The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872 Volume II Part 3

-- * Emerson's estimate of Mr. Ripley was justified as the years went on. His _Life,_ by Mr. Octavius Frothingham,--like his father, "a worthy and accomplished, man," but more like Luther than Erasmus,--forms one of the most attractive volumes of the series of _Lives of American Men of Letters._

** The late Ellis Gray Loring, a man of high character, well esteemed in his profession, and widely respected.

On the other hand, I make no doubt you shall be sure of some opposition. Andrews Norton, one of our best heads, once a theological professor, and a destroying critic, lives upon a rich estate at Cambridge, and frigidly excludes the Diderot paper from a _Select Journal_ edited by him, with the remark, "Another paper of the Teufelsdrockh School." The University perhaps, and much that is conservative in literature and religion, I apprehend, will give you its cordial opposition, and what eccentricity can be collected from the Obituary Notice on Goethe, or from the _Sartor,_ shall be mustered to demolish you. Nor yet do I feel quite certain of this. If we get a good tide with us, we shall sweep away the whole inertia, which is the whole force of these gentlemen, except Norton. That you do not like the Unitarians will never hurt you at all, if possibly you do like the Calvinists. If you have any friendly relations to your native Church, fail not to bring a letter from a Scottish Calvinist to a Calvinist here, and your fortune is made. But that were too good to happen.

Since things are so, can you not, my dear sir, finish your new work and cross the great water in September or October, and try the experiment of a winter in America? I cannot but think that if we do not make out a case strong enough to make you build your house, at least you should pitch your tent among us. The country is, as you say, worth visiting, and to give much pleasure to a few persons will be some inducement to you. I am afraid to press this matter. To me, as you can divine, it would be an unspeakable comfort; and the more, that I hope before that time so far to settle my own affairs as to have a wife and a house to receive you. Tell Mrs. Carlyle, with my affectionate regards, that some friends whom she does not yet know do hope with me to have her company for the next winter at our house, and shall not cease to hope it until you come.

I have many things to say upon the topics of your letter, but my letter is already so immeasurably long, it must stop. Long as it is, I regret I have not more facts. Dr. Channing is in New York, or I think, despite your negligence of him, I should have visited him on account of his interest in you. Could you see him you would like him. I shall write you immediately on learning anything new bearing on this business. I intended to have despatched this letter a day or two sooner, that it might go by the packet of the 1st of May from New York. Now it will go by that of the 8th, and ought to reach you in thirty days. Send me your thoughts upon it as soon as you can. I _jalouse_ of that new book. I fear its success may mar my project.

Yours affectionately, R. Waldo Emerson

VII. Carlyle to Emerson

5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, London 13 May, 1835

Thanks, my kind friend, for the news you again send me. Good news, good new friends; nothing that is not good comes to me across these waters. As if the "Golden West" seen by Poets were no longer a mere optical phenomenon, but growing a reality, and coining itself into solid blessings! To me it seems very strange; as indeed generally this whole Existence here below more and more does.

We have seen your Barnard: a most modest, intelligent, compact, hopeful-looking man, who will not revisit you without conquests from his expedition hither. We expect to see much more of him; to instruct him, to learn of him: especially about that real-imaginary locality of "Concord," where a kindly-speaking voice lives incarnated, there is much to learn.

That you will take to yourself a wife is the cheerfulest tidings you could send us. It is in no wise meet for man to be alone; and indeed the beneficent Heavens, in creating Eve, did mercifully guard against that. May it prove blessed, this new arrangement! I delight to prophesy for you peaceful days in it; peaceful, not idle; filled rather with that best activity which is the stillest. To the future, or perhaps at this hour actual Mrs. Emerson, will you offer true wishes from two British Friends; who have not seen her with their eyes, but whose thoughts need not be strangers to the Home she will make for you.

Nay, you add the most chivalrous summons: which who knows but one day we may actually stir ourselves to obey! It may hover for the present among the gentlest of our day-dreams; mild-l.u.s.trous; an impossible possibility. May all go well with you, my worthy Countryman, Kinsman, and brother Man!

