The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872 Volume II Part 6

America has faded considerably into the background of late: indeed, to say truth, whenever I think of myself in America, it is as in the Backwoods, with a rifle in my hand, G.o.d's sky over my head, and this accursed Lazar-house of quacks and blockheads, 'and sin and misery (now near a head) lying all behind me forevermore. A thing, you see, which is and can be at bottom but a daydream! To rest through the summer: that is my only fixed wisdom; a resolution taken; only the place where uncertain.-- What a pity this poor sheet is done! I had innumerable things to tell you about people whom I have seen, about books,--Miss Harriet Martineau, Mrs. Butler, Southey, Influenza, Parliament, Literature and the Life of Man,--the whole of which must lie over till next time. Write to me; do not forget me. My Wife, who is sitting by me, in very poor health (this long while), sends "kindest remembrances," "compliments" she expressly does not send. Good be with you always, my dear Friend!

--T. Carlyle

We send our felicitation to the Mother and little Boy; which latter you had better tell us the name of.

XV. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, Ma.s.s., 31 March, 1837

My Dear Friend,--Last night, I said I would write to you forthwith. This morning I received your letter of February 13th, and _with it_ the _Diamond Necklace,_ the _Mirabeau,_ and the olive leaf of a proof-sheet. I write out the sum of my debt as the best acknowledgment I can make. I had already received, about New-Year's-Day, the preceding letter. It came in the midst of my washbowl-storm of a course of Lectures on the Philosophy of History. For all these gifts and pledges,--thanks. Over the finished _History,_ joy and evergreen laurels. I embrace you with all my heart. I solace myself with the n.o.ble nature G.o.d has given you, and in you to me, and to all. I had read the _Diamond Necklace_ three weeks ago at the Boston Athenaeum, and the _Mirabeau_ I had just read when my copy came. But the proof-sheet was virgin gold. The _Mirabeau_ I forebode is to establish your kingdom in England. That is genuine thunder, which n.o.body that wears ears can affect to mistake for the rumbling of cart-wheels.

I please myself with thinking that my Angelo has blocked a Colossus which may stand in the public square to defy all compet.i.tors. To be sure, that is its least merit,--that n.o.body can do the like,--yet is it a gag to Cerberus. Its better merit is that