The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872 Volume II Part 4

says Lowell, in his _Fable for Critics._ --

The three tasks were, a literary address; a historical discourse on the two-hundredth anniversary of our little town of Concord*

(my first adventure in print, which I shall send you); the third, my marriage, now happily consummated. All three, from the least to the greatest, trod so fast upon each other's heel as to leave me, who am a slow and awkward workman, no interstice big enough for a letter that should hope to convey any information.

Again I waited that the Discourse might go in his new jacket to show how busy I had been, but the creeping country press has not dressed it yet. Now congratulate me, my friend, as indeed you have already done, that I live with my wife in my own house, waiting on the good future. The house is not large, but convenient and very elastic. The more hearts (specially great hearts) it holds, the better it looks and feels. I have not had so much leisure yet but that the fact of having ample s.p.a.ce to spread my books and blotted paper is still gratifying. So know now that your rooms in America wait for you, and that my wife is making ready a closet for Mrs. Carlyle.

- * "A Historical Discourse, delivered before the Citizens of Concord, 12th September, 1835, on the Second Centennial Anniversary of the Incorporation of the Town. By Ralph Waldo Emerson. Published by Request. Concord: G.F. Bemis, Printer.

1835." 8vo, pp. 52.--A discourse worthy of the author and of the town. It is reprinted in the eleventh volume of Emerson's Works, Boston, 1883.

I could cry at the disaster that has befallen you in the loss of the book. My brother Charles says the only thing the friend could do on such an occasion was to shoot himself, and wishes to know if he have done so. Such mischance might well quicken one's curiosity to know what Oversight there is of us, and I greet you well upon your faith and the resolution issuing out of it. You have certainly found a right manly consolation, and can afford to faint and rest a month or two on the laurels of such endeavor. I trust ere this you have re-collected the entire creation out of the secret cells where, under the smiles of every Muse, it first took life. Believe, when you are weary, that you who stimulate and rejoice virtuous young men do not write a line in vain. And whatever betide us in the inexorable future, what is better than to have awaked in many men the sweet sense of beauty, and to double the courage of virtue. So do not, as you will not, let the imps from all the fens of weariness and apathy have a minute too much. To die of feeding the fires of others were sweet, since it were not death but multiplication. And yet I hold to a more orthodox immortality too.

This morning in happiest time I have a letter from George Ripley, who tells me you have written him, and that you say pretty confidently you will come next summer. _Io paean!_ He tells me also that Alexander Everett (brother of Edward) has sent you the friendly notice that has just appeared in the _North American Review,_ with a letter.* All which I hope you have received. I am delighted, for this man represents a clique to which I am a stranger, and which I supposed might not love you. It must be you shall succeed when Saul prophesies. Indeed, I have heard that you may hear the _Sartor_ preached from some of our best pulpits and lecture-rooms. Don't think I speak of myself, for I cherish carefully a salutary horror at the German style, and hold off my admiration as long as ever I can. But all my importance is quite at an end. For now that Doctors of Divinity and the solemn Review itself have broke silence to praise you, I have quite lost my plume as your harbinger.

-- * Mr. A.H. Everett's paper on _Sartor Resartus_ was published in the _North American Review_ for October, 1835.

I read with interest what you say of the political omens in England. I could wish our country a better comprehension of its felicity. But government has come to be a trade, and is managed solely on commercial principles. A man plunges into politics to make his fortune, and only cares that the world should last his day. We have had in different parts of the country mobs and moblike legislation, and even moblike judicature, which have betrayed an almost G.o.dless state of society; so that I begin to think even here it behoves every man to quit his dependency on society as much as he can, as he would learn to go without crutches that will be soon plucked away from him, and settle with himself the principles he can stand upon, happen what may. There is reading, and public lecturing too, in this country, that I could recommend as medicine to any gentleman who finds the love of life too strong in him.

If virtue and friends.h.i.+p have not yet become fables, do believe we keep your face for the living type. I was very glad to hear of the brother you describe, for I have one too, and know what it is to have presence in two places. Charles Chauncy Emerson is a lawyer now settled in this town, and, as I believe, no better Lord Hamlet was ever. He is our Doctor on all questions of taste, manners, or action. And one of the pure pleasures I promise myself in the months to come is to make you two gentlemen know each other.

X. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, Ma.s.s., 8 April, 1856

My Dear Friend,--I am concerned at not hearing from you. I have written you two letters, one in October, one in November, I believe, since I had any tidings of you.* Your last letter is dated 27 June, 1835. I have counted all the chances of delay and miscarriage, and still am anxious lest you are ill, or have forgotten us. I have looked at the advertising sheet of the booksellers, but it promised nothing of the _History._ I thought I had made the happiest truce with sorrow in having the promise of your coming,--I was to take possession of a new kingdom of virtue and friends.h.i.+p. Let not the new wine mourn. Speak to me out of the wide silence. Many friends inquire of me concerning you, and you must write some word immediately on receipt of this sheet.

--- * One in August by Mrs. Child, apparently not delivered, and one, the preceding, in October.

