The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872 Volume I Part 8

(by himself or by deputy) to ascertain that it is so in very fact! In that case, if something come of it, we shall get the something and be thankful; if nothing come of it, we shall have the pleasure of caring nothing about it.--I have given Putnam two Books (_Heroes_ and _Sartor_) ready, corrected; the others I think will follow in the course of next month;--F. _Revolution_ waits only for an Index which my man is now busy with. The _Cromwell,_ Supplement and all, he has now got,--published two days ago, after sorrowful delays. Your Copy will be ready _this afternoon,_--too late, I fear, by just one day: it will lie, in that case, for a fortnight, and then come. Wiley will find that he has no resource but to reprint the Book; he will reprint the Supplement too, in justice to former purchasers; but this is the _final_ form of the Book, this second edition; and to this all readers of it will come at last.

We expect the Daguerreotype by next Steamer; but you take good care not to prepossess us on its behalf! In fact, I believe, the only satisfactory course will be to get a Sketch done too; if you have any Painter that can manage it tolerably, pray set about that, as the true solution of the business--out of the two together we shall make a likeness for ourselves that will do.

Let the Lady Wife be satisfied with it; then we shall p.r.o.nounce it genuine!--

I envy you your forest-work, your summer umbrages, and clear silent lakes. The weather here is getting insupportable to us for heat. Indeed, if rain do not come within two weeks, I believe we must wind up our affairs, and make for some shady place direct:--Scotland is perhaps likeliest; but nothing yet is fixed: you shall duly hear.--Directly after this, I set off for Putnam's in Waterloo Place; sign his paper there; stick one copy under a cover for you, and despatch.--Send me word about all that you are doing and thinking. Be busy, be still and happy.

Yours ever, T. Carlyle

CXIII. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 15 July, 1846

My Dear Carlyle,--I received by the last steamer your letter with the copy of the covenant with Wiley and Putnam, which seems unexceptionable. I like the English side of those men very well; that is, Putnam seems eager to stand well and rightly with his fellow-men. Wiley at New York it was who provoked me, last winter, to write him an angry letter when he declared his intention to reprint our new matter without paying for it. When he thought better of it, and came to terms, I had not got so far as to be affectionate, and have never yet resumed the correspondence I had with him a year ago, about my own books. I hope you found my letter to them, though I do not remember which, properly cross. I believe I only enumerated difficulties. I have talked with Little and Brown about their editions of _Chartism,_ and _Past and Present;_ they have made no new sales of the books since they were printed on by the pirates, and say that the books lie still on their shelves, as also do a few copies of the London and Boston edition of _French Revolution._ I prayed them immediately to dispose of these things by auction, or at their trade sales, at whatever prices would sell them, and leave the market open for W. & P.; which they promise to do.

To Munroe I went, and learn that he has bought the stereotype- plates of the New York pirate edition of _Sartor,_ and means to print it immediately. He is willing to stop if W. & P. will buy of him his plates at their cost. I wrote so to them, but they say no. And I have not spoken again with Munroe. I was in town yesterday, and carried the copy of the Covenant to E.P. Clark, and read him your message. His Bank occupies him entirely just now, for his President is gone to Europe, and Clark's duties are the more onerous. But finding that the new responsibilities delegated to him are light and tolerable, and, at any rate, involve no retrospection, he very cheerfully signified his readiness to serve you, and I graciously forbore all allusions to my heap of booksellers' accounts which he has had in keeping now --for years, I believe. He told me that he hopes at no distant day to have a house of his own,--he and his wife are always at board,--and, whenever that happens, he intends to devote a chamber in it to his "Ill.u.s.trations of Mr. Carlyle's Writings,"

which, I believe, I have told you before, are a very large and extraordinary collection of prints, pictures, books, and ma.n.u.scripts. I sent you the promised Daguerrotype with all unwillingness, by the steamer, I think of 16 June. On 1 August, Margaret Fuller goes to England and the Continent; and I shall not fail to write to you by her, and you must not fail to give a good and faithful interview to this wise, sincere, accomplished, and most entertaining of women. I wish to bespeak Jane Carlyle's friendliest ear to one of the n.o.blest of women. We shall send you no other such.

I was lately inquired of again by an agent of a huge Boston society of young men, whether Mr. Carlyle would not come to America and read Lectures, on some terms which they could propose. I advised them to make him an offer, and a better one than they had in view. Joy and Peace to you in your new freedom.

--R.W.E.

CXIV. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, 17 July, 1846

Dear Emerson,--Since I wrote last to you, I think, with the Wiley-and-Putnam Covenant enclosed,--the Photograph, after some days of loitering at the Liverpool Custom-house, came safe to hand. Many thanks to you for this punctuality: this poor Shadow, it is all you could do at present in that matter!

