The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872 Volume II Part 5

* Charles Chauncy Emerson,--died May 9, 1836,--whose memory still survives fresh and beautiful in the hearts of the few who remain who knew him in life. A few papers of his published in the _Dial_ show to others what he was and what he might have become.

We want but two or three friends, but these we cannot do without, and they serve us in every thought we think. I find now I must hold faster the remaining jewels of my social belt. And of you I think much and anxiously since Mrs. Channing, amidst her delight at what she calls the happiest hour of her absence, in her acquaintance with you and your family, expresses much uneasiness respecting your untempered devotion to study. I am the more disturbed by her fears, because your letters avow a self-devotion to your work, and I know there is no gentle dulness in your temperament to counteract the mischief. I fear Nature has not inlaid fat earth enough into your texture to keep the ethereal blade from whetting it through. I write to implore you to be careful of your health. You are the property of all whom you rejoice in art and soul, and you must not deal with your body as your own. O my friend, if you would come here and let me nurse you and pasture you in my nook of this long continent, I will thank G.o.d and you therefor morning and evening, and doubt not to give you, in a quarter of a year, sound eyes, round cheeks, and joyful spirits. My wife has been lately an invalid, but she loves you thoroughly, and hardly stores a barrel of flour or lays her new carpet without some hopeful reference to Mrs. Carlyle.

And in good earnest, why cannot you come here forthwith, and deliver in lectures to the solid men of Boston the _History of the French Revolution_ before it is published,--or at least whilst it is publis.h.i.+ng in England, and before it is published here. There is no doubt of the perfect success of such a course now that the _five hundred copies of the Sartor are all sold,_ and read with great delight by many persons.

This I suggest if you too must feel the vulgar necessity of _doing;_ but if you will be governed by your friend, you shall come into the meadows, and rest and talk with your friend in my country pasture. If you will come here like a n.o.ble brother, you shall have your solid day undisturbed, except at the hours of eating and walking; and as I will abstain from you myself, so I will defend you from others. I entreat Mrs. Carlyle, with my affectionate remembrances, to second me in this proposition, and not suffer the wayward man to think that in these s.p.a.ce-destroying days a prayer from Boston, Ma.s.sachusetts, is any less worthy of serious and prompt granting than one from Edinburgh or Oxford.

I send you a little book I have just now published, as an entering wedge, I hope, for something more worthy and significant.* This is only a naming of topics on which I would gladly speak and gladlier hear. I am mortified to learn the ill fate of my former packet containing the _Sartor_ and Dr.

Channing's work. My mercantile friend is vexed, for he says accurate orders were given to send it as a packet, not as a letter. I shall endeavor before despatching this sheet to obtain another copy of our American edition.

-- * This was _Nature,_ the first clear manifesto of Emerson's genius.

I wish I could come to you instead of sending this sheet of paper. I think I should persuade you to get into a s.h.i.+p this Autumn, quit all study for a time, and follow the setting sun. I have many, many things to learn of you. How melancholy to think how much we need confession!...* Yet the great truths are always at hand, and all the tragedy of individual life is separated how thinly from that universal nature which obliterates all ranks, all evils, all individualities. How little of you is in your _will!_ Above your will how intimately are you related to all of us! In G.o.d we meet. Therein we _are,_ thence we descend upon Time and these infinitesimal facts of Christendom, and Trade, and England Old and New. Wake the soul now drunk with a sleep, and we overleap at a bound the obstructions, the griefs, the mistakes, of years, and the air we breathe is so vital that the Past serves to contribute nothing to the result.

-- ** Some words appear to be lost here.

I read Goethe, and now lately the posthumous volumes, with a great interest. A friend of mine who studies his life with care would gladly know what records there are of his first ten years after his settlement at Weimar, and what Books there are in Germany about him beside what Mrs. Austin has collected and Heine. Can you tell me?

Write me of your health, or else come.

Yours ever, R.W. Emerson.

P.S.--I learn that an acquaintance is going to England, so send the packet by him.

XIII. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 5 November, 1836

My Dear Friend,--You are very good to write to me in my silence, in the mood you must be in. My silence you may well judge is not forgetfulness; it is a forced silence; which this kind Letter enforces into words. I write the day after your letter comes, lest the morrow bring forth something new to hinder me.

