I read with interest what you say of the political omens in
England. I could wish our country a better comprehension of its
felicity. But government has come to be a trade, and is managed
solely on commercial principles. A man plunges into politics to
make his fortune, and only cares that the world should last his
day. We have had in different parts of the country mobs and
moblike legislation, and even moblike judicature, which have
betrayed an almost godless state of society; so that I begin to
think even here it behoves every man to quit his dependency on
society as much as he can, as he would learn to go without
crutches that will be soon plucked away from him, and settle with
himself the principles he can stand upon, happen what may. There
is reading, and public lecturing too, in this country, that I
could recommend as medicine to any gentleman who finds the love
of life too strong in him.
If virtue and friendship have not yet become fables, do believe
we keep your face for the living type. I was very glad to hear
of the brother you describe, for I have one too, and know what it
is to have presence in two places. Charles Chauncy Emerson is a
lawyer now settled in this town, and, as I believe, no better
Lord Hamlet was ever. He is our Doctor on all questions of
taste, manners, or action. And one of the pure pleasures I
promise myself in the months to come is to make you two gentlemen
know each other.
X. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, Mass., 8 April, 1856
My Dear Friend,--I am concerned at not hearing from you. I have
written you two letters, one in October, one in November, I
believe, since I had any tidings of you.* Your last letter is
dated 27 June, 1835. I have counted all the chances of delay and
miscarriage, and still am anxious lest you are ill, or have
forgotten us. I have looked at the advertising sheet of the
booksellers, but it promised nothing of the _History._ I thought
I had made the happiest truce with sorrow in having the promise
of your coming,--I was to take possession of a new kingdom of
virtue and friendship. Let not the new wine mourn. Speak to me
out of the wide silence. Many friends inquire of me concerning
you, and you must write some word immediately on receipt of
this sheet.
------------
* One in August by Mrs. Child, apparently not delivered, and one,
the preceding, in October.
-----------
With it goes an American reprint of the _Sartor._ Five hundred
copies only make the edition, at one dollar a copy. About one
hundred and fifty copies are subscribed for. How it will be
received I know not. I am not very sanguine, for I often hear
and read somewhat concerning its repulsive style. Certainly, I
tell them, it is very odd. Yet I read a chapter lately with
great pleasure. I send you also, with Dr. Channing's regards and
good wishes, a copy of his little work, lately published, on our
great local question of Slavery.
You must have written me since July. I have reckoned upon
your projected visit the ensuing summer or autumn, and have
conjectured the starlike influences of a new spiritual element.
Especially Lectures. My own experiments for one or two winters,
and the readiness with which you embrace the work, have led me to
think much and to expect much from this mode of addressing men.
In New England the Lyceum, as we call it, is already a great
institution. Beside the more elaborate courses of lectures in
the cities, every country town has its weekly evening meeting,
called a Lyceum, and every professional man in the place is
called upon, in the course of the winter, to entertain his
fellow-citizens with a discourse on whatever topic. The topics
are miscellaneous as heart can wish. But in Boston, Lowell,
Salem, courses are given by individuals. I see not why this is
not the most flexible of all organs of opinion, from its
popularity and from its newness permitting you to say what you
think, without any shackles of prescription. The pulpit in our
age certainly gives forth an obstructed and uncertain sound, and
the faith of those in it, if men of genius, may differ so much
from that of those under it, as to embarrass the conscience of
the speaker, because so much is attributed to him from the fact
of standing there. In the Lyceum nothing is presupposed. The
orator is only responsible for what his lips articulate. Then
what scope it allows! You may handle every member and relation
of humanity. What could Homer, Socrates, or St. Paul say that
cannot be said here? The audience is of all classes, and its
character will be determined always by the name of the lecturer.
Why may you not give the reins to your wit, your pathos, your
philosophy, and become that good despot which the virtuous
orator is?
Another thing. I am persuaded that, if a man speak well, he
shall find this a well-rewarded work in New England. I have
written this year ten lectures; I had written as many last year.
