received from London and for sale in New York and Boston before
my last sheets arrived by the "Columbia." Appleton in New York
braved us and printed it, and furthermore told us that he intends
to print in future everything of yours that shall be printed in
London,--complaining in rude terms of the monopoly your
publishers here exercise, and the small commissions they allow to
the trade, &c., &c. Munroe showed me the letter, which certainly
was not an amiable one. In this distress, then, I beg you, when
you have more histories and lectures to print, to have the
manuscript copied by a scrivener before you print at home, and
send it out to me, and I will keep all Appletons and Corsairs
whatsoever out of the lists. Not only these men made a book (of
which, by the by, Munroe sends you by this steamer a copy, which
you will find at John Green's, Newgate Street), but the New York
newspapers print the book in chapters, and you circulate for six
cents per newspaper at the corners of all streets in New York and
Boston; gaining in fame what you lose in coin.--The book is a
good book, and goes to make men brave and happy. I bear glad
witness to its cheering and arming quality.
---------
* "Heroes and Hero-Worship."
---------
I have put into Munroe's box which goes to Green a _Dial_ No. 4
also, which I could heartily wish were a better book. But
Margaret Fuller, who is a noble woman, is not in sufficiently
vigorous health to do this editing work as she would and should,
and there is no other who can and will.
Yours affectionately,
R.W. Emerson
LXIII. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, London, 8 May, 1841
My Dear Emerson,--Your last letter found me on the southern
border of Yorkshire, whither Richard Milnes had persuaded me with
him, for the time they call "Easter Holidays" here. I was to
shake off the remnants of an ugly _Influenza_ which still hung
about me; my little portmanteau, unexpectedly driven in again by
perverse accidents, had stood packed, its cowardly owner, the
worst of all travelers, standing dubious the while, for two weeks
or more; Milnes offering to take me as under his cloak, I went
with Milnes. The mild, cordial, though something dilettante
nature of the man distinguishes him for me among men, as men go.
For ten days I rode or sauntered among Yorkshire fields and
knolls; the sight of the young Spring, new to me these seven
years, was beautiful, or better than beauty. Solitude itself,
the great Silence of the Earth, was as balm to this weary, sick
heart of mine; not Dragons of Wantley (so they call Lord
Wharncliffe, the wooden Tory man), not babbling itinerant
Barrister people, fox-hunting Aristocracy, nor Yeomanry Captains
cultivating milk-white mustachios, nor the perpetual racket, and
"dinner at eight o'clock," could altogether countervail the fact
that green Earth was around one and unadulterated sky overhead,
and the voice of waters and birds,--not the foolish speech of
Cockneys at _all_ times!--On the last morning, as Richard and I
drove off towards the railway, your Letter came in, just in time;
and Richard, who loves you well, hearing from whom it was, asked
with such an air to see it that I could not refuse him. We
parted at the "station," flying each his several way on the wings
of Steam; and have not yet met again. I went over to Leeds,
staid two days with its steeple-chimneys and smoke-volcano still
in view; then hurried over to native Annandale, to see my aged
excellent Mother yet again in this world while she is spared to
me. My birth-land is always as the Cave of Trophonius to me; I
return from it with a haste to which the speed of Steam is slow,
--with no smile on my face; avoiding all speech with men! It is
not yet eight-and-forty hours since I got back; your Letter is
among the first I answer, even with a line; your new Book--But
we will not yet speak of that....
My Friend, I _thank_ you for this Volume of yours; not for the
copy alone which you send to me, but for writing and printing
such a Book. _Euge!_ say I, from afar. The voice of one crying
in the desert;--it is once more the voice of a _man._ Ah me! I
feel as if in the wide world there were still but this one voice
that responded intelligently to my own; as if the rest were all
hearsays, melodious or unmelodious echoes; as if this alone were
true and alive. My blessing on you, good Ralph Waldo! I read
the Book all yesterday; my Wife scarcely yet done with telling
me her news. It has rebuked me, it has aroused and comforted me.
Objections of all kinds I might make, how many objections to
superficies and detail, to a dialect of thought and speech as yet
imperfect enough, a hundred-fold too narrow for the Infinitude it
strives to speak: but what were all that? It is an Infinitude,
the real vision and belief of one, seen face to face: a "voice
of the heart of Nature" is here once more. This is the one fact
for me, which absorbs all others whatsoever. Persist, persist;
you have much to say and to do. These voices of yours which I
likened to unembodied souls, and censure sometimes for having no
body,--how can they have a body? They are light-rays darting
upwards in the East; they will yet make much and much to have a
body! You are a new era, my man, in your new huge country: God
give you strength, and speaking and silent faculty, to do such a
work as seems possible now for you! And if the Devil will be
pleased to set all the Popularities _against_ you and evermore
against you,--perhaps that is of all things the very kindest any
_Angel_ could do.
