by that blotted Paper he has, but do the best you can for me,
consulting with him or not taking any counsel just as you see to
be fittest on the spot. And so Heaven prosper you, both in your
"aroused Yankee" state, and in all others;--and let us for the
present consider that we have enough about Books and Guineas. I
must add, however, that Fraser and I have yet made no bargain.
We found, on computing, that there would be five good
volumes, including _Teufelsdrockh._ For an edition of Seven
hundred and Fifty I demanded L50 a volume, and Fraser refused:
the poor man then fell dangerously ill, and there could not be a
word farther said on the subject; till very lately, when it
again became possible, but has not yet been put in practice. All
the world cries out, Why _do you_ publish with Fraser? "Because
my soul is sick of Booksellers, and of trade, and deception, and
'need and greed' altogether; and this poor Fraser, not worse
than the rest of them, has in some sort grown less hideous to me
by custom." I fancy, however, either Fraser will publish these
things before long; or some Samaritan here will take me to some
bolder brother of the trade that will. Great Samuel Johnson
assisted at the beginning of Bibliopoly; small Thomas Carlyle
assists at the ending of it: both are sorrowful seasons for a
man. For the rest, people here continue to receive that
_Revolution_ very much as you say they do _there:_ I am right
well quit of it; and the elderly gentlemen on both sides of the
water may take comfort, they will not soon have to suffer the
like again. But really England is wonderfully changed within
these ten years; the old gentlemen all shrunk into nooks, some
of them even voting with the young.--The American ill-printed Two
and-a-half-dollars Copy shall, for Emerson's sake, be welcomest
to me of all. Kennet will send it when it comes.
The _Oration_ did arrive, with my name on it, one snowy night in
January. It is off to Madeira; probably there now. I can
dispose of a score of copies to good advantage. Friend Sterling
has done the best of all his things in the current _Blackwood,_--
"Crystals from a Cavern,"--which see. He writes kind things of
you from Madeira, in expectation of the Speech. I will gratify
him with your message; he is to be here in May; better, we
hope, and in the way towards safety. Miss Martineau has given
you a luminous section in her new Book about America; you are
one of the American "Originals,"--the good Harriet!
And now I have but one thing to add and to repeat: Be quiet, be
quiet! The fire that is in one's own stomach is enough, without
foreign bellows to blow it ever and anon. My whole heart
shudders at the thrice-wretched self-combustion into which I see
all manner of poor paper-lanterns go up, the wind of "popularity"
puffing at them, and nothing left erelong but ashes and sooty
wreck. It is sad, most sad. I shun all such persons and
circles, as much as possible; and pray the gods to make me a
brick layer's hodbearer rather. O the "cabriolets, neatflies,"
and blue twaddlers of both sexes therein, that drive many a poor
Mrs. Rigmarole to the Devil!*--As for me, I continue doing as
nearly nothing as I can manage. I decline all invitations of
society that are declinable: a London rout is one of the maddest
things under the moon; a London dinner makes me sicker for a
week, and I say often, It is better to be even dull than to be
witty, better to be silent than to speak.
--------
* This sentence is a variation on one at the beginning of the
article on Scott.
--------
Curious: your Course of Lectures "on Human Culture" seems to be
on the very subject I am to discourse upon here in May coming;
but I am to call it "on the History of Literature," and _speak_
it, not write it. While you read this, I shall be in the
agonies! Ah me! often when I think of the matter, how my one
sole wish is to be left to hold my tongue, and by what bayonets
of Necessity clapt to my back I am driven into that Lecture-room,
and in what mood, and ordered to speak or die, I feel as if my
only utterance should be a flood of tears and blubbering! But
that, clearly, will not do. Then again I think it is perhaps
better so; who knows? At all events, we will try what is in
this Lecturing in London. If something, well; if nothing, why
also well. But I do want to get out of these coils for a tune.
My Brother is to be home again in May; if he go back to Italy,
if our Lecturing proved productive, why might we not all set off
thitherward for the winter coming? There is a dream to that
effect. It would suit my wife, too: she was alarmingly weak
this time twelvemonth; and I can only yet tell you that she is
stronger, not strong: she has not ventured out except at midday,
and rarely then, since Autumn last; she sits here patiently
waiting Summer, and charges me to send you her love.--America
also always lies in the background: I do believe, if I live
long, I shall get to Concord one day. Your wife must love me.