But it must not rest there, no. This Image is altogether unsatisfactory, illusive, and even in some measure tragical to me! First of all, it is a bad Photograph; no _eyes_ discernible, at least one of the eyes not, except in rare favorable lights then, alas, Time itself and Oblivion must have been busy. I could not at first, nor can I yet with perfect decisiveness, bring out any feature completely recalling to me the old Emerson, that lighted on us from the Blue, at Craigenputtock, long ago,--_eheu!_ Here is a genial, smiling, energetic face, full of sunny strength, intelligence, integrity, good humor; but it lies imprisoned in baleful shades, as of the valley of Death; seems smiling on me as if in mockery. "Dost know me, friend? I am dead, thou seest, and distant, and forever hidden from thee;--I belong already to the Eternities, and thou recognizest me not!" On the whole, it is the strangest feeling I have:--and practically the thing will be, that you get us by the earliest opportunity some _living_ pictorial sketch, chalk- drawing or the like, from a trustworthy hand; and send _it_ hither to represent you. Out of the two I shall compile for myself a likeness by degrees: but as for this present, we cannot put up with it at all; to my Wife and me, and to sundry other parties far and near that have interest in it, there is no satisfaction in this. So there will be nothing for you but compliance, by the first fair chance you have: furthermore, I bargain that the _Lady_ Emerson have, within reasonable limits, a royal veto in the business (not absolute, if that threaten extinction to the enterprise, but absolute within the limits of possibility); and that she take our case in hand, and graciously consider what can and shall be done. That will answer, I think.

Of late weeks I have been either idle, or sunk in the sorrowfulest cobbling of old shoes again; sorrowfully reading over old Books for the Putnams and Chapmans, namely. It is really painful, looking in one's own old face; said "old face"

no longer a thing extant now!--Happily I have at last finished it; the whole Lumber-troop with clothes duly brushed (_French Revolution_ has even got an Index too) travels to New York in the Steamer that brings you this. _Quod faustum sit:_--or indeed I do not much care whether it be faustum or not; I grow to care about an astonis.h.i.+ngly small number of things as times turn with me! Man, all men seem radically _dumb;_ jabbering mere jargons and noises from the teeth outwards; the inner meaning of them,-- of them and of me, poor devils,--remaining shut, buried forever.

If almost all Books were burnt (my own laid next the coal), I sometimes in my spleen feel as if it really would be better with us! Certainly could one generation of men be forced to live without rhetoric, babblement, hearsay, in short with the tongue well cut out of them altogether,--their fortunate successors would find a most improved world to start upon! For Cant does lie piled on us, high as the zenith; an Augean Stable with the poisonous confusion piled so high: which, simply if there once could be nothing said, would mostly dwindle like summer snow gradually about its business, and leave us free to use our eyes again! When I see painful Professors of Greek, poring in their sumptuous Oxfords over dead _Greek_ for a thousand years or more, and leaving live _English_ all the while to develop itself under charge of Pickwicks and Sam Wellers, as if it were nothing and the other were all things: this, and the like of it everywhere, fills me with reflections! Good Heavens, will the people not come out of their wretched Old-Clothes Monmouth-Streets, Hebrew and other; but lie there dying of the basest pestilence,--dying and as good as dead! On the whole, I am very weary of most "Literature":--and indeed, in very sorrowful, abstruse humor otherwise at present.

For remedy to which I am, in these very hours, preparing for a sally into the green Country and deep silence; I know not altogether how or whitherward as yet; only that I must tend towards Lancas.h.i.+re; towards Scotland at last. My Wife already waits me in Lancas.h.i.+re; went off, in rather poor case, much burnt by the hot Town, some ten days ago; and does not yet report much improvement. I will write to you somewhere in my wanderings. The address, "Scotsbrig, Ecclefechan, N.B.," if you chance to write directly or soon after this arrives, will, likely, be the shortest: at any rate, that, or "Cheyne Row"

either, is always sure enough to find me in a day or two after trying.

By a kind of accident I have fallen considerably into American History in these days; and am even looking out for American Geography to help me. Jared Sparks, Marshall, &c. are hickory and buckskin; but I do catch a credible trait of human life from them here and there; Michelet's genial champagne _froth,_--alas, I could find no fact in it that would stand handling; and so have broken down in the middle of _La France,_ and run over to hickory and Jared for shelter! Do you know Beriah Green?* A body of Albany newspapers represent to me the people quarreling in my name, in a very vague manner, as to the propriety of being "governed," and Beriah's is the only rational voice among them.

Farewell, dear Friend. Speedy news of you!