Of myself I have nothing good to report. Years of sick idleness
and barrenness have grown wearisome to me. I do nothing. I
waver and hover, and painfully speculate even now as to health,
and where I shall spend the summer out of London! I am a very
poor fellow;--but hope to grow better by and by. Then this
_alluvies_ of foul lazy stuff that has long swum over me may
perhaps yield the better harvest. _Esperons!_--Hail to all of
you from both of us.
Yours ever,
T. Carlyle
LXIV. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, London, 21 May, 1841
My Dear Emerson,--About a week ago I wrote to you, after too long
a silence. Since that there has another Letter come, with a
Draft of L100 in it, and other comfortable items not pecuniary;
a line in acknowledgment of the money is again very clearly among
my duties. Yesterday, on my first expedition up to Town, I gave
the Paper to Fraser; who is to present the result to me in the
shape of cash tomorrow. Thanks, and again thanks. This L100, I
think, nearly clears off for me the outlay of the second _French
Revolution;_ an ill-printed, ill-conditioned publication, the
prime cost of which, once all lying saved from the Atlantic
whirlpools and hard and fast in my own hand, it was not perhaps
well done to venture thitherward again. To the new trouble of my
friends withal! We will now let the rest of the game play itself
out as it can; and my friends, and my one friend, must not take
more trouble than their own kind feelings towards me will reward.
The Books, the _Dial_ No. 4, and Appleton's pirated _Lectures,_
are still expected from Green. In a day or two he will send
them: if not, we will jog him into wakefulness, and remind him
of the _Parcels Delivery Company,_ which carries luggage of all
kinds, like mere letters, many times a day, over all corners of
our Babylon. In this, in the universal British _Penny Post,_ and
a thing or two of that sort, men begin to take advantage of their
crowded ever-whirling condition in these days, which brings such
enormous disadvantages along with it _un_sought for.--
Bibliopolist Appleton does not seem to be a "Hero,"--except after
his own fashion. He is one of those of whom the Scotch say,
"Thou wouldst do little for God if the Devil were dead!" The
Devil is unhappily dead, in that international bibliopolic
province, and little hope of his reviving for some time;
whereupon this is what Squire Appleton does. My respects to him
even in the Bedouin department, I like to see a complete man, a
clear decisive Bedouin.
For the rest, there is one man who ought to be apprised that I
can now stand robbery a little better; that I am no longer so
very poor as I once was. In Fraser himself there do now lie
vestiges of money! I feel it a great relief to see, for a year
or two at least, the despicable bugbear of Beggary driven out of
my sight; for _which_ small mercy, at any rate, be the Heavens
thanked. Fraser himself, for these two editions, One thousand
copies each, of the Lectures and _Sartor,_ pays me down on the
nail L150; consider that miracle! Of the other Books which he
is selling on a joint-stock basis, the poor man likewise promises
something, though as yet, ever since New-Year's-day, I cannot
learn what, owing to a grievous sickness of his,--for which
otherwise I cannot but be sorry, poor Fraser within the Cockney
limits being really a worthy, accurate, and rather friendly
creature. So you see me here provided with bread and water for a
season,--it is but for a season one needs either water or bread,
--and rejoice with me accordingly. It is the one useful, nay, I
will say the one _innoxious,_ result of all this trumpeting,
reviewing, and dinner-invitationing; from which I feel it
indispensable to withdraw myself more and more resolutely, and
altogether count it as a thing not there. Solitude is what I
long and pray for. In the babble of men my own soul goes all to
babble: like soil you were forever _screening,_ tumbling over
with shovels and riddles; in _which_ soil no fruit can grow! My
trust in Heaven is, I shall yet get away "to some cottage by the
sea-shore"; far enough from all the mad and mad making things
that dance round me here, which I shall then look on only as a
theatrical phantasmagory, with an eye only to the _meaning_ that
lies hidden in it. You, friend Emerson, are to be a Farmer, you
say, and dig Earth for your living? Well; I envy you that as
much as any other of your blessednesses. Meanwhile, I sit shrunk
together here in a small _dressing-closet,_ aloft in the back
part of the house, excluding all cackle and cockneys; and,
looking out over the similitude of a May grove (with little brick
in it, and only the minarets of Westminster and gilt cross of St.