If the little Boy be a well-behaved fellow, he shall ride on my
back yet: if not, tell him I will have nothing to do with him,
the riotous little imp that he is. And so God bless you always,
my dear friend! Your affectionate,
--T. Carlyle
XXIII. Emerson to Carlyle*
Concord, 10 May, 1888
My Dear Friend,--Yesterday I had your letter of March. It
quickens my purpose (always all but ripe) to write to you. If it
had come earlier I should have been confirmed in my original
purpose of publishing _Select Miscellanies of T.C._ As it is, we
are far on in the printing of the first two volumes (to make 900
pages) of the papers as they stand in your list. And now I find
we shall only get as far as the seventeenth or eighteenth
article. I regret it, because this book will not embrace those
papers I chiefly desire to provide people with, and it may be
some time, in these years of bankruptcy and famine, before we
shall think it prudent to publish two volumes more. But Loring
is a good man, and thinks that many desire to see the sources of
Nile. I, for my part, fancy that to meet the taste of the
readers we should publish _from the last_ backwards, beginning
with the paper on Scott, which has had the best reception ever
known. Carlyleism is becoming so fashionable that the most
austere Seniors are glad to qualify their reprobation by
applauding this review. I have agreed with the bookseller
publishing the _Miscellanies_ that he is to guarantee to you one
dollar on every copy he sells; and you are to have the total
profit on every copy subscribed for. The retail price [is] to be
$2.50. The cost of the work is not yet precisely ascertained.
The work will probably appear in six or seven weeks. We print
one thousand copies. So whenever it is sold you shall have one
thousand dollars.
----------
* Printed in the _Athenaeum,_ July 8, 1882.
----------
The _French Revolution_ continues to find friends and purchasers.
It has gone to New Orleans, to Nashville, to Vicksburg. I have
not been in Boston lately, but have determined that nearly or
quite eight hundred copies should be gone. On the 1st of July I
shall make up accounts with the booksellers, and I hope to make
you the most favorable returns. I shall use the advice of
Barnard, Adams, & Co. in regard to remittances.
When you publish your next book I think you must send it out to
me in sheets, and let us print it here contemporaneously with the
English edition. The _eclat_ of so new a book would help the
sale very much.
But a better device would be, that you should embark in the
"Victoria" steamer, and come in a fortnight to New York, and in
twenty-four hours more to Concord. Your study arm-chair,
fireplace, and bed, long vacant, auguring expect you. Then you
shall revise your proofs and dictate wit and learning to the New
World. Think of it in good earnest. In aid of your friendliest
purpose, I will set down some of the facts. I occupy, or
_improve,_ as we Yankees say, two acres only of God's earth; on
which is my house, my kitchen-garden, my orchard of thirty young
trees, my empty barn. My house is now a very good one for
comfort, and abounding in room. Besides my house, I have, I
believe, $22,000, whose income in ordinary years is six percent.
I have no other tithe or glebe except the income of my winter
lectures, which was last winter $800. Well, with this income,
here at home, I am a rich man. I stay at home and go
abroad at my own instance. I have food, warmth, leisure, books,
friends. Go away from home, I am rich no longer. I never have a
dollar to spend on a fancy. As no wise man, I suppose, ever was
rich in the sense of _freedom to spend,_ because of the
inundation of claims, so neither am I, who am not wise. But at
home, I am rich,--rich enough for ten brothers. My wife Lidian
is an incarnation of Christianity,--I call her Asia,--and keeps
my philosophy from Antinomianism; my mother, whitest, mildest,
most conservative of ladies, whose only exception to her
universal preference for old things is her son; my boy, a piece
of love and sunshine, well worth my watching from morning to
night;--these, and three domestic women, who cook and sew and run
for us, make all my household. Here I sit and read and write,
with very little system, and, as far as regards composition, with
the most fragmentary result: paragraphs incompressible, each
sentence an infinitely repellent particle.
In summer, with the aid of a neighbor, I manage my garden; and a
week ago I set out on the west side of my house forty young pine
trees to protect me or my son from the wind of January. The
ornament of the place is the occasional presence of some ten or
twelve persons, good and wise, who visit us in the course of the
year.--But my story is too long already. God grant that you will
come and bring that blessed wife, whose protracted illness we
heartily grieve to learn, and whom a voyage and my wife's and my
mother's nursing would in less than a twelvemonth restore to
blooming health. My wife sends to her this message: "Come, and
I will be to you a sister." What have you to do with Italy?
Your genius tendeth to the New, to the West. Come and live with
me a year, and if you do not like New England well enough to
stay, one of these years (when the _History_ has passed its ten
editions, and been translated into as many languages) I will come
and dwell with you.
I gladly hear what you say of Sterling. I am foolish enough to
be delighted with being an object of kindness to a man I have
never seen, and who has not seen me. I have not yet got the
_Blackwood_ for March, which I long to see, but the other three
papers I have read with great satisfaction. They lie here on my
table. But he must get well.