With it goes an American reprint of the _Sartor._ Five hundred copies only make the edition, at one dollar a copy. About one hundred and fifty copies are subscribed for. How it will be received I know not. I am not very sanguine, for I often hear and read somewhat concerning its repulsive style. Certainly, I tell them, it is very odd. Yet I read a chapter lately with great pleasure. I send you also, with Dr. Channing's regards and good wishes, a copy of his little work, lately published, on our great local question of Slavery.

You must have written me since July. I have reckoned upon your projected visit the ensuing summer or autumn, and have conjectured the starlike influences of a new spiritual element.

Especially Lectures. My own experiments for one or two winters, and the readiness with which you embrace the work, have led me to think much and to expect much from this mode of addressing men.

In New England the Lyceum, as we call it, is already a great inst.i.tution. Beside the more elaborate courses of lectures in the cities, every country town has its weekly evening meeting, called a Lyceum, and every professional man in the place is called upon, in the course of the winter, to entertain his fellow-citizens with a discourse on whatever topic. The topics are miscellaneous as heart can wish. But in Boston, Lowell, Salem, courses are given by individuals. I see not why this is not the most flexible of all organs of opinion, from its popularity and from its newness permitting you to say what you think, without any shackles of prescription. The pulpit in our age certainly gives forth an obstructed and uncertain sound, and the faith of those in it, if men of genius, may differ so much from that of those under it, as to embarra.s.s the conscience of the speaker, because so much is attributed to him from the fact of standing there. In the Lyceum nothing is presupposed. The orator is only responsible for what his lips articulate. Then what scope it allows! You may handle every member and relation of humanity. What could Homer, Socrates, or St. Paul say that cannot be said here? The audience is of all cla.s.ses, and its character will be determined always by the name of the lecturer.

Why may you not give the reins to your wit, your pathos, your philosophy, and become that good despot which the virtuous orator is?

Another thing. I am persuaded that, if a man speak well, he shall find this a well-rewarded work in New England. I have written this year ten lectures; I had written as many last year.

And for reading both these and those at places whither I was invited, I have received this last winter about three hundred and fifty dollars. Had I, in lieu of receiving a lecturer's fee, myself advertised that I would deliver these in certain places, these receipts would have been greatly increased. I insert all this because my prayers for you in this country are quite of a commercial spirit. If you lose no dollar by us, I shall joyfully trust your genius and virtue for your satisfaction on all other points.

I cannot remember that there are any other mouthpieces that are specially vital at this time except Criticism and Parliamentary Debate. I think this of ours would possess in the hands of a great genius great advantages over both. But what avail any commendations of the form, until I know that the man is alive and well? If you love them that love you, write me straightway of your welfare. My wife desires to add to mine her friendliest greetings to Mrs. Carlyle and to yourself.

Yours affectionately, R. Waldo Emerson

I ought to say that Le-Baron Russell, a worthy young man who studies Engineering, did cause the republication of Teufelsdrockh.* I trust you shall yet see a better American review of it than the _North American._

--- * This first edition of _Sartor_ as an independent volume was published by James Munroe and Company, Boston. Emerson, at Mr.

(now Dr.) Russell's request, wrote a Preface for the book. He told Dr. Russell that his brother Charles was not pleased with the Preface, thinking it "too commonplace, too much like all prefaces."

XI. Carlyle to Emerson

5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, London 29 April, 1836

My Dear Emerson,--Barnard is returning across the water, and must not go back without a flying salutation for you. These many weeks I have had your letter by me; these many weeks I have felt always that it deserved and demanded a grateful answer; and, alas! also that I could give it none. It is impossible for you to figure what mood I am in. One sole thought, That Book! that weary Book! occupies me continually: wreck and confusion of all kinds go tumbling and falling around me, within me; but to wreck and growth, to confusion and order, to the world at large, I turn a deaf ear; and have life only for this one thing,--which also in general I feel to be one of the pitifulest that ever man went about possessed with. Have compa.s.sion for me! It is really very miserable: but it will end. Some months more, and it is _ended;_ and I am done with _French Revolution,_ and with Revolution and Revolt in general; and look once more with free eyes over this Earth, where are other things than mean internecine work of that kind: things fitter for me, under the bright Sun, on this green Mother's-bosom (though the Devil does dwell in it)! For the present, really, it is like a Nessus'

s.h.i.+rt, burning you into madness, this wretched Enterprise; nay, it is also like a kind of Panoply, rendering you invulnerable, insensible, to all _other_ mischiefs.

I got the fatal First Volume finished (in the miserablest way, after great efforts) in October last; my head was all in a whirl; I fled to Scotland and my Mother for a month of rest.

Rest is nowhere for the Son of Adam: all looked so "spectral" to me in my old-familiar Birthland; Hades itself could not have seemed stranger; Annandale also was part of the kingdom of TIME.

