borrowed my copy of your Dartmouth business, and bound himself
over to return with it soon. Some approve of that here, some
condemn: my Wife and another lady call it better even than the
former, I not so good. And now the Heterodox, the Heterodox,
where is that? Adieu, my dear Friend. Commend me to the Concord
Household; to the little Boy, to his Grandmother, and Mother,
and Father; we must all meet some day,--or _some no-day_ then
(as it shall please God)! My Wife heartily greets you all.
Ever yours,
T. Carlyle
I sent your book, message, and address to Sterling; he is in
Florence or Rome. Read the article _Simonides_ by him in the
_London and Westminster_--brilliant prose, translations--wooden?
His signature is L (Pounds Sterling!).--_Now_ you are to write
_soon?_ I always forgot to tell you, there came long since two
packages evidently in your hand, marked "One printed sheet," and
"one Newspaper," for which the Postman demanded about Fifteen
shillings: _rejected._ After considerable correspondence the
Newspaper was again offered me at _ten pence;_ the _sheet_
unattainable altogether: "No," even at tenpence. The fact is,
it was wrong wrapped, that Newspaper. Leave it open at the ends,
and try me again, once; I think it will come almost gratis.
Steam and Iron are making all the Planet into one Village.--A Mr.
Dwight wrote to me about the dedicating of some German
translations: _Yes._ What are they or he?*--Your _Sartor_ is
off through Kennet. Could you send me two copies of the American
_Life of Schiller,_ if the thing is fit for making a present of,
and easy to be got? If not, do not mind it at all.--Addio!
-------------
* Mr. John S. Dwight, whose volume of _Select Minor Poems from
the German of Goethe and Schiller,_ published in 1839, was
dedicated to Carlyle. It was the third volume of _Specimens of
Foreign Standard Literature, edited by George Ripley. Beside Mr.
Dwight's own excellent versions, it contained translations by Mr.
Bancroft, Dr. Hedge, Dr. Frothingham, and others. For many years
Mr. Dwight rendered a notable public service as the editor of
_Dwight's Journal of Music,_--a publication which did more than
any other to raise and to maintain high the standard of musical
taste and culture in America.
---------
XXXII. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 13 January, 1839
My Dear Friend,--I am not now in any Condition to write a letter,
having neither the facts from the booksellers which you would
know touching our future plans, nor yet a satisfactory account
balanced and settled of our past dealings; and lastly, no time
to write what I would say,--as my poor lectures are in full
course, and absorb all my wits; but as the "Royal William" will
not wait, and as I have a hundred pounds to send on account of
the sales of the _French Revolution,_ I must steal a few minutes
to send my salutation. I have received all your four good
letters: and you are a good and generous man to write so many.
Two came on the 2d and 3d of January, and the last on the 9th.
If the bookselling Munroe had answered me yesterday, as he ought,
I should be able to satisfy you as to the time when to expect our
cargo of _Miscellanies._ The third and fourth volumes are now
printing: 't is a fortnight since we began. You shall have two
hundred and fifty copies,--I am not quite sure you can have
more,--bound, and _entitled,_ and directed as you desire, at
least according to the best ability of our printer as far as the
typography is concerned, and we will speed the work as fast as we
can; but as we have but a single copy of _Fraser's Magazine_--we
do not get on rapidly. The _French Revolution_ was all sold more
than a month since. We should be glad of more copies, but the
bookseller thinks not of enough copies to justify a new edition
yet. I should not be surprised, however, to see that some bold
brother of the trade had undertaken it. Now, what does your
question point at in reference to your new edition, asking "if we
want more"? Could you send us out a part of your edition at
American prices, and at the same time to your advantage? I wish
I knew the precise answer to this question, then perhaps I could
keep all pirates out of our bay.
I shall convey in two days your message to Stearns Wheeler, who
is now busy in correcting the new volumes. He is now Greek Tutor
in Harvard College.*--Kindest thanks to Jane Carlyle for her
generous remembrances, which I will study to deserve. Has the
heterodoxy arrived in Chelsea, and quite destroyed us even in the
charity of our friend? I am sorry to have worried you so often
about the summer letter. Now am I your debtor four times. The
parish commotion, too, has long ago subsided here, and my course
of Lectures on "Human Life" finds a full attendance. I wait for
the coming of the _Westminster,_ which has not quite yet
arrived here, though I have seen the London advertisement. It
sounds prosperously in my ear what you say of Dr. Carlyle's
appointments. I was once very near the man in Rome, but did not
see him. I will atone as soon as I can for this truncated
epistle. You must answer it immediately, so far as to
acknowledge the receipt of the enclosed bill of exchange, and
soon I will send you the long promised _account_ of the _French
Revolution,_ and also such moral account of the same as is
over due.
