The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872 Volume I Part 20

CLXIX. Emerson to Carlyle*

Concord, 8 December, 1862

My Dear Friend,--Long ago, as soon as swift steamers could bring the new book across the sea, I received the third volume of _Friedrich,_ with your autograph inscription, and read it with joy. Not a word went to the beloved author, for I do not write or think. I would wait perhaps for happier days, as our President Lincoln will not even emanc.i.p.ate slaves, until on the heels of a victory, or the semblance of such. But he waited in vain for his triumph, nor dare I in my heavy months expect bright days. The book was heartily grateful, and square to the author's imperial scale. You have lighted the glooms, and engineered away the pits, whereof you poetically pleased yourself with complaining, in your sometime letter to me, clean out of it, according to the high Italian rule, and have let suns.h.i.+ne and pure air enfold the scene. First, I read it honestly through for the history; then I pause and speculate on the Muse that inspires, and the friend that reports it. 'T is sovereignly written, above all literature, dictating to all mortals what they shall accept as fated and final for their salvation. It is Mankind's Bill of Rights and Duties, the royal proclamation of Intellect ascending the throne, announcing its good pleasure, that, hereafter, _as heretofore,_ and now once for all, the World shall be governed by Common Sense and law of Morals, or shall go to ruin.

--------- * Portions of this and of the following letter of Emerson have been printed by Mr. Alexander Ireland in his "Ralph Waldo Emerson: Recollections of his Visits to England," &c. London, 1882.

But the manner of it!--the author sitting as Demiurgus, trotting out his manikins, coaxing and bantering them, amused with their good performance, patting them on the back, and rating the naughty dolls when they misbehave; and communicating his mind ever in measure, just as much as the young public can understand; hinting the future, when it would be useful; recalling now and then ill.u.s.trative antecedents of the actor, impressing, the reader that he is in possession of the entire history centrally seen, that his investigation has been exhaustive, and that he descends too on the petty plot of Prussia from higher and cosmical surveys. Better I like the sound sense and the absolute independence of the tone, which may put kings in fear. And, as the reader shares, according to his intelligence, the haughty _coup d'oeil_ of this genius, and shares it with delight, I recommend to all governors, English, French, Austrian, and other, to double their guards, and look carefully to the censors.h.i.+p of the press. I find, as ever in your books, that one man has deserved well of mankind for restoring the Scholar's profession to its highest use and dignity.* I find also that you are very wilful, and have made a covenant with your eyes that they shall not see anything you do not wish they should. But I was heartily glad to read somewhere that your book was nearly finished in the ma.n.u.script, for I could wish you to sit and taste your fame, if that were not contrary to law of Olympus. My joints ache to think of your rugged labor. Now that you have conquered to yourself such a huge kingdom among men, can you not give yourself breath, and chat a little, an Emeritus in the eternal university, and write a gossiping letter to an old American friend or so?

Alas, I own that I have no right to say this last,--I who write never.

-------- * As long before as 1843 Emerson wrote in his Diary: "Carlyle in his new book" (_Past and Present_), "as everywhere, is a continuer of the great line of scholars in the world, of Horace, Varro, Pliny, Erasmus, Scaliger, Milton, and well sustains their office in ample credit and honor."

Here we read no books. The war is our sole and doleful instructor. All our bright young men go into it, to be misused and sacrificed hitherto by incapable leaders. One lesson they all learn,--to hate slavery, _teterrima causa._ But the issue does not yet appear. We must get ourselves morally right.

n.o.body can help us. 'T is of no account what England or France may do. Unless backed by our profligate parties, their action would be nugatory, and, if so backed, the worst. But even the war is better than the degrading and descending politics that preceded it for decades of years, and our legislation has made great strides, and if we can stave off that fury of trade which rushes to peace at the cost of replacing the South in the _status ante bellum,_ we can, with something more of courage, leave the problem to another score of years,--free labor to fight with the Beast, and see if bales and barrels and baskets cannot find out that they pa.s.s more commodiously and surely to their ports through free hands, than through barbarians.

I grieved that the good Clough, the generous, susceptible scholar, should die. I read over his _Bothie_ again, full of the wine of youth at Oxford. I delight in Matthew Arnold's fine criticism in two little books. Give affectionate remembrances from me to Jane Carlyle, whom ---'s happiness and accurate reporting restored to me in brightest image.