This so astonis.h.i.+ng reception of Teufelsdrockh in your New England circle seems to me not only astonis.h.i.+ng, but questionable; not, however, to be quarreled with. I may say: If the New. England cup is dangerously sweet, there are here in Old England whole antiseptic floods of good _hop_-decoction; therein let it mingle; work wholesomely towards what clear benefit it can. Your young ones too, as all exaggeration is transient, and exaggerated love almost itself a blessing, will get through it without damage. As for Fraser, however, the idea of a new Edition is frightful to him; or rather ludicrous, unimaginable. Of him no man has inquired for a _Sartor:_ in his whole wonderful world of Tory Pamphleteers, Conservative Younger-brothers, Regent-Street Loungers, Crockford Gamblers, Irish Jesuits, drunken Reporters, and miscellaneous unclean persons (whom nitre and much soap will not wash clean), not a soul has expressed the smallest wish that way. He shrieks at the idea.

Accordingly I realized these four copies from [him,] all he will surrender; and can do no more. Take them with my blessing. I beg you will present one to the honorablest of those "honorable women"; say to her that her (unknown) image as she reads shall be to me a bright faultless vision, textured out of mere sunbeams; to be loved and wors.h.i.+ped; the best of all Transatlantic women! Do at any rate, in a more business like style, offer my respectful regards to Dr. Channing, whom certainly I could not count on for a reader, or other than a grieved condemnatory one; for I reckoned tolerance had its limits. His own faithful, long-continued striving towards what is Best, I knew and honored; that he will let me go my own way thitherward, with a G.o.d-speed from him, is surely a new honor to us both.

Finally, on behalf of the British world (which is not all contained in Fraser's shop) I should tell you that various persons, some of them in a dialect not to be doubted of, have privately expressed their recognition of this poor Rhapsody, the best the poor Clothes-Professor could produce in the circ.u.mstances; nay, I have Scottish Presbyterian Elders who read, and thank. So true is what you say about the apt.i.tude of all natural hearts for receiving what is from the heart spoken to them. As face answereth to face! Brother, if thou wish me to believe, do thou thyself believe first: this is as true as that of the _flere_ and _dolendum;_ perhaps truer. Wherefore, putting all things together, cannot I feel that I have washed my hands of this business in a quite tolerable manner? Let a man be thankful; and on the whole go along, while he has strength left to go.

This Boston _Transcendentalist,_ whatever the fate or merit of it prove to be, is surely an interesting symptom. There must be things not dreamt of, over in that Transoceanic Paris.h.!.+ I shall cordially wish well to this thing; and hail it as the sure forerunner of things better. The Visible becomes the b.e.s.t.i.a.l when it rests not on the Invisible. Innumerable tumults of Metaphysic must be struggled through (whole generations peris.h.i.+ng by the way), and at last Transcendentalism evolve itself (if I construe aright), as the _Euthanasia_ of Metaphysic altogether.

May it be sure, may it be speedy! Thou shalt open thy _eyes,_ O Son of Adam; thou shalt _look,_ and not forever jargon about _laws_ of Optics and the making of spectacles! For myself, I rejoice very much that I seem to be flinging aside innumerable sets of spectacles (could I but _lay_ them aside,--with gentleness!) and hope one day actually to see a thing or two.

Man _lives_ by Belief (as it was well written of old); by logic he can only at best long to live. Oh, I am dreadfully, afflicted with Logic here, and wish often (in my haste) that I had the besom of destruction to lay to it for a little!

"Why? and WHEREFORE? G.o.d wot, simply THEREFORE! Ask not WHY; 't is SITH thou hast to care for."

Since I wrote last to you, (which seems some three months ago,) there has a great mischance befallen me: the saddest, I think, of the kind called Accidents I ever had to front. By dint of continual endeavor for many weary weeks, I had got the first volume of that miserable _French Revolution_ rather handsomely finished: from amid infinite contradictions I felt as if my head were fairly above water, and I could go on writing my poor Book, defying the Devil and the World, with a certain degree of a.s.surance, and even of joy. A Friend borrowed this volume of Ma.n.u.script,--a kind Friend but a careless one,--to write notes on it, which he was well qualified to do. One evening about two months ago he came in on us, "distraction (literally) in his aspect"; the Ma.n.u.script, left carelessly out, had been torn up as waste paper, and all but three or four tatters was clean gone!

