not fulfilments.
The Dial too, it is all spirit-like, aeriform, aurora-borealis
like. Will no _Angel_ body himself out of that; no stalwart
Yankee _man,_ with color in the cheeks of him, and a coat on his
back! These things I _say:_ and yet, very true, you alone can
decide what practical meaning is in them. Write you always _as_
it is given you,_ be it in the solid, in the aeriform, or
whatsoever way. There is no other rule given among men.--I have
sent the criticism on Landor* to an Editorial Friend of L.'s, by
whom I expect it will be put into the Newspapers here, for the
benefit of Walter Savage; he is not often so well praised among
us, and deserves a little good praise.
--------
* From the Dial for October, 1841.
--------
You propose again to send me Moneys,--surprising man! I am glad
also to hear that that beggarly misprinted _French Revolution_ is
nearly out among you. I only hope farther your Booksellers will
have an eye on that rascal Appleton, and not let _him_ reprint
and deface, if more copies of the Book turn out to be wanted.
Adieu, dear Emerson! Good speed to you at Boston, and in all
true things. I hope to write soon again.
Yours ever,
T. Carlyle
LXXII. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, 6 December, 1841
Dear Emerson,--Though I wrote to you very lately, and am in great
haste today, I must lose no time in announcing that the Letter
with the L40 draught came to hand some mornings ago; and now,
this same morning, a second Letter round by Dumfriesshire, which
had been sent as a duplicate, or substitute in case of accident,
for the former. It is all right, my friend ----'s paper has got
itself changed into forty gold sovereigns, and lies here waiting
use; thanks, many thanks! Sums of that kind come always upon me
like manna out of the sky; surely they, more emphatically than
any others, are the gift of Heaven. Let us receive, use, and be
thankful. I am not so poor now at all; Heaven be praised:
indeed, I do not know, now and then when I reflect on it, whether
being rich were not a considerably harder problem. With the
wealth of Rothschild what farther good thing could one get,--if
not perhaps some but to live in, under free skies, in the
country, with a horse to ride and have a little less pain on?
_Angulus ille ridet!_--I will add, for practical purposes in the
future, that it is in general of little or no moment whether an
American Bill be at sight or after a great many days; that the
paper can wait as conveniently here as the cash can,--if your New
England House and Baring of Old England will forbear bankruptcy
in the mean while. By the bye, will you tell me some time or
other in _what_ American funds it is that your funded money, you
once gave me note of, now lies? I too am creditor to America,--
State of Illinois or some such State: one thousand dollars of
mine, which some years ago I had no use for, now lies there,
paying I suppose for canals, in a very obstructed condition! My
Brother here is continually telling me that I shall lose it all,
--which is not so bad; but lose it all by my own unreason,--which
is very bad. It struck me I would ask where Emerson's money
lies, and lay mine there too, let it live or perish as it likes!
Your _Adelphi_ went straightway off to Miss Martineau with a
message. Richard Milnes has another; John Sterling is to have a
third,--had certain other parties seen it first. For the man
Emerson is become a person to be _seen_ in these times. I also
gave a _Morning-Chronicle_ Editor your brave eulogy on Landor,
with instructions that it were well worth publishing there, for
Landor's and others' sake. Landor deserves more praise than he
gets at present; the world too, what is far more, should hear of
him oftener than it does. A brave man after his kind,--though
considerably "flamed on from the Hell beneath." He speaks
notable things; and at lowest and worst has the faculty too of
holding his peace.
The "Lectures on the Times" are even now in progress? Good speed
to the Speaker, to the Speech. Your Country is luckier than most
at this time; it has still real Preaching; the tongue of man is
not, whensoever it begins wagging, entirely sure to emit
babblement, twaddlement, sincere--cant, and other noises which
awaken the passionate wish for silence! That must alter
everywhere the human tongue is no wooden watchman's-rattle or
other _obsolete_ implement; it continues forever new and useful,
nay indispensable.
As for me and my doings--_Ay de mi!_*
-------
* The signature has been cut off.