And for reading both these and those at places whither I was
invited, I have received this last winter about three hundred and
fifty dollars. Had I, in lieu of receiving a lecturer's fee,
myself advertised that I would deliver these in certain places,
these receipts would have been greatly increased. I insert all
this because my prayers for you in this country are quite of a
commercial spirit. If you lose no dollar by us, I shall joyfully
trust your genius and virtue for your satisfaction on all
other points.
I cannot remember that there are any other mouthpieces that are
specially vital at this time except Criticism and Parliamentary
Debate. I think this of ours would possess in the hands of a
great genius great advantages over both. But what avail any
commendations of the form, until I know that the man is alive and
well? If you love them that love you, write me straightway of
your welfare. My wife desires to add to mine her friendliest
greetings to Mrs. Carlyle and to yourself.
Yours affectionately,
R. Waldo Emerson
I ought to say that Le-Baron Russell, a worthy young man
who studies Engineering, did cause the republication of
Teufelsdrockh.* I trust you shall yet see a better American
review of it than the _North American._
------------
* This first edition of _Sartor_ as an independent volume was
published by James Munroe and Company, Boston. Emerson, at Mr.
(now Dr.) Russell's request, wrote a Preface for the book. He
told Dr. Russell that his brother Charles was not pleased
with the Preface, thinking it "too commonplace, too much like
all prefaces."
-----------
XI. Carlyle to Emerson
5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, London
29 April, 1836
My Dear Emerson,--Barnard is returning across the water, and must
not go back without a flying salutation for you. These many
weeks I have had your letter by me; these many weeks I have felt
always that it deserved and demanded a grateful answer; and,
alas! also that I could give it none. It is impossible for you
to figure what mood I am in. One sole thought, That Book! that
weary Book! occupies me continually: wreck and confusion of all
kinds go tumbling and falling around me, within me; but to wreck
and growth, to confusion and order, to the world at large, I turn
a deaf ear; and have life only for this one thing,--which also
in general I feel to be one of the pitifulest that ever man went
about possessed with. Have compassion for me! It is really very
miserable: but it will end. Some months more, and it is
_ended;_ and I am done with _French Revolution,_ and with
Revolution and Revolt in general; and look once more with
free eyes over this Earth, where are other things than mean
internecine work of that kind: things fitter for me, under the
bright Sun, on this green Mother's-bosom (though the Devil does
dwell in it)! For the present, really, it is like a Nessus'
shirt, burning you into madness, this wretched Enterprise; nay,
it is also like a kind of Panoply, rendering you invulnerable,
insensible, to all _other_ mischiefs.
I got the fatal First Volume finished (in the miserablest way,
after great efforts) in October last; my head was all in a
whirl; I fled to Scotland and my Mother for a month of rest.
Rest is nowhere for the Son of Adam: all looked so "spectral" to
me in my old-familiar Birthland; Hades itself could not have
seemed stranger; Annandale also was part of the kingdom of TIME.
Since November I have worked again as I could; a second volume
got wrapped up and sealed out of my sight within the last three
days. There is but a Third now: one pull more, and then! It
seems to me, I will fly into some obscurest cranny of the world,
and lie silent there for a twelvemonth. The mind is weary, the
body is very sick; a little black speck dances to and fro in the
left eye (part of the retina protesting against the liver, and
striking work): I cannot help it; it must flutter and dance
there, like a signal of distress, unanswered till I be done. My
familiar friends tell me farther that the Book is all wrong,
style cramp, &c., &c.: my friends, I answer, you are very right;
but this also, Heaven be my witness, I cannot help.--In such sort
do I live here; all this I had to write you, if I wrote at all.
