The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872 Volume I Part 2

Orators always allow something to ma.s.ses, 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 coa.r.s.e pamphlet, and hawked by a hundred boys in the streets of all of our cities for 25, 18, or 12 cents; d.i.c.kens'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 compet.i.tion. One prints Bulwer's novel yesterday, for 35 cents; and already, in twenty-four hours, another has a coa.r.s.er edition of it for 18 cents, in all thoroughfares.--What to do with my sealed parcel of ma.n.u.scripts and proofs? No bookseller would in these perilous circ.u.mstances 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 s.p.a.ce left to say what I would concerning the _Dial._ I heartily hoped I had done with it, when lately our poor, good, publis.h.i.+ng 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 n.o.ble to allude to his books and ma.n.u.script 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 pa.s.sages 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 G.o.ds 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 Amba.s.sador 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 lords.h.i.+p 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 antic.i.p.ating 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 circ.u.mstance of today. The poet is here for this, to dwarf and destroy all merely temporary circ.u.mstance, and to glorify the perpetual circ.u.mstance 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."

Lx.x.xIV. 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 n.o.ble 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

Lx.x.xV. 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 Ma.n.u.script, &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 a.s.sure 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 princ.i.p.al 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 ent.i.tled 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 cas.h.i.+er in a bank, with the total auditing and a.n.a.lyzing 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 alb.u.m of several volumes, containing ill.u.s.trations 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 a.s.sume it. No more of accounts tonight.

I send you by this s.h.i.+p 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 G.o.d keep you and yours.

--R. Waldo Emerson

---------- * In the second number of the _Dial,_ in October, 1840, Emerson had published, under the t.i.tle of "New Poetry," an article warmly commending Mr. Channing's then unpublished poems.

Lx.x.xVI. 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, Lancas.h.i.+re, 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 antic.i.p.ated, 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 a.s.sure 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 s.h.i.+llings,--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, n.o.ble 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.ds 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 a.s.similate 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_ent.i.ty 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 G.o.ds forgive you!--I have purchased a copy for three s.h.i.+llings, 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 s.h.i.+ne like suns, these two, amid mult.i.tudes 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. G.o.d only knows what will become of me in the business. Patience, Patience!

By the bye, do you know a "Ma.s.sachusetts 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, embarra.s.sed 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 a.s.saying 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 ma.n.u.script 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 ma.s.s cross their door-threshold! This of Bowdoin's is a plat.i.tude of some magnitude.--Adieu, dear Emerson. Rest not, haste not; you have work to do.

--T. Carlyle

Lx.x.xVII. 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--G.o.d 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.