manner." It is reprinted in the second volume of Sterling's
Essays and Tales, edited by Julius Hare.
---------
As I hear not yet of your reception of the bill of exchange,
which went by the "Royal William" in January, I enclose the
duplicate. And now all success to the Lectures of April or May!
A new Kingdom with new extravagances of power and splendor I
know. Unless you can keep your own secret better in _Rahel,_
&c., you must not give it me to keep. The London _Sartor_
arrived in my hands March 5th, dated the 15th of November, so
long is the way from Kennet to Little & Co. The book is welcome,
and awakens a sort of nepotism in me,--my brother's child.
--R.W. Emerson
I rejoice in the good accounts you give me of your household; in
your wife's health; in your brother's position. My wife wishes
to be affectionately remembered to you and yours. And the lady
must continue to love her _old_ Transatlantic friend.
XXXV. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 19 March, 1839
My Dear Friend,--Only last Saturday I despatched a letter to you
containing a duplicate of the bill of exchange sent in January,
and all the facts I knew of our books; and now comes to me a
note from Wheeler, at Cambridge, saying that the printers, on
reckoning up their amount of copy, find that nowise can they make
450 pages per volume, as they have promised, for these two last
of the _Miscellanies._ They end the third volume with page 390,
and they have not but 350 or less pages for the fourth. They
ask, What shall be done? Nothing is known to me but to give them
_Rahel,_ though I grudge it, for I vastly prefer to end with
_Scott._ _Rahel,_ I fancy, cost you no night and no morning,
but was writ in that gentle after-dinner hour so friendly to good
digestion. Stearns Wheeler dreams that it is possible to draw at
this eleventh hour some possible manuscript out of the unedited
treasures of Teufelsdrockh's cabinets. If the manuscripts were
ready, all fairly copied out by foreseeing scribes in your
sanctuary at Chelsea, the good goblin of steam would--with the
least waiting, perhaps a few days--bring the packet to our types
in time. I have little hope, almost none, from a sally so
desperate on possible portfolios; but neither will I be wanting
to my sanguine co-editor, your good friend. So I told him I
would give you as instant notice as Mr. Rogers at the Merchants'
Exchange Bar can contrive, and tell you plainly that we shall
proceed to print _Rahel_ when we come so far on; and with that
paper end; unless we shall receive some contrary word from you.
And if we can obtain any manuscript from you before we have
actually bound our book, we will cancel our last sheets and
insert it. And so may the friendly Heaven grant a speedy passage
to my letter and to yours! I fear the possibility of our success
is still further reduced by the season of the year, as the
Lectures must shortly be on foot. Well, the best speed to them
also. When I think of you as speaking and not writing them, I
remember Luther's words, "He that can speak well, the same is
a man."
I hope you liked John Dwight's translations of Goethe, and his
notes. He is a good, susceptible, yearning soul, not so apt to
create as to receive with the freest allowance, but I like his
books very much.
Do think to say in a letter whether you received _from me_ a copy
of our edition of your _French Revolution._ I ordered a copy
sent to you,--probably wrote your name in it,--but it does not
appear in the bookseller's account. Farewell.
--R.W. Emerson
XXXVI. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, London, 13 April, 1839
My Dear Emerson,--Has anything gone wrong with you? How is it
that you do not write to me? These three or four weeks, I know
not whether _duly_ or not so long, I have been in daily hope of
some sign from you; but none comes; not even a Newspaper,--open
at the ends. The German Translator, Mr. Dwight, mentioned, at
the end of a Letter I had not long ago, that you had given a
brilliant course of Lectures at Boston, but had been obliged to
_intermit it on account of illness._ Bad news indeed, that
latter clause; at the same time, it was thrown in so cursorily I
would not let myself be much alarmed; and since that, various
New England friends have assured me here that there was nothing
of great moment in it, that the business was all well over now,
and you safe at Concord again. Yet how is it that I do not
hear? I will tell you my guess is that those Boston Carlylean
_Miscellanies_ are to blame. The Printer is slack and lazy as
Printers are; and you do not wish to write till you can send
some news of him? I will hope and believe that only this is it,
till I hear worse.
I sent you a Dumfries Newspaper the other week, for a sign of my
existence and anxiety. A certain Mr. Ellis of Boston is this day
packing up a very small memorial of me to your Wife; a poor
Print rolled about a bit of wood: let her receive it graciously
in defect of better. It comes under your address. Nay, properly
it is my Wife's memorial to your Wife. It is to be hung up in
the Concord drawing-room. The two Households, divided by wide
seas, are to understand always that they are united nevertheless.
