The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872 Volume I Part 23

CLx.x.xIII. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, 6 April, 1870

Dear Emerson,--The day before yesterday your welcome Letter came to hand, with the welcome news in it; yesterday I put into my poor Doc.u.ment here the few words still needed; locked everything into its still repository (your Letter, President Eliot's, Norton's, &c., &c.); and walked out into the suns.h.i.+ne, piously thankful that a poor little whim, which had long lain fondly in my heart, had realized itself with an emphasis I could never hope, and was become (thanks to generous enthusiasm on New England's part) a beautiful little fact, lying done there, so far as I had to do with it. Truly your account of matters threw a glow of _life_ into my thoughts which is very rare there now; altogether a gratifying little Transaction to me,--and I must add a surprising, for the enthusiasm of good-will is evidently great, and the occasion is almost infinitesimally small! Well, well; it is all finished off and completed,--(you can tell Mr. Eliot, with many thanks from me, that I did introduce the proper style, "President and Fellows," &c., and have forgotten nothing of what he said, or of what he _did_);--and so we will say only, _Faustum sit,_ as our last word on the subject;--and to me it will be, for some days yet, under these vernal skies, something that is itself connected with THE SPRING in a still higher sense; a little white and red-lipped bit of _Daisy_ pure and poor, scattered into TIME's Seedfield, and struggling above ground there, uttering _its_ bit of prophecy withal, among the ox-hoofs and big jungles that are everywhere about and not prophetic of much!--

One thing only I regret, that you _have_ spoken of the affair!

For G.o.d's sake don't; and those kindly people to whom you have,- -swear them to silence for love of me! The poor little _Daisy_kin will get into the Newspapers, and become the nastiest of Cabbages:--silence, silence, I beg of you to the utmost stretch of your power! Or is the case already irremediable? I will hope not. Talk about such things, especially Penny Editor's talk, is like vile coal-smoke filling your poor little world; silence alone is azure, and has a _sky_ to it.--But, enough now.

The "little Book" never came; and, I doubt, never will: it is a fate that seems to await three fourths of the Books that attempt to reach me by the American Post; owing to some _informality in wrapping_ (I have heard);--it never gave me any notable _regret_ till now. However, I had already bought myself an English copy, rather gaudy little volume (probably intended for the _railways,_ as if _it_ were a Book to be read there), but perfectly printed, ready to be read anywhere by the open eye and earnest mind;-- which I read here, accordingly, with great attention, clear a.s.sent for most part, and admiring recognition. It seems to me you are all your old self here, and something _more._ A calm insight, piercing to the very centre; a beautiful sympathy, a beautiful _epic_ humor; a soul peaceably irrefragable in this loud-jangling world, of which it sees the ugliness, but _notices_ only the huge new _opulences_ (still so anarchic); knows the electric telegraph, with all its vulgar botherations and impertinences, accurately for what it is, and ditto ditto the oldest eternal Theologies of men. All this belongs to the Highest Cla.s.s of thought (you may depend upon it); and again seemed to me as, in several respects, the one perfectly Human Voice I had heard among my fellow-creatures for a long time. And then the "style," the treatment and expression,--yes, it is inimitable, best--Emersonian throughout. Such brevity, simplicity, softness, homely grace; with such a penetrating meaning, _soft_ enough, but irresistible, going down to the depths and up to the heights, as _silent electricity_ goes. You have done _very well;_ and many will know it ever better by degrees.--Only one thing farther I will note: How you go as if altogether on the "Over-Soul," the Ideal, the Perfect or Universal and Eternal in this life of ours; and take so little heed of the frightful quant.i.ties of _friction_ and perverse impediment there everywhere are; the reflections upon which in my own poor life made me now and then very sad, as I read you.

Ah me, ah me; what a vista it is, mournful, beautiful, _unfathomable_ as Eternity itself, these last fifty years of Time to me.--

Let me not forget to thank you for that _fourth_ page of your Note; I should say it was almost the most interesting of all.

News from yourself at first hand; a momentary glimpse into the actual Household at Concord, face to face, as in years of old!

True, I get vague news of you from time to time; but what are these in comparison?--If you _will,_ at the eleventh hour, turn over a new leaf, and write me Letters again,--but I doubt _you won't._ And yet were it not worth while, think you? [Greek]-- will be here _anon._--My kindest regards to your wife. Adieu, my ever-kind Old Friend.