What a bereavement, my Friend, is this that has overtaken you!

Such a Brother, with such a Life opening around him, like a blooming garden where he was to labor and gather, all vanished suddenly like frostwork, and hidden from your eye! It is a loss, a sore loss; which G.o.d had appointed you. I do not tell you not to mourn: I mourn with you, and could wish all mourners the spirit you have in this sorrow. Oh, I know it well! Often enough in this noisy Inanity of a vision where _we_ still linger, I say to myself, Perhaps thy Buried Ones are not far from thee, are with thee; they are in Eternity, which is a Now and HERE!

And yet Nature will have her right; Memory would feel desecrated if she could forget. Many times in the crowded din of the Living, some sight, some feature of a face, will recall to you the Loved Face; and in these turmoiling streets you see the little silent Churchyard, the green grave that lies there so silent, inexpressibly _wae._ O, perhaps we _shall_ all meet YONDER, and the tears be wiped from all eyes! One thing is no Perhaps: surely we _shall_ all meet, if it be the will of the Maker of us. If it be not His will,--then is it not better so?

Silence,--since in these days we have no speech! Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, in any day.

You inquire so earnestly about my welfare; hold open still the hospitable door for me. Truly Concord, which I have sought out on the Map, seems worthy of its name: no dissonance comes to me from that side; but grief itself has acquired a harmony: in joy or grief a voice says to me, Behold there is one that loves thee; in thy loneliness, in thy darkness, see how a hospitable candle s.h.i.+nes from far over seas, how a friendly heart watches! It is very good, and precious for me.

As for my health, be under no apprehension. I am always sick; I am sicker and worse in body and mind, a little, for the present; but it has no deep significance: it is _weariness_ merely; and now, by the bounty of Heaven, I am as it were within sight of land. In two months more, this unblessed Book will be _finished;_ at Newyearday we begin printing: before the end of March, the thing is out; and I am a free man! Few happinesses I have ever known will equal that, as it seems to me. And yet I ought not to call the poor Book unblessed: no, it has girdled me round like a panoply these two years; kept me invulnerable, indifferent, to innumerable things. The poorest man in London has perhaps been one of the freest: the roaring press of gigs and gigmen, with their gold blazonry and fierce gig-wheels, have little incommoded him; they going their way, he going his.--As for the results of the Book, I can rationally promise myself, on the economical, pecuniary, or otherwise worldly side, simply _zero._ It is a Book contradicting all rules of Formalism, that have not a Reality within them, which so few have;--testifying, the more quietly the worse, internecine war with Quacks high and low. My good Brother, who was with me out of Italy in summer, declared himself shocked, and almost terror-struck: "Jack," I answered, "innumerable men give their lives cheerfully to defend Falsehoods and Half-Falsehoods; why should not one writer give his life cheerfully to say, in plain Scotch-English, in the hearing of G.o.d and man, To me they seem false and half-false? At all events, thou seest, I cannot help it. It is the nature of the beast." So that, on the whole, I suppose there is no more unpromotable, unappointable man now living in England than I.

Literature also, the miscellaneous place of refuge, seems done here, unless you will take the Devil's wages for it; which one does not incline to do. A _disjectum membrum;_ cut off from relations with men? Verily so; and now forty years of age; and extremely dyspeptical: a hopeless-looking man. Yet full of what I call desperate-hope! One does verily stand on the Earth, a Star-dome encompa.s.sing one; seemingly accoutred and enlisted and sent to battle, with rations good, indifferent, or bad,--what can one do but in the name of Odin, Tuisco, Hertha, Horsa, and all Saxon and Hebrew G.o.ds, fight it out?--This surely is very idle talk.