-------
LXXIII. Emerson to Carlyle
New York, 28 February, 1842
My Dear Friend,--I enclose a bill of exchange for forty-eight
pounds sterling, payable by Baring Brothers & Co. after sixty
days from the 25th of February.
This Sum is part of a payment from Little and Brown on account of
sales of your London _French Revolution and of Chartism._ As
another part of their payment they asked me if they might not
draw on the estate of James Fraser for a balance due from his
house to them, and pay you so. I, perhaps unwisely, consented to
make the proffer to you, with the distinct stipulation, however,
that if it should not prove perfectly agreeable to you, and
exactly as available as another form of money, you should
instantly return it to me, and they shall pay me the amount,
$41.57, or L8 12s. 5d. in cash. My mercantile friend, Abel
Adams, did not admire my wisdom in accepting this bill of Little
and Brown; so I told them I should probably bring it back to
them, and if there is a shadow of inconvenience in it you will
send it back to me by the next steamer. For they have no claims
on us. I decide not to enclose the Little and Brown bill in this
sheet,--but to let it accompany this letter in the same packet.
I grieve to hear that you have bought any of our wretched
Southern Stocks. In New England all Southern and Southwestern
debt is usually regarded as hopeless, unless the debtor is
personally known. Massachusetts stock is in the best credit of
any public stock. Ward told me that it would be safest for you
to keep your Illinois stock, although he could say nothing very
good of it.
Our city banks in Boston are in better credit than the banks in
any other city here, yet one in which a large part of my own
property is invested has failed, for the two last half-years, to
pay any dividend, and I am a poor man until next April, when, I
hope, it will not fail me again. If you wish to invest money
here, my friend Abel Adams, who is the principal partner in one
of our best houses, Barnard, Adams, & Co., will know how to give
you the best assistance and action the case admits.
My dear friend, you should have had this letter and these
messages by the last steamer; but when it sailed, my son, a
perfect little boy of five years and three months, had ended his
earthly life.* You can never sympathize with me; you can never
know how much of me such a young child can take away. A few
weeks ago I accounted myself a very rich man, and now the poorest
of all. What would it avail to tell you anecdotes of a sweet and
wonderful boy, such as we solace and sadden ourselves with at
home every morning and evening? From a perfect health and as
happy a life and as happy influences as ever child enjoyed, he
was hurried out of my arms in three short days by Scarlatina.--We
have two babes yet,--one girl of three years, and one girl of
three months and a week, but a promise like that Boy's I shall
never see. How often I have pleased myself that one day I should
send to you this Morning Star of mine, and stay at home so gladly
behind such a representative. I dare not fathom the Invisible
and Untold to inquire what relations to my Departed ones I yet
sustain. Lidian, the poor Lidian, moans at home by day and by
night. You too will grieve for us, afar. I believe I have two
letters from you since I wrote last. I shall write again soon,
for Bronson Alcott will probably go to London in about a month,
and him I shall surely send to you, hoping to atone by his great
nature for many smaller one, that have craved to see you. Give
me early advice of receiving these Bills of Exchange.
---------
* The memory of this Boy, "born for the future, to the future
lost;" is enshrined in the heart of every lover of childhood and
of poetry by his father's impassioned _Threnody._
-----------
Tell Jane Carlyle our sorrowing story with much love, and with
all good hope for her health and happiness. Tell us when you
write, with as much particularity as you can, how it stands with
you, and all your household; with the Doctor, and the friends;
what you do, and propose to do, and whether you will yet come to
America, one good day?