My special cause for writing this day rather than another is the
old story, book business. You have brought that upon yourself,
my friend; and must do the best you can with it. After all, why
should not Letters be on business too? Many a kind thought,
uniting man with man, in gratitude and helpfulness, is founded on
business. The speaker at Dartmouth College seems to think it
ought to be so. Nor do I dissent.--But the case is this, Fraser
and I are just about bargaining for a second edition of the
_Revolution._ He will print fifteen hundred for the English
market, in a somewhat closer style, and sell them here at twenty-
four shillings a copy. His first edition is all gone but some
handful; and the man is in haste, and has taken into a mood of
hope,--for he is weak and aguish, alternating from hot to cold;
otherwise, I find, a very accurate creature, and deals in his
unjust trade as justly as any other will. He has settled with
me; his half-profits amount to some L130, which by charging me
for every presentation copy he cuts down to somewhere about L110;
_not_ the lion's share in the gross produce, yet a great share
compared with an expectancy no higher than _zero!_ We continue
on the same system for this second adventure; I cannot go
hawking about in search of new terms; I might go farther and
fare worse. And now comes your part of the affair; in which I
would fain have had your counsel; but must ask your help,
proceeding with my own light alone. After Fraser's fifteen
hundred are printed off, the types remain standing, and I for my
own behoof throw off five hundred more, designed for your market.
Whether five hundred are too many or too few, I can only guess;
if too many, we can retain them here and turn them to account;
if too few, there is no remedy. At all events, costing me only
the paper and press-work, there is surely no Pirate in the Union
that can _undersell_ us! Nay, it seems they have a drawback on
our taxed paper, sufficient or nearly so to land the cargo at
Boston without more charge. You see, therefore, how it is. Can
you find me a Bookseller, as for yourself; he and you can fix
what price the ware will carry when you see it. Meanwhile I must
have his Title-page; I must have his directions (if any be
needed); nay, for that matter, you might write a Preface if you
liked,--though I see not what you have to say, and recommend
silence rather! The book is to be in three volumes duodecimo,
and we will take care it be fit to show its face in your market.
A few errors of the press; and one correction (about the sinking
of the _Vengeur,_ which I find lately to be an indisputable
falsehood); these are all the changes. We are to have done
printing, Fraser predicts, "in two months";--say two and a half!
I suppose you decipher the matter out of this plastering and
smearing; and will do what is needful in it. "Great inquiry" is
made for the _Miscellanies,_ Fraser says; though he suspects it
may perhaps be but one or two men inquiring _often,_--the dog!
I am again upon the threshold of extempore lecturing: on "the
Revolutions of Modern Europe"; Protestantism, 2 lectures;
Puritanism, 2; French Revolution, 2. I almost regret that I had
undertaken the thing this year at all, for I am no longer driven
by Poverty as heretofore. Nay, I am richer than I have been for
ten years; and have a kind of prospect, for the first time this
great while, of being allowed to subsist in this world for the
future: a great blessing, perhaps the greatest, when it comes as
a novelty! However, I thought it right to keep this Lecture
business open, come what might. I care less about it than I did;
it is not agony and wretched trembling to the marrow of the bone,
as it was the last two times. I believe, in spite of all my
perpetual indigestions and nervous woes, I am actually getting
into better health; the weary heart of me is quieter; I wait in
silence for the new chapter,--feeling truly that we are at the
end of one period here. I count it _two_ in my autobiography:
we shall see what the _third_ is; [if] third there be. But I am
in small haste for a third. How true is that of the old
Prophets, "The _word of the Lord_ came unto" such and such a one!
When it does not come, both Prophet and Prosaist ought to be
thankful (after a sort), and rigorously hold their tongue.--Lord
Durham's people have come over with golden reports of the
Americans, and their brotherly feelings. One Arthur Buller
preaches to me, with emphasis, on a quite personal topic till one
explodes in laughter to hear him, the good soul: That I, namely,
am the most esteemed, &c., and ought to go over and Lecture in
all great towns of the Union, and make, &c., &c.! I really do
begin to think of it in this interregnum that I am in. But then
my Lectures must be written; but then I must become a _hawker,
--ach Gott!_
The people are beginning to quote you here: _tant pis pour eux!_
I have found you in two Cambridge books. A certain Mr. Richard
M. Milnes, M.P., a beautiful little Tory dilettante poet and
politician whom I love much, applied to me for _Nature_ (the
others he has) that he might write upon it. Somebody has
stolen _Nature_ from me, or many have thumbed it to pieces; I
could not find a copy. Send me one, the first chance you have.
And see Miss Martineau in the last _Westminster Review:_--these
things you are old enough to stand? They are even of benefit?
