The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872 Volume II Part 18

Concord, 28 February, 1841

My Dear Carlyle,--Behold Mr. George Nichols's new digest and exegesis of his October accounts. The letter seems to me the most intelligible of the two papers, but I have long been that man's victim, semi-annually, and never dare to make head against his figures. You are a brave man, and out of the ring of his enchantments, and withal have magicians of your own who can give spell for spell, and read his incantations backward. I entreat you to set them on the work, and convict his figures if you can. He has really taken pains, and is quite proud of his establishment of his accounts. In a month it will be April, and be will have a new one to fender. Little and Brown also in April promise a payment on _French Revolution,_--and I suppose something is due from _Chartism._ We will hope that a Bill of Exchange will yet cross from us to you, before our booksellers fail.

I hoped before this to have reached my last proofsheet, but shall have two or three more yet. In a fortnight or three weeks my little raft will be afloat.* Expect nothing more of my powers of construction,--no s.h.i.+pbuilding, no clipper, smack, nor skiff even, only boards and logs tied together. I read to some Mechanics' Apprentices a long lecture on Reform, one evening, a little while ago. They asked me to print it, but Margaret Fuller asked it also, and I preferred the _Dial,_ which shall have the dubious sermon, and I will send it to you in that.--You see the bookseller reverendizes me notwithstanding your laudable perseverance to adorn me with profane t.i.tles, on the one hand, and the growing habit of the majority of my correspondents to clip my name of all t.i.tles on the other. I desire that you and your wife will keep your kindness for

--R. W. Emerson

- * The first series of _Essays._ -

LXII. Emerson to Carlyle

Boston, 30 April, 1841

My Dear Carlyle,--Above you have a bill of exchange for one hundred pounds sterling drawn by T.W. Ward & Co. on the Messrs.

Barings, payable at sight. Let us hope it is but the first of a long series. I have vainly endeavored to get your account to be rendered by Munroe & Co. to the date of the 1st of April. It was conditionally promised for the day of the last steamer (15 April). It is not ready for that which sails tomorrow and carries this. Little & Co. acknowledge a debt of $607.90 due to you 1st of April, and just now paid me; and regret that their sales have been so slow, which they attribute to the dulness of all trade among us for the last two years. You shall have the particulars of their account from Munroe's statement of the account between you and me. Munroe & Co. have a long apology for not rendering their own account; their book keeper left them at a critical moment, they were without one six weeks, &c.;--but they add, if we could give you it, to what use, since we should be utterly unable to make you any payment at this time? To what use, surely? I am too much used to similar statements from our booksellers and others in the last few years to be much surprised; nor do I doubt their readiness or their power to pay all their debts at last; but a great deal of mutual concession and accommodation has been the familiar resort of our tradesmen now for a good while, a vice which they are all fain to lay at the doors of the Government, whilst it belongs in the first instance, no doubt, to the rashness of the individual traders.

These men I believe to be prudent, honest, and solvent, and that we shall get all our debt from them at last. They are not reckoned as rich as Little and Brown. By the next steamer they think they can promise to have their account ready. I am sorry to find that we have been driven from the market by the New York Pirates in the affair of the Six Lectures.* The book was received from London and for sale in New York and Boston before my last sheets arrived by the "Columbia." Appleton in New York braved us and printed it, and furthermore told us that he intends to print in future everything of yours that shall be printed in London,--complaining in rude terms of the monopoly your publishers here exercise, and the small commissions they allow to the trade, &c., &c. Munroe showed me the letter, which certainly was not an amiable one. In this distress, then, I beg you, when you have more histories and lectures to print, to have the ma.n.u.script copied by a scrivener before you print at home, and send it out to me, and I will keep all Appletons and Corsairs whatsoever out of the lists. Not only these men made a book (of which, by the by, Munroe sends you by this steamer a copy, which you will find at John Green's, Newgate Street), but the New York newspapers print the book in chapters, and you circulate for six cents per newspaper at the corners of all streets in New York and Boston; gaining in fame what you lose in coin.--The book is a good book, and goes to make men brave and happy. I bear glad witness to its cheering and arming quality.

* "Heroes and Hero-Wors.h.i.+p."