Yours affectionately,
R.W. Emerson
---------
* This promising young scholar edited with English notes the
first American edition of Herodotus. He went to Europe to pursue
his studies, and died, greatly regretted, at Rome, of a fever,
in 1848.
---------
XXXIII. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, London, 8 February, 1859
My Dear Friend,--Your welcome little Letter, with the astonishing
inclosure, arrived safe four days ago; right welcome, as all
your Letters are, and bringing as these usually do the best news
I get here. The miraculous draught of Paper I have just sent to
a sure hand in Liverpool, there to lie till in due time it have
ripened into a crop of a hundred gold sovereigns! On this
subject, which gives room for so many thoughts, there is little
that can be said, that were not an impertinence more or less.
The matter grows serious to me, enjoins me to be silent and
reflect. I will say, at any rate, there never came money into my
hands I was so proud of; the promise of a blessing looks from
the face of it; nay, it _will_ be _twice_ blessed. So I will
ejaculate, with the Arabs, _Allah akbar!_ and walk silent by the
shore of the many-sounding Babel-tumult, meditating on much.
Thanks to the mysterious all-bounteous Guide of men, and to you
my true Brother, far over the sea!--For the rest, I showed Fraser
this Nehemiah document, and said I hoped he would blush very
deep;--which indeed the poor creature did, till I was absolutely
sorry for him.
But now first as to this question, What I mean? You must know
poor Fraser, a punctual but most pusillanimous mortal, has been
talking louder and louder lately of a "second edition" here;
whereupon, as labor-wages are not higher here than with you, and
printing-work, if well bargained for, ought to be about the same
price, it struck me that, as in the case of the _Miscellanies,_
so here inversely the supply of both the New and the Old England
might be profitably combined. Whether aught can come of this,
now that it is got close upon us, I yet know not. Fraser has
only seventy-five copies left; but when these will be done his
prophecy comprehends not,--"surely within the year"! For the
present I have set him to ascertain, and will otherwise ascertain
for myself, what the exact cost of _stereotyping_ the Book were,
in the same letter and style as yours; it is not so much more
than printing, they tell me: I should then have done with it
forever and a day. You on your side, and we on ours, might have
as many copies as were wanted for all time coming. This is, in
these very days, under inquisition; but there are many points to
be settled before the issue.
I have not yet succeeded in finding a Bookseller of any fitness,
but am waiting for one always. And even had I found such a one,
I mean an energetic seller that would sell on other terms than
forty percent for his trouble, it were still a question whether
one ought to venture on such a speculation: "quitting the old
highways," as I say, "in indignation at the excessive tolls, with
hope that you will arrive cheaper in the steeple-chase way!" It
is clear, however, that said highways are of the corduroy sort,
said tolls an anomaly that must be remedied soon; and also that
in all England there is no Book in a likelier case to adventure
it with than this same,--which did not sell at all for two
months, as I hear, which all Booksellers got terrified for, and
which has crept along mainly by its own gravitation ever since.
We will consider well, we shall see. You can understand that
such a thing, for your market too, is in agitation; if any
pirate step in before us in the meanwhile, we cannot help it.
Thanks again for your swift attention to the _Miscellanies;_
poor Fraser is in great haste to see them; hoping for his forty-
per-cent division of the spoil. If you have not yet got to the
very end with your printing, I will add a few errata; if they
come too late, never mind; they are of small moment....
This foggy Babylon tumbles along as it was wont; and, as for my
particular case, uses me not worse, but better, than of old.
Nay, there are many in it that have a real friendliness for me.
For example, the other night, a massive portmanteau of Books,
sent according to my written list, from the Cambridge University
Library, from certain friends there whom I have never seen; a
gratifying arrival. For we have no Library here, from which we
can borrow books home; and are only in these weeks striving to
get one:* think of that! The worst is the sore tear and wear of
this huge roaring Niagara of things on such a poor excitable set
of nerves as mine. The velocity of all things, of the very word
you hear on the streets, is at railway rate: joy itself is
unenjoyable, to be avoided like pain; there is no wish one has
so pressing as for quiet. Ah me! I often swear I will be buried
at least in free breezy Scotland, out of this insane hubbub,
where Fate tethers me in life! If Fate always tether me;--but if
ever the smallest competence of worldly means be mine, I will fly
this whirlpool as I would the Lake of _Malebolge,_ and only visit
it now and then! Yet perhaps it is the proper place after all,
seeing all places are improper: who knows? Meanwhile I lead a
most dyspeptic, solitary, self-shrouded life: consuming, if
possible in silence, my considerable daily allotment of pain;
glad when any strength is left in me for working, which is the
only use I can see in myself,--too rare a case of late. The
ground of my existence is black as Death; too black, when all
void too but at times there paint themselves on it pictures of
gold and rainbow and lightning; all the brighter for the black
ground, I suppose. Withal I am very much of a fool.--Some people
will have me write on _Cromwell,_ which I have been talking
about. I do read on that and English subjects, finding that I
know nothing and that nobody knows anything of that: but whether
anything will come of it remains to be seen. Mill, the
_Westminster_ friend, is gone in bad health to the Continent, and
has left a rude Aberdeen Longear, a great admirer of mine too,
with whom I conjecture I cannot act at all: so good-bye to that.