As to Miss Martineau, I know not well what to say. Meaning to do
me a signal kindness (and a kindness quite out of all measure of
justice) she does me a great annoyance,--to take away from me my
privacy and thrust me before my time (if ever there be a time)
into the arena of the gladiators to be stared at. I was ashamed
to read, and am ashamed to remember. Yet, as you see her, I
would not be wanting in gratitude to a gifted and generous lady
who so liberally transfigures our demerits. So you shall tell
her, if you please, that I read all her book with pleasure but
that part, and if ever I shall travel West or South, I think she
has furnished me with the eyes. Farewell, dear wise man. I
think your poverty honorable above the common brightness of that
thorn-crown of the great. It earns you the love of men and the
praise of a thousand years. Yet I hope the angelical Beldame,
all-helping, all-hated, has given you her last lessons, and,
finding you so striding a proficient, will dismiss you to a
hundred editions and the adoration of the booksellers.
--R.W. Emerson
I have never heard from Rich, who, you wrote, had sent his
account to me. Let him direct to me at Concord.
A young engineer in Cambridge, by name McKean,* volunteers his
services in correcting the proofs of the _Miscellanies,_--and he
has your errata,--for the love of the reading. Shall we have
anthracite coal or wood in your chamber? My old mother is glad
you are coming.
-----------
* The late Mr. Henry S. McKean, a son of Professor McKean, and a
graduate of Harvard College in 1828.
-----------
XXIV. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, London, 15 June, 1838
My Dear Emerson,--Our correspondence has fallen into a raveled
state; which would doubtless clear itself could I afford to wait
for your next Letter, probably tumbling over the Atlantic brine
about this very moment: but I cannot afford to wait; I must
write straightway. Your answer to this will bring matters round
again. I have had two irregular Notes of your writing, or
perhaps three; two dated March, one by Mr. Bancroft's Parcel,--
bringing Twelve _Orations_ withal; then some ten days later,
just in this very time, another Note by Mr. Sumner, whom I have
not yet succeeded in seeing, though I have attempted it, and hope
soon to do it. The Letter he forwarded me from Paris was
acknowledged already, I think. And now if the Atlantic will but
float me in safe that other promised Letter!
I got your American _French Revolution_ a good while ago. It
seems to me a very pretty Book indeed, wonderfully so for the
money; neither does it seem what we can call _incorrectly_
printed so far as I have seen; compared with the last _Sartor_
it is correctness itself. Many thanks to you, my Friend, and
much good may it do us all! Should there be any more reprinting,
I will request you to rectify at least the three following
errors, copied out of the English text indeed; nay, mark them in
your own New-English copy, whether there be reprinting or not:
Vol. I. p. 81, last paragraph, _for_ September _read_ August;
Vol. II. p. 344, first line, _for_ book of prayer _read_ look of
prayer; p. 357, _for_ blank _read_ black (2d paragraph, "all
black "). And so _basta._ And let us be well content about this
F.R. on both sides of the water, yours as well as mine.
"Too many cooks"! the Proverb says: it is pity if this new
apparition of a Mr. Loring should spoil the broth. But I
calculate you will adjust it well and smoothly between you, some
way or other. How you shall adjust it, or have adjusted it, is
what I am practically anxious now to learn. For you are to
understand that our English Edition has come to depend partly on
yours. After long higgling with the foolish Fraser, I have
quitted him, quite quietly, and given "Saunders and Ottley,
Conduit Street," the privilege of printing a small edition of
_Teufelsdrockh_ (Five Hundred copies), with a prospect of the
"Miscellaneous Writings" soon following. Saunders and Ottley are
at least more reputable persons, they are useful to me also in
the business of Lecturing. _Teufelsdrockh_ is at Press, to be
out very soon; I will send you a correct copy, the only
one in America I fancy. The enterprise here too is on the
"half-profits" plan, which I compute generally to mean equal
partition of the oyster-shells and a net result of zero. But the
thing will be economically useful to me otherwise; as a
publication of the "Miscellaneous" also would be; which latter,
however, I confess myself extremely unwilling to undertake the
trouble of for _nothing._ To me they are grown or fast growing
_obsolete,_ these Miscellanies, for most part; if money lie not
in them, what does lie for me? Now it strikes me you will infallibly
edit these things, at least as well as I, and are doing it at any
rate; your printing too would seem to be cheaper than ours: I
said to Saunders and Ottley, Why not have two hundred or three
hundred of this American Edition struck off with "London:
Saunders and Ottley, Conduit Street," on the title-page, and sent
over hither in sheets at what price they have cost my friends
yonder? Saunders of course threw cold water on this project, but
was obliged to admit that there would be some profit in it, and
that for me it would be far easier. The grand profit for me is
that people would understand better what I mean, and come better
about me if I lectured again, which seems the only way of getting
any wages at all for me here at present. Pray meditate my
project, if it be not already too late, hear what your Booksellers
say about it, and understand that I will not in any case set to
printing till I hear from you in answer to this.