I have put into Munroe's box which goes to Green a _Dial_ No. 4 also, which I could heartily wish were a better book. But Margaret Fuller, who is a n.o.ble woman, is not in sufficiently vigorous health to do this editing work as she would and should, and there is no other who can and will.

Yours affectionately, R.W. Emerson

LXIII. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 8 May, 1841

My Dear Emerson,--Your last letter found me on the southern border of Yorks.h.i.+re, whither Richard Milnes had persuaded me with him, for the time they call "Easter Holidays" here. I was to shake off the remnants of an ugly _Influenza_ which still hung about me; my little portmanteau, unexpectedly driven in again by perverse accidents, had stood packed, its cowardly owner, the worst of all travelers, standing dubious the while, for two weeks or more; Milnes offering to take me as under his cloak, I went with Milnes. The mild, cordial, though something dilettante nature of the man distinguishes him for me among men, as men go.

For ten days I rode or sauntered among Yorks.h.i.+re fields and knolls; the sight of the young Spring, new to me these seven years, was beautiful, or better than beauty. Solitude itself, the great Silence of the Earth, was as balm to this weary, sick heart of mine; not Dragons of Wantley (so they call Lord Wharncliffe, the wooden Tory man), not babbling itinerant Barrister people, fox-hunting Aristocracy, nor Yeomanry Captains cultivating milk-white mustachios, nor the perpetual racket, and "dinner at eight o'clock," could altogether countervail the fact that green Earth was around one and unadulterated sky overhead, and the voice of waters and birds,--not the foolish speech of c.o.c.kneys at _all_ times!--On the last morning, as Richard and I drove off towards the railway, your Letter came in, just in time; and Richard, who loves you well, hearing from whom it was, asked with such an air to see it that I could not refuse him. We parted at the "station," flying each his several way on the wings of Steam; and have not yet met again. I went over to Leeds, staid two days with its steeple-chimneys and smoke-volcano still in view; then hurried over to native Annandale, to see my aged excellent Mother yet again in this world while she is spared to me. My birth-land is always as the Cave of Trophonius to me; I return from it with a haste to which the speed of Steam is slow, --with no smile on my face; avoiding all speech with men! It is not yet eight-and-forty hours since I got back; your Letter is among the first I answer, even with a line; your new Book--But we will not yet speak of that....

My Friend, I _thank_ you for this Volume of yours; not for the copy alone which you send to me, but for writing and printing such a Book. _Euge!_ say I, from afar. The voice of one crying in the desert;--it is once more the voice of a _man._ Ah me! I feel as if in the wide world there were still but this one voice that responded intelligently to my own; as if the rest were all hearsays, melodious or unmelodious echoes; as if this alone were true and alive. My blessing on you, good Ralph Waldo! I read the Book all yesterday; my Wife scarcely yet done with telling me her news. It has rebuked me, it has aroused and comforted me.

Objections of all kinds I might make, how many objections to superficies and detail, to a dialect of thought and speech as yet imperfect enough, a hundred-fold too narrow for the Infinitude it strives to speak: but what were all that? It is an Infinitude, the real vision and belief of one, seen face to face: a "voice of the heart of Nature" is here once more. This is the one fact for me, which absorbs all others whatsoever. Persist, persist; you have much to say and to do. These voices of yours which I likened to unembodied souls, and censure sometimes for having no body,--how can they have a body? They are light-rays darting upwards in the East; they will yet make much and much to have a body! You are a new era, my man, in your new huge country: G.o.d give you strength, and speaking and silent faculty, to do such a work as seems possible now for you! And if the Devil will be pleased to set all the Popularities _against_ you and evermore against you,--perhaps that is of all things the very kindest any _Angel_ could do.

Of myself I have nothing good to report. Years of sick idleness and barrenness have grown wearisome to me. I do nothing. I waver and hover, and painfully speculate even now as to health, and where I shall spend the summer out of London! I am a very poor fellow;--but hope to grow better by and by. Then this _alluvies_ of foul lazy stuff that has long swum over me may perhaps yield the better harvest. _Esperons!_--Hail to all of you from both of us.