Always faithfully yours, R.W. Emerson

CLXX. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, 8 March, 1864

Dear Emerson,--This will be delivered to you by the Hon. Lyulph Stanley, an excellent, intelligent young gentleman whom I have known ever since his infancy,--his father and mother being among my very oldest friends in London; "Lord and Lady Stanley of Alderley" (not of Knowesley, but a cadet branch of it), whom perhaps you did not meet while here.

My young Friend is coming to look with his own eyes at your huge and hugely travailing Country;--and I think will agree with you, better than he does with me, in regard to that latest phenomenon.

At all events, he regards "Emerson" as intelligent Englishmen all do; and you will please me much by giving him your friendliest reception and furtherance,--which I can certify that he deserves for his own sake, not counting mine at all.

Probably _he_ may deliver you the Vol. IV. of _Frederic;_ he will tell you our news (part of which, what regards my poor Wife, is very bad, though G.o.d be thanked not yet the worst);--and, in some six months, he may bring me back some human tidings from Concord, a place which always inhabits my memory,--though it is so dumb latterly!

Yours ever, T. Carlyle

CLXXI. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 26 September, 1864

Dear Carlyle,--Your friend, young Stanley, brought me your letter now too many days ago. It contained heavy news of your household,--yet such as in these our autumnal days we must await with what firmness we can. I hear with pain that your Wife, whom I have only seen beaming goodness and intelligence, has suffered and suffers so severely. I recall my first visit to your house, when I p.r.o.nounced you wise and fortunate in relations wherein best men are often neither wise nor fortunate. I had already heard rumors of her serious illness. Send me word, I pray you, that there is better health and hope. For the rest, the Colonna motto would fit your letter, "Though sad, I am strong."

I had received in July, forwarded by Stanley, on his flight through Boston, the fourth Volume of _Friedrich,_ and it was my best reading in the summer, and for weeks my only reading: One fact was paramount in all the good I drew from it, that whomsoever many years had used and worn, they had not yet broken any fibre of your force:--a pure joy to me, who abhor the inroads which time makes on me and on my friends. To live too long is the capital misfortune, and I sometimes think, if we shall not parry it by better art of living, we shall learn to include in our morals some bolder control of the facts. I read once, that Jacobi declared that he had some thoughts which--if he should entertain them--would put him to death: and perhaps we have weapons in our intellectual armory that are to save us from disgrace and impertinent relation to the world we live in. But this book will excuse you from any unseemly haste to make up your accounts, nay, holds you to fulfil your career with all amplitude and calmness. I found joy and pride in it, and discerned a golden chain of continuity not often seen in the works of men, apprising me that one good head and great heart remained in England,--immovable, superior to his own eccentricities and perversities, nay, wearing these, I can well believe, as a jaunty coat or red c.o.c.kade to defy or mislead idlers, for the better securing his own peace, and the very ends which the idlers fancy he resists. England's lease of power is good during his days.

I have in these last years lamented that you had not made the visit to America, which in earlier years you projected or favored. It would have made it impossible that your name should be cited for one moment on the side of the enemies of mankind.

Ten days' residence in this country would have made you the organ of the sanity of England and of Europe to us and to them, and have shown you the necessities and aspirations which struggle up in our Free States, which, as yet, have no organ to others, and are ill and unsteadily articulated here. In our today's division of Republican and Democrat, it is certain that the American nationality lies in the Republican party (mixed and multiform though that party be); and I hold it not less certain, that, viewing all the nationalities of the world, the battle for Humanity is, at this hour, in America. A few days here would show you the disgusting composition of the Party which within the Union resists the national action. Take from it the wild Irish element, imported in the last twenty-five year's into this country, and led by Romish Priests, who sympathize, of course, with despotism, and you would bereave it of all its numerical strength. A man intelligent and virtuous is not to be found on that side. Ah! how gladly I would enlist you, with your thunderbolt, on our part! How gladly enlist the wise, thoughtful, efficient pens and voices of England! We want England and Europe to hold our people stanch to their best tendency. Are English of this day incapable of a great sentiment? Can they not leave caviling at petty failures, and bad manners, and at the dunce part (always the largest part in human affairs), and leap to the suggestions and finger-pointings of the G.o.ds, which, above the understanding, feed the hopes and guide the wills of men? This war has been conducted over the heads of all the actors in it; and the foolish terrors, "What shall we do with the negro?" "The entire black population is coming North to be fed," &c., have strangely ended in the fact that the black refuses to leave his climate; gets his living and the living of his employers there, as he has always done; is the natural ally and soldier of the Republic, in that climate; now takes the place of two hundred thousand white soldiers; and will be, as the conquest of the country proceeds, its garrison, till peace, without slavery, returns. Slaveholders in London have filled English ears with their wishes and perhaps beliefs; and our people, generals, and politicians have carried the like, at first, to the war, until corrected by irresistible experience. I shall always respect War hereafter. The cost of life, the dreary havoc of comfort and time, are overpaid by the vistas it opens of Eternal Life, Eternal Law, reconstructing and uplifting Society, --breaks up the old horizon, and we see through the rifts a wider.