As to the Book, I do say seriously that it is a wild, savage, ruleless, very bad Book; which even you will not be able to like; much less any other man. Yet it contains strange things; sincerities drawn out of the heart of a man very strangely situated; reverent of nothing but what is reverable in all ages and places: so we will print it, and be done with it;--and try a new turn next time. What I am to do, were the thing done, you see therefore, is most uncertain. How gladly would I run to Concord! And if I were there, be sure the do-nothing arrangement is the only conceivable one for me. That my sick existence subside again, this is the first condition; that quiet vision be restored me. It is frightful what an impatience I have got for many kinds of fellow-creatures. Their jargon really hurts me like the shrieking of inarticulate creatures that ought to articulate. There is no resource but to say: Brother, thou surely art not hateful; thou art lovable, at lowest pitiable;-- alas! in my case, thou art dreadfully wearisome, unedifying: go thy ways, with my blessing. There are hardly three people among these two millions, whom I care much to exchange words with, in the humor I have. Nevertheless, at bottom, it is not my purpose to quit London finally till I have as it were _seen it out._ In the very hugeness of the monstrous City, contradiction cancelling contradiction, one finds a sort of composure for one's self that is not to be met with elsewhere perhaps in the world: people tolerate you, were it only that they have not time to trouble themselves with you. Some individuals even love me here; there are one or two whom I have even learned to love,--though, for the present, cross circ.u.mstances have s.n.a.t.c.hed them out of my orbit again mostly. Wherefore, if you ask me, What I am to do?--the answer is clear so far, "Rest myself awhile"; and all farther is as dark as Chaos. Now for resting, taking that by itself, my Brother, who has gone back to Rome with some thoughts of settling as a Physician there, presses me to come thither, and rest in Rome. On the other hand, a certain John Sterling (the best man I have found in these regions) has been driven to Bordeaux lately for his health; he will have it that I must come to him, and walk through the South of France to Dauphine, Avignon, and over the Alps next spring!* Thirdly, my Mother will have me return to Annandale, and lie quiet in her little habitation;--which I incline to think were the wisest course of all. And lastly from over the Atlantic comes my good Emerson's voice. We will settle nothing, except that all shall remain unsettled. _Die Zukunft decket Schmerzen and Glucke._

--- * In his _Life of Sterling,_ Carlyle prints a letter from Sterling to himself, dated Bordeaux, October 26, 1836, in which Sterling urges him to come "in the first fine days of spring."

It must have reached him a few days before he wrote this letter to Emerson.

I ought to say, however, that about New-year's-day I will send you an Article on _Mirabeau,_ which they have printed here (for a thing called the _London Review_), and some kind of Note to escort it. I think Pamphlets travel as Letters in New England, provided you leave the ends of them open: if I be mistaken, pray instruct Messrs. Barnard to _refuse_ the thing, for it has small value. _The Diamond Necklace_ is to be printed also, in _Fraser;_ inconceivable hawking that poor Paper has had; till now Fraser takes it--for L50: not being able to get it for nothing. The _Mirabeau_ was written at the pa.s.sionate request of John Mill; and likewise for needful lucre. I think it is the first s.h.i.+lling of money I have earned by my craft these four years: where the money I have lived on has come from while I sat here scribbling gratis, amazes me to think; yet surely it has come (for I am still here), and Heaven only to thank for it, which is a great fact. As for Mill's _London Review_ (for he is quasi-editor), I do not recommend it to you. Hide-bound Radicalism; a to me well-nigh insupportable thing! Open it not: a breath as of Sahara and the Infinite Sterile comes from every page of it. A young Radical Baronet* has laid out L3,000 on getting the world instructed in that manner: it is very curious to see.--Alas! the bottom of the sheet! Take my hurried but kindest thanks for the prospect of your second Teufelsdrockh: the _first_ too is now in my possession; Brother John went to the Post-Office, and worked it out for a ten s.h.i.+llings. It is a beautiful little Book; and a Preface to it such as no kindest friend could have improved. Thank my kind Editor** very heartily from me.

* Sir William Molesworth. In his _Autobiography_ Mill gives an interesting account of the founding of this _Review,_ and his quasi-editorial relations to it. "In the beginning," he says, "it did not, as a whole, by any means represent my opinion."

** Dr. Le-Baron Russell

My wife was in Scotland in summer, driven thither by ill health; she is stronger since her return, though not yet strong; she sends over to Concord her kindest wishes. If I fly to the Alps or the Ocean, her Mother and she must keep one another company, we think, till there be better news of me. You are to thank Dr.