Yours with love,
R. Waldo Emerson
LXXIV. Carlyle to Emerson
Templand, Thornhill, Dumfries, Scotland
28 March, 1842
My Dear Friend,--This is heavy news that you send me; the
heaviest outward bereavement that can befall a man has overtaken
you. Your calm tone of deep, quiet sorrow, coming in on the rear
of poor trivial worldly businesses, all punctually despatched and
recorded too, as if the Higher and Highest had not been busy with
you, tells me a sad tale. What can we say in these cases? There
is nothing to be said,--nothing but what the wild son of Ishmael,
and every thinking heart, from of old have learned to say: God
is great! He is terrible and stern; but we know also He is
good. "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." Your bright
little Boy, chief of your possessions here below, is rapt away
from you; but of very truth he is with God, even as we that yet
live are,--and surely in the way that was best for him, and for
you, and for all of us.--Poor Lidian Emerson, poor Mother! To
her I have no word. Such poignant unspeakable grief, I believe,
visits no creature as that of a Mother bereft of her child. The
poor sparrow in the bush affects one with pity, mourning for its
young; how much more the human soul of one's Friend! I cannot
bid her be of comfort; for there is as yet no comfort. May good
Influences watch over her, bring her some assuagement. As the
Hebrew David said, "We shall go to him, he will not return
to us."
I also am here in a house rendered vacant and sacred by Death. A
sore calamity has fallen on us, or rather has fallen on my poor
Wife (for what am I but like a spectator in comparison?): she
has lost unexpectedly her good Mother, her sole surviving Parent,
and almost only relative of much value that was left to her. The
manner too was almost tragic. We had heard of illness here, but
only of commonplace illness, and had no alarm. The Doctor
himself, specially applied to, made answer as if there was no
danger: his poor Patient, in whose character the like of that
intimately lay, had rigorously charged him to do so: her poor
Daughter was far off, confined to her room by illness of her own;
why alarm her, make her wretched? The danger itself did seem
over; the Doctor accordingly obeyed. Our first intimation of
alarm was despatched on the very day which proved the final one.
My poor Wife, casting sickness behind her, got instantly ready,
set off by the first railway train: traveling all night, on the
morrow morning at her Uncle's door in Liverpool she is met by
tidings that all is already ended. She broke down there; she
is now home again at Chelsea, a cheery, amiable younger Jane
Welsh to nurse her: the tone of her Letters is still full of
disconsolateness. I had to proceed hither, and have to stay here
till this establishment can be abolished, and all the sad wrecks
of it in some seemly manner swept away. It is above three weeks
that I have been here; not till eight days ago could I so much
as manage to command solitude, to be left altogether alone. I
lead a strange life; full of sadness, of solemnity, not without
a kind of blessedness. I say it is right and fitting that one be
left entirely alone now and then, alone with one's own griefs and
sins, with the mysterious ancient Earth round one, the
everlasting Heaven over one, and what one can make of these.
Poor rustic businesses, subletting of Farms, disposal of houses,
household goods: these strangely intervene, like matter upon
spirit, every day;--wholesome this too perhaps. It is many years
since I have stood so in close contact face to face with the
reality of Earth, with its haggard ugliness, its divine beauty,
its depths of Death and of Life. Yesterday, one of, the stillest
Sundays, I sat long by the side of the swift river Nith; sauntered
among woods all vocal only with rooks and pairing birds.* The
hills are often white with snow-powder, black brief spring-tempests
rush fiercely down from them, and then again the sky looks forth
with a pale pure brightness,--like Eternity from behind Time.
The _Sky,_ when one thinks of it, is _always_ blue, pure changeless
azure; rains and tempests are only for the little dwellings where
men abide. Let us think of this too. Think of this, thou
sorrowing Mother! Thy Boy has escaped many showers.
---------
* "Templand has a very fine situation; old Walter's walk, at the
south end of the house, was one of the most picturesque and
pretty to be found in the world. Nith valley (river half a mile
off, winding through green holms, now in its border of clean
shingle, now lost in pleasant woods and rushes) lay patent to the
South. "Carlyle's Reminiscences," Vol. II. p. 137.
---------
In some three weeks I shall probably be back at Chelsea. Write
thitherward so soon as you have opportunity; I will write again
before long, even if I do not hear from you. The moneys, &c. are
all safe here as you describe: if Fraser's' Executors make any
demur, your Bookseller shall soon hear of it.
