The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872 Volume II Part 11

My Dear Friend,--Your welcome little Letter, with the astonis.h.i.+ng inclosure, arrived safe four days ago; right welcome, as all your Letters are, and bringing as these usually do the best news I get here. The miraculous draught of Paper I have just sent to a sure hand in Liverpool, there to lie till in due time it have ripened into a crop of a hundred gold sovereigns! On this subject, which gives room for so many thoughts, there is little that can be said, that were not an impertinence more or less.

The matter grows serious to me, enjoins me to be silent and reflect. I will say, at any rate, there never came money into my hands I was so proud of; the promise of a blessing looks from the face of it; nay, it _will_ be _twice_ blessed. So I will e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.e, with the Arabs, _Allah akbar!_ and walk silent by the sh.o.r.e of the many-sounding Babel-tumult, meditating on much.

Thanks to the mysterious all-bounteous Guide of men, and to you my true Brother, far over the sea!--For the rest, I showed Fraser this Nehemiah doc.u.ment, and said I hoped he would blush very deep;--which indeed the poor creature did, till I was absolutely sorry for him.

But now first as to this question, What I mean? You must know poor Fraser, a punctual but most pusillanimous mortal, has been talking louder and louder lately of a "second edition" here; whereupon, as labor-wages are not higher here than with you, and printing-work, if well bargained for, ought to be about the same price, it struck me that, as in the case of the _Miscellanies,_ so here inversely the supply of both the New and the Old England might be profitably combined. Whether aught can come of this, now that it is got close upon us, I yet know not. Fraser has only seventy-five copies left; but when these will be done his prophecy comprehends not,--"surely within the year"! For the present I have set him to ascertain, and will otherwise ascertain for myself, what the exact cost of _stereotyping_ the Book were, in the same letter and style as yours; it is not so much more than printing, they tell me: I should then have done with it forever and a day. You on your side, and we on ours, might have as many copies as were wanted for all time coming. This is, in these very days, under inquisition; but there are many points to be settled before the issue.

I have not yet succeeded in finding a Bookseller of any fitness, but am waiting for one always. And even had I found such a one, I mean an energetic seller that would sell on other terms than forty percent for his trouble, it were still a question whether one ought to venture on such a speculation: "quitting the old highways," as I say, "in indignation at the excessive tolls, with hope that you will arrive cheaper in the steeple-chase way!" It is clear, however, that said highways are of the corduroy sort, said tolls an anomaly that must be remedied soon; and also that in all England there is no Book in a likelier case to adventure it with than this same,--which did not sell at all for two months, as I hear, which all Booksellers got terrified for, and which has crept along mainly by its own gravitation ever since.

We will consider well, we shall see. You can understand that such a thing, for your market too, is in agitation; if any pirate step in before us in the meanwhile, we cannot help it.

Thanks again for your swift attention to the _Miscellanies;_ poor Fraser is in great haste to see them; hoping for his forty- per-cent division of the spoil. If you have not yet got to the very end with your printing, I will add a few errata; if they come too late, never mind; they are of small moment....

This foggy Babylon tumbles along as it was wont; and, as for my particular case, uses me not worse, but better, than of old.

Nay, there are many in it that have a real friendliness for me.