Channing also for his valued gift. I read the Discourse, and other friends of his read it, with great estimation; but the _end_ of that black question lies beyond my ken. I suppose, as usual, Might and Right will have to make themselves synonymous in some way. CANST and SHALT, if they are _very_ well understood, mean the same thing under this Sun of ours. Adieu, my dear Emerson. _Gehab' Dich wohl!_ Many affectionate regards to the Lady Wife: it is far within the verge of Probabilities that I shall see her face, and eat of her bread, one day. But she must not get sick! It is a dreadful thing, sickness; really a thing which I begin frequently to think _criminal_--at least in myself.

Nay, in myself it really is criminal; wherefore I determine to be well one day.

Good be with you and Yours.

T. Carlyle

As to Goethe and your Friend: I know not anything out of Goethe's own works (which have many notices in them) that treats specially of those ten years. Doubtless your Friend knows Jordens's _Lexicon_ (which dates all the writings, for one thing), the _Conversations-Lexicon Supplement,_ and such like.

There is an essay by one Schubarth which has reputation; but it is critical and ethical mainly. The Letters to Zelter, and the Letters to Schiller, will do nothing for those years, but are essential to see. Perhaps in some late number of the _Zeitgenossen_ there may be something? Blackguard Heine is worth very little; Mentzel is duller, decenter, not much wiser. A very curious Book is Eckermann's _Conversations with Goethe,_ just published. No room more!*

-- * Concerning this letter Emerson wrote in his Diary: "January 7, 1837. Received day before yesterday a letter from Thomas Carlyle, dated 5 November;--as ever, a cordial influence. Strong he is, upright, n.o.ble, and sweet, and makes good how much of our human nature. Quite in consonance with my delight in his eloquent letters I read in Bacon this afternoon this sentence (of Letters): 'And such as are written from wise men are of all the words of men, in my judgment, the best; for they are more natural than orations, public speeches, and more advised than conferences or present speeches.'"

XIV. Carlyle to Emerson

5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, London, 13 February, 1837

My Dear Emerson,--You had promise of a letter to be despatched you about New-year's-day; which promise I was myself in a condition to fulfil at the time set, but delayed it, owing to delays of printers and certain "Articles" that were to go with it. Six weeks have not yet entirely brought up these laggard animals: however, I will delay no longer for them. Nay, it seems the Articles, were they never so ready, cannot go with the Letter; but must fare round by Liverpool or Portsmouth, in a separate conveyance. We will leave them to the bounty of Time.

Your little Book and the Copy of _Teufelsdrockh_ came safely; soon after I had written. The _Teufelsdrockh_ I instantaneously despatched to Hamburg, to a Scottish merchant there, to whom there is an allusion in the Book; who used to be my _Speditor_ (one of the politest extant though totally a stranger) in my missions and packages to and from Weimar.* The other, former Copy, more specially yours, had already been, as I think I told you, delivered out of durance; and got itself placed in the bookshelf, as _the_ Teufelsdrockh. George Ripley tells me you are printing another edition; much good may it do you! There is now also a kind of whisper and whimper rising _here_ about printing one. I said to myself once, when Bookseller Fraser shrieked so loud at a certain message you sent him: "Perhaps after all they will print this poor rag of a thing into a Book, after I am dead it may be,--if so seem good to them. _Either_ way!" As it is, we leave the poor orphan to its destiny, all the more cheerfully. Ripley says farther he has sent me a critique of it by a better hand than the _North American:_ I expect it, but have not got it Yet.** The _North American_ seems to say that he too sent me one. It never came to hand, nor any hint of it,--except I think once before through you. It was not at all an unfriendly review; but had an opacity, of matter-of-fact in it that filled one with amazement. Since the Irish Bishop who said there were some things in _Gulliver_ on which he for one would keep his belief _suspended,_ nothing equal to it, on that side, has come athwart me. However, he _has_ made out that Teufelsdrockh is, in all human probability, a fict.i.tious character; which is always something, for an Inquirer into Truth.--Will you, finally, thank Friend Ripley in my name, till I have time to write to him and thank him.

