The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872 Volume II Part 17

My Dear Emerson,--Two Letters of yours are here, the latest of them for above a week: I am a great sinner not to have answered sooner. My way of life has been a thing of petty confusions, uncertainties; I did not till a short while ago see any definite highway, through the mult.i.tude of byelanes that opened out on me, even for the next few months. Partly I was busy; partly too, as my wont is, I was half asleep:--perhaps you do not know the _combination_ of these two predicables in one and the same unfortunate human subject! Seeing my course now for a little, I must speak.

According to your prognosis, it becomes at length manifest that I do _not_ go to America for the present. Alas, no! It was but a dream of the fancy; projected, like the French shoemaker's fairy shoes, "in a moment of enthusiasm." The nervous flutter of May Lecturing has subsided into stagnancy; into the feeling that, of all things in the world, public speaking is the hatefulest for me; that I ought devoutly to thank Heaven there is no absolute compulsion laid on me at present to speak! My notion in general was but an absurd one: I fancied I might go across the sea, open my lips wide; go raging and lecturing over the Union like a very lion (too like a frothy mountebank) for several months;--till I had gained, say a thousand pounds; therewith to retire to some small, quiet cottage by the sh.o.r.e of the sea, at least three hundred miles from this, and sit silent there for ten years to come, or forever and a day perhaps! That was my poor little day dream;--incapable of being realized. It appears, I have to stay here, in this brick Babylon; tugging at my chains, which will not break for me: the less I tug, the better. Ah me! On the whole, I have written down my last course of lectures, and shall probably print them; and you, with the aid of proof-sheets, may again print them; that will be the easiest way of lecturing to America! It is truly very weak to speak about that matter so often and long, that matter of coming to you; and never to come.

_Frey ist das Herz,_ as Goethe says, _doch ist der Fuss gebunden._ After innumerable projects, and invitations towards all the four winds, for this summer, I have ended about a week ago by--simply going nowhither, not even to see my dear aged Mother, but sitting still here under the Autumn sky such as I have it; in these vacant streets I am lonelier than elsewhere, have more chance for composure than elsewhere! With Sterne's starling I repeat to myself, "I can't get out."--Well, hang it, stay in then; and let people alone of it!

I have parted with my horse; after an experiment of seven or eight months, most a.s.siduously prosecuted, I came to the conclusion that, though it did me some good, there was not _enough_ of good to warrant such equestrianism: so I plunged out, into green England, in the end of July, for a whole week of riding, an _explosion_ of riding, therewith to end the business, and send off my poor quadruped for sale. I rode over Surrey,-- with a leather valise behind me and a mackintosh before; very singular to see: over Suss.e.x, down to Pevensey where the Norman b.a.s.t.a.r.d landed; I saw Julius Hare (whose _Guesses at Truth_ you perhaps know), saw Saint Dunstan's st.i.thy and hammer, at Mayfield, and the very tongs with which he took the Devil by the nose;--finally I got home again, a right wearied man; sent my horse off to be sold, as I say; and finished the writing of my Lectures on Heroes. This is all the rustication I have had, or am like to have. I am now over head and ears in _Cromwellian_ Books; studying, for perhaps the fourth time in my life, to see if it be possible to get any credible face-to-face acquaintance with our English Puritan period; or whether it must be left forever a mere hearsay and echo to one. Books equal in dulness were at no epoch of the world penned by una.s.sisted man.

Nevertheless, courage! I have got, within the last twelve months, actually, as it were, to _see_ that this Cromwell was one of the greatest souls ever born of the English kin; a great amorphous semi-articulate _Baresark;_ very interesting to me. I grope in the dark vacuity of Baxters, Neales; thankful for here a glimpse and there a glimpse. This is to be my reading for some time.

The _Dial_ No. 1 came duly: of course I read it with interest; it is an utterance of what is purest, youngest in your land; pure, ethereal, as the voices of the Morning! And yet--you know me--for me it is _too_ ethereal, speculative, theoretic: all theory becomes more and more confessedly inadequate, untrue, unsatisfactory, almost a kind of mockery to me! I will have all things condense themselves, take shape and body, if they are to have my sympathy. I have a _body_ myself; in the brown leaf, sport of the Autumn winds, I find what mocks all prophesyings, even Hebrew ones,--Royal Societies, and Scientific a.s.sociations eating venison at Glasgow, not once reckoned in! Nevertheless go on with this, my Brothers. The world has many most strange utterances of a prophetic nature in it at the present time; and this surely is worth listening to among the rest. Do you know English Puseyism? Good Heavens! in the whole circle of History is there the parallel of that,--a true wors.h.i.+p rising at this hour of the day for Bands and the Shovel-hat? Distraction surely, incipience of the "final deliration" enters upon the poor old English Formulism that has called itself for some two centuries a Church. No likelier symptom of its being soon about to leave the world has come to light in my time. As if King Macready should quit Covent-Garden, go down to St. Stephen's, and insist on saying, _Le roi le veut!_--I read last night the wonderfulest article to that effect, in the shape of a criticism on myself, in the _Quarterly Review._ It seems to be by one Sewell, an Oxford doctor of note, one of the chief men among the Pusey-and-Newman Corporation. A good man, and with good notions, whom I have noted for some years back. He finds me a very worthy fellow; "true, most true,"--except where I part from Puseyism, and reckon the shovel-hat to be an old bit of felt; then I am false, most false. As the Turks say, _Allah akbar!_

