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 ships. 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 God,
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 passed 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 gushing 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 scrap 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 worship 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 class 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 God'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: God 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
platitude" 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 God 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 God'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
God speed you well! My space 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 assured 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 Massachusetts
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 space and circumstance;
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 noble.
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 Parnassus but only in friendship. 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
document, it was strange how the hopefulest ideal dwindled away
to a dwarfish actual. But you may be assured I shall on this
occasion summon to the bargain all the Yankee in my constitution,
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 fashioned,
has to fashion 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 English!
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 Bass'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
God, 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 God'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 god
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