-- * The allusion referred to is the following: "By the kindness of a Scottish Hamburg merchant, whose name, known to the whole mercantile world, he must not mention; but whose honorable courtesy, now and before spontaneously manifested to him, a mere literary stranger, he cannot soon forget,--the bulky Weissnichtwo packet, with all its Custom-house seals, foreign hieroglyphs, and miscellaneous tokens of travel, arrived here in perfect safety, and free of cost."--_Sartor Resartus,_ Book I. ch. xi.

** An article by the Rev. N.L. Frothingham in the _Christian Examiner._ -

Your little azure-colored Nature gave me true satisfaction. I read it, and then lent it about to all my acquaintance that had a sense for such things; from whom a similar verdict always came back. You say it is the first chapter of something greater. I call it rather the Foundation and Ground-plan on which you may build whatsoever of great and true has been given you to build.

It is the true Apocalypse, this when the "Open Secret" becomes revealed to a man. I rejoice much in the glad serenity of soul with which you look out on this wondrous Dwelling-place of yours and mine--with an ear for the _Ewigen Melodien,_ which pipe in the winds round us, and utter themselves forth in all sounds and sights and things: not to be written down by gamut-machinery; but which all right writing is a kind of attempt to write down.

You will see what the years will bring you. It is not one of your smallest qualities in my mind, that you can wait so quietly and let the years do their best. He that cannot keep himself quiet is of a morbid nature; and the thing he yields us will be like him in that, whatever else it be.

Miss Martineau (for I have seen her since I wrote) tells me you "are the only man in America" who has quietly set himself down on a competency to follow his own path, and do the work his own will prescribes for him. Pity that you were the only one! But be one, nevertheless; be the first, and there will come a second and a third. It is a poor country where all men are _sold_ to Mammon, and can make nothing but Railways and Bursts of Parliamentary Eloquence! And yet your New England here too has the upper hand of our Old England, of our Old Europe: we too are sold to Mammon, soul, body, and spirit; but (mark that, I pray you, with double pity) Mammon will not _pay_ us,--we, are "Two Million three hundred thousand in Ireland that have not potatoes enough"! I declare, in History I find nothing more tragical. I find also that it will alter; that for me as one it has altered.

Me Mammon will _pay_ or not as he finds convenient; buy me he will not.--In fine, I say, sit still at Concord, with such spirit as you are of; under the blessed skyey influences, with an open sense, with the great Book of Existence open round you: we shall see whether you too get not something blessed to read us from it.

The Paper is declining fast, and all is yet speculation. Along with these two "Articles" (to be sent by Liverpool; there are two of them, _Diamond Necklace_ and _Mirabeau_), you will very probably get some stray Proofsheet--of the unutterable _French Revolution!_ It is actually at Press; two Printers working at separate Volumes of it,--though still too slow. In not many weeks, my hands will be washed of it! You, I hope, can have little conception of the feeling with which I wrote the last word of it, one night in early January, when the clock was striking ten, and our frugal Scotch supper coming in! I did not cry; nor I did not pray but could have done both. No such _spell_ shall get itself fixed on me for some while to come! A beggarly Distortion; that will please no mortal, not even myself; of which I know not whether the fire were not after all the due place! And yet I ought not to say so: there is a great blessing in a man's doing what he utterly can, in the case he is in.

Perhaps great quant.i.ties of dross are burnt out of me by this calcination I have had; perhaps I shall be far quieter and healthier of mind and body than I have ever been since boyhood.

The world, though no man had ever less empire in it, seems to me a thing lying _under_ my feet; a mean imbroglio, which I never more shall fear, or court, or disturb myself with: welcome and welcome to go wholly _its own way;_ I wholly clear for going mine. Through the summer months I am, somewhere or other, to rest myself, in the deepest possible sleep. The residue is vague as the wind,--unheeded as the wind. Some way it will turn out that a poor, well-meaning Son of Adam has bread growing for him too, better or worse: _any_ way,--or even _no_ way, if that be it,--I shall be content. There is a scheme here among Friends for my Lecturing in a thing they call Royal Inst.i.tution; but it will not do there, I think. The instant two or three are gathered together under any terms, who want to learn something I can teach them,--then we will, most readily, as Burns says, "loose our tinkler jaw"; but not I think till then; were the Inst.i.tution even Imperial.