I forget altogether what I said of Landor; but I hope I did not put him in the Heraud category: a c.o.c.kney windbag is one thing; a scholar and bred man, though incontinent, explosive, half-true, is another. He has not been in town, this year; Milnes describes him as _eating_ greatly at Bath, and perhaps even cooking! Milnes did get your Letter: I told you? Sterling has the Concord landscape; mine is to go upon the wall here, and remind me of many things. Sterling is busy writing; he is to make Falmouth do, this winter, and try to dispense with Italy.

He cannot away with my doctrine of _Silence;_ the good John. My Wife has been better than usual all summer; she begins to s.h.i.+ver again as winter draws nigh. Adieu, dear Emerson. Good be with you and yours. I must be far gone when I cease to love you.

"The stars are above us, the graves are under us." Adieu.

--T. Carlyle

LVIII. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 30 October, 1840

My Dear Friend,--My hope is that you may live until this creeping bookseller's balance shall incline at last to your side. My rude ciphering, based on the last account of this kind which I sent you in April from J. Munroe & Co., had convinced me that I was to be in debt to you at this time L40 or more; so that I actually bought L40 the day before the "Caledonia" sailed to send you; but on giving my new accounts to J.M. & Co., to bring the statement up to this time, they astonished me with the above written result. I professed absolute incredulity, but Nichols*

labored to show me the rise and progress of all my blunders.

Please to send the account with the last to your Fraser, and have it sifted. That I paid, a few weeks since, $481.34, and again, $28.12, for printing and paper respectively, is true.--C.C.

Little & Co. acknowledge the sale of 82 more copies of the London Edition _French Revolution_ since the 187 copies of July 1; but these they do not get paid for until January 1, and we it seems must wait as long. We will see if the New-Year's-day will bring us more pence.

* Partner in the firm of J. Munroe & Co.

I received by the "Acadia" a letter from you, which I acknowledge now, lest I should not answer it more at large on another sheet, which I think to do. If you do not despair of American booksellers send the new proofs of the Lectures when they are in type to me by John Green, 121 Newgate Street (I believe), to the care of J. Munroe & Co. He sends a box to Munroe by every steamer. I sent a _Dial,_ No. 2, for you, to Green. Kennet, I hear, has failed. I hope he did not give his creditors my _Miscellanies,_ which you told me were there. I shall be glad if you will draw Cromwell, though if I should choose it would be Carlyle. You will not feel that you have done your work until those devouring eyes and that portraying hand have achieved England in the Nineteenth Century. Perhaps you cannot do it until you have made your American visit. I a.s.sure you the view of Britain is excellent from New England.

We are all a little wild here with numberless projects of social reform. Not a reading man but has a draft of a new Community in his waistcoat pocket. I am gently mad myself, and am resolved to live cleanly. George Ripley is talking up a colony of agriculturists and scholars, with whom he threatens to take the field and the book.* One man renounces the use of animal food; and another of coin; and another of domestic hired service; and another of the State; and on the whole we have a commendable share of reason and hope.

-- * Preliminary to the experiment of Brook Farm, in 1841.

I am ashamed to tell you, though it seems most due, anything of my own studies, they seem so desultory, idle, and unproductive.

I still hope to print a book of essays this winter, but it cannot be very large. I write myself into letters, the last few months, to three or four dear and beautiful persons, my country-men and women here. I lit my candle at both ends, but will now be colder and scholastic. I mean to write no lectures this winter. I hear gladly of your wife's better health; and a letter of Jane Tuckerman's, which I saw, gave the happiest tidings of her. We do not despair of seeing her yet in Concord, since it is now but twelve and a half days to you.