The dismal Malthus, the dismal DeBow, have had their night.

Our Census of 1860, and the War, are poems, which will, in the next age, inspire a genius like your own. I hate to write you a newspaper, but, in these times, 't is wonderful what sublime lessons I have once and again read on the Bulletin-boards in the streets. Everybody has been wrong in his guess, except good women, who never despair of an Ideal right.

I thank you for sending to me so gracious a gentleman as Mr.

Stanley, who interested us in every manner, by his elegance, his accurate information of that we wished to know, and his surprising acquaintance with the camp and military politics on our frontier. I regretted that I could see him so little. He has used his time to the best purpose, and I should gladly have learned all his adventures from so competent a witness. Forgive this long writing, and keep the old kindness which I prize above words. My kindest salutations to the dear invalid!

--R.W. Emerson

CLXXII. Carlyle to Emerson

c.u.mmertrees, Annan, Scotland, 14 June, 1865

Dear Emerson,--Though my hand is shaking (as you sadly notice) I determine to write you a little Note today. What a severance there has been these many sad years past!--In the first days of February I ended my weary Book; a totally worn-out man, got to sh.o.r.e again after far the ugliest sea he had ever swam in. In April or the end of March, when the book was published, I duly handed out a Copy for Concord and you; it was to be sent by mail; but, as my Publisher (a _new_ Chapman, very unlike the _old_) discloses to me lately an incredible negligence on such points, it is quite possible the dog may _not,_ for a long while, have put it in the Post-Office (though he faithfully charged me the postage of it, and was paid), and that the poor waif may never yet have reached you! Patience: it will come soon enough,--there are two thick volumes, and they will stand you a great deal of reading; stiff rather than "light."

Since February last, I have been sauntering about in Devons.h.i.+re, in Chelsea, hither, thither; idle as a dry bone, in fact, a creature sinking into deeper and deeper _collapse,_ after twelve years of such mulish pulling and pus.h.i.+ng; creature now good for nothing seemingly, and much indifferent to being so in permanence, if that be the arrangement come upon by the Powers that made us. Some three or four weeks ago, I came rolling down hither, into this old nook of my Birthland, to see poor old Annandale again with eyes, and the poor remnants of kindred and loved ones still left me there; I was not at first very lucky (lost sleep, &c.); but am now doing better, pretty much got adjusted to my new element, new to me since about six years past,--the longest absence I ever had from it before. My Work was getting desperate at that time; and I silently said to myself, "We won't return till _it_ is done, or _you_ are done, my man!"

This is my eldest living sister's house; one of the most rustic Farmhouses in the world, but abounding in all that is needful to me, especially in the truest, _silently_-active affection, the humble generosity of which is itself medicine and balm. The place is airy, on dry waving knolls cheerfully (with such _water_ as I never drank elsewhere, except at Malvern) all round me are the Mountains, Cheviot and Galloway (three to fifteen miles off), c.u.mberland and Yorks.h.i.+re (say forty and fifty, with the Solway brine and sands intervening). I live in total solitude, sauntering moodily in thin checkered woods, galloping about, once daily, by old lanes and roads, oftenest latterly on the wide expanses of Solway sh.o.r.e (when the tide is _out!_) where I see bright busy Cottages far off, houses over even in c.u.mberland, and the beautifulest amphitheatre of eternal Hills,--but meet no living creature; and have endless thoughts as loving and as sad and sombre as I like. My youngest Brother (whom on the whole I like best, a rustic man, the express image of my Father in his ways of living and thinking) is within ten miles of me; Brother John "the Doctor" has come down to Dumfries to a sister (twelve miles off), and runs over to me by rail now and then in few minutes. I have Books; but can hardly be troubled with them.

