tears. The book too is sovereignly written. I think you the true inventor of the stereoscope, as having exhibited that art in style, long before we had heard of it in drawing.

------- * This letter and the Extract from the Diary are printed from a copy of the original supplied to me by the kindness of Mr.

Alexander Ireland, who first printed a portion of the letter in his "Ralph Waldo Emerson, a Biographical Sketch," London, 1882.

One or two words missing in the copy are inserted from the rough draft, which, as usual, varies in minor points from the letter as sent.

The letter came also. Every child of mine knows from far that handwriting, and brings it home with speed. I read without alarm the pathetical hints of your sad plight in the German labyrinth.

I know too well what invitations and a.s.surance brought you in there, to fear any lack of guides to bring you out. More presence of mind and easy change from the microscopic to the telescopic view does not exist. I await peacefully your issue from your pretended afflictions.

What to tell you of my coop and byre? Ah! you are a very poor fellow, and must be left with your glory. You hug yourself on missing the illusion of children, and must be pitied as having one glittering toy the less. I am a victim all my days to certain graces of form and behavior, and can never come into equilibrium. Now I am fooled by my own young people, and grow old contented. The heedless children suddenly take the keenest hold on life, and foolish papas cling to the world on their account, as never on their own. Out of sympathy, we _make believe_ to value the prizes of their ambition and hope. My, two girls, pupils once or now of Aga.s.siz, are good, healthy, apprehensive, decided young people, who love life. My boy divides his time between Cicero and cricket, knows his boat, the birds, and Walter Scott--verse and prose, through and through,-- and will go to College next year. Sam Ward and I tickled each other the other day, in looking over a very good company of young people, by finding in the new comers a marked improvement on their parents. There, I flatter myself, I see some emerging of our people from the prison of their politics. The insolvency of slavery shows and stares, and we shall perhaps live to see that putrid Black-vomit extirpated by mere dying and planting.

I am so glad to find myself speaking once more to you, that I mean to persist in the practice. Be as glad as you have been.

You and I shall not know each other on this platform as long as we have known. A correspondence even of twenty-five years should not be disused unless through some fatal event. Life is too short, and, with all our poetry and morals, too indigent to allow such sacrifices. Eyes so old and wary, and which have learned to look on so much, are gathering an hourly harvest,--and I cannot spare what on n.o.ble terms is offered me.

With congratulations to Jane Carlyle on the grandeur of the Book,

Yours affectionately, R.W. Emerson

Extract From Diary*

Here has come into the country, three or four months ago, a _History of Frederick,_ infinitely the wittiest book that ever was written,--a book that one would think the English people would rise up in ma.s.s and thank the author for, by cordial acclamation, and signify, by crowning him with oakleaves, their joy that such a head existed among them, and sympathizing and much-reading America would make a new treaty or send a Minister Extraordinary to offer congratulation of honoring delight to England, in acknowledgment of this donation,--a book holding so many memorable and heroic facts, working directly on practice; with new heroes, things unvoiced before;--the German Plutarch (now that we have exhausted the Greek and Roman and British Plutarchs), with a range, too, of thought and wisdom so large and so elastic, not so much applying as inosculating to every need and sensibility of man, that we do not read a stereotype page, rather we see the eyes of the writer looking into ours, mark his behavior, humming, chuckling, with under-tones and trumpet-tones and shrugs, and long-commanding glances, stereoscoping every figure that pa.s.ses, and every hill, river, road, hummock, and pebble in the long perspective. With its wonderful new system of mnemonics, whereby great and insignificant men are ineffaceably ticketed and marked and modeled in memory by what they were, had, and did; and withal a book that is a Judgment Day, for its moral verdict on the men and nations and manners of modern times.

--------- * In the first edition, this extract was printed from the original Diary; it is now printed according to the copy sent abroad.

And this book makes no noise; I have hardly seen a notice of it in any newspaper or journal, and you would think there was no such book. I am not aware that Mr. Buchanan has sent a special messenger to Great Cheyne Row, Chelsea, or that Mr. Dallas has been instructed to a.s.sure Mr. Carlyle of his distinguished consideration. But the secret wits and hearts of men take note of it, not the less surely. They have said nothing lately in praise of the air, or of fire, or of the blessing of love, and yet, I suppose, they are sensible of these, and not less of this book, which is like these.

CLXV. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 16 April, 1860

My Dear Carlyle,--Can booksellers break the seal which the G.o.ds do not, and put me in communication again with the loyalest of men? On the ground of Mr. Wight's honest proposal to give you a benefit from his edition,* I, though unwilling, allowed him to copy the Daguerre of your head. The publishers ask also some expression of your good will to their work....

-------- * Mr. O.W. Wight of New York, an upright "able editor," who, had just made arrangements for the publication of a very satisfactory edition of Carlyle's _Miscellaneous Essays._ --------

I commend you to the G.o.ds who love and uphold you, and who do not like to make their great gifts vain, but teach us that the best life-insurance is a great task. I hold you to be one of those to whom all is permitted, and who carry the laws in their hand.

Continue to be good to your old friends. 'T is no matter whether they write to you or not. If not, they save your time. When _Friedrich_ is once despatched to G.o.ds and men, there was once some talk that you should come to America! You shall have an ovation such, and on such sincerity, as none have had.