The wisest of all, I do believe, were that I bought my nag
_Yankee_ and set to galloping about the elevated places here! A
certain Mr. Coolidge,** a Boston man of clear iron visage and
character, came down to me the other day with Sumner; he left
a newspaper fragment, containing "the Socinian Pope's denunciation
of Emerson."
---------
* The beginning of the London Library, a most useful institution,
from which books may be borrowed. It served Carlyle well in
later years, and for a long time he was President of it.
** The late Mr. Joseph Coolidge.
---------
The thing denounced had not then arrived, though often asked for
at Kennet's; it did not arrive till yesterday, but had lain buried
in bales of I know not what. We have read it only once, and are
not yet at the bottom of it. Meanwhile, as I judge, the Socinian
"tempest in a washbowl" is all according to nature, and will be
profitable to you, not hurtful. A man is called to let his light
shine before men; but he ought to understand better and better
what medium it is through, what retinas it falls on: wherefore
look _there._ I find in this, as in the two other Speeches, that
noblest self-assertion, and believing originality, which is like
sacred fire, the _beginning_ of whatsoever is to flame and work;
and for young men especially one sees not what could be more
vivifying. Speak, therefore, while you feel called to do it;
and when you feel called. But for yourself, my friend, I
prophesy it will not do always: a faculty is in you for a _sort_
of speech which is itself _action,_ an artistic sort. You _tell_
us with piercing emphasis that man's soul is great; _show_ us a
great soul of a man, in some work symbolic of such: this is the
seal of such a message, and you will feel by and by that you are
called to this. I long to see some concrete Thing, some Event,
Man's Life, American Forest, or piece of Creation, which this
Emerson loves and wonders at, well _Emersonized,_ depictured by
Emerson, filled with the life of Emerson, and cast forth from him
then to live by itself. If these Orations balk me of this, how
profitable soever they be for others. I will not love them.--And
yet, what am I saying? How do I know what is good for _you,_
what authentically makes your own heart glad to work in it? I
speak from _without,_ the friendliest voice must speak from
without; and a man's ultimate monition comes only from _within._
Forgive me, and love me, and write soon. _A Dieu!_
--T. Carlyle
My Wife, very proud of your salutation, sends a sick return of
greeting. After a winter of unusual strength, she took cold the
other day, and coughs again; though she will not call it serious
yet. One likes none of these things. She has a brisk heart and
a stout, but too weak a frame for this rough life of mine. I
will not get sad about it.
One of the strangest things about these New England Orations is a
fact I have heard, but not yet seen, that a certain W. Gladstone,
an Oxford crack Scholar, Tory M.P., and devout Churchman of great
talent and hope, has contrived to insert a piece of you (_first_
Oration it must be) in a work of his on _Church and State,_ which
makes some figure at present! I know him for a solid, serious,
silent-minded man; but how with his Coleridge Shovel-Hattism he
has contrived to relate himself to _you,_ there is the mystery.
True men of all creeds, it _would_ seem, are Brothers.
To write soon!
XXXIV. Emerson to Carlyle*
Concord, 15 March, 1839
My Dear Friend,--I will spare you my apologies for not writing,
they are so many. You have been very generous, I very promising
and dilatory. I desired to send you an Account of the sales of
the _History,_ thinking that the details might be more
intelligible to you than to me, and might give you some insight
into literary and social, as well as bibliopolical relations.
But many details of this account will not yet settle themselves
into sure facts, but do dance and mystify me as one green in
ledgers. Bookseller says nine hundred and ninety-one copies came
from Binder, nine remaining imperfect, and so not bound. But in
all my reckonings of the particulars of distribution I make
either more or less than nine hundred and ninety-one copies. And
some of my accounts are with private individuals at a distance,
and they have their uncertainties and misrememberings also. But
the facts will soon show themselves, and I count confidently on a
small balance against the world to your credit.