For example, the other night, a ma.s.sive portmanteau of Books, sent according to my written list, from the Cambridge University Library, from certain friends there whom I have never seen; a gratifying arrival. For we have no Library here, from which we can borrow books home; and are only in these weeks striving to get one:* think of that! The worst is the sore tear and wear of this huge roaring Niagara of things on such a poor excitable set of nerves as mine. The velocity of all things, of the very word you hear on the streets, is at railway rate: joy itself is unenjoyable, to be avoided like pain; there is no wish one has so pressing as for quiet. Ah me! I often swear I will be buried at least in free breezy Scotland, out of this insane hubbub, where Fate tethers me in life! If Fate always tether me;--but if ever the smallest competence of worldly means be mine, I will fly this whirlpool as I would the Lake of _Malebolge,_ and only visit it now and then! Yet perhaps it is the proper place after all, seeing all places are improper: who knows? Meanwhile I lead a most dyspeptic, solitary, self-shrouded life: consuming, if possible in silence, my considerable daily allotment of pain; glad when any strength is left in me for working, which is the only use I can see in myself,--too rare a case of late. The ground of my existence is black as Death; too black, when all void too but at times there paint themselves on it pictures of gold and rainbow and lightning; all the brighter for the black ground, I suppose. Withal I am very much of a fool.--Some people will have me write on _Cromwell,_ which I have been talking about. I do read on that and English subjects, finding that I know nothing and that n.o.body knows anything of that: but whether anything will come of it remains to be seen. Mill, the _Westminster_ friend, is gone in bad health to the Continent, and has left a rude Aberdeen Longear, a great admirer of mine too, with whom I conjecture I cannot act at all: so good-bye to that.

The wisest of all, I do believe, were that I bought my nag _Yankee_ and set to galloping about the elevated places here! A certain Mr. Coolidge,** a Boston man of clear iron visage and character, came down to me the other day with Sumner; he left a newspaper fragment, containing "the Socinian Pope's denunciation of Emerson."

* The beginning of the London Library, a most useful inst.i.tution, from which books may be borrowed. It served Carlyle well in later years, and for a long time he was President of it.

** The late Mr. Joseph Coolidge.

The thing denounced had not then arrived, though often asked for at Kennet's; it did not arrive till yesterday, but had lain buried in bales of I know not what. We have read it only once, and are not yet at the bottom of it. Meanwhile, as I judge, the Socinian "tempest in a washbowl" is all according to nature, and will be profitable to you, not hurtful. A man is called to let his light s.h.i.+ne before men; but he ought to understand better and better what medium it is through, what retinas it falls on: wherefore look _there._ I find in this, as in the two other Speeches, that n.o.blest self-a.s.sertion, and believing originality, which is like sacred fire, the _beginning_ of whatsoever is to flame and work; and for young men especially one sees not what could be more vivifying. Speak, therefore, while you feel called to do it; and when you feel called. But for yourself, my friend, I prophesy it will not do always: a faculty is in you for a _sort_ of speech which is itself _action,_ an artistic sort. You _tell_ us with piercing emphasis that man's soul is great; _show_ us a great soul of a man, in some work symbolic of such: this is the seal of such a message, and you will feel by and by that you are called to this. I long to see some concrete Thing, some Event, Man's Life, American Forest, or piece of Creation, which this Emerson loves and wonders at, well _Emersonized,_ depictured by Emerson, filled with the life of Emerson, and cast forth from him then to live by itself. If these Orations balk me of this, how profitable soever they be for others. I will not love them.--And yet, what am I saying? How do I know what is good for _you,_ what authentically makes your own heart glad to work in it? I speak from _without,_ the friendliest voice must speak from without; and a man's ultimate monition comes only from _within._ Forgive me, and love me, and write soon. _A Dieu!_

--T. Carlyle

My Wife, very proud of your salutation, sends a sick return of greeting. After a winter of unusual strength, she took cold the other day, and coughs again; though she will not call it serious yet. One likes none of these things. She has a brisk heart and a stout, but too weak a frame for this rough life of mine. I will not get sad about it.

One of the strangest things about these New England Orations is a fact I have heard, but not yet seen, that a certain W. Gladstone, an Oxford crack Scholar, Tory M.P., and devout Churchman of great talent and hope, has contrived to insert a piece of you (_first_ Oration it must be) in a work of his on _Church and State,_ which makes some figure at present! I know him for a solid, serious, silent-minded man; but how with his Coleridge Shovel-Hattism he has contrived to relate himself to _you,_ there is the mystery.

True men of all creeds, it _would_ seem, are Brothers.