Yours ever, T. Carlyle

LXIV. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 21 May, 1841

My Dear Emerson,--About a week ago I wrote to you, after too long a silence. Since that there has another Letter come, with a Draft of L100 in it, and other comfortable items not pecuniary; a line in acknowledgment of the money is again very clearly among my duties. Yesterday, on my first expedition up to Town, I gave the Paper to Fraser; who is to present the result to me in the shape of cash tomorrow. Thanks, and again thanks. This L100, I think, nearly clears off for me the outlay of the second _French Revolution;_ an ill-printed, ill-conditioned publication, the prime cost of which, once all lying saved from the Atlantic whirlpools and hard and fast in my own hand, it was not perhaps well done to venture thitherward again. To the new trouble of my friends withal! We will now let the rest of the game play itself out as it can; and my friends, and my one friend, must not take more trouble than their own kind feelings towards me will reward.

The Books, the _Dial_ No. 4, and Appleton's pirated _Lectures,_ are still expected from Green. In a day or two he will send them: if not, we will jog him into wakefulness, and remind him of the _Parcels Delivery Company,_ which carries luggage of all kinds, like mere letters, many times a day, over all corners of our Babylon. In this, in the universal British _Penny Post,_ and a thing or two of that sort, men begin to take advantage of their crowded ever-whirling condition in these days, which brings such enormous disadvantages along with it _un_sought for.-- Bibliopolist Appleton does not seem to be a "Hero,"--except after his own fas.h.i.+on. He is one of those of whom the Scotch say, "Thou wouldst do little for G.o.d if the Devil were dead!" The Devil is unhappily dead, in that international bibliopolic province, and little hope of his reviving for some time; whereupon this is what Squire Appleton does. My respects to him even in the Bedouin department, I like to see a complete man, a clear decisive Bedouin.

For the rest, there is one man who ought to be apprised that I can now stand robbery a little better; that I am no longer so very poor as I once was. In Fraser himself there do now lie vestiges of money! I feel it a great relief to see, for a year or two at least, the despicable bugbear of Beggary driven out of my sight; for _which_ small mercy, at any rate, be the Heavens thanked. Fraser himself, for these two editions, One thousand copies each, of the Lectures and _Sartor,_ pays me down on the nail L150; consider that miracle! Of the other Books which he is selling on a joint-stock basis, the poor man likewise promises something, though as yet, ever since New-Year's-day, I cannot learn what, owing to a grievous sickness of his,--for which otherwise I cannot but be sorry, poor Fraser within the c.o.c.kney limits being really a worthy, accurate, and rather friendly creature. So you see me here provided with bread and water for a season,--it is but for a season one needs either water or bread, --and rejoice with me accordingly. It is the one useful, nay, I will say the one _innoxious,_ result of all this trumpeting, reviewing, and dinner-invitationing; from which I feel it indispensable to withdraw myself more and more resolutely, and altogether count it as a thing not there. Solitude is what I long and pray for. In the babble of men my own soul goes all to babble: like soil you were forever _screening,_ tumbling over with shovels and riddles; in _which_ soil no fruit can grow! My trust in Heaven is, I shall yet get away "to some cottage by the sea-sh.o.r.e"; far enough from all the mad and mad making things that dance round me here, which I shall then look on only as a theatrical phantasmagory, with an eye only to the _meaning_ that lies hidden in it. You, friend Emerson, are to be a Farmer, you say, and dig Earth for your living? Well; I envy you that as much as any other of your blessednesses. Meanwhile, I sit shrunk together here in a small _dressing-closet,_ aloft in the back part of the house, excluding all cackle and c.o.c.kneys; and, looking out over the similitude of a May grove (with little brick in it, and only the minarets of Westminster and gilt cross of St.

Paul's visible in the distance, and the enormous roar of London softened into an enormous hum), endeavor to await what will betide. I am busy with Luther in one Marheinecke's very long- winded Book. I think of innumerable things; steal out westward at sunset among the Kensington lanes; would this _May_ weather last, I might be as well here as in any attainable place. But June comes; the rabid dogs get muzzles; all is brown-parched, dusty, suffocating, desperate, and I shall have to run! Enough of all that. On my paper there comes, or promises to come, as yet simply nothing at all. Patience;--and yet who can be patient?