Pitiful temporary babble and balderdash, in comparison to what the Silences can say to one. Enough of all that: you perceive me sufficiently at this point of my Pilgrimage, as withdrawn to _Hades_ for the time being; intending a month's walk there, till the muddy semi-solutions settle into sediment according to what laws they have, and there be perhaps a partial restoration of clearness. I have to go deeper into Scotland by and by, perhaps to try _sailing,_ which generally agrees with me; but till the end of September I hope there will be no London farther. My poor Wife, who is again poorly since I left (and has had frightful sufferings, last year especially) will probably join me in this region before I leave it. And see here, This is authentically the way we figure in the eye of the Sun; and something like what your spectacles, could they reach across the Ocean into these nooks, would teach you of us. There are three Photographs which I reckon fairly _like;_ _these_ are properly what I had to send you today,--little thinking that so much surplusage would acc.u.mulate about them; to which I now at once put an end. Your friend Conway,* who is a boundless admirer of yours, used to come our way regularly now and then; and we always liked him well. A man of most gentlemanly, ingenious ways; turn of thought always loyal and manly, though tending to be rather _winged_ than solidly ambulatory. He talked of coming to Scotland too; but it seems uncertain whether we shall meet. He is clearly rather a favorite among the London people,--and tries to explain America to them; I know not if with any success. As for me, I have entirely lost count and reckoning of your enormous element, and its enormous affairs and procedures for some time past; and can only wish (which no man more heartily does) that all may issue in as blessed a way as you hope. Fat--(if you know and his fat commonplace at all) amused me much by a thing he had heard of yours in some lecture a year or two ago. "The American Eagle is a mighty bird; but what is he to the American Peac.o.c.k." At which all the audience had exploded into laughter. Very good.

Adieu, old Friend.

Yours ever, T. Carlyle

--------- * Mr. Moncure D. Conway.

CLXXIII. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 7 January, 1866

Dear Carlyle,--Is it too late to send a letter to your door to claim an old right to enter, and to scatter all your convictions that I had pa.s.sed under the earth? You had not to learn what a sluggish pen mine is. Of course, the sluggishness grows on me, and even such a trumpet at my gate as a letter from you heralding-in n.o.ble books, whilst it gives me joy, cannot heal the paralysis. Yet your letter deeply interested me, with the account of your rest so well earned. You had fought your great battle, and might roll in the gra.s.s, or ride your pony, or shout to the c.u.mberland or Scotland echoes, with largest leave of men and G.o.ds. My lethargies have not dulled my delight in good books. I read these in the bright days of our new peace, which added a l.u.s.tre to every genial work. Now first we had a right to read, for the very bookworms were driven out of doors whilst the war lasted. I found in the book no trace of age, which your letter so impressively claimed. In the book, the hand does not shake, the mind is ubiquitous. The treatment is so spontaneous, self-respecting, defiant,--liberties with your hero as if he were your client, or your son, and you were proud of him, and yet can check and chide him, and even put him in the corner when he is not a good boy, freedoms with kings, and reputations, and nations, yes, and with principles too,--that each reader, I suppose, feels complimented by the confidences with which he is honored by this free-tongued, masterful Hermes.--Who knows what the [Greek] will say next? This humor of telling the story in a gale,--bantering, scoffing, at the hero, at the enemy, at the learned reporters,--is a perpetual flattery to the admiring student,--the author abusing the whole world as mad dunces,--all but you and I, reader! Ellery Channing borrowed my Volumes V.

and VI., worked slowly through them,--midway came to me for Volumes I., II., III., IV., which he had long already read, and at last returned all with this word, "If you write to Mr.

Carlyle, you may say to him, that I _have_ read these books, and they have made it impossible for me to read any other books but his."

'T is a good proof of their penetrative force, the influence on the new Stirling, who writes "The Secret of Hegel." He is quite as much a student of Carlyle to learn treatment, as of Hegel for his matter, and plays the same game on his essence-dividing German, which he has learned of you on _Friedrich._ I have read a good deal in this book of Stirling's, and have not done with it.

One or two errata I noticed in the last volumes of _Friedrich,_ though the books are now lent, and I cannot indicate the pages.

Fort Pulaski, which is near Savannah, is set down as near Charleston. Charleston, South Carolina, your printer has twice called Charlestown, which is the name of the town in Ma.s.sachusetts in which Bunker Hill stands.--Bancroft told me that the letters of Montcalm are spurious. We always write and say Ticonderoga.