I had a letter from Sterling, which I will answer. In all love and good hope for you and yours, your affectionate

--R.W. Emerson

LIX. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, 9 December, 1840

Dear Emerson,--My answer on this occasion has been delayed above two weeks by a rigorous, searching investigation into the procedure of the hapless Book-conveyer, Kennet, in reference to that copy of the _Miscellanies._ I was deceived by hopes of a conclusive response from day to day; not till yesterday did any come. My first step, taken long ago, was to address a new copy of the Book, not to you, luckless man, but to _Lydia_ Emerson, the fortunate wife; this copy Green now has lying by him, waiting for the January Steamer (we sail only once a month in this season); before the New Year has got out of infancy the Lady will be graciously pleased to make a few inches of room on her bookshelves for this celebrated performance. And now as to Kennet, take the brief outcome of some dozen visitations, judicial interrogatories, searches of doc.u.ments, and other piercing work on the part of methodic Fraser, attended with demurrers, pleadings, false denials, false affirmings, on the part of innocent chaotic Kennet: namely, that the said Kennet, so urged, did in the end of the last week, fish up from his repositories your very identical Book directed to Munroe's care, duly booked and engaged for, in May last, but left to repose itself in the Covent-Garden crypts ever since without disturbance from G.o.ds or men! Fraser has brought back the Book, and you have lost it;--and the Library of my native village in Scotland is to get it; and not Kennet any more in this world, but Green ever henceforth is to be our Book Carrier. There is a history.

Green, it seems, addresses also to Munroe; but the thing, I suppose, will now s.h.i.+ft for itself without watching.

As to the bibliopolic Accounts, my Friend! we will trust them, with a faith known only in the purer ages of Roman Catholicism,-- when Papacy had indeed become a Dubiety, but was not yet a Quackery and Falsehood, was a thing _as_ true as it could manage to be! That really may be the fact of this too. In any case what signifies it much? Money were still useful; but it is not now so indispensable. Booksellers by their knavery or their fidelity cannot kill us or cure us. Of the truth of Waldo Emerson's heart to me, there is, G.o.d be thanked for it, no doubt at all.

My Hero-Lectures lie still in Ma.n.u.script. Fraser offers no amount of cash adequate to be an outward motive; and inwardly there is as yet none altogether clear, though I rather feel of late as if it were clearing. To fly in the teeth of English Puseyism, and risk such shrill welcome as I am pretty sure of, is questionable: yet at bottom why not? Dost thou not as entirely reject this new Distraction of a Puseyism as man can reject a thing,--and couldst utterly abjure it, and even abhor it,--were the shadow of a cobweb ever likely to become momentous, the cobweb itself being _beheaded,_ with axe and block on Tower Hill, two centuries ago? I think it were as well to _tell_ Puseyism that it has something of good, but also much of bad and even worst. We shall see. If I print the thing, we shall surely take in America again; either by stereotype or in some other way.

Fear not that!--Do you attend at all to this new _Laudism_ of ours? It spreads far and wide among our Clergy in these days; a most notable symptom, very cheering to me many ways; whether or not one of the fatalest our poor Church of England has ever exhibited, and betokening swifter ruin to it than any other, I do not inquire. Thank G.o.d, men do discover at last that there is still a G.o.d present in their affairs, and must be, or their affairs are of the Devil, naught, and worthy of being sent to the Devil! This once given, I find that all is given; daily History, in Kingdom and in Parish, is an _experimentum crucis_ to show what is the Devil's and what not. But on the whole are we not the _formalest_ people ever created under this Sun? Cased and overgrown with Formulas, like very lobsters with their sh.e.l.ls, from birth upwards; so that in the man we see only his breeches, and believe and swear that wherever a pair of old breeches are there is a man! I declare I could both laugh and cry. These poor good men, merciful, zealous, with many sympathies and thoughts, there do they vehemently appeal to me, _Et tu, Brute?_ Brother, wilt thou too insist on the breeches being old,--not ply a needle among us here?--To the naked Caliban, gigantic, for whom such breeches would not be a glove, who is stalking and groping there in search of new breeches and accoutrements, sure to get them, and to tread into nonent.i.ty whoever hinders him in the search,--they are blind as if they had no eyes. Sartorial men; ninth-parts of a man:--enough of them.

The second Number of the _Dial_ has also arrived some days ago.

I like it decidedly better than the first; in fact, it is right well worth being put on paper, and sent circulating;--I find only, as before that it is still too much of a soul for circulating as it should. I wish you could in future contrive to mark at the end of each Article who writes it, or give me some general key for knowing. I recognize Emerson readily; the rest are of [Greek] for most part. But it is all good and very good as a _soul;_ wants only a body, which want means a great deal!

