The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872 Volume II Part 7

XVIII. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 2 November, 1837

My Dear Friend,--Mr. Charles Sumner, a lawyer of high standing for his age, and editor or one editor of a journal called _The Jurist,_ and withal a lover of your writings, tells me he is going to Paris and thence to London, and sets out in a few days.

I cannot, of course, resist his request for a letter to you, nor let pa.s.s the occasion of a greeting. Health, Joy, and Peace be with you! I hope you sit still yet, and do not hastily meditate new labors. Phidias need not be always tinkering. Sit still like an Egyptian. Somebody told me the other day that your friends here might have made a sum for the author by publis.h.i.+ng _Sartor_ themselves, instead of leaving it with a bookseller.

Instantly I wondered why I had never such a thought before, and went straight to Boston, and have made a bargain with a bookseller to print the _French Revolution._ It is to be printed in two volumes of the size of our American _Sartor,_ one thousand copies, the estimate making the cost of the book say (in dollars and cents) $1.18 a copy, and the price $2.50. The bookseller contracts with me to sell the book at a commission of twenty percent on that selling price, allowing me however to take at cost as many copies as I can find subscribers for. There is yet, I believe, no other copy in the country than mine: so I gave him the first volume, and the printing is begun. I shall take care that your friends here shall know my contract with the bookseller, and so shall give me their names. Then, if so good a book can have a tolerable sale, (almost contrary to the nature of a good book, I know,) I shall sustain with great glee the new relation of being your banker and attorney. They have had the wit in the London _Examiner,_ I find, to praise at last; and I mean that our public shall have the entire benefit of that page.

The _Westminster_ they can read themselves. The printers think they can get the book out by Christmas. So it must be long before I can tell you what cheer. Meantime do you tell me, I entreat you, what speed it has had at home. The best, I hope, with the wise and good withal.

I have nothing to tell you and no thoughts. I have promised a course of Lectures for December, and am far from knowing what I am to say; but the way to make sure of fighting into the new continent is to burn your s.h.i.+ps. The "tender ears," as George Fox said, of young men are always an effectual call to me ignorant to speak. I find myself so much more and freer on the platform of the lecture-room than in the pulpit, that I shall not much more use the last; and do now only in a little country chapel at the request of simple men to whom I sustain no other relation than that of preacher. But I preach in the Lecture-Room and then it tells, for there is no prescription. You may laugh, weep, reason, sing, sneer, or pray, according to your genius. It is the new pulpit, and very much in vogue with my northern countrymen. This winter, in Boston, we shall have more than ever: two or three every night of the week. When will you come and redeem your pledge? The day before yesterday my little boy was a year old,--no, the day before that,--and I cannot tell you what delight and what study I find in this little bud of G.o.d, which I heartily desire you also should see. Good, wise, kind friend, I shall see you one day. Let me hear, when you can write, that Mrs. Carlyle is well again.

--R. Waldo Emerson

XIX. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 8 December, 1837

My Dear Emerson,--How long it is since you last heard of me I do not very accurately know; but it is too long. A very long, ugly, inert, and unproductive chapter of my own history seems to have pa.s.sed since then. Whenever I delay writing, be sure matters go not well with me; and do you in that case write to me, were it again and over again,--unweariable in pity.

I did go to Scotland, for almost three months; leaving my Wife here with her Mother. The poor Wife had fallen so weak that she gave me real terror in the spring-time, and made the Doctor look very grave indeed: she continued too weak for traveling: I was worn out as I had never in my life been. So, on the longest day of June, I got back to my Mother's cottage; threw myself down, I may say, into what we may call the "frightfulest _magnetic sleep,_" and lay there avoiding the intercourse of men. Most wearisome had their gabble become; almost unearthly. But indeed all was unearthly in that humor. The gus.h.i.+ng of my native brooks, the _sough_ of the old solitary woods, the great roar of old native Solway (billowing fresh out of your Atlantic, drawn by the Moon): all this was a kind of unearthly music to me; I cannot tell you how unearthly. It did not bring me to rest; yet _towards_ rest I do think at all events, the time had come when I behoved to quit it again. I have been here since September evidently another little "chapter" or paragraph, _not_ altogether inert, is getting forward. But I must not speak of these things.

How can I speak of them on a miserable sc.r.a.p of blue paper?

Looking into your kind-eyes with my eyes, I could speak: not here. Pity me, my friend, my brother; yet hope well of me: if I can (in all senses) _rightly hold my peace,_ I think much will yet be well with me. SILENCE is the great thing I wors.h.i.+p at present; almost the sole tenant of my Pantheon. Let a man know rightly how to hold his peace. I love to repeat to myself, "Silence is of Eternity." Ah me, I think how I could rejoice to quit these jarring discords and jargonings of Babel, and go far, far away! I do believe, if I had the smallest competence of money to get "food and warmth" with, I would shake the mud of London from my feet, and go and bury myself in some green place, and never print any syllable more. Perhaps it is better as it is.