----------
* This letter appeared in the _Athenaeum,_ July 22, 1882.
----------
The _Miscellanies_ go forward too slowly, at about the rate of
seventy-two pages a week, as I understand. Of the _Fraser_
articles and of some others we have but a single copy, (such are
the tough limits of some English immortalities and editorial
renowns,) but we expect the end of the printing in six weeks.
The first two volumes, with title-pages, are gone to the binder--
two hundred and sixty copies--with strait directions; and I
presume will go to sea very soon. We shall send the last two
volumes by a later ship. You will pay nothing for the books
we send except freight. We shall deduct the cost of the
books from the credit side of your account here. We print
of the second series twelve hundred and fifty copies, with the
intention of printing a second edition of the first series of
five hundred, if we see fit hereafter to supply the place of the
emigrating portion of the first. You express some surprise at
the cheapness of our work. The publishers, I believe, generally
get more profits. They grumbled a little at the face of the
account on the 1st of January; so in the new contract for the
new volumes I have allowed them nine cents more on each copy sold
by them. So that you should receive ninety-one cents on a copy
instead of one dollar. When the two hundred and fifty copies of
our first two volumes are gone to you, I think they will have but
about one hundred copies more to sell.
Your books are read. I hear, I think, more gratitude expressed
for the _Miscellanies_ than for the _History._ Young men at all
our colleges study them in closets, and the Copernican is
eradicating the Ptolemaic lore. I have frequent and cordial
testimonies to the good working of the leaven, and continual
inquiry whether the man will come hither. _Speriamo._
I was a fool to tell you once you must not come if I did tell you
so. I knew better at the time, and did steadily believe, as far
as I was concerned, that no polemical mud, however much was
thrown, could by any possibility stick to me; for I was purely
an observer; had not the smallest personal or _partial_
interest; and merely spoke to the question as a historian; and
I knew whoever could see me must see that. But, at the moment,
the little pamphlet made much stir and excitement in the
newspapers; and the whole thousand copies were bought up. The
ill wind has blown over. I advertised, as usual, my winter
course of Lectures, and it prospered very well. Ten Lectures:
I. Doctrine of the Soul; II. Home; III. The School; IV. Love;
V. Genius; VI. The Protest; VII. Tragedy; VIII. Comedy; IX.
Duty; X. Demonology. I designed to add two more, but my lungs
played me false with unseasonable inflammation, so I discoursed
no more on "Human Life." Now I am well again.--But, as I said,
as I could not hurt myself, it was foolish to flatter myself that
I could mix your cause with mine and hurt you. Nothing is more
certain than that you shall have all our ears, whenever you wish
for them, and free from that partial position which I deprecated.
Yet I cannot regret my letter, which procured me so affectionate
and magnanimous a reply.
Thanks, too, for your friendliest invitation. But I have a new
reason why I should not come to England,--a blessed babe, named
Ellen, almost three weeks old,--a little, fair, soft lump of
contented humanity, incessantly sleeping, and with an air of
incurious security that says she has come to stay, has come to be
loved, which has nothing mean, and quite piques me.
Yet how gladly should I be near you for a time. The months and
years make me more desirous of an unlimited conversation with
you; and one day, I think, the God will grant it, after whatever
way is best. I am lately taken with _The Onyx Ring,_ which
seemed to me full of knowledge, and good, bold, true drawing.
Very saucy, was it not? in John Sterling to paint Collins; and
what intrepid iconoclasm in this new Alcibiades to break in among
your Lares and disfigure your sacred Hermes himself in
Walsingham.* To me, a profane man, it was good sport to see the
Olympic lover of Frederica, Lili, and so forth, lampooned. And
by Alcibiades too, over whom the wrath of Pericles must pause and
brood ere it falls. I delight in this Sterling, but now that I
know him better I shall no longer expect him to write to me. I
wish I could talk to you on the grave questions, graver than all
literature, which the trifles of each day open. Our doing seems
to be a gaudy screen or popinjay to divert the eye from our
nondoing. I wish, too, you could know my friends here. A man
named Bronson Alcott is a majestic soul, with whom conversation
is possible. He is capable of truth, and gives me the same glad
astonishment that he should exist which the world does.
--------
* Collins and Walsingham, two characters in _The Onyx Ring,_ are
partly drawn, not very felicitously, from Carlyle and Goethe. In
his _Life of Sterling,_ Carlyle says of the story: "A tale still
worth reading, in which, among the imaginary characters, various
friends of Sterling's are shadowed forth not always in the truest