Your Paper on Literature is incomparably the worthiest thing hitherto; a thing I read with delight. Speak out, my brave Emerson; there are many good men that listen! Even what you say of Goethe gratifies me; it is one of the few things yet spoken of him from personal insight, the sole kind of things that should be spoken! You call him _actual,_ not _ideal;_ there is truth in that too; and yet at bottom is not the whole truth rather this: The actual well-seen _is_ the ideal? The _actual,_ what really is and exists: the past, the present, the future no less, do all lie there! Ah yes! one day you will find that this sunny-looking, courtly Goethe held veiled in him a Prophetic sorrow deep as Dante's,--all the n.o.bler to me and to you, that he _could_ so hold it. I believe this; no man can _see_ as he sees, that has not suffered and striven as man seldom did.-- Apropos of _this,_ Have you got Miss Martineau's _Hour and Man?_ How curious it were to have the real History of the Negro Toussaint, and his _black_ Sansculottism in Saint Domingo,--the most atrocious form Sansculottism could or can a.s.sume! This of a "black Wilberforce-Was.h.i.+ngton," as Sterling calls it, is decidedly something. Adieu, dear Emerson: time presses, paper is done. Commend me to your good wife, your good Mother, and love me as well as you can. Peace and health under clear winter skies be with you all.

--T. Carlyle

My Wife rebukes me sharply that I have "forgot her love." She is much better this winter than of old.

Having mentioned Sterling I should say that he is at Torquay (Devons.h.i.+re) for the winter, meditating new publication of Poems.

I work still in Cromwellism; all but desperate of any feasible issue worth naming. I "enjoy bad health" too, considerably!

LX. Carlyle to Mrs. Emerson

Chelsea, London, 21 February, 1841

Dear Mrs. Emerson,--Your Husband's Letter shall have answer when some moment of leisure is granted me; he will wait till then, and must. But the beautiful utterance which you send over to me; melodious as the voice of flutes, of Aeolian Harps borne on the rude winds so _far,_--this must have answer, some word or growl of answer, be there leisure or none! The "Acadia," it seems, is to return from Liverpool the day after tomorrow. I shove my paper-whirlpools aside for a little, and grumble in pleased response.

You are an enthusiast; make Arabian Nights out of dull foggy London Days; with your beautiful female imagination, shape burnished copper Castles out of London Fog! It is very beautiful of you;--nay, it is not foolish either, it is wise. I have a guess what of truth there may be in that; and you the fair Alchemist, are you not all the richer and better that you know the _essential_ gold, and will not have it called pewter or spelter, though in the shops it is only such? I honor such Alchemy, and love it; and have myself done something in that kind. Long may the talent abide with you; long may I abide to have it exercised on me! Except the Annandale Farm where my good Mother still lives, there is no House in all this world which I should be gladder to see than the one at Concord. It seems to stand as only over the hill, in the next Parish to me, familiar from boyhood. Alas! and wide-waste Atlantics roll between; and I cannot walk over of an evening!--I never give up the hope of getting thither some time. Were I a little richer, were I a little healthier; were I this and that--!--One has no Fortunatus' "Time-annihilating" or even "s.p.a.ce-annihilating Hat": it were a thing worth having in this world.

My Wife unites with me in all kindest acknowledgments: she is getting stronger these last two years; but is still such a _sailor_ as the Island hardly parallels: had she the _s.p.a.ce- annihilating Hat,_ she too were soon with you.

Your message shall reach Miss Martineau; my Dame will send it in her first Letter. The good Harriet is not well; but keeps a very courageous heart. She lives by the sh.o.r.e of the beautiful blue Northumbrian Sea; a "many-sounding" solitude which I often envy her. She writes unweariedly, has many friends visiting her.

You saw her _Toussaint l'Ouverture:_ how she has made such a beautiful "black Was.h.i.+ngton," or "Was.h.i.+ngton-Christ-Macready," as I have heard some call it, of a rough-handed, hard-headed, semi- articulate gabbling Negro; and of the horriblest phasis that "Sansculottism" _can_ exhibit, of a Black Sansculottism, a musical Opera or Oratorio in pink stockings! It is very beautiful. Beautiful as a child's heart,--and in so shrewd a head as that. She is now writing express Children's-Tales, which I calculate I shall find more perfect.

Some ten days ago there went from me to Liverpool, perhaps there will arrive at Concord by this very "Acadia," a bundle of Printed Sheets directed to your Husband: pray apprise the man of that.

They are sheets of a Volume called _Lectures on Heroes;_ the Concord Hero gets them without direction or advice of any kind.

I have got some four sheets more ready for him here; shall perhaps send them too, along with this. Some four again more will complete the thing. I know not what he will make of it;-- perhaps wry faces at it?

Adieu, dear Mrs. Emerson. We salute you from this house. May all good which the Heavens grant to a kind heart, and the good which they never _refuse_ to one such, abide with you always. I commend myself to your and Emerson's good Mother, to the mischievous Boys and--all the Household. Peace and fair Spring- weather be there!

Yours with great regard, T. Carlyle

LXI. Emerson to Carlyle