But quitting this, we will actually speak (under favor of "Silence") one very small thing; a pleasant piece of news.

There is a man here called John Sterling (_Reverend_ John of the Church of England too), whom I love better than anybody I have met with, since a certain sky-messenger alighted to me at Craigenputtock, and vanished in the Blue again. This Sterling has written; but what is far better, he has lived, he is alive.

Across several unsuitable wrappages, of Church-of-Englandism and others, my heart loves the man. He is one, and the best, of a small cla.s.s extant here, who, nigh drowning in a black wreck of Infidelity (lighted up by some glare of Radicalism only, now growing _dim_ too) and about to perish, saved themselves into a Coleridgian Shovel-hattedness, or determination to _preach,_ to preach peace, were it only the spent _echo_ of a peace once preached. He is still only about thirty; young; and I think will shed the shovel-hat yet perhaps. Do you ever read _Blackwood?_ This John Sterling is the "New Contributor" whom Wilson makes such a rout about, in the November and prior month "Crystals from a Cavern," &c., which it is well worth your while to see. Well, and what then, cry you?--Why then, this John Sterling has fallen overhead in love with a certain Waldo Emerson; that is all. He saw the little Book _Nature_ lying here; and, across a whole _silva silvarum_ of prejudices, discerned what was in it; took it to his heart,--and indeed into his pocket; and has carried it off to Madeira with him; whither unhappily (though now with good hope and expectation) the Doctors have ordered him. This is the small piece of pleasant news, that two sky-messengers (such they were both of them to me) have met and recognized each other; and by G.o.d's blessing there shall one day be a trio of us: call you that nothing?

And so now by a direct transition I am got to the _Oration._ My friend! you know not what you have done for me there. It was long decades of years that I had heard nothing but the infinite jangling and jabbering, and inarticulate twittering and screeching, and my soul had sunk down sorrowful, and said there is no articulate speaking then any more, and thou art solitary among stranger-creatures? and lo, out of the West comes a clear utterance, clearly recognizable as a _man's_ voice, and I _have_ a kinsman and brother: G.o.d be thanked for it! I could have _wept_ to read that speech; the clear high melody of it went tingling through my heart;--I said to my wife, "There, woman!"

She read; and returned, and charges me to return for answer, "that there had been nothing met with like it since Schiller went silent." My brave Emerson! And all this has been lying silent, quite tranquil in him, these seven years, and the "vociferous plat.i.tude" dinning his ears on all sides, and he quietly answering no word; and a whole world of Thought has silently built itself in these calm depths, and, the day being come, says quite softly, as if it were a common thing, "Yes, I _am_ here too." Miss Martineau tells me, "Some say it is inspired, some say it is mad." Exactly so; no say could be suitabler. But for you, my dear friend, I say and pray heartily: May G.o.d grant you strength; for you have a _fearful_ work to do! Fearful I call it; and yet it is great, and the greatest. O for G.o.d's sake _keep yourself still quiet!_ Do not hasten to write; you cannot be too slow about it. Give no ear to any man's praise or censure; know that that is _not_ it: on the one side is as Heaven if you have strength to keep silent, and climb unseen; yet on the other side, yawning always at one's right-hand and one's left, is the frightfulest Abyss and Pandemonium! See Fenimore Cooper;--poor Cooper, he is _down in it;_ and had a climbing faculty too. Be steady, be quiet, be in no haste; and G.o.d speed you well! My s.p.a.ce is done.

And so adieu, for this time. You must write soon again. My copy of the _Oration_ has never come: how is this? I could dispose of a dozen well.--They say I am to lecture again in Spring, _Ay de mi!_ The "Book" is babbled about sufficiently in several dialects: Fraser wants to print my scattered Reviews and Articles; a pregnant sign. Teufelsdrockh to precede. The man "screamed" once at the name of it in a very musical manner. He shall not print a line; unless he give me money for it, more or less. I have had enough of printing for one while,--thrown into "magnetic sleep"

by it! Farewell my brother.

--T. Carlyle

O. Rich, it seems, is in Spain. His representative a.s.sured me, some weeks since, that the Account was now sent. There is an Article on Sir W. Scott: shocking; invitissima Minerva!*

- *Carlyle's article on Scott published in the _London and Westminster Review,_ No. 12. Reprinted in his _Critical and Miscellaneous Essays._ -

Miss Martineau charges me to send kind remembrances to you and your Lady: her words were kinder than I have room for here.--Can you not, in defect or delay of Letter, send me a Ma.s.sachusetts Newspaper? I think it costs little or almost nothing now; and I shall know your hand.

