English Puseyism? Good Heavens! in the whole circle of History
is there the parallel of that,--a true worship rising at this
hour of the day for Bands and the Shovel-hat? Distraction
surely, incipience of the "final deliration" enters upon the poor
old English Formulism that has called itself for some two
centuries a Church. No likelier symptom of its being soon about
to leave the world has come to light in my time. As if King
Macready should quit Covent-Garden, go down to St. Stephen's, and
insist on saying, _Le roi le veut!_--I read last night the
wonderfulest article to that effect, in the shape of a criticism
on myself, in the _Quarterly Review._ It seems to be by one
Sewell, an Oxford doctor of note, one of the chief men among the
Pusey-and-Newman Corporation. A good man, and with good notions,
whom I have noted for some years back. He finds me a very worthy
fellow; "true, most true,"--except where I part from Puseyism,
and reckon the shovel-hat to be an old bit of felt; then I am
false, most false. As the Turks say, _Allah akbar!_
I forget altogether what I said of Landor; but I hope I did not
put him in the Heraud category: a cockney windbag is one thing;
a scholar and bred man, though incontinent, explosive, half-true,
is another. He has not been in town, this year; Milnes
describes him as _eating_ greatly at Bath, and perhaps even
cooking! Milnes did get your Letter: I told you? Sterling has
the Concord landscape; mine is to go upon the wall here, and
remind me of many things. Sterling is busy writing; he is to
make Falmouth do, this winter, and try to dispense with Italy.
He cannot away with my doctrine of _Silence;_ the good John. My
Wife has been better than usual all summer; she begins to shiver
again as winter draws nigh. Adieu, dear Emerson. Good be with
you and yours. I must be far gone when I cease to love you.
"The stars are above us, the graves are under us." Adieu.
--T. Carlyle
LVIII. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 30 October, 1840
My Dear Friend,--My hope is that you may live until this creeping
bookseller's balance shall incline at last to your side. My rude
ciphering, based on the last account of this kind which I sent
you in April from J. Munroe & Co., had convinced me that I was to
be in debt to you at this time L40 or more; so that I actually
bought L40 the day before the "Caledonia" sailed to send you;
but on giving my new accounts to J.M. & Co., to bring the
statement up to this time, they astonished me with the above
written result. I professed absolute incredulity, but Nichols*
labored to show me the rise and progress of all my blunders.
Please to send the account with the last to your Fraser, and have
it sifted. That I paid, a few weeks since, $481.34, and again,
$28.12, for printing and paper respectively, is true.--C.C.
Little & Co. acknowledge the sale of 82 more copies of the London
Edition _French Revolution_ since the 187 copies of July 1; but
these they do not get paid for until January 1, and we it seems
must wait as long. We will see if the New-Year's-day will bring
us more pence.
---------
* Partner in the firm of J. Munroe & Co.
---------
I received by the "Acadia" a letter from you, which I acknowledge
now, lest I should not answer it more at large on another sheet,
which I think to do. If you do not despair of American
booksellers send the new proofs of the Lectures when they are in
type to me by John Green, 121 Newgate Street (I believe), to the
care of J. Munroe & Co. He sends a box to Munroe by every
steamer. I sent a _Dial,_ No. 2, for you, to Green. Kennet, I
hear, has failed. I hope he did not give his creditors my
_Miscellanies,_ which you told me were there. I shall be glad if
you will draw Cromwell, though if I should choose it would be
Carlyle. You will not feel that you have done your work until
those devouring eyes and that portraying hand have achieved
England in the Nineteenth Century. Perhaps you cannot do it
until you have made your American visit. I assure you the view
of Britain is excellent from New England.
We are all a little wild here with numberless projects of social
reform. Not a reading man but has a draft of a new Community in
his waistcoat pocket. I am gently mad myself, and am resolved to
live cleanly. George Ripley is talking up a colony of
agriculturists and scholars, with whom he threatens to take the
field and the book.* One man renounces the use of animal food;
and another of coin; and another of domestic hired service; and
another of the State; and on the whole we have a commendable
share of reason and hope.
-----------
* Preliminary to the experiment of Brook Farm, in 1841.
-----------
I am ashamed to tell you, though it seems most due, anything of
my own studies, they seem so desultory, idle, and unproductive.