For the rest I cannot say that this huge blind monster of a City
is without some sort of charm for me. It leaves one alone, to go
his own road unmolested. Deep in your soul you take up your
protest against it, defy it, and even despise it; but need not
divide yourself from it for that. Worthy individuals are glad to
hear your thought, if it have any sincerity; they do not
exasperate themselves or you about it; they have not even time
for such a thing. Nay, in stupidity itself on a scale of this
magnitude, there is an impressiveness, almost a sublimity; one
thinks how, in the words of Schiller, "the very Gods fight
against it in vain"; how it lies on its unfathomable foundations
there, inert yet peptic; nay, eupeptic; and is a _Fact_ in the
world, let theory object as it will. Brown-stout, in quantities
that would float a seventy-four, goes down the throats of men;
and the roaring flood of life pours on;--over which Philosophy
and Theory are but a poor shriek of remonstrance, which oftenest
were wiser, perhaps, to hold its peace. I grow daily to honor
Facts more and more, and Theory less and less. A Fact, it seems
to me, is a great thing: a Sentence printed if not by God, then
at least by the Devil;--neither Jeremy Bentham nor Lytton Bulwer
had a hand in _that._
There are two or three of the best souls here I have known for
long: I feel less alone with them; and yet one is alone,--a
stranger and a pilgrim. These friends expect mainly that the
Church of England is not dead but asleep; that the leather
coaches, with their gilt panels, can be peopled again with a
living Aristocracy, instead of the simulacra of such. I must
altogether hold my peace to this, as I do to much. Coleridge is
the Father of all these. _Ay de mi!_
But to look across the "divine salt-sea." A letter reached me,
some two months ago, from Mobile, Alabama; the writer, a kind
friend of mine, signs himself James Freeman Clarke.* I have
mislaid, not lost his Letter; and do not at present know his
permanent address (for he seemed to be only on a visit at
Mobile); but you, doubtless, do know it. Will you therefore
take or even find an opportunity to tell this good Friend that it
is not the wreckage of the Liverpool ship he wrote by, nor
insensibility on my part, that prevents his hearing direct from
me; that I see him, and love him in this Letter; and hope we
shall meet one day under the Sun, shall live under it, at any
rate, with many a kind thought towards one another.
----------
* Now the Rev. Dr. Clarke, of Boston.
----------
The _North American Review_ you spoke of never came (I mean that
copy of it with the Note in it); but another copy became rather
public here, to the amusement of some. I read the article
myself: surely this Reviewer, who does not want in [sense]*
otherwise, is an original: either a _thrice_-plied quiz
(_Sartor's_ "Editor" a twice-plied one); or else opening on you
a grandeur of still Dulness, rarely to be met with on earth.
-------------
* The words supplied here were lost under the seal of the letter.
-------------
My friend! I must end here. Forgive me till I get done with
this Book. Can you have the generosity to write, _without_ an
answer? Well, if you can_not,_ I will answer. Do not forget me.
My love and my Wife's to your good Lady, to your Brother, and all
friends. Tell me what you do; what your world does. As for my
world, take this (which I rendered from the German Voss, a tough
old-Teutonic fellow) for the best I can say of it:--
"As journeys this Earth, her eye on a Sun, through the
heavenly spaces,
And, radiant in azure, or Sunless, swallowed in tempests,
Falters not, alters not; journeying equal, sunlit or
stormgirt
So thou, Son of Earth, who hast Force,
Goal, and Time, go still onwards."
Adieu, my dear friend! Believe me ever Yours,
Thomas Carlyle
XII. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, Massachusetts, 17 September, 1836
My Dear Friend,--I hope you do not measure my love by the
tardiness of my messages. I have few pleasures like that of
receiving your kind and eloquent letters. I should be most
impatient of the long interval between one and another, but that
they savor always of Eternity, and promise me a friendship and
friendly inspiration not reckoned or ended by days or years.
Your last letter, dated in April, found me a mourner, as did your
first. I have lost out of this world my brother Charles,* of
whom I have spoken to you,--the friend and companion of many
years, the inmate of my house, a man of a beautiful genius, born
to speak well, and whose conversation for these last years has
treated every grave question of humanity, and has been my daily
bread. I have put so much dependence on his gifts that we made
but one man together; for I needed never to do what he could do
by noble nature much better than I. He was to have been married
in this month, and at the time of his sickness and sudden
death I was adding apartments to my house for his permanent
accommodation. I wish that you could have known him. At
twenty-seven years the best life is only preparation. He built
his foundation so large that it needed the full age of man to make
evident the plan and proportions of his character. He postponed
always a particular to a final and absolute success, so that his
life was a silent appeal to the great and generous. But some
time I shall see you and speak of him.