XX. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 9 February, 1838

My Dear Friend,--It is ten days now--ten cold days--that your last letter has kept my heart warm, and I have not been able to write before. I have just finished--Wednesday evening--a course of lectures which I ambitiously baptized "Human Culture," and read once a week to the curious in Boston. I could write nothing else the while, for weariness of the week's stated scribbling.

Now I am free as a wood-bird, and can take up the pen without fretting or fear. Your letter should, and nearly did, make me jump for joy,--fine things about our poor speech at Cambridge,-- fine things from CARLYLE. Scarcely could we maintain a decorous gravity on the occasion. And then news of a friend, who is also Carlyle's friend. What has life better to offer than such tidings? You may suppose I went directly and got me _Blackwood,_ and read the prose and the verse of John Sterling, and saw that my man had a head and a heart, and spent an hour or two very happily in spelling his biography out of his own hand;--a species of palmistry in which I have a perfect reliance. I found many incidents grave and gay and beautiful, and have determined to love him very much. In this romancing of the gentle affections we are children evermore. We forget the age of life, the barriers so thin yet so adamantean of s.p.a.ce and circ.u.mstance; and I have had the rarest poems self-singing in my head of brave men that work and conspire in a perfect intelligence across seas and conditions--and meet at last. I heartily pray that the Sea and its vineyards may cheer with warm medicinal breath a Voyager so kind and n.o.ble.

For the _Oration,_ I am so elated with your goodwill that I begin to fear your heart has betrayed your head this time, and so the praise is not good on Parna.s.sus but only in friends.h.i.+p. I sent it diffidently (I did send it through bookselling Munroe) to you, and was not a little surprised by your generous commendations.

Yet here it interested young men a good deal for an academical performance, and an edition of five hundred was disposed of in a month. A new edition is now printing, and I will send you some copies presently to give to anybody who you think will read.

I have a little budget of news myself. I hope you had my letter --sent by young Sumner--saying that we meant to print the _French Revolution_ here for the Author's benefit. It was published on the 25th of December. It is published at my risk, the booksellers agreeing to let me have at cost all the copies I can get subscriptions for. All the rest they are to sell and to have twenty percent on the retail price for their commission. The selling price of the book is $2.50; the cost of a copy, $1.26; the bookseller's commission, 50 cts.; so that T.C. only gains 74 cts. on each copy they sell. But we have two hundred subscribers, and on each copy they buy you have $1.26, except in cases where the distant residence of subscribers makes a cost of freight. You ought to have three or four quarters of a dollar more on each copy, but we put the lowest price on the book in terror of the Philistines, and to secure its accessibleness to the economical Public. We printed one thousand copies: of these, five hundred are already sold, in six weeks; and Brown the bookseller talks, as I think, much too modestly, of getting rid of the whole edition in one year. I say six months. The printing, &c. is to be paid and a settlement made in six months from the day of publication; and I hope the settlement will be the final one. And I confide in sending you seven hundred dollars at least, as a certificate that you have so many readers in the West. Yet, I own, I shake a little at the thought of the bookseller's account. Whenever I have seen that species of doc.u.ment, it was strange how the hopefulest ideal dwindled away to a dwarfish actual. But you may be a.s.sured I shall on this occasion summon to the bargain all the Yankee in my const.i.tution, and multiply and divide like a lion.

The book has the best success with the best. Young men say it is the only history they have ever read. The middle-aged and the old shake their heads, and cannot make anything of it. In short, it has the success of a book which, as people have not fas.h.i.+oned, has to fas.h.i.+on the people. It will take some time to win all, but it wins and will win. I sent a notice of it to the _Christian Examiner,_ but the editor sent it all back to me except the first and last paragraphs; those he printed. And the editor of the _North American_ declined giving a place to a paper from another friend of yours. But we shall see. I am glad you are to print your _Miscellanies;_ but--forgive our Transatlantic effrontery--we are beforehand of you, and we are already selecting a couple of volumes from the same, and shall print them on the same plan as the _History,_ and hope so to turn a penny for our friend again. I surely should not do this thing without consulting you as to the selection but that I had no choice. If I waited, the bookseller would have done it himself, and carried off the profit. I sent you (to Kennet) a copy of the _French Revolution._ I regret exceedingly the printer's blunder about the numbering the Books in the volumes, but he had warranted me in a literal, punctual reprint of the copy without its leaving his office, and I trusted him. I am told there are many errors.

I am going to see for myself. I have filled my paper, and not yet said a word of how many things. You tell me how ill was Mrs.

C., and you do not tell me that she is well again. But I see plainly that I must take speedily another sheet. I love you always.