I still hope to print a book of essays this winter, but it cannot
be very large. I write myself into letters, the last few months,
to three or four dear and beautiful persons, my country-men and
women here. I lit my candle at both ends, but will now be colder
and scholastic. I mean to write no lectures this winter. I hear
gladly of your wife's better health; and a letter of Jane
Tuckerman's, which I saw, gave the happiest tidings of her. We
do not despair of seeing her yet in Concord, since it is now but
twelve and a half days to you.
I had a letter from Sterling, which I will answer. In all love
and good hope for you and yours, your affectionate
--R.W. Emerson
LIX. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, 9 December, 1840
Dear Emerson,--My answer on this occasion has been delayed above
two weeks by a rigorous, searching investigation into the
procedure of the hapless Book-conveyer, Kennet, in reference to
that copy of the _Miscellanies._ I was deceived by hopes of a
conclusive response from day to day; not till yesterday did any
come. My first step, taken long ago, was to address a new copy
of the Book, not to you, luckless man, but to _Lydia_ Emerson,
the fortunate wife; this copy Green now has lying by him,
waiting for the January Steamer (we sail only once a month in
this season); before the New Year has got out of infancy the
Lady will be graciously pleased to make a few inches of room on
her bookshelves for this celebrated performance. And now as to
Kennet, take the brief outcome of some dozen visitations,
judicial interrogatories, searches of documents, and other
piercing work on the part of methodic Fraser, attended with
demurrers, pleadings, false denials, false affirmings, on the
part of innocent chaotic Kennet: namely, that the said Kennet,
so urged, did in the end of the last week, fish up from his
repositories your very identical Book directed to Munroe's care,
duly booked and engaged for, in May last, but left to repose
itself in the Covent-Garden crypts ever since without disturbance
from gods or men! Fraser has brought back the Book, and you have
lost it;--and the Library of my native village in Scotland is to
get it; and not Kennet any more in this world, but Green ever
henceforth is to be our Book Carrier. There is a history.
Green, it seems, addresses also to Munroe; but the thing, I
suppose, will now shift for itself without watching.
As to the bibliopolic Accounts, my Friend! we will trust them,
with a faith known only in the purer ages of Roman Catholicism,--
when Papacy had indeed become a Dubiety, but was not yet a
Quackery and Falsehood, was a thing _as_ true as it could manage
to be! That really may be the fact of this too. In any case
what signifies it much? Money were still useful; but it is not
now so indispensable. Booksellers by their knavery or their
fidelity cannot kill us or cure us. Of the truth of Waldo
Emerson's heart to me, there is, God be thanked for it, no doubt
at all.
My Hero-Lectures lie still in Manuscript. Fraser offers no
amount of cash adequate to be an outward motive; and inwardly
there is as yet none altogether clear, though I rather feel of
late as if it were clearing. To fly in the teeth of English
Puseyism, and risk such shrill welcome as I am pretty sure of, is
questionable: yet at bottom why not? Dost thou not as entirely
reject this new Distraction of a Puseyism as man can reject a
thing,--and couldst utterly abjure it, and even abhor it,--were
the shadow of a cobweb ever likely to become momentous, the
cobweb itself being _beheaded,_ with axe and block on Tower Hill,
two centuries ago? I think it were as well to _tell_ Puseyism
that it has something of good, but also much of bad and even
worst. We shall see. If I print the thing, we shall surely take
in America again; either by stereotype or in some other way.
Fear not that!--Do you attend at all to this new _Laudism_ of
ours? It spreads far and wide among our Clergy in these days; a
most notable symptom, very cheering to me many ways; whether or
not one of the fatalest our poor Church of England has ever
exhibited, and betokening swifter ruin to it than any other, I do
not inquire. Thank God, men do discover at last that there is
still a God present in their affairs, and must be, or their
affairs are of the Devil, naught, and worthy of being sent to the
Devil! This once given, I find that all is given; daily
History, in Kingdom and in Parish, is an _experimentum crucis_ to
show what is the Devil's and what not. But on the whole are we
not the _formalest_ people ever created under this Sun? Cased
and overgrown with Formulas, like very lobsters with their
shells, from birth upwards; so that in the man we see only his
breeches, and believe and swear that wherever a pair of old
breeches are there is a man! I declare I could both laugh and
cry. These poor good men, merciful, zealous, with many
sympathies and thoughts, there do they vehemently appeal to me,
_Et tu, Brute?_ Brother, wilt thou too insist on the breeches
being old,--not ply a needle among us here?--To the naked
Caliban, gigantic, for whom such breeches would not be a glove,
who is stalking and groping there in search of new breeches and
accoutrements, sure to get them, and to tread into nonentity
whoever hinders him in the search,--they are blind as if they had
no eyes. Sartorial men; ninth-parts of a man:--enough of them.