---------
* Charles Chauncy Emerson,--died May 9, 1836,--whose memory still
survives fresh and beautiful in the hearts of the few who remain
who knew him in life. A few papers of his published in the
_Dial_ show to others what he was and what he might have become.
-----------
We want but two or three friends, but these we cannot do without,
and they serve us in every thought we think. I find now I must
hold faster the remaining jewels of my social belt. And of you I
think much and anxiously since Mrs. Channing, amidst her delight
at what she calls the happiest hour of her absence, in her
acquaintance with you and your family, expresses much uneasiness
respecting your untempered devotion to study. I am the more
disturbed by her fears, because your letters avow a self-devotion
to your work, and I know there is no gentle dulness in your
temperament to counteract the mischief. I fear Nature has not
inlaid fat earth enough into your texture to keep the ethereal
blade from whetting it through. I write to implore you to be
careful of your health. You are the property of all whom you
rejoice in art and soul, and you must not deal with your body as
your own. O my friend, if you would come here and let me nurse
you and pasture you in my nook of this long continent, I will
thank God and you therefor morning and evening, and doubt not to
give you, in a quarter of a year, sound eyes, round cheeks, and
joyful spirits. My wife has been lately an invalid, but she
loves you thoroughly, and hardly stores a barrel of flour or lays
her new carpet without some hopeful reference to Mrs. Carlyle.
And in good earnest, why cannot you come here forthwith, and
deliver in lectures to the solid men of Boston the _History of
the French Revolution_ before it is published,--or at least
whilst it is publishing in England, and before it is published
here. There is no doubt of the perfect success of such a course
now that the _five hundred copies of the Sartor are all sold,_
and read with great delight by many persons.
This I suggest if you too must feel the vulgar necessity of
_doing;_ but if you will be governed by your friend, you shall
come into the meadows, and rest and talk with your friend in my
country pasture. If you will come here like a noble brother, you
shall have your solid day undisturbed, except at the hours of
eating and walking; and as I will abstain from you myself,
so I will defend you from others. I entreat Mrs. Carlyle,
with my affectionate remembrances, to second me in this
proposition, and not suffer the wayward man to think that in
these space-destroying days a prayer from Boston, Massachusetts,
is any less worthy of serious and prompt granting than one
from Edinburgh or Oxford.
I send you a little book I have just now published, as
an entering wedge, I hope, for something more worthy and
significant.* This is only a naming of topics on which I would
gladly speak and gladlier hear. I am mortified to learn the ill
fate of my former packet containing the _Sartor_ and Dr.
Channing's work. My mercantile friend is vexed, for he says
accurate orders were given to send it as a packet, not as a
letter. I shall endeavor before despatching this sheet to obtain
another copy of our American edition.
-----------
* This was _Nature,_ the first clear manifesto of Emerson's
genius.
-----------
I wish I could come to you instead of sending this sheet of
paper. I think I should persuade you to get into a ship this
Autumn, quit all study for a time, and follow the setting sun. I
have many, many things to learn of you. How melancholy to think
how much we need confession!...* Yet the great truths are always
at hand, and all the tragedy of individual life is separated how
thinly from that universal nature which obliterates all ranks,
all evils, all individualities. How little of you is in your
_will!_ Above your will how intimately are you related to all of
us! In God we meet. Therein we _are,_ thence we descend upon
Time and these infinitesimal facts of Christendom, and Trade, and
England Old and New. Wake the soul now drunk with a sleep, and
we overleap at a bound the obstructions, the griefs, the
mistakes, of years, and the air we breathe is so vital that the
Past serves to contribute nothing to the result.
-----------
** Some words appear to be lost here.
-----------
I read Goethe, and now lately the posthumous volumes, with a
great interest. A friend of mine who studies his life with care
would gladly know what records there are of his first ten years
after his settlement at Weimar, and what Books there are in
Germany about him beside what Mrs. Austin has collected and
Heine. Can you tell me?
Write me of your health, or else come.
Yours ever,
R.W. Emerson.
P.S.--I learn that an acquaintance is going to England, so send
the packet by him.
XIII. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, London, 5 November, 1836