--R.W. Emerson

XXI. Emerson to Carlyle

Boston, 12 March, 1838

My Dear Friend,--Here in a bookseller's shop I have secured a stool and corner to say a swift benison. Mr. Bancroft told me that the presence of English Lord Gosford in town would give me a safe conveyance of pamphlets to you, so I send some _Orations_ of which you said so kind and cheering words. Give them to any one who will read them. I have written names in three. You have, I hope, got the letter sent nearly a month ago, giving account of our reprint of the _French Revolution,_ and have received a copy of the same. I learn from the bookseller today that six hundred and fifty copies are sold, and the book continues to sell. So I hope that our settlement at the end of six months will be final, or nearly so.

I had nearly closed my agreement the other day with a publisher for the emission of _Carlyle's Miscellanies,_ when just in the last hour comes word from E.G. Loring that he has an authentic catalogue from the Bard himself. Now I have that, and could wish Loring had communicated his plan to me at first, or that I had bad wit enough to have undertaken this matter long ago and conferred with you. I designed nothing for you or your friends; but merely a lucrative book for our daily market that would have yielded a pecuniary compensation to you, such as we are all bound to make, and have bought our Socrates a cloak. Loring contemplated something quite different,--a "Complete Works,"

etc.,--and now clamors for the same thing, and I do not know but I shall have to gratify him and others at the risk of injury to this my vulgar hope of dollars,--that innate idea of the American mind. This I shall settle in a few days. No copyright can be secured here for an English book unless it contain original matter: But my moments are going, and I can only promise to write you quickly, at home and at leisure, for I have just been reading the _History_ again with many, many thoughts, and I revere, wonder at, and love you.

--R. Waldo Emerson

XXII. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 16 March, 1838

My Dear Emerson,--Your letter through Sumner was sent by him from Paris about a month ago; the man himself has not yet made his appearance, or been heard of in these parts: he shall be very welcome to me, arrive when he will. The February letter came yesterday, by direct conveyance from Dartmouth. I answer it today rather than tomorrow; I may not for long have a day freer than this. _Fronte capillata, post est occasio calva:_ true either in Latin or Englis.h.!.+

You send me good news, as usual. You have been very brisk and helpful in this business of the _Revolution_ Book, and I give you many thanks and commendations. It will be a very brave day when cash actually reaches me, no matter what the _number_ of the coins, whether seven or seven hundred, out of Yankee-land; and strange enough, what is not unlikely, if it be the _first_ cash I realize for that piece of work,--Angle-land continuing still _in_solvent to me! Well, it is a wide Motherland we have here, or are getting to have, from Ba.s.s's Straits all round to Columbia River, already almost circling the Globe: it must be hard with a man if somewhere or other he find not some one or other to take his part, and stand by him a little! Blessings on you, my brother: nay, your work is already twice blessed.--I believe after all, with the aid of my Scotch thrift, I shall not be absolutely thrown into the streets here, or reduced to borrow, and become the slave of somebody, for a morsel of bread. Thank G.o.d, no! Nay, of late I begin entirely to despise that whole matter, so as I never hitherto despised it: "Thou beggarliest Spectre of Beggary that hast chased me ever since I was man, come on then, in the Devil's name, let us see what is in thee! Will the Soul of a man, with Eternity within a few years of it, quail before _thee?_" Better, however, is my good pious Mother's version of it: "They cannot take G.o.d's Providence from thee; thou hast never wanted yet."*

- * In his Diary, May 9, 1838, Emerson wrote: "A letter this morning from T. Carlyle. How should he be so poor? It is the most creditable poverty I know of."

But to go on with business; and the republication of books in that Transoceanic England, New and improved Edition of England.

In January last, if I recollect right, Miss Martineau, in the name of a certain Mr. Loring, applied to me for a correct List of all my fugitive Papers; the said Mr. Loring meaning to publish them for my behoof. This List she, though not without solicitation, for I had small hope in it, did at last obtain, and send, coupled with a request from me that you should be consulted in the matter. Now it appears you had of yourself previously determined on something of the same sort, and probably are far on with the printing of your Two select volumes. I confess myself greatly better pleased with it on that footing than on another.

Who Mr. Loring may be I know not, with any certainty, at first hand; but who Waldo Emerson is I do know; and more than one G.o.d from the machine is not necessary. I pray you, thank Mr. Loring for his goodness towards me (his intents are evidently charitable and not wicked); but consider yourself as in nowise bound at all by that blotted Paper he has, but do the best you can for me, consulting with him or not taking any counsel just as you see to be fittest on the spot. And so Heaven prosper you, both in your "aroused Yankee" state, and in all others;--and let us for the present consider that we have enough about Books and Guineas. I must add, however, that Fraser and I have yet made no bargain.