Yours faithfully always, T. Carlyle

CLx.x.xIV. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 17 June, 1870

My Dear Carlyle,--Two* unanswered letters filled and fragrant and potent with goodness will not let me procrastinate another minute, or I shall sink and deserve to sink into my dormouse condition. You are of the Anakim, and know nothing of the debility and postponement of the blonde const.i.tution. Well, if you shame us by your reservoir inexhaustible of force, you indemnify and cheer some of us, or one of us, by charges of electricity.

-------- * One seems to be missing.

Your letter of April came, as ever-more than ever, if possible-- full of kindness, and making much of our small doings and writings, and seemed to drive me to instant acknowledgment; but the oppressive engagement of writing and reading eighteen lectures on Philosophy to a cla.s.s of graduates in the College, and these in six successive weeks, was a task a little more formidable in prospect and in practice than any foregoing one.

Of course, it made me a prisoner, took away all rights of friends.h.i.+p, honor, and justice, and held me to such frantic devotion to my work as must spoil that also.

Well, it is now ended, and has no s.h.i.+ning side but this one, that materials are collected and a possibility shown me how a repet.i.tion of the course next year--which is appointed--will enable me partly out of these materials, and partly by large rejection of these, and by large addition to them, to construct a fair report of what I have read and thought on the subject. I doubt the experts in Philosophy will not praise my discourses;-- but the topics give me room for my guesses, criticism, admirations and experiences with the accepted masters, and also the lessons I have learned from the hidden great. I have the fancy that a realist is a good corrector of formalism, no matter how incapable of syllogism or continuous linked statement. To great results of thought and morals the steps are not many, and it is not the masters who spin the ostentatious continuity.

I am glad to hear that the last sent book from me arrived safely.

You were too tender and generous in your first notice of it, I fear. But with whatever deductions for your partiality, I know well the unique value of Carlyle's praise. Many things crowd to be said on this little paper. Though I could see no harm in the making known the bequest of books to Cambridge,--no harm, but sincere pleasure, and honor of the donor from all good men,--yet on receipt of your letter touching that, I went back to President Eliot, and told him your opinion on newspapers. He said it was necessarily communicated to the seven persons composing the Corporation, but otherwise he had been very cautious, and it would not go into print.

You are sending me a book, and Chapman's Homer it is? Are you bound by your Arabian bounty to a largess whenever you think of your friend? And you decry the book too. 'T-is long since I read it, or in it, but the apotheosis of Homer, in the dedication to Prince Henry, "Thousands of years attending," &c., is one of my lasting inspirations. The book has not arrived yet, as the letter always travels faster, but shall be watched and received and announced.

But since you are all bounty and care for me, where are the new volumes of the Library Edition of Carlyle? I received duly, as I wrote you in a former letter, nine Volumes,--_Sartor; Life of Schiller;_ five Vols. of _Miscellanies; French Revolution;_ these books oddly addressed to my name, but at _Cincinnati,_ Ma.s.sachusetts. Whether they went to Ohio, and came back to Boston, I know not. Two volumes came later, duplicates of two already received, and were returned at my request by Fields & Co.

with an explanation. But no following volume has come. I write all this because you said in one letter that Mr. Chapman a.s.sured you that every month a book was despatched to my address.

But what do I read in our Boston Newspapers twice in the last three days? That "Thomas Carlyle is coming to America," and the tidings cordially greeted by the editors; though I had just received your letter silent to any such point. Make that story true, though it had never a verisimilitude since thirty odd years ago, and you shall make many souls happy and perhaps show you so many needs and opportunities for beneficent power that you cannot be allowed to grow old or withdraw. Was I not once promised a visit? This house entreats you earnestly and lovingly to come and dwell in it. My wife and Ellen and Edward E. are thoroughly acquainted with your greatness and your loveliness. And it is but ten days of healthy sea to pa.s.s.