I had begun to write some Book on Cromwell: I have often begun,
but know not how to set about it; the most unutterable of all
subjects I ever felt much meaning to lie in. There is risk yet
that, with the loss of still farther labor, I may have to abandon
it;--and then the great dumb Oliver may lie unspoken forever;
gathered to the mighty _Silent_ of the Earth; for, I think,
there will hardly ever live another man that will believe in him
and his Puritanism as I do. To _him_ small matter.
Adieu, my good kind Friend, ever dear to me, dearer now in
sorrow. My Wife when she hears of your affliction will send a
true thought over to you also. The poor Lidian!--John Sterling
is driven off again, setting out I think this very day for
Gibraltar, Malta, and Naples. Farewell, and better days to us.
Your affectionate
T. Carlyle
LXXV. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 81 March, 1842
My Dear Carlyle,--I wrote you a letter from my brother's office
in New York nearly a month ago to tell you how hardly it had
fared with me here at home, that the eye of my home was plucked
out when that little innocent boy departed in his beauty and
perfection from my sight. Well, I have come back hither to my
work and my play, but he comes not back, and I must simply suffer
it. Doubtless the day will come which will resolve this, as
everything gets resolved, into light, but not yet.
I write now to tell you of a piece of life. I wish you to know
that there is shortly coming to you a man by the name of Bronson
Alcott. If you have heard his name before, forget what you have
heard. Especially if you have ever read anything to which this
name was attached, be sure to forget that; and, inasmuch as in
you lies, permit this stranger when he arrives at your gate to
make a new and primary impression. I do not wish to bespeak any
courtesies or good or bad opinion concerning him. You may love
him, or hate him, or apathetically pass by him, as your genius
shall dictate; only I entreat this, that you do not let him go
quite out of your reach until you are sure you have seen him
and know for certain the nature of the man. And so I leave
contentedly my pilgrim to his fate.
I should tell you that my friend Margaret Fuller, who has edited
our little _Dial_ with such dubious approbation on the part of
you and other men, has suddenly decided a few days ago that she
will edit it no more. The second volume was just closing; shall
it live for a third year? You should know that, if its interior
and spiritual life has been ill fed, its outward and bibliopolic
existence has been worse managed. Its publishers failed, its
short list of subscribers became shorter, and it has never paid
its laborious editor, who has been very generous of her time and
labor, the smallest remuneration. Unhappily, to me alone could
the question be put whether the little aspiring starveling should
be reprieved for another year. I had not the cruelty to kill it,
and so must answer with my own proper care and nursing for its
new life. Perhaps it is a great folly in me who have little
adroitness in turning off work to assume this sure vexation, but
the _Dial_ has certain charms to me as an opportunity, which I
grudge to destroy. Lately at New York I found it to be to a
certain class of men and women, though few, an object of
tenderness and religion. You cannot believe it?
Mr. Lee,* who brings you this letter, is the son of one of the
best men in Massachusetts, a man whose name is a proverb among
merchants for his probity, for his sense and his information.
The son, who bears his father's name, is a favorite among all the
young people for his sense and spirit, and has lived always with
good people.
---------
* Mr. Henry Lee.
--------
I have read at New York six out of eight lectures on the Times
which I read this winter in Boston. I found a very intelligent
and friendly audience. The penny papers reported my lectures,
somewhat to my chagrin when I tried to read them; many persons
came and talked with me, and I felt when I came away that New
York is open to me henceforward whenever my Boston parish is not
large enough. This summer, I must try to set in order a few more
chapters from these rambling lectures, one on "The Poet" and one
on "Character" at least. And now will you not tell me what you
read and write? Is it Cromwell still? For I supposed from the
_Westminster_ piece that the laborer must be in that quarter.
I send herewith a new _Dial,_ No. 8, and the last of this
dispensation. I hope you have received every number. They have
been sent in order. I have written no line in this Number. I
send a letter for Sterling, as I do not know whether his address
is still at Falmouth. Is he now a preacher? By the "Acadia" you
should have received a letter of exchange on the Barings, and
another on James Fraser's estate.
With constant good hope for yourself and for your wife, I am
your friend,
--R.W. Emerson
End of Vol. I.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle
and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol. I,
by Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CARLYLE AND EMERSON, VOL. I ***
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