To write soon!

x.x.xIV. Emerson to Carlyle*

Concord, 15 March, 1839

My Dear Friend,--I will spare you my apologies for not writing, they are so many. You have been very generous, I very promising and dilatory. I desired to send you an Account of the sales of the _History,_ thinking that the details might be more intelligible to you than to me, and might give you some insight into literary and social, as well as bibliopolical relations.

But many details of this account will not yet settle themselves into sure facts, but do dance and mystify me as one green in ledgers. Bookseller says nine hundred and ninety-one copies came from Binder, nine remaining imperfect, and so not bound. But in all my reckonings of the particulars of distribution I make either more or less than nine hundred and ninety-one copies. And some of my accounts are with private individuals at a distance, and they have their uncertainties and misrememberings also. But the facts will soon show themselves, and I count confidently on a small balance against the world to your credit.

- * This letter appeared in the _Athenaeum,_ July 22, 1882.

The _Miscellanies_ go forward too slowly, at about the rate of seventy-two pages a week, as I understand. Of the _Fraser_ articles and of some others we have but a single copy, (such are the tough limits of some English immortalities and editorial renowns,) but we expect the end of the printing in six weeks.

The first two volumes, with t.i.tle-pages, are gone to the binder-- two hundred and sixty copies--with strait directions; and I presume will go to sea very soon. We shall send the last two volumes by a later s.h.i.+p. You will pay nothing for the books we send except freight. We shall deduct the cost of the books from the credit side of your account here. We print of the second series twelve hundred and fifty copies, with the intention of printing a second edition of the first series of five hundred, if we see fit hereafter to supply the place of the emigrating portion of the first. You express some surprise at the cheapness of our work. The publishers, I believe, generally get more profits. They grumbled a little at the face of the account on the 1st of January; so in the new contract for the new volumes I have allowed them nine cents more on each copy sold by them. So that you should receive ninety-one cents on a copy instead of one dollar. When the two hundred and fifty copies of our first two volumes are gone to you, I think they will have but about one hundred copies more to sell.

Your books are read. I hear, I think, more grat.i.tude expressed for the _Miscellanies_ than for the _History._ Young men at all our colleges study them in closets, and the Copernican is eradicating the Ptolemaic lore. I have frequent and cordial testimonies to the good working of the leaven, and continual inquiry whether the man will come hither. _Speriamo._

I was a fool to tell you once you must not come if I did tell you so. I knew better at the time, and did steadily believe, as far as I was concerned, that no polemical mud, however much was thrown, could by any possibility stick to me; for I was purely an observer; had not the smallest personal or _partial_ interest; and merely spoke to the question as a historian; and I knew whoever could see me must see that. But, at the moment, the little pamphlet made much stir and excitement in the newspapers; and the whole thousand copies were bought up. The ill wind has blown over. I advertised, as usual, my winter course of Lectures, and it prospered very well. Ten Lectures: I. Doctrine of the Soul; II. Home; III. The School; IV. Love; V. Genius; VI. The Protest; VII. Tragedy; VIII. Comedy; IX.

Duty; X. Demonology. I designed to add two more, but my lungs played me false with unseasonable inflammation, so I discoursed no more on "Human Life." Now I am well again.--But, as I said, as I could not hurt myself, it was foolish to flatter myself that I could mix your cause with mine and hurt you. Nothing is more certain than that you shall have all our ears, whenever you wish for them, and free from that partial position which I deprecated.

Yet I cannot regret my letter, which procured me so affectionate and magnanimous a reply.

Thanks, too, for your friendliest invitation. But I have a new reason why I should not come to England,--a blessed babe, named Ellen, almost three weeks old,--a little, fair, soft lump of contented humanity, incessantly sleeping, and with an air of incurious security that says she has come to stay, has come to be loved, which has nothing mean, and quite piques me.