Had you the happiness to see yourself not long ago, in _Fraser's Magazine,_ cla.s.sed _nominatim_ by an emphatic earnest man, not without a kind of splay-footed strength and sincerity,--among the chief Heresiarchs of the--world? Perfectly right. Fraser was very anxious to know what I thought of the Paper,--"by an entirely unknown man in the country." I counseled "that there was something in him, which he ought to improve by holding his peace for the next five years."

Adieu, dear Emerson; there is not a sc.r.a.p more of Paper. All copies of your _Essays_ are out at use; with what result we shall perhaps see. As for me I love the Book and man, and their n.o.ble rustic herohood and manhood:--one voice as of a living man amid such jabberings of galvanized corpses: _Ach Gott!_

Yours evermore, T. Carlyle

LXV. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 80 May, 1841

My Dear Friend,--In my letter written to you on the 1st of May (enclosing a bill of exchange of L100 sterling, which, I hope, arrived safely) I believe I promised to send you by the next steamer an account for April. But the false tardy Munroe & Co.

did not send it to me until one day too late. Here it is, as they render it, compiled from Little and Brown's statement and their own. I have never yet heard whether you have received their _a.n.a.lysis_ or explanation of the last abstract they drew up of the mutual claims between the great houses of T.C. and R.W.E., and I am impatient to know whether you have caused it to be examined, and whether it was satisfactory. This new one is based on that, and if that was incorrect, this must be also. I am daily looking for some letter from you, which is perhaps near at hand. If you have not written, write me exactly and immediately on this subject, I entreat you. You will see that in this sheet I am charged with a debt to you of $184.29. I shall tomorrow morning pay to Mr. James Brown (of Little and Brown), who should be the bearer of this letter, $185.00, which sum he will pay you in its equivalent of English coin. I give Mr. Brown an introductory letter to you, and you must not let slip the opportunity to make the man explain his own accounts, if any darkness hang on them. In due time, perhaps, we can send you Munroe, and Nichols also, and so all your factors shall render direct account of themselves to you. I believe I shall also make Brown the bearer of a little book written some time since by a young friend of mine in a very peculiar frame of mind,--thought by most persons to be mad,--and of the publication of which I took the charge.* Mr. Very requested me to send you a copy.--I had a letter from Sterling, lately, which rejoiced me in all but the dark picture it gave of his health. I earnestly wish good news of him. When you see him, show him these poems, and ask him if they have not a grandeur.

* _Essays and Poems,_ by Jones Very,--a little volume, the work of an exquisite spirit. Some of the poems it contains are as if written by a George Herbert who had studied Shakespeare, read Wordsworth, and lived in America.

When I wrote last, I believe all the sheets of the Six Lectures had not come to me. They all arrived safely, although the last package not until our American pirated copy was just out of press in New York. My private reading was not less happy for this robbery whereby the eager public were supplied. Odin was all new to me; and Mahomet, for the most part; and it was all good to read, abounding in truth and n.o.bleness. Yet, as I read these pages, I dream that your audience in London are less prepared to hear, than is our New England one. I judge only from the tone.

I think I know many persons here who accept thoughts of this vein so readily now, that, if you were speaking on this sh.o.r.e, you would not feel that emphasis you use to be necessary. I have been feeble and almost sick during all the spring, and have been in Boston but once or twice, and know nothing of the reception the book meets from the Catholic Carlylian Church. One reader and friend of yours dwells now in my house, and, as I hope, for a twelvemonth to come,--Henry Th.o.r.eau,--a poet whom you may one day be proud of;--a n.o.ble, manly youth, full of melodies and inventions. We work together day by day in my garden, and I grow well and strong. My mother, my wife, my boy and girl, are all in usual health, and according to their several ability salute you and yours. Do not cease to tell me of the health of your wife and of the learned and friendly physician.

Yours, R.W. Emerson

LXVI. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 25 June, 1841

Dear Emerson,--Now that there begins again to be some program possible of my future motions for some time, I hastily despatch you some needful outline of the same.