Emerson is not without a select public, the root of a select
public on this side of the water too.--Popular Sumner is off to
Italy, the most popular of men,--inoffensive, like a worn
sixpence that has no physiognomy left. We preferred Coolidge to
him in this circle; a square-cut iron man, yet with clear
symptoms of a heart in him. Your people will come more and more
to their maternal Babylon, will they not, by the steamers?--
Adieu, my dear friend. My Wife joins me in all good prayers for
you and yours.
--Thomas Carlyle
XXXVII. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, London, 17 April, 1839
Dear Friend,--Some four days ago I wrote you a long Letter,
rather expressive of anxiety about you; it will probably come to
hand along with this. I had heard vaguely that you were unwell,
and wondered why you did not write. Happily, that point is as
good as settled now, even by your silence about it. I have, half
an hour ago, received your Concord Letter of the 19th of March.
The Letter you speak of there as "written last Saturday" has not
yet made its appearance, but may be looked for now shortly: as
there is no mention here of any mischance, except the shortcoming
of Printers' copy, I infer that all else is in a tolerably
correct state; I wait patiently for the "last Saturday" tidings,
and will answer as to the matters of copy, in good heart, without
loss of a moment.
There is nothing of the manuscript sort in Teufelsdrockh's
repositories that would suit you well; nothing at all in a
completed state, except a long rigmarole dissertation (in a
crabbed sardonic vein) about the early history of the Teutonic
Kindred, wriggling itself along not in the best style through
Proverb lore, and I know not what, till it end (if my memory
serve) in a kind of Essay on the _Minnesingers._ It was written
almost ten years ago, and never contented me well. It formed
part of a lucklessly projected _History of German Literature,_
subsequent portions of which, the _Nibelungen_ and _Reinecke
Fox,_ you have already printed. The unfortunate "_Cabinet
Library_ Editor," or whatever his title was, broke down; and I
let him off,--without paying me; and this alone remains of the
misventure; a thing not fit for you, nor indeed at bottom for
anybody, though I have never burnt it yet. My other Manuscripts
are scratchings and scrawlings;--children's _infant_ souls
weeping because they never could be born, but were left there
whimpering _in limine primo!_
On this side, therefore, is no help. Nevertheless, it seems to
me, otherwise there is. _Varnhagen_ may be printed I think
without offence, since there is need of it: if that will make up
your fourth volume to a due size, why not? It is the last faint
murmur one gives in Periodical Literature, and may indicate the
approach of silence and slumber. I know no errors of the Press
in _Varnhagen:_ there is one thing about Jean Paul F. Richter's
_want_ of humor in his _speech,_ which somehow I could like to
have the opportunity of uttering a word on, though _what_ word I
see not very well. My notion is partly that V. overstates the
thing, taking a Berlin _propos de salon_ for a scientifically
accurate record; and partly farther that the defect (if any) was
_creditable_ to Jean Paul, indicating that he talked from the
abundance of the heart, not burning himself off in miserable
perpetual sputter like a Town-wit, but speaking what he had to
say, were it dull, were it not dull,--for his own satisfaction
first of all! If you in a line or two could express at the right
point something of that sort, it were well; yet on the whole, if
not, then is almost no matter. Let the whole stand then as the
commencement of slumber and stertorous breathing!
Varnhagen himself will not bring up your fourth volume to the
right size; hardly beyond 380 pages, I should think; yet what
more can be done? Do you remember Fraser's Magazine for October,
1832, and a Translation there, with Notes, of a thing called
Goethe's Mahrchen? It is by me; I regard it as a most
remarkable piece, well worthy of perusal, especially by all
readers of mine. The printing of your third volume will of
course be finished before this letter arrive; nevertheless I
have a plan: that you (as might be done, I suppose, by
cancelling and reprinting the concluding leaf or leaves) append
the said Translated Tale, in a smaller type, to that volume. It
is 21 or 22 pages of _Fraser,_ and will perhaps bring yours up to
the mark. Nay, indeed there are two other little Translations
from Goethe which I reckon good, though of far less interest than
the _Mahrchen;_ I think they are in the Frasers almost
immediately preceding; one of them is called _Fragment from
Goethe_ (if I remember); in his _Works,_ it is _Novelle;_ it
treats of a visit by some princely household to a strange
Mountain ruin or castle, and the catastrophe is the escape of a
show-lion from its booth in the neighboring Market-Town. I have
not the thing here,--alas, sinner that I am, it now strikes me
that the "two other things" are this one thing, which my
treacherous memory is making into two! This however you will
find in the Number immediately, or not far from immediately,
preceding that of the _Mahrchen;_ along with which, in the same
type with which, it would give us letter-press enough. It ought
to stand _before_ the _Mahrchen:_ read it, and say whether it is
worthy or not worthy. Will this _Appendix_ do, then? I should
really rather like the _Mahrchen_ to be printed, and had thoughts
of putting [it] at the end of the English _Sartor._ The other I
care not for, intrinsically, but think it very beautiful in its
kind.--Some rubbish of my own, in small quantity, exists here and
there in _Fraser;_ one story, entitled _Cruthers and Jonson,_*
was written sixteen years ago, and printed somewhere early
(probably the second year) in that rubbish heap, with several
gross errors of the press (mares for maces was one!): it is the
first thing I wrote, or among the very first;--otherwise a thing
to be kept rather secret, except from the like of you! This or
any other of the "original" immaturities I will _not_ recommend
as an Appendix; I hope the _Mahrchen,_ or the _Novelle_ and
_Mahrchen,_ will suffice. But on the whole, to thee, O Friend,
and thy judgment and decision, without appeal, I leave it
altogether. Say Yes, say No; do what seemeth good to thee.--Nay
now, writing with the speed of light, another consideration
strikes me: Why should Volume Third be interfered with if it is
finished? Why will not this _Appendix_ do, these _Appendixes,_
to hang to the skirts of Volume Four as well? Perhaps better!