Paul's visible in the distance, and the enormous roar of London
softened into an enormous hum), endeavor to await what will
betide. I am busy with Luther in one Marheinecke's very long-
winded Book. I think of innumerable things; steal out westward
at sunset among the Kensington lanes; would this _May_ weather
last, I might be as well here as in any attainable place. But
June comes; the rabid dogs get muzzles; all is brown-parched,
dusty, suffocating, desperate, and I shall have to run! Enough
of all that. On my paper there comes, or promises to come,
as yet simply nothing at all. Patience;--and yet who can
be patient?
Had you the happiness to see yourself not long ago, in _Fraser's
Magazine,_ classed _nominatim_ by an emphatic earnest man, not
without a kind of splay-footed strength and sincerity,--among the
chief Heresiarchs of the--world? Perfectly right. Fraser was
very anxious to know what I thought of the Paper,--"by an
entirely unknown man in the country." I counseled "that there
was something in him, which he ought to improve by holding his
peace for the next five years."
Adieu, dear Emerson; there is not a scrap more of Paper. All
copies of your _Essays_ are out at use; with what result we
shall perhaps see. As for me I love the Book and man, and their
noble rustic herohood and manhood:--one voice as of a living man
amid such jabberings of galvanized corpses: _Ach Gott!_
Yours evermore,
T. Carlyle
LXV. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 80 May, 1841
My Dear Friend,--In my letter written to you on the 1st of May
(enclosing a bill of exchange of L100 sterling, which, I hope,
arrived safely) I believe I promised to send you by the next
steamer an account for April. But the false tardy Munroe & Co.
did not send it to me until one day too late. Here it is, as
they render it, compiled from Little and Brown's statement and
their own. I have never yet heard whether you have received
their _Analysis_ or explanation of the last abstract they drew up
of the mutual claims between the great houses of T.C. and R.W.E.,
and I am impatient to know whether you have caused it to be
examined, and whether it was satisfactory. This new one is based
on that, and if that was incorrect, this must be also. I am
daily looking for some letter from you, which is perhaps near at
hand. If you have not written, write me exactly and immediately
on this subject, I entreat you. You will see that in this sheet
I am charged with a debt to you of $184.29. I shall tomorrow
morning pay to Mr. James Brown (of Little and Brown), who should
be the bearer of this letter, $185.00, which sum he will pay
you in its equivalent of English coin. I give Mr. Brown an
introductory letter to you, and you must not let slip the
opportunity to make the man explain his own accounts, if any
darkness hang on them. In due time, perhaps, we can send you
Munroe, and Nichols also, and so all your factors shall render
direct account of themselves to you. I believe I shall also make
Brown the bearer of a little book written some time since by a
young friend of mine in a very peculiar frame of mind,--thought
by most persons to be mad,--and of the publication of which I
took the charge.* Mr. Very requested me to send you a copy.--I
had a letter from Sterling, lately, which rejoiced me in all but
the dark picture it gave of his health. I earnestly wish good
news of him. When you see him, show him these poems, and ask him
if they have not a grandeur.
---------
* _Essays and Poems,_ by Jones Very,--a little volume, the work
of an exquisite spirit. Some of the poems it contains are as if
written by a George Herbert who had studied Shakespeare, read
Wordsworth, and lived in America.
---------
When I wrote last, I believe all the sheets of the Six Lectures
had not come to me. They all arrived safely, although the last
package not until our American pirated copy was just out of press
in New York. My private reading was not less happy for this
robbery whereby the eager public were supplied. Odin was all new
to me; and Mahomet, for the most part; and it was all good to
read, abounding in truth and nobleness. Yet, as I read these
pages, I dream that your audience in London are less prepared to
hear, than is our New England one. I judge only from the tone.
I think I know many persons here who accept thoughts of this vein
so readily now, that, if you were speaking on this shore, you
would not feel that emphasis you use to be necessary. I have
been feeble and almost sick during all the spring, and have been
in Boston but once or twice, and know nothing of the reception
the book meets from the Catholic Carlylian Church. One reader
and friend of yours dwells now in my house, and, as I hope, for a
twelvemonth to come,--Henry Thoreau,--a poet whom you may one
day be proud of;--a noble, manly youth, full of melodies and
inventions. We work together day by day in my garden, and I grow
well and strong. My mother, my wife, my boy and girl, are all in
usual health, and according to their several ability salute you
and yours. Do not cease to tell me of the health of your wife
and of the learned and friendly physician.
Yours,
R.W. Emerson
LXVI. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, London, 25 June, 1841
Dear Emerson,--Now that there begins again to be some program
possible of my future motions for some time, I hastily despatch
you some needful outline of the same.
After infinite confused uncertainty, I learn yesternight that
there has been a kind of country-house got for us, at a place
called Annan, on the north shore of the Solway Frith, in my
native County of Dumfries. You passed through the little Burgh,
I suppose, in your way homeward from Craigenputtock: it stands
about midway, on the great road, between Dumfries and Carlisle.