Since November I have worked again as I could; a second volume got wrapped up and sealed out of my sight within the last three days. There is but a Third now: one pull more, and then! It seems to me, I will fly into some obscurest cranny of the world, and lie silent there for a twelvemonth. The mind is weary, the body is very sick; a little black speck dances to and fro in the left eye (part of the retina protesting against the liver, and striking work): I cannot help it; it must flutter and dance there, like a signal of distress, unanswered till I be done. My familiar friends tell me farther that the Book is all wrong, style cramp, &c., &c.: my friends, I answer, you are very right; but this also, Heaven be my witness, I cannot help.--In such sort do I live here; all this I had to write you, if I wrote at all.

For the rest I cannot say that this huge blind monster of a City is without some sort of charm for me. It leaves one alone, to go his own road unmolested. Deep in your soul you take up your protest against it, defy it, and even despise it; but need not divide yourself from it for that. Worthy individuals are glad to hear your thought, if it have any sincerity; they do not exasperate themselves or you about it; they have not even time for such a thing. Nay, in stupidity itself on a scale of this magnitude, there is an impressiveness, almost a sublimity; one thinks how, in the words of Schiller, "the very G.o.ds fight against it in vain"; how it lies on its unfathomable foundations there, inert yet peptic; nay, eupeptic; and is a _Fact_ in the world, let theory object as it will. Brown-stout, in quant.i.ties that would float a seventy-four, goes down the throats of men; and the roaring flood of life pours on;--over which Philosophy and Theory are but a poor shriek of remonstrance, which oftenest were wiser, perhaps, to hold its peace. I grow daily to honor Facts more and more, and Theory less and less. A Fact, it seems to me, is a great thing: a Sentence printed if not by G.o.d, then at least by the Devil;--neither Jeremy Bentham nor Lytton Bulwer had a hand in _that._

There are two or three of the best souls here I have known for long: I feel less alone with them; and yet one is alone,--a stranger and a pilgrim. These friends expect mainly that the Church of England is not dead but asleep; that the leather coaches, with their gilt panels, can be peopled again with a living Aristocracy, instead of the simulacra of such. I must altogether hold my peace to this, as I do to much. Coleridge is the Father of all these. _Ay de mi!_

But to look across the "divine salt-sea." A letter reached me, some two months ago, from Mobile, Alabama; the writer, a kind friend of mine, signs himself James Freeman Clarke.* I have mislaid, not lost his Letter; and do not at present know his permanent address (for he seemed to be only on a visit at Mobile); but you, doubtless, do know it. Will you therefore take or even find an opportunity to tell this good Friend that it is not the wreckage of the Liverpool s.h.i.+p he wrote by, nor insensibility on my part, that prevents his hearing direct from me; that I see him, and love him in this Letter; and hope we shall meet one day under the Sun, shall live under it, at any rate, with many a kind thought towards one another.

- * Now the Rev. Dr. Clarke, of Boston.

The _North American Review_ you spoke of never came (I mean that copy of it with the Note in it); but another copy became rather public here, to the amus.e.m.e.nt of some. I read the article myself: surely this Reviewer, who does not want in [sense]*

otherwise, is an original: either a _thrice_-plied quiz (_Sartor's_ "Editor" a twice-plied one); or else opening on you a grandeur of still Dulness, rarely to be met with on earth.

---- * The words supplied here were lost under the seal of the letter.

My friend! I must end here. Forgive me till I get done with this Book. Can you have the generosity to write, _without_ an answer? Well, if you can_not,_ I will answer. Do not forget me.

My love and my Wife's to your good Lady, to your Brother, and all friends. Tell me what you do; what your world does. As for my world, take this (which I rendered from the German Voss, a tough old-Teutonic fellow) for the best I can say of it:--

"As journeys this Earth, her eye on a Sun, through the heavenly s.p.a.ces, And, radiant in azure, or Sunless, swallowed in tempests, Falters not, alters not; journeying equal, sunlit or stormgirt So thou, Son of Earth, who hast Force, Goal, and Time, go still onwards."

Adieu, my dear friend! Believe me ever Yours, Thomas Carlyle

XII. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, Ma.s.sachusetts, 17 September, 1836

My Dear Friend,--I hope you do not measure my love by the tardiness of my messages. I have few pleasures like that of receiving your kind and eloquent letters. I should be most impatient of the long interval between one and another, but that they savor always of Eternity, and promise me a friends.h.i.+p and friendly inspiration not reckoned or ended by days or years.

Your last letter, dated in April, found me a mourner, as did your first. I have lost out of this world my brother Charles,* of whom I have spoken to you,--the friend and companion of many years, the inmate of my house, a man of a beautiful genius, born to speak well, and whose conversation for these last years has treated every grave question of humanity, and has been my daily bread. I have put so much dependence on his gifts that we made but one man together; for I needed never to do what he could do by n.o.ble nature much better than I. He was to have been married in this month, and at the time of his sickness and sudden death I was adding apartments to my house for his permanent accommodation. I wish that you could have known him. At twenty-seven years the best life is only preparation. He built his foundation so large that it needed the full age of man to make evident the plan and proportions of his character. He postponed always a particular to a final and absolute success, so that his life was a silent appeal to the great and generous. But some time I shall see you and speak of him.