The second Number of the _Dial_ has also arrived some days ago.
I like it decidedly better than the first; in fact, it is right
well worth being put on paper, and sent circulating;--I find
only, as before that it is still too much of a soul for
circulating as it should. I wish you could in future contrive to
mark at the end of each Article who writes it, or give me some
general key for knowing. I recognize Emerson readily; the rest
are of [Greek] for most part. But it is all good and very good
as a _soul;_ wants only a body, which want means a great deal!
Your Paper on Literature is incomparably the worthiest thing
hitherto; a thing I read with delight. Speak out, my brave
Emerson; there are many good men that listen! Even what you
say of Goethe gratifies me; it is one of the few things yet
spoken of him from personal insight, the sole kind of things that
should be spoken! You call him _actual,_ not _ideal;_ there is
truth in that too; and yet at bottom is not the whole truth
rather this: The actual well-seen _is_ the ideal? The _actual,_
what really is and exists: the past, the present, the future no
less, do all lie there! Ah yes! one day you will find that this
sunny-looking, courtly Goethe held veiled in him a Prophetic
sorrow deep as Dante's,--all the nobler to me and to you, that he
_could_ so hold it. I believe this; no man can _see_ as he
sees, that has not suffered and striven as man seldom did.--
Apropos of _this,_ Have you got Miss Martineau's _Hour and Man?_
How curious it were to have the real History of the Negro
Toussaint, and his _black_ Sansculottism in Saint Domingo,--the
most atrocious form Sansculottism could or can assume! This of a
"black Wilberforce-Washington," as Sterling calls it, is
decidedly something. Adieu, dear Emerson: time presses, paper
is done. Commend me to your good wife, your good Mother, and
love me as well as you can. Peace and health under clear winter
skies be with you all.
--T. Carlyle
My Wife rebukes me sharply that I have "forgot her love." She is
much better this winter than of old.
Having mentioned Sterling I should say that he is at Torquay
(Devonshire) for the winter, meditating new publication of Poems.
I work still in Cromwellism; all but desperate of any feasible
issue worth naming. I "enjoy bad health" too, considerably!
LX. Carlyle to Mrs. Emerson
Chelsea, London, 21 February, 1841
Dear Mrs. Emerson,--Your Husband's Letter shall have answer when
some moment of leisure is granted me; he will wait till then,
and must. But the beautiful utterance which you send over to me;
melodious as the voice of flutes, of Aeolian Harps borne on the
rude winds so _far,_--this must have answer, some word or
growl of answer, be there leisure or none! The "Acadia," it
seems, is to return from Liverpool the day after tomorrow. I
shove my paper-whirlpools aside for a little, and grumble in
pleased response.
You are an enthusiast; make Arabian Nights out of dull foggy
London Days; with your beautiful female imagination, shape
burnished copper Castles out of London Fog! It is very beautiful
of you;--nay, it is not foolish either, it is wise. I have a
guess what of truth there may be in that; and you the fair
Alchemist, are you not all the richer and better that you know
the _essential_ gold, and will not have it called pewter or
spelter, though in the shops it is only such? I honor such
Alchemy, and love it; and have myself done something in that
kind. Long may the talent abide with you; long may I abide to
have it exercised on me! Except the Annandale Farm where my good
Mother still lives, there is no House in all this world which I
should be gladder to see than the one at Concord. It seems to
stand as only over the hill, in the next Parish to me, familiar
from boyhood. Alas! and wide-waste Atlantics roll between; and
I cannot walk over of an evening!--I never give up the hope of
getting thither some time. Were I a little richer, were I
a little healthier; were I this and that--!--One has no
Fortunatus' "Time-annihilating" or even "Space-annihilating Hat":
it were a thing worth having in this world.
My Wife unites with me in all kindest acknowledgments: she is
getting stronger these last two years; but is still such a
_sailor_ as the Island hardly parallels: had she the _Space-
annihilating Hat,_ she too were soon with you.
Your message shall reach Miss Martineau; my Dame will send it in
her first Letter. The good Harriet is not well; but keeps a
very courageous heart. She lives by the shore of the beautiful
blue Northumbrian Sea; a "many-sounding" solitude which I often
envy her. She writes unweariedly, has many friends visiting her.