Yet how gladly should I be near you for a time. The months and years make me more desirous of an unlimited conversation with you; and one day, I think, the G.o.d will grant it, after whatever way is best. I am lately taken with _The Onyx Ring,_ which seemed to me full of knowledge, and good, bold, true drawing.

Very saucy, was it not? in John Sterling to paint Collins; and what intrepid iconoclasm in this new Alcibiades to break in among your Lares and disfigure your sacred Hermes himself in Walsingham.* To me, a profane man, it was good sport to see the Olympic lover of Frederica, Lili, and so forth, lampooned. And by Alcibiades too, over whom the wrath of Pericles must pause and brood ere it falls. I delight in this Sterling, but now that I know him better I shall no longer expect him to write to me. I wish I could talk to you on the grave questions, graver than all literature, which the trifles of each day open. Our doing seems to be a gaudy screen or popinjay to divert the eye from our nondoing. I wish, too, you could know my friends here. A man named Bronson Alcott is a majestic soul, with whom conversation is possible. He is capable of truth, and gives me the same glad astonishment that he should exist which the world does.

-------- * Collins and Walsingham, two characters in _The Onyx Ring,_ are partly drawn, not very felicitously, from Carlyle and Goethe. In his _Life of Sterling,_ Carlyle says of the story: "A tale still worth reading, in which, among the imaginary characters, various friends of Sterling's are shadowed forth not always in the truest manner." It is reprinted in the second volume of Sterling's Essays and Tales, edited by Julius Hare.

As I hear not yet of your reception of the bill of exchange, which went by the "Royal William" in January, I enclose the duplicate. And now all success to the Lectures of April or May!

A new Kingdom with new extravagances of power and splendor I know. Unless you can keep your own secret better in _Rahel,_ &c., you must not give it me to keep. The London _Sartor_ arrived in my hands March 5th, dated the 15th of November, so long is the way from Kennet to Little & Co. The book is welcome, and awakens a sort of nepotism in me,--my brother's child.

--R.W. Emerson

I rejoice in the good accounts you give me of your household; in your wife's health; in your brother's position. My wife wishes to be affectionately remembered to you and yours. And the lady must continue to love her _old_ Transatlantic friend.

x.x.xV. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 19 March, 1839

My Dear Friend,--Only last Sat.u.r.day I despatched a letter to you containing a duplicate of the bill of exchange sent in January, and all the facts I knew of our books; and now comes to me a note from Wheeler, at Cambridge, saying that the printers, on reckoning up their amount of copy, find that nowise can they make 450 pages per volume, as they have promised, for these two last of the _Miscellanies._ They end the third volume with page 390, and they have not but 350 or less pages for the fourth. They ask, What shall be done? Nothing is known to me but to give them _Rahel,_ though I grudge it, for I vastly prefer to end with _Scott._ _Rahel,_ I fancy, cost you no night and no morning, but was writ in that gentle after-dinner hour so friendly to good digestion. Stearns Wheeler dreams that it is possible to draw at this eleventh hour some possible ma.n.u.script out of the unedited treasures of Teufelsdrockh's cabinets. If the ma.n.u.scripts were ready, all fairly copied out by foreseeing scribes in your sanctuary at Chelsea, the good goblin of steam would--with the least waiting, perhaps a few days--bring the packet to our types in time. I have little hope, almost none, from a sally so desperate on possible portfolios; but neither will I be wanting to my sanguine co-editor, your good friend. So I told him I would give you as instant notice as Mr. Rogers at the Merchants'

Exchange Bar can contrive, and tell you plainly that we shall proceed to print _Rahel_ when we come so far on; and with that paper end; unless we shall receive some contrary word from you.

And if we can obtain any ma.n.u.script from you before we have actually bound our book, we will cancel our last sheets and insert it. And so may the friendly Heaven grant a speedy pa.s.sage to my letter and to yours! I fear the possibility of our success is still further reduced by the season of the year, as the Lectures must shortly be on foot. Well, the best speed to them also. When I think of you as speaking and not writing them, I remember Luther's words, "He that can speak well, the same is a man."