So wishes heartily and affectionately, R.W. Emerson

CLx.x.xV. Carlyle to Emerson

5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, 28 September, 1870

Dear Emerson,--Your Letter, dated 15 June, never got to me till about ten days ago; when my little Niece and I returned out of Scotland, and a long, rather empty Visit there! It had missed me here only by two or three days; and my highly _in_felicitous Selectress of Letters to be forwarded had left _it_ carefully aside as undeserving that honor,--good faithful old Woman, one hopes she is greatly stronger on some sides than in this literary-selective one. Certainly no Letter was forwarded that had the hundredth part of the right to be so; certainly, of all the Letters that came to me, or were left waiting here, this was, in comparison, the one which might _not_ with propriety have been left to lie stranded forever, or to wander on the winds forever!--

One of my first journeys was to Chapman, with vehement _rebuke_ of this inconceivable "Cincinnati-Ma.s.sachusetts" business.

_Stupiditas stupiditatum;_ I never in my life, not even in that unpunctual House, fell in with anything that equaled it. Instant amendment was at once undertaken for, nay it seems had been already in part performed: "Ten volumes, following the nine you already had, were despatched in Field & Co.'s box above two months ago," so Chapman solemnly said and a.s.severated to me; so that by this time you ought actually to have in hand nineteen volumes; and the twentieth (first of _Friedrich_), which came out ten days ago, is to go in Field & Co.'s Box this week, and ought, not many days after the arrival of this Letter, to be in Boston waiting for you there. The _Chapman's Homer_ (two volumes) had gone with that first Field Packet; and would be handed to you along with the ten volumes which were overdue. All this was solemnly declared to me as on Affidavit; Chapman also took extract of the Ma.s.sachusetts pa.s.sage in your Letter, in order to pour it like ice-cold water on the head of his stupid old Chief-Clerk, the instant the poor creature got back from his rustication: alas, I am by no means certain that it will make a new man of him, nor, in fact, that the whole of this amendatory programme will get itself performed to equal satisfaction! But you must write to me at once if it is not so; and done it shall be in spite of human stupidity itself. Note, withal, these things: Chapman sends no Books to America _except_ through Field & Co.; he does not regularly send a Box at the middle of the month; but he does "almost monthly send one Bog"; so that if your monthly Volume do not start from London about the 15th, it is due by the very _next_ Chapman-Field box; and if it at any time don't come, I beg of you very much to make instant complaint through Field & Co., or what would be still more effectual, direct to myself. My malison on all Blockheadisms and torpid stupidities and infidelities; of which this world is full!--

Your Letter had been anxiously enough waited for, a month before my departure; but we will not mention the delay in presence of what you were engaged with then. _Faustum sit;_ that truly was and will be a Work worth doing your best upon; and I, if alive, can promise you at least one reader that will do his best upon your Work. I myself, often think of the Philosophies precisely in that manner. To say truth, they do not otherwise rise in esteem with me at all, but rather sink. The last thing I read of that kind was a piece by Hegel, in an excellent Translation by Stirling, right well translated, I could see, for every bit of it was intelligible to me; but my feeling at the end of it was, "Good Heavens, I have walked this road before many a good time; but never with a Cannon-ball at each ankle before!" Science also, Science falsely so called, is--But I will not enter upon that with you just now.

The Visit to America, alas, alas, is pure Moons.h.i.+ne. Never had I, in late years, the least shadow of intention to undertake that adventure; and I am quite at a loss to understand how the rumor originated. One Boston Gentleman (a kind of universal Undertaker, or Lion's Provider of Lecturers I think) informed me that _"the Cable"_ had told him; and I had to remark, "And who the devil told the Cable?" Alas, no, I fear I shall never dare to undertake that big Voyage; which has so much of romance and of reality behind it to me; _zu spat, zu spat._ I do sometimes talk dreamily of a long Sea-Voyage, and the good the Sea has often done me,--in times when good was still possible. It may have been some vague folly of that kind that originated this rumor; for rumors are like dandelion-seeds; and _the Cable_ I dare say welcomes them all that have a guinea in their pocket.

Thank you for blocking up that Harvard matter; provided it don't go into the Newspapers, all is right. Thank you a thousand times for that thrice-kind potential welcome, and flinging wide open your doors and your hearts to me at Concord. The gleam of it is like suns.h.i.+ne in a subterranean place. Ah me, Ah me! May G.o.d be with you all, dear Emerson.