--T. Carlyle

--------- * The Reverend Beriah Green, President for some years of Oneida Inst.i.tute, a manual-labor school at Whitesboro, N.Y. He was an active reformer, and a leading member of the National Convention which met in Philadelphia, December 4th, 1833, to form the American Antislavery Society. He died in 1874, seventy-nine years old.

CXV. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 31 July, 1846

My Dear Friend,--The new edition of _Cromwell_ in its perfect form and in excellent dress, and the copy of the Appendix, came munificently safe by the last steamer. When thought is best, then is there most,--is a faith of which you alone among writing men at this day will give me experience. If it is the right frankincense and sandal-wood, it is so good and heavenly to give me a basketful and not a pinch. I read proudly, a little at a time, and have not yet got through the new matter. But I think neither the new letters nor the commentary could be spared.

Wiley and Putnam shall do what they can, and we will see if New England will not come to reckon this the best chapter in her Pentateuch.

I send this letter by Margaret Fuller, of whose approach I believe I wrote you some word. There is no foretelling how you visited and crowded English will like our few educated men or women, and in your learned populace my luminaries may easily be overlooked. But of all the travelers whom you have so kindly received from me, I think of none, since Alcott went to England, whom I so much desired that you should see and like, as this dear old friend of mine. For two years now I have scarcely seen her, as she has been at New York, engaged by Horace Greeley as a literary editor of his _Tribune_ newspaper. This employment was made acceptable to her by good pay, great local and personal conveniences of all kinds, and unbounded confidence and respect from Greeley himself, and all other parties connected with this influential journal (of 30,000 subscribers, I believe). And Margaret Fuller's work as critic of all new books, critic of the drama, of music, and good arts in New York, has been honorable to her. Still this employment is not satisfactory to me. She is full of all n.o.bleness, and with the generosity native to her mind and character appears to me an exotic in New England, a foreigner from some more sultry and expansive climate. She is, I suppose, the earliest reader and lover of Goethe in this Country, and n.o.body here knows him so well. Her love too of whatever is good in French, and specially in Italian genius, give her the best t.i.tle to travel. In short, she is our citizen of the world by quite special diploma. And I am heartily glad that she has an opportunity of going abroad that pleases her.

Mr. Spring, a merchant of great moral merits, (and, as I am informed, an a.s.siduous reader of your books,) has grown rich, and resolves to see the world with his wife and son, and has wisely invited Miss Fuller to show it to him. Now, in the first place, I wish you to see Margaret when you are in special good humor, and have an hour of boundless leisure. And I entreat Jane Carlyle to abet and exalt and secure this satisfaction to me. I need not, and yet perhaps I need say, that M.F. is the safest of all possible persons who ever took pen in hand. Prince Metternich's closet not closer or half so honorable. In the next place, I should be glad if you can easily manage to show her the faces of Tennyson and of Browning. She has a sort of right to them both, not only because she likes their poetry, but because she has made their merits widely known among our young people.

And be it known to my friend Jane Carlyle, whom, if I cannot see, I delight to name, that her visitor is an immense favorite in the parlor, as well as in the library, in all good houses where she is known. And so I commend her to you.

Yours affectionately, R.W. Emerson

CXVI. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, 18 December, 1846

Dear Emerson,--This is the 18th of the month, and it is a frightful length of time, I know not how long, since I wrote to you,--sinner that I am! Truly we are in no case for paying debts at present, being all sick more or less, from the hard cold weather, and in a state of great temporary puddle but, as the adage says, "one should own debt, and crave days";--therefore accept a word from me, such as it may be.

I went, as usual, to the North Country in the Autumn; pa.s.sed some two extremely disconsolate months,--for all things distress a wretched thin-skinned creature like me,--in that old region, which is at once an Earth and a Hades to me, an unutterable place, now that I have become mostly a _ghost_ there! I saw Ireland too on my return, saw black potato-fields, a ragged noisy population, that has long in a headlong baleful manner followed the _Devil's_ leading, listened namely to bl.u.s.tering shallow- violent Impostors and Children of Darkness, saying, "Yes, we know _you,_ you are Children of Light!"--and so has fallen all out at elbows in body and in soul; and now having lost its _potatoes_ is come as it were to a crisis; all its windy nonsense cracking suddenly to pieces under its feet: a very pregnant crisis indeed! A country cast suddenly into the melting-pot,--say into the Medea's-Caldron; to be boiled into horrid _dissolution;_ whether into new _youth,_ into sound healthy life, or into eternal death and annihilation, one does not yet know! Daniel O'Connell stood bodily before me, in his green Mullaghmart Cap; haranguing his retinue of Dupables: certainly the most _sordid_ Humbug I have ever seen in this world; the emblem to me, he and his talk and the wors.h.i.+p and credence it found, of all the miseries that can befall a Nation. I also conversed with Young Ireland in a confidential manner; for Young Ireland, really meaning what it says, is worth a little talk: the Heroism and Patriotism of a new generation; welling fresh and new from the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of Nature; and already poisoned by O'Connellism and the _Old_ Irish atmosphere of bl.u.s.ter, falsity, fatuity, into one knows not what. Very sad to see. On the whole, no man ought, for any cause, to speak lies, or have anything to do with _lies;_ but either hold his tongue, or speak a bit of the truth: that is the meaning of a _tongue,_ people used to know!--Ireland was not the place to console my sorrows. I returned home very sad out of Ireland;--and indeed have remained one of the saddest, idlest, most useless of Adam's sons ever since; and do still remain so.