the _Mahrchen_ in any case closing the rear. I leave it all to
Emerson and Stearns Wheeler, my more than kind Editors: E. knows
it better than I; be his decision irrevocable.
-----------
* "Cruthers and Jonson; or, The Outskirts of Life. A True
Story." _Fraser's Magazine,_ January, 1831.
------------
This letter is far too long, but I had not time to make it
shorter.--I got your _French Revolution,_ and have seen no other:
my name is on it in your hand. I received Dwight's Book, liked
it, and have answered him: a good youth, of the kind you
describe; no Englishman, to my knowledge, has yet uttered as
much sense about Goethe and German things. I go this day to
settle with Fraser about printers and a second edition of the
_Revolution_ Book,--as specified in the other Letter: five
hundred copies for America, which are to cost he computes about
2/7, and _your_ Bookseller will bind them, and defy Piracy. My
Lectures come on, this day two weeks: O Heaven! I cannot
"speak"; I can only gasp and writhe and stutter, a spectacle to
gods and fashionables,--being forced to it by want of money. In
five weeks I shall be free, and then--! Shall it be Switzerland,
shall it be Scotland, nay, shall it be America and Concord?
Ever your affectionate
T. Carlyle
All love from both of us to the Mother and Boy. My Wife is
better than usual; rejoices in the promise of summer now
at last visible after a spring like Greenland. Scarcity,
discontent, fast ripening towards desperation, extends far
and wide among our working people. God help them! In man as
yet is small help. There will be work yet, before that account
is liquidated; a generation or two of work! Miss Martineau is
gone to Switzerland, after emitting _Deerwood_ [sic], a Novel.*
How do you like it? people ask. To which there are serious answers
returnable, but few so good as none. Ah me! Lady Bulwer too has
written a Novel, in satire of her Husband. I saw the Husband not
long since; one of the wretchedest Phantasms, it seemed to me, I
had yet fallen in with,--many, many, as they are here.
The L100 Sterling Bill came, in due time, in perfect order; and
will be payable one of these days. I forget dates; but had well
calculated that before the 19th of March this piece of news and
my gratitude for it had reached you.
--------
* _Deerbrook_
--------
XXXVIII. Emerson to Carlyle
Boston, 20 April, 1839
My Dear Friend,--Learning here in town that letters may go today
to the "Great Western," I seize the hour to communicate a
bookseller's message. I told Brown, of C.C. Little & Co., that
you think of stereotyping the _History._ He says that he can
make it profitable to himself and to you to use your plates here
in this manner (which he desires may be kept secret here, and I
suppose with you also). You are to get your plates made and
proved, then you are to send them out here to him, having first
insured them in London, and he is to pay you a price for every
copy he prints from them. As soon as he has printed a supply for
our market,--and we want, he says, five hundred copies now,--he
will send them back to you. I told him I thought he had better
fix the price per copy to be paid by him, and I would send it to
you as his offer. He is willing to do so, but not today. It was
only this morning I informed him of your plan. I think in a
fortnight I shall need to write again,--probably to introduce to
you my countrywoman, Miss Sedgwick, the writer of affectionate
New England tales and the like, who is about to go to Europe for
a year or more. I will then get somewhat definite from Brown as
to rates and prices. Brown thought you might better send the
plates here first, as we are in immediate want of copies; and
afterwards print with them in London. He is quite sure that it
would be more profitable to print them in this manner than to