How my sheet is filling with dull talk about mere economics! I
must still add that the _Lecturing_ I talked of, last time, is
verily over now; and well over. The superfine people listened
to the rough utterance with patience, with favor, increasing to
the last. I sent you a Newspaper once, to indicate that it was
in progress. I know not yet what the money result is; but I
suppose it will enable us to exist here thriftily another year;
not without hope of at worst doing the like again when the time
comes. It is a great novelty in my lot; felt as a very
considerable blessing; and really it has arrived, if it have
arrived, in _due_ time, for I had begun to get quite impatient of
the other method. Poverty and Youth may do; Poverty and Age go
badly together.--For the rest, I feel fretted to fiddle-strings;
my head and heart all heated, sick,--ah me! The question as ever
is: Rest. But then where? My Brother invites us to come to
Rome for the winter; my poor sick Wife might perhaps profit by
it; as for me, Natty Leatherstocking's lodge in the Western
Wood, I think, were welcomer still. I have a great mind, too, to
run off and see my Mother, by the new railways. What we shall
do, whether not stay quietly here, must remain uncertain for a
week or two. Write you always hither, till you hear otherwise.
The _Orations_ were right welcome; my _Madeira_ one, returned
thence with Sterling, was circulating over the West of England.
Sterling and Harriet stretched out the right hand with wreathed
smiles. I have read, a second or third time. Robert Southey has
got a copy, for his own behoof and that of _Lake_land: if he
keep his word as to _me,_ he may do as much for you, or more.
Copies are at Cambridge; among the Oxonians too; I have with
stingy discretion distributed all my copies but two. Old Rogers,
a grim old Dilettante, full of sardonic sense, was heard saying,
"It is German Poetry given out in American Prose." Friend
Emerson ought to be content;--and has now above all things, as I
said, to _be in no haste._ Slow fire does make sweet malt: how
true, how true! Also his next work ought to be a _concrete_
thing; not _theory_ any longer, but _deed._ Let him "live it,"
as he says; that is the way to come to "painting of it."
Geometry and the art of Design being once well over, take the
brush, and _andar con Dios!_
Mrs. Child has sent me a Book, _Philothea,_ and a most
magnanimous epistle. I have answered as I could. The Book is
beautiful, but of a _hectic_ beauty; to me not pleasant, even
fatal looking. Such things grow not in the ground, on Mother
Earth's honest bosom, but in hothouses,--Sentimental-Calvinist
fire traceable underneath! Bancroft also is of the hothouse
partly: I have a Note to send him by Sumner; do you thank him
meanwhile, and say nothing about _hothouses!_ But, on the whole,
men ought in New England, too to "swallow their formulas";*
there is no freedom till then: yet hitherto I find only one man
there who seems fairly on the way towards that, or arrived at
that. Good speed to _him._ I had to send my Wife's love: she
is not dangerously ill; but always feeble, and has to _struggle_
to keep erect; the summer always improves her, and this summer
too. Adieu, dear Friend; may Good always be with you and yours.
--T. Carlyle
-----------
* This was the saying of the old Marquis de Mirabeau concerning
his son, _Il a hume toutes les formules,_ and is used as a text
by Carlyle in his article on Mirabeau. "Of inexpressible
advantage is it that a man have 'an eye instead of a pair of
spectacles merely'; that, seeing through the formulas of things
and even 'making away' with many a formula, he see into the thing
itself, and so know it and be master of it!"
----------
XXV. Emerson to Carlyle
Boston, 30 July, 1888
My Dear Sir,--I am in town today to get what money the booksellers
will relinquish from their faithful gripe, and have succeeded now
in obtaining a first instalment, however small. I enclose to you
a bill of exchange for fifty pounds sterling, which costs here
exactly $242.22, the rate of exchange being nine percent. I
shall not today trouble you with any account, for my letter
must be quickly ready to go by the steam-packet. An exact
account has been rendered to me, which, though its present
balance in our favor is less than I expected, yet, as far as I
understand it, agrees well with all that has been promised: at
least the balance in our favor when the edition is sold, which
the booksellers assure me will assuredly be done within a year
from the publication, must be seven hundred and sixty dollars,
and what more Heaven and the subscribers may grant. I shall
follow this letter and bill by a duplicate of the bill in the
next packet.