I care not to _write_ anything more,--so it seems to me at present. I am in my vacant interlunar cave (I suppose that is the truth);--and I ought to wrap my mantle round me, and lie, if dark, _silent_ also. But, alas, I have wasted almost all your poor sheet first!--

Miss Fuller came duly as you announced; was welcomed for your sake and her own. A high-soaring, clear, enthusiast soul; in whose speech there is much of all that one wants to find in speech. A sharp, subtle intellect too; and less of that sh.o.r.eless Asiatic dreaminess than I have sometimes met with in her writings. We liked one another very well, I think, and the Springs too were favorites. But, on the whole, it could not be concealed, least of all from the sharp female intellect, that this Carlyle was a dreadfully heterodox, not to say a dreadfully savage fellow, at heart; believing no syllable of all that Gospel of Fraternity, Benevolence, and _new_ Heaven-on-Earth, preached forth by all manner of "advanced" creatures, from George Sand to Elihu Burritt, in these days; that in fact the said Carlyle not only disbelieved all that, but treated it as poisonous cant,--_sweetness_ of sugar-of-lead,--a detestable _phosph.o.r.escence_ from the dead body of a Christianity, that would not admit itself to be dead, and lie buried with all its unspeakable putrescences, as a venerable dead one ought!--Surely detestable enough.--To all which Margaret listened with much good nature; though of course with sad reflections not a few.*--She is coming back to us, she promises. Her dialect is very vernacular,--extremely exotic in the London climate. If she do not gravitate too irresistibly towards that cla.s.s of New-Era people (which includes whatsoever we have of prurient, esurient, morbid, flimsy, and in fact pitiable and unprofitable, and is at a sad discount among men of sense), she may get into good tracks of inquiry and connection here, and be very useful to herself and others. I could not show her Alfred (he has been here since) nor Landor: but surely if I can I will,--that or a hundred times as much as that,--when she returns.--They tell me you are about collecting your Poems. Well, though I do not approve of rhyme at all, yet it is impossible Emerson in rhyme or prose can put down any thought that was in his heart but I should wish to get into mine. So let me have the Book as fast as may be. And do others like it if you will take circ.u.mbendibuses for sound's sake! And excuse the Critic who seems to you so unmusical; and say, It is the nature of beast! Adieu, dear Friend: write to me, write to me.

Yours ever, T. Carlyle

-------- * Miss Fullers impressions of Carlyle, much to this effect, may be found in the "Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli," Boston, 1852, Vol. II. pp. 184-190.

CXVII. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 31 January, 1847

My Dear Carlyle,--Your letter came with a blessing last week. I had already learned from Margaret Fuller, at Paris, that you had been very good and gentle to her;--brilliant and prevailing, of course, but, I inferred, had actually restrained the volleys and modulated the thunder, out of true courtesy and goodness of nature, which was worthy of all praise in a spoiled conqueror at this time of day. Especially, too, she expressed a true recognition and love of Jane Carlyle; and thus her visit proved a solid satisfaction; to me, also, who think that few people have so well earned their pleasures as she.

She wrote me a long letter; she has been very happy in England, and her time and strength fully employed. Her description of you and your discourse (which I read with lively curiosity also) was the best I have had on that subject.

I tried hard to write you by the December steamer, to tell you how forward was my book of Poems; but a little affair makes me much writing. I chanced to have three or four items of business to despatch, when the steamer was ready to go, and you escaped hearing of them. I am the trustee of Charles Lane, who came out here with Alcott and bought land, which, though sold, is not paid for.

Somebody or somebodies in Liverpool and Manchester* have proposed once or twice, with more or less specification, that I should come to those cities to lecture. And who knows but I may come one day? Steam is strong, and Liverpool is near. I should find my account in the strong inducement of a new audience to finish pieces which have lain waiting with little hope for months or years.