After infinite confused uncertainty, I learn yesternight that there has been a kind of country-house got for us, at a place called Annan, on the north sh.o.r.e of the Solway Frith, in my native County of Dumfries. You pa.s.sed through the little Burgh, I suppose, in your way homeward from Craigenputtock: it stands about midway, on the great road, between Dumfries and Carlisle.

It is the place where I got my schooling;--consider what a _preter_natural significance such a scene has now got for me! It is within eight miles of my aged Mother's dwelling-place; within riding distance, in fact, of almost all the Kindred I have in the world.--The house, which is built since my time, and was never yet seen by me, is said to be a reasonable kind of house. We get it for a small sum in proportion to its value (thanks to kind accident); the three hundred miles of travel, very hateful to me, will at least entirely obliterate all traces of _this_ Dust- Babel; the place too being naturally almost ugly, as far as a green leafy place in sight of sea and mountains can be so nicknamed, the whole gang of picturesque Tourists, c.o.c.kney friends of Nature, &c., &c., who penetrate now by steam, in shoals every autumn, into the very centre of the Scotch Highlands, will be safe over the horizon! In short, we are all bound thitherward in few days; must cobble up some kind of gypsy establishment; and bless Heaven for solitude, for the sight of green fields, heathy moors; for a silent sky over one's head, and air to breathe which does not consist of coal-smoke, finely powdered flint, and other beautiful _etceteras_ of that kind among others! G.o.d knows I have need enough to be left altogether alone for some considerable while (_forever,_ as it at present seems to me), to get my inner world, and my poor bodily nerves, both all torn to pieces, set in order a little again! After much vain reluctance therefore; disregarding many considerations,-- disregarding _finance_ in the front of these,--I am off; and calculate on staying till I am heartily _sated_ with country, till at least the last gleam of summer weather has departed. My way of life has all along hitherto been a resolute _staying at home:_ I find now, however, that I must alter my habits, cost what it may; that I cannot live all the year round in London, under pain of dying or going rabid;--that I must, in fact, learn to travel, as others do, and be hanged to me! Wherefore, in brief, my Friend, our address for the next two or three months is "Newington Lodge, Annan, Scotland,"--where a letter from Emerson will be a right pleasant visitor! _Faustum sit._

My second piece of news, not less interesting I hope, is that _Emerson's Essays,_ the Book so called, is to be reprinted here; nay, I think, is even now at press,--in the hands of that invaluable Printer, Robson, who did the _Miscellanies._ Fraser undertakes it, "on _half-profits_";--T. Carlyle writing a Preface,*--which accordingly he did (in rather sullen humor,--not with you!) last night and the foregoing days. Robson will stand by the text to the very utmost; and I also am to read the Proof sheets. The edition is of Seven Hundred and Fifty; which Fraser thinks he will sell. With what joy shall I then sack up the small Ten Pounds Sterling perhaps of "Half-Profits," and remit them to the man Emerson; saying: There, Man! t.i.t for tat, the reciprocity _not_ all on one side!--I ought to say, moreover, that this was a volunteer scheme of Fraser's; the risk is all his, the origin of it was with him: I advised him to have it reviewed, as being a really noteworthy Book; "Write you a Preface," said he, "and I will reprint it";--to which, after due delay and meditation; I consented. Let me add only, on this subject, the story of a certain Rio,** a French Breton, with long, distracted, black hair. He found your Book at Richard Milnes's, a borrowed copy, and could not borrow it; whereupon he appeals pa.s.sionately to me; carries off my Wife's copy, this distracted Rio; and is to "read it _four_ times" during this current autumn, at Quimperle, in his native Celtdom! The man withal is a _Catholic,_ eats fish on Friday;--a great lion here when he visits us; one of the _naivest_ men in the world: concerning whom nevertheless, among fas.h.i.+onables, there is a controversy, "Whether he is an Angel, or partially a Windbag and _Humbug?_" Such is the lot of loveliness in the World! A truer man I never saw; how _wind_less, how windy, I will not compute at present. Me he likes greatly (in spite of my unspeakable contempt for his fish on Friday); likes,--but withal is apt to bore.

- * The greater part of this interesting Preface is reprinted in Mr. George Willis Cooke's excellent book on the _Life, Writings, and Philosophy of Emerson,_ Boston, 1881, p. 109.