I hope you liked John Dwight's translations of Goethe, and his notes. He is a good, susceptible, yearning soul, not so apt to create as to receive with the freest allowance, but I like his books very much.

Do think to say in a letter whether you received _from me_ a copy of our edition of your _French Revolution._ I ordered a copy sent to you,--probably wrote your name in it,--but it does not appear in the bookseller's account. Farewell.

--R.W. Emerson

x.x.xVI. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 13 April, 1839

My Dear Emerson,--Has anything gone wrong with you? How is it that you do not write to me? These three or four weeks, I know not whether _duly_ or not so long, I have been in daily hope of some sign from you; but none comes; not even a Newspaper,--open at the ends. The German Translator, Mr. Dwight, mentioned, at the end of a Letter I had not long ago, that you had given a brilliant course of Lectures at Boston, but had been obliged to _intermit it on account of illness._ Bad news indeed, that latter clause; at the same time, it was thrown in so cursorily I would not let myself be much alarmed; and since that, various New England friends have a.s.sured me here that there was nothing of great moment in it, that the business was all well over now, and you safe at Concord again. Yet how is it that I do not hear? I will tell you my guess is that those Boston Carlylean _Miscellanies_ are to blame. The Printer is slack and lazy as Printers are; and you do not wish to write till you can send some news of him? I will hope and believe that only this is it, till I hear worse.

I sent you a Dumfries Newspaper the other week, for a sign of my existence and anxiety. A certain Mr. Ellis of Boston is this day packing up a very small memorial of me to your Wife; a poor Print rolled about a bit of wood: let her receive it graciously in defect of better. It comes under your address. Nay, properly it is my Wife's memorial to your Wife. It is to be hung up in the Concord drawing-room. The two Households, divided by wide seas, are to understand always that they are united nevertheless.

My special cause for writing this day rather than another is the old story, book business. You have brought that upon yourself, my friend; and must do the best you can with it. After all, why should not Letters be on business too? Many a kind thought, uniting man with man, in grat.i.tude and helpfulness, is founded on business. The speaker at Dartmouth College seems to think it ought to be so. Nor do I dissent.--But the case is this, Fraser and I are just about bargaining for a second edition of the _Revolution._ He will print fifteen hundred for the English market, in a somewhat closer style, and sell them here at twenty- four s.h.i.+llings a copy. His first edition is all gone but some handful; and the man is in haste, and has taken into a mood of hope,--for he is weak and aguish, alternating from hot to cold; otherwise, I find, a very accurate creature, and deals in his unjust trade as justly as any other will. He has settled with me; his half-profits amount to some L130, which by charging me for every presentation copy he cuts down to somewhere about L110; _not_ the lion's share in the gross produce, yet a great share compared with an expectancy no higher than _zero!_ We continue on the same system for this second adventure; I cannot go hawking about in search of new terms; I might go farther and fare worse. And now comes your part of the affair; in which I would fain have had your counsel; but must ask your help, proceeding with my own light alone. After Fraser's fifteen hundred are printed off, the types remain standing, and I for my own behoof throw off five hundred more, designed for your market.

Whether five hundred are too many or too few, I can only guess; if too many, we can retain them here and turn them to account; if too few, there is no remedy. At all events, costing me only the paper and press-work, there is surely no Pirate in the Union that can _undersell_ us! Nay, it seems they have a drawback on our taxed paper, sufficient or nearly so to land the cargo at Boston without more charge. You see, therefore, how it is. Can you find me a Bookseller, as for yourself; he and you can fix what price the ware will carry when you see it. Meanwhile I must have his t.i.tle-page; I must have his directions (if any be needed); nay, for that matter, you might write a Preface if you liked,--though I see not what you have to say, and recommend silence rather! The book is to be in three volumes duodecimo, and we will take care it be fit to show its face in your market.