I could not complain, or the poor man seemed as if he would have shot himself: we had to gather ourselves together, and show a smooth front to it; which happily, though difficult, was not impossible to do. I began again at the beginning; to such a wretched paralyzing torpedo of a task as my hand never found to do: at which I have worn myself these two months to the hue of saffron, to the humor of incipient desperation; and now, four days ago, perceiving well that I was like a man swimming in an element that grew ever rarer, till at last it became vacuum (think of that!) I with a new effort of self-denial sealed up all the paper fragments, and said to myself: In this mood thou makest no way, writest _nothing_ that requires not to be erased again; lay it by for one complete week! And so it lies, under lock and key. I have digested the whole misery; I say, if thou canst _never_ write this thing, why then never do write it: G.o.d's Universe will go along _better_--without it. My Belief in a special Providence grows yearly stronger, unsubduable, impregnable: however, you see all the mad increase of entanglement I have got to strive with, and will pity me in it. Bodily exhaustion (and "Diana in the shape of bile")* I will at least try to exclude from the controversy. By G.o.d's blessing, perhaps the Book shall yet be written; but I find it will not do, by sheer direct force; only by gentler side-methods. I have much else to write too: I feel often as if with one year of health and peace I could write something considerable;--the image of which sails dim and great through my head. Which year of health and peace, G.o.d, if He see meet, will give me yet; or withhold from me, as shall be for the best.

* This allusion to Diana as an obstruction was a favorite one with Carlyle. "Sir Hudibras, according to Butler, was about to do a dreadful homicide,--an all-important catastrophe,--and had drawn his pistol with that full intent, and would decidedly have done it, had not, says Butler, 'Diana in the shape of rust'

imperatively intervened. A miracle she has occasionally wrought upon me in other shapes." So wrote Carlyle in a letter in 1874.

I have dwelt and swum now for about a year in this World-Maelstrom of London; with much pain, which however has given me many thoughts, more than a counterbalance for that. Hitherto there is no outlook, but confusion, darkness, innumerable things against which a man must "set his face like a flint." Madness rules the world, as it has generally done: one cannot, unhappily, without loss, say to it, Rule then; and yet must say it.--However, in two months more I expect my good Brother from Italy (a brave fellow, who is a great comfort to me); we are then for Scotland to gather a little health, to consider ourselves a little. I must have this Book done before anything else will prosper with me.

Your American Pamphlets got to hand only a few days ago; worthy old Rich had them not originally; seemed since to have been oblivious, out of Town, perhaps unwell. I called one day, and unearthed them. Those papers you marked I have read. Genuine endeavor; which may the Heavens forward!--In this poor Country all is swallowed up in the barren Chaos of Politics: Ministries tumbled out, Ministries tumbled in; all things (a fearful substratum of "Ignorance and Hunger" weltering and heaving under them) apparently in rapid progress towards--the melting-pot.

There will be news from England by and by: many things have reached their term; Destiny "with lame foot" has overtaken them, and there will be a reckoning. O blessed are you where, what jargoning soever there be at Was.h.i.+ngton, the poor man (_un_governed can govern himself) shoulders his age, and walks into the Western Woods, sure of a nouris.h.i.+ng Earth and an overarching Sky! It is verily the Door of Hope to distracted Europe; which otherwise I should see crumbling down into blackness of darkness.--That too shall be for good.

I wish I had anything to send you besides these four poor Pamphlets; but I fear there is nothing going. Our Ex-Chancellor has been promulgating triticalities (significant as novelties, when _he_ with his wig and lordhood utters them) against the Aristocracy; whereat the upper circles are terribly scandalized.

In Literature, except a promised or obtained (but to me still unknown) volume of Wordsworth, nothing nameworthy doing.--Did I tell you that I _saw_ Wordsworth this winter? Twice, at considerable length; with almost no disappointment. He is a _natural_ man (which means whole immensities here and now); flows like a natural well yielding mere wholesomeness,--though, as it would not but seem to me, in _small_ quant.i.ty, and astonis.h.i.+ngly _diluted._ Franker utterance of mere garrulities and even plat.i.tudes I never heard from any man; at least never, whom I could _honor_ for uttering them. I am thankful for Wordsworth; as in great darkness and perpetual _sky-rockets_ and _coruscations,_ one were for the smallest clear-burning farthing candle. Southey also I saw; a far _cleverer_ man in speech, yet a considerably smaller man. Shovel-hatted; the shovel-hat is _grown_ to him: one must take him as he is.

The second leaf is done; I must not venture on another. G.o.d bless you, my worthy Friend; you and her who is to be yours! My Wife bids me send heartiest wishes and regards from her too across the Sea. Perhaps we shall all meet one another some day, --if not Here, then Yonder!