You saw her _Toussaint l'Ouverture:_ how she has made such a
beautiful "black Washington," or "Washington-Christ-Macready," as
I have heard some call it, of a rough-handed, hard-headed, semi-
articulate gabbling Negro; and of the horriblest phasis that
"Sansculottism" _can_ exhibit, of a Black Sansculottism, a
musical Opera or Oratorio in pink stockings! It is very
beautiful. Beautiful as a child's heart,--and in so shrewd a
head as that. She is now writing express Children's-Tales, which
I calculate I shall find more perfect.
Some ten days ago there went from me to Liverpool, perhaps there
will arrive at Concord by this very "Acadia," a bundle of Printed
Sheets directed to your Husband: pray apprise the man of that.
They are sheets of a Volume called _Lectures on Heroes;_ the
Concord Hero gets them without direction or advice of any kind.
I have got some four sheets more ready for him here; shall
perhaps send them too, along with this. Some four again more
will complete the thing. I know not what he will make of it;--
perhaps wry faces at it?
Adieu, dear Mrs. Emerson. We salute you from this house. May
all good which the Heavens grant to a kind heart, and the good
which they never _refuse_ to one such, abide with you always. I
commend myself to your and Emerson's good Mother, to the
mischievous Boys and--all the Household. Peace and fair Spring-
weather be there!
Yours with great regard,
T. Carlyle
LXI. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 28 February, 1841
My Dear Carlyle,--Behold Mr. George Nichols's new digest and
exegesis of his October accounts. The letter seems to me the
most intelligible of the two papers, but I have long been that
man's victim, semi-annually, and never dare to make head against
his figures. You are a brave man, and out of the ring of his
enchantments, and withal have magicians of your own who can give
spell for spell, and read his incantations backward. I entreat
you to set them on the work, and convict his figures if you
can. He has really taken pains, and is quite proud of his
establishment of his accounts. In a month it will be April, and
be will have a new one to fender. Little and Brown also in April
promise a payment on _French Revolution,_--and I suppose
something is due from _Chartism._ We will hope that a Bill of
Exchange will yet cross from us to you, before our booksellers
fail.
I hoped before this to have reached my last proofsheet, but shall
have two or three more yet. In a fortnight or three weeks my
little raft will be afloat.* Expect nothing more of my powers of
construction,--no shipbuilding, no clipper, smack, nor skiff
even, only boards and logs tied together. I read to some
Mechanics' Apprentices a long lecture on Reform, one evening, a
little while ago. They asked me to print it, but Margaret Fuller
asked it also, and I preferred the _Dial,_ which shall have the
dubious sermon, and I will send it to you in that.--You see the
bookseller reverendizes me notwithstanding your laudable
perseverance to adorn me with profane titles, on the one hand,
and the growing habit of the majority of my correspondents to
clip my name of all titles on the other. I desire that you and
your wife will keep your kindness for
--R. W. Emerson
----------
* The first series of _Essays._
----------
LXII. Emerson to Carlyle
Boston, 30 April, 1841
My Dear Carlyle,--Above you have a bill of exchange for one
hundred pounds sterling drawn by T.W. Ward & Co. on the Messrs.
Barings, payable at sight. Let us hope it is but the first of a
long series. I have vainly endeavored to get your account to be
rendered by Munroe & Co. to the date of the 1st of April. It was
conditionally promised for the day of the last steamer (15
April). It is not ready for that which sails tomorrow and
carries this. Little & Co. acknowledge a debt of $607.90 due to
you 1st of April, and just now paid me; and regret that their
sales have been so slow, which they attribute to the dulness of
all trade among us for the last two years. You shall have the
particulars of their account from Munroe's statement of the
account between you and me. Munroe & Co. have a long apology for
not rendering their own account; their book keeper left them at
a critical moment, they were without one six weeks, &c.;--but
they add, if we could give you it, to what use, since we should
be utterly unable to make you any payment at this time? To what
use, surely? I am too much used to similar statements from
our booksellers and others in the last few years to be much
surprised; nor do I doubt their readiness or their power to pay
all their debts at last; but a great deal of mutual concession
and accommodation has been the familiar resort of our tradesmen
now for a good while, a vice which they are all fain to lay at
the doors of the Government, whilst it belongs in the first
instance, no doubt, to the rashness of the individual traders.
These men I believe to be prudent, honest, and solvent, and that
we shall get all our debt from them at last. They are not
reckoned as rich as Little and Brown. By the next steamer they
think they can promise to have their account ready. I am sorry
to find that we have been driven from the market by the New
York Pirates in the affair of the Six Lectures.* The book was