It is the place where I got my schooling;--consider what a
_preter_natural significance such a scene has now got for me! It
is within eight miles of my aged Mother's dwelling-place; within
riding distance, in fact, of almost all the Kindred I have in the
world.--The house, which is built since my time, and was never
yet seen by me, is said to be a reasonable kind of house. We get
it for a small sum in proportion to its value (thanks to kind
accident); the three hundred miles of travel, very hateful to
me, will at least entirely obliterate all traces of _this_ Dust-
Babel; the place too being naturally almost ugly, as far as a
green leafy place in sight of sea and mountains can be so
nicknamed, the whole gang of picturesque Tourists, Cockney
friends of Nature, &c., &c., who penetrate now by steam, in
shoals every autumn, into the very centre of the Scotch Highlands,
will be safe over the horizon! In short, we are all bound
thitherward in few days; must cobble up some kind of gypsy
establishment; and bless Heaven for solitude, for the sight of
green fields, heathy moors; for a silent sky over one's head,
and air to breathe which does not consist of coal-smoke, finely
powdered flint, and other beautiful _etceteras_ of that kind
among others! God knows I have need enough to be left altogether
alone for some considerable while (_forever,_ as it at present
seems to me), to get my inner world, and my poor bodily nerves,
both all torn to pieces, set in order a little again! After much
vain reluctance therefore; disregarding many considerations,--
disregarding _finance_ in the front of these,--I am off; and
calculate on staying till I am heartily _sated_ with country,
till at least the last gleam of summer weather has departed. My
way of life has all along hitherto been a resolute _staying at
home:_ I find now, however, that I must alter my habits, cost
what it may; that I cannot live all the year round in London,
under pain of dying or going rabid;--that I must, in fact, learn
to travel, as others do, and be hanged to me! Wherefore, in
brief, my Friend, our address for the next two or three months is
"Newington Lodge, Annan, Scotland,"--where a letter from Emerson
will be a right pleasant visitor! _Faustum sit._
My second piece of news, not less interesting I hope, is that
_Emerson's Essays,_ the Book so called, is to be reprinted here;
nay, I think, is even now at press,--in the hands of that
invaluable Printer, Robson, who did the _Miscellanies._ Fraser
undertakes it, "on _half-profits_";--T. Carlyle writing a
Preface,*--which accordingly he did (in rather sullen humor,--not
with you!) last night and the foregoing days. Robson will stand
by the text to the very utmost; and I also am to read the Proof
sheets. The edition is of Seven Hundred and Fifty; which Fraser
thinks he will sell. With what joy shall I then sack up the
small Ten Pounds Sterling perhaps of "Half-Profits," and remit
them to the man Emerson; saying: There, Man! Tit for tat, the
reciprocity _not_ all on one side!--I ought to say, moreover,
that this was a volunteer scheme of Fraser's; the risk is all
his, the origin of it was with him: I advised him to have it
reviewed, as being a really noteworthy Book; "Write you a
Preface," said he, "and I will reprint it";--to which, after due
delay and meditation; I consented. Let me add only, on this
subject, the story of a certain Rio,** a French Breton, with
long, distracted, black hair. He found your Book at Richard
Milnes's, a borrowed copy, and could not borrow it; whereupon he
appeals passionately to me; carries off my Wife's copy, this
distracted Rio; and is to "read it _four_ times" during this
current autumn, at Quimperle, in his native Celtdom! The man
withal is a _Catholic,_ eats fish on Friday;--a great lion here
when he visits us; one of the _naivest_ men in the world:
concerning whom nevertheless, among fashionables, there is a
controversy, "Whether he is an Angel, or partially a Windbag and
_Humbug?_" Such is the lot of loveliness in the World! A truer
man I never saw; how _wind_less, how windy, I will not compute
at present. Me he likes greatly (in spite of my unspeakable
contempt for his fish on Friday); likes,--but withal is apt
to bore.
----------
* The greater part of this interesting Preface is reprinted in
Mr. George Willis Cooke's excellent book on the _Life, Writings,
and Philosophy of Emerson,_ Boston, 1881, p. 109.
** The author of a book once much admired, _De 'l'Art Chretien._
In a later work entitled _Epilogue a l'Art Chretien,_ but
actually a sort of autobiography, written in the naivest spirit
of personal conceit and pious sentimentalism, M. Rio gives an
exceedingly entertaining account of his intercourse with Carlyle.
----------
Enough, dear Emerson; and more than enough for a day so hurried.
Our Island is all in a ferment electioneering: Tories to come
in;--perhaps not to come in; at all events not to stay long,