Yours ever, T. Carlyle

CLx.x.xVI. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 15 October, 1870

My Dear Carlyle,--I am the ign.o.blest of all men in my perpetual short-comings to you. There is no example of constancy like yours, and it always stings my stupor into temporary recovery and wonderful resolution to accept the n.o.ble challenge. But "the strong hours conquer us," and I am the victim of miscellany,-- miscellany of designs, vast debility, and procrastination.

Already many days before your letter came, Fields sent me a package from you, which he said he had found a little late, because they were covered up in a box of printed sheets of other character, and this treasure was not at first discovered. They are,--_Life of Sterling; Latter Day Pamphlets; Past and Present; Heroes;_ 5 Vols. _Cromwell's Letters and Speeches._ Unhappily, Vol. II. of _Cromwell_ is wanting, and there is a duplicate of Vol. V. instead of it. Now, two days ago came your letter, and tells me that the good old G.o.ds have also inspired you to send me Chapman's Homer! and that it came--heroes with heroes--in the same enchanted box. I went to Fields yesterday and demanded the book. He ignored all,--even to the books he had already sent me; called Osgood to council, and they agreed that it must be that all these came in a bog of sheets of d.i.c.kens from Chapman, which was sent to the Stereotypers at Cambridge; and the box shall be instantly explored. We will see what tomorrow shall find. As to the duplicates, I will say here, that I have received two: first, the above-mentioned Vol. II. of _Cromwell;_ and, second, long before, a second copy of _Sartor Resartus,_ apparently instead of the Vol. I. of the _French Revolution,_ which did not come. I proposed to Fields to send back to Chapman these two duplicates. But he said, "No, it will cost as much as the price of the books." I shall try to find in New York who represents Chapman and sells these books, and put them to his credit there, in exchange for the volumes I lack. Meantime, my serious thanks for all these treasures go to you,--steadily good to my youth and my age.

Your letter was most welcome, and most in that I thought I read, in what you say of not making the long-promised visit hither, a little willingness to come. Think again, I pray you, of that Ocean Voyage, which is probably the best medicine and restorative which remains to us at your age and mine. Nine or ten days will bring you (and commonly with unexpected comfort and eas.e.m.e.nts on the way) to Boston. Every reading person in America holds you in exceptional regard, and will rejoice in your arrival. They have forgotten your scarlet sins before or during the war. I have long ceased to apologize for or explain your savage sayings about American or other republics or publics, and am willing that anointed men bearing with them authentic charters shall be laws to themselves as Plato willed. Genius is but a large infusion of Deity, and so brings a prerogative all its own. It has a right and duty to affront and amaze men by carrying out its perceptions defiantly, knowing well that time and fate will verify and explain what time and fate have through them said. We must not suggest to Michel Angelo, or Machiavel, or Rabelais, or Voltaire, or John Brown of Osawatomie (a great man), or Carlyle, how they shall suppress their paradoxes and check their huge gait to keep accurate step with the procession on the street sidewalk. They are privileged persons, and may have their own swing for me.

I did not mean to chatter so much, but I wish you would come out hither and read our possibilities now being daily disclosed, and our actualities which are not nothing. I shall like to show you my near neighbors, topographically or practically. A near neighbor and friend, E. Rockwood h.o.a.r, whom you saw in his youth, is now an inestimable citizen in this State, and lately, in President Grant's Cabinet, Attorney-General of the United States.

He lives in this town and carries it in his hand. Another is John M. Forbes, a strictly private citizen, of great executive ability, and n.o.blest affections, a motive power and regulator essential to our City, refusing all office, but impossible to spare; and these are men whom to name the voice breaks and the eye is wet. A mult.i.tude of young men are growing up here of high promise, and I compare gladly the social poverty of my youth with the power on which these draw. The Lowell race, again, in our War yielded three or four martyrs so able and tender and true, that James Russell Lowell cannot allude to them in verse or prose but the public is melted anew. Well, all these know you well, have read and will read you, yes, and will prize and use your benefaction to the College; and I believe it would add hope, health, and strength to you to come and see them.

In my much writing I believe I have left the chief things unsaid.

But come! I and my house wait for you.

Affectionately, R.W. Emerson

CLx.x.xVIa. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 10 April, 1871