Ever affectionately yours, R.W. Emerson

I do not know Mr. Wight, but he sends his open letter, which I fear is already old, for me to write in: and I will not keep it, lest it lose another steamer.

CLXVI. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 30 April, 1860

Dear Emerson,--It is a special favor of Heaven to me that I hear of you again by this accident; and am made to answer a word _de Profundis._ It is constantly among the fairest of the few hopes that remain for me on the other side of this Stygian Abyss of a _Friedrich_ (should I ever get through it alive) that I _shall then_ begin writing to you again, who knows if not see you in the body before quite taking wing! For I feel always, what I have some times written, that there is (in a sense) but one completely human voice to me in the world; and that you are it, and have been,--thanks to you, whether you speak or not! Let me say also, while I am at it, that the few words you sent me about those first Two volumes are present with me in the far more frightful darknesses of these last Two; and indeed are often almost my one encouragement. That is a fact, and not exaggerated, though you think it is. I read some criticisms of my wretched Book, and hundreds of others I in the gross refused to read; they were in praise, they were in blame; but not one of them looked into the eyes of the object, and in genuine human fas.h.i.+on responded to its human strivings, and recognized it,--completely right, though with generous exaggeration! That was well done, I can tell you: a human voice, far out in the waste deeps, among the inarticulate sea-krakens and obscene monsters, loud-roaring, inexpressibly ugly, dooming you as if to eternal solitude by way of wages,-- "hath exceeding much refreshment in it," as my friend Oliver used to say.

Having not one spare moment at present, I will answer to _you_ only the whole contents of that letter; you in your charity will convey to Mr. Wight what portion belongs to him. Wight, if you have a chance of him, is worth knowing; a genuine bit of metal, too thin and ringing for my tastes (hammered, in fact, upon the Yankee anvils), but recognizably of steel and with a keen fire- edge. Pray signify to him that he has done a thing agreeable to me, and that it will be pleasant if I find it will not hurt _him._ Profit to me out of it, except to keep his own soul clear and sound (to his own sense, as it always will be to mine), is perfectly indifferent; and on the whole I thank him heartily for showing me a chivalrous human brother, instead of the usual vulturous, malodorous, and much avoidable phenomenon, in Transatlantic Bibliopoly! This is accurately true; and so far as his publisher and he can extract encouragement from this, in the face of vested interests which I cannot judge of, it is theirs without reserve....

Adieu, my friend; I have not written so much in the Letter way, not, I think, since you last heard of me. In my despair it often seems as if I should never write more; but be sunk here, and perish miserably in the most undoable, least worthy, most disgusting and heart breaking of all the labors I ever had. But perhaps also not, not quite. In which case--

Yours ever truly at any rate, T. Carlyle

No time to re-read. I suppose you can decipher.

CLXVII. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, 29 January, 1861

Dear Emerson,--The sight of my hand-writing will, I know, be welcome again. Though I literally do not write the smallest Note once in a month, or converse with anything but Prussian Nightmares of a hideous [nature], and with my Horse (who is human in comparison), and with my poor Wife (who is altogether human, and heroically cheerful to me, in her poor weak state),--I must use the five minutes, which have fallen to me today, in acknowledgment, _du_e by all laws terrestrial and celestial, of the last Book* that has come from you.

-------- * "The Conduct of Life."

I read it a great while ago, mostly in sheets, and again read it in the finely printed form,--I can tell you, if you do not already guess, with a satisfaction given me by the Books of no other living mortal. I predicted to your English Bookseller a great sale even, reckoning it the best of all your Books. What the sale was or is I nowhere learned; but the basis of my prophecy remains like the rocks, and will remain. Indeed, except from my Brother John, I have heard no criticism that had much rationality,--some of them incredibly irrational (if that matter had not altogether become a barking of dogs among us);--but I always believe there are in the mute state a great number of thinking English souls, who can recognize a Thinker and a Sayer, of perennially human type and welcome him as the rarest of miracles, in "such a spread of knowledge" as there now is:--one English soul of that kind there indubitably is; and I certify hereby, notarially if you like, that such is emphatically his view of the matter. You have grown older, more pungent, piercing;--I never read from you before such lightning-gleams of meaning as are to be found here. The finale of all, that of "Illusions" falling on us like snow-showers, but again of "the G.o.ds sitting steadfast on their thrones" all the while,--what a _Fiat Lux_ is there, into the deeps of a philosophy, which the vulgar has not, which hardly three men living have, yet dreamt of! _Well done,_ I say; and so let that matter rest.

I am still twelve months or so from the end of my Task; very uncertain often whether I can, even at this snail's pace, hold out so long. In my life I was never worn nearly so low, and seem to get _weaker_ monthly. Courage! If I do get through, you shall hear of me, again.

Yours forever, T. Carlyle

CLXVIII. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 16 April, 1861

My Dear Carlyle,--...I have to thank you for the cordial note which brought me joy, many weeks ago. It was n.o.ble and welcome in all but its boding account of yourself and your task. But I have had experience of your labors, and these deplorations I have long since learned to distrust. We have settled it in America, as I doubt not it is settled in England, that _Frederick_ is a history which a beneficent Providence is not very likely to interrupt. And may every kind and tender influence near you and over you keep the best head in England from all harm.

Affectionately, R.W. Emerson