Faithfully always, T. Carlyle

VIII. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 27 June, 1835

My Dear Friend,--Your very kind Letter has been in my hand these four weeks,--the subject of much meditation, which has not yet cleared itself into anything like a definite practical issue.

Indeed, the conditions of the case are still not wholly before me: for if the American side of it, thanks to your perspicuous minuteness, is now tolerably plain, the European side continues dubious, too dim for a decision. So much in my own position here is vague, not to be measured; then there is a Brother, coming home to me from Italy, almost daily expected now; whose ulterior resolutions cannot but be influential on mine; for we are Brothers in the old good sense, and have one heart and one interest and object, and even one purse; and Jack is a _good man,_ for whom I daily thank Heaven, as for one of its princ.i.p.al mercies. He is Traveling Physician to the Countess of Clare, well entreated by her and hers; but, I think, weary of that inane element of "the English Abroad," and as good as determined to have done with it; to seek _work_ (he sees not well how), if possible, with wages; but even almost _without,_ or with the lowest endurable, if need be. Work and wages: the two prime necessities of man! It is pity they should ever be disjoined; yet of the two, if one _must,_ in this mad Earth, be dispensed with, it is really wise to say at all hazards, Be it the wages then. This Brother (if the Heavens have been kind to me) must be in Paris one of these days; then here speedily; and "the House must resolve itself into a Committee"--of ways and means. Add to all this, that I myself have been and am one of the stupidest of living men; in one of my vacant, interlunar conditions, unfit for deciding on anything: were I to give you my actual _view_ of this case, it were a view such as Satan had from the pavilion of the Anarch old. Alas! it is all too like Chaos: confusion of dense and rare: I also know what it is to drop _plumb,_ fluttering my pennons vain,--for a series of weeks.

One point only is clear: that you, my Friend, are very friendly to me; that New England is as much my country and home as Old England. Very singular and very pleasant it is to me to feel as if I had a _house of my own_ in that far country: so many leagues and geographical degrees of wild-weltering "unfruitful brine"; and then the hospitable hearth and the smiles of brethren awaiting one there! What with railways, steams.h.i.+ps, printing presses, it has surely become a most _monstrous_ "tissue," this life of ours; if evil and confusion in the one Hemisphere, then good and order in the other, a man knows not how: and so it rustles forth, immeasurable, from "that roaring Loom of Time,"--miraculous ever as of old! To Ralph Waldo Emerson, however, and those that love me as he, be thanks always, and a sure place in the sanctuary of the mind. Long shall we remember that Autumn Sunday that landed him (out of Infinite s.p.a.ce) on the Craigenputtock wilderness, not to leave us as he found us. My Wife says, whatever I decide on, I cannot thank you too heartily;--which really is very sound doctrine. I write to tell you so much; and that you shall hear from me again when there is more to tell.

It does seem next to certain to me that I could preach a very considerable quant.i.ty of things from that Boston Pulpit, such as it is,--were I once fairly started. If so, what an unspeakable relief were it too! Of the whole mountain of miseries one grumbles at in this life, the central and parent one, as I often say, is that you cannot utter yourself. The poor soul sits struggling, impatient, longing vehemently out towards all corners of the Universe, and cannot get its hest delivered, not even so far as the voice might do it. Imprisoned, enchanted, like the Arabian Prince with half his body marble: it is really bad work.

Then comes bodily sickness; to act and react, and double the imbroglio. Till at last, I suppose, one does rise, like Eliphaz the Temanite; states that his inner man is bursting (as if filled with carbonic acid and new wine), that by the favor of Heaven he will speak a word or two. Would it were come so far,-- if it be ever to come!

On the whole I think the odds are that I shall some time or other get over to you; but that for this winter I ought not to go. My London expedition is not decided hitherto; I have begun various relations and arrangements, which it were questionable to cut short so soon. That beggarly Book, were there nothing else, hampers me every way. To fling it once for all into the fire were perhaps the best; yet I grudge to do that. To finish it, on the other hand, is denied me for the present, or even so much as to work at it. What am I to do? When my Brother arrives, we go all back to Scotland for some weeks: there, in seclusion, with such calmness as I can find or create, the plan for the winter must be settled. You shall hear from me then; let us hope something more reasonable than I can write at present. For about a month I have gone to and fro utterly _idle:_ understand that, and I need explain no more. The wearied machine refused to be urged any farther; after long spasmodic struggling comes collapse. The burning of that wretched Ma.n.u.script has really been a sore business for me. Nevertheless that too shall clear itself, and prove a _favor_ of the Upper Powers: _tomorrow_ to fresh fields and pastures new! This monstrous London has taught me several things during the past year; for if its Wisdom be of the most uninstructive ever heard of by that name of wisdom, its Folly abounds with lessons,--which one ought to learn. I feel (with my burnt ma.n.u.script) as if defeated in this campaign; defeated, yet not altogether disgraced. As the great Fritz said, when the battle had gone against him, "Another time we will do better."

As to Literature, Politics, and the whole multiplex aspect of existence here, expect me not to say one word. We are a singular people, in a singular condition. Not many nights ago, in one of those phenomenal a.s.semblages named routs, whither we had gone to see the countenance of O'Connell and Company (the Tail was a Peac.o.c.k's tail, with blonde muslin women and heroic Parliamentary men), one of the company, a "distinguished female" (as we call them), informed my Wife "O'Connell was the master-spirit of this age." If so, then for what we have received let us be thankful, --and enjoy it _without_ criticism.--It often painfully seems to me as if much were coming fast to a crisis here; as if the crown-wheel had given way, and the whole horologe were rus.h.i.+ng rapidly down, down, to its end! Wreckage is swift; rebuilding is slow and distant. Happily another than we has charge of it.

My new American Friends have come and gone. Barnard went off northward some fortnight ago, furnished with such guidance and furtherance as I could give him. Professor Longfellow went about the same time; to Sweden, then to Berlin and Germany: we saw him twice or thrice, and his ladies, with great pleasure; as one sees worthy souls from a far country, who cannot abide with you, who throw you a kind greeting as they pa.s.s. I inquired considerably about Concord, and a certain man there; one of the fair pilgrims told me several comfortable things. By the bye, how very good you are, in regard to this of Unitarianism! I declare, I am ashamed of my intolerance:--and yet you have ceased to be a Teacher of theirs, have you not? I mean to address you this time by the secular t.i.tle of Esquire; as if I liked you better so. But truly, in black clothes or in white, by this style or by that, the man himself can never be other than welcome to me. You will further allow me to fancy that you are now wedded; and offer our united congratulations and kindest good wishes to that new fair Friend of ours, whom one day we shall surely know more of,--if the Fates smile.

My sheet is ending, and I must not burden you with double postage for such stuff as this. By dint of some inquiry I have learnt the law of the American Letter-carrying; and I now mention it for our mutual benefit. There are from New York to London three packets monthly (on the 1st, on the 10th, on the 20th); the masters of these carry Letters gratis for all men; and put the same into the Post-Office; there are some pence charged on the score of "s.h.i.+p-letter" there, and after that, the regular postage of the country, if the Letter has to go farther. I put this, for example, into a place called North and South American Coffee-house in the City here, and pay twopence for it, and it flies. Doubtless there is some similar receiving-house with its "leather bag" somewhere in New York, and fixed days (probably the same as our days) for emptying, or rather for tying and despatching, said leather bag: if you deal with the London Packets (so long as I am here) in preference to the Liverpool ones, it will all be well. As for the next Letter, (if you write as I hope you may before hearing from me again,) pray direct it, "Care of John Mill, Esq., India House, London"; and he will forward it directly, should I even be still absent in the North.--Now will you write? and pray write something about yourself. We both love you here, and send you all good prayers. _Vale faveque!_

Yours ever, T. Carlyle

IX. Emerson to Carlyle*

Concord, 7 October, 1835

My Dear Friend,--Please G.o.d I will never again sit six weeks of this short human life over a letter of yours without answering it.

-- * The original of this letter is missing; what is printed here is from the rough draft.

I received in August your letter of June, and just then hearing that a lady, a little lady with a mighty heart, Mrs. Child,* whom I scarcely know but do much respect, was about to visit England (invited thither for work's sake by the African or Abolition Society) and that she begged an introduction to you, I used the occasion to say the G.o.dsend was come, and that I would acknowledge it as soon as three then impending tasks were ended.

I have now learned that Mrs. Child was detained for weeks in New York and did not sail. Only last night I received your letter written in May, with the four copies of the _Sartor,_ which by a strange oversight have been lying weeks, probably months, in the Custom-House. On such provocation I can sit still no longer.

--- * The excellent Mrs. Lydia Maria Child, whose romance of _Philothea_ was published in this year, 1835.

"If her heart at high floods swamps her brain now and then, 'T is but richer for that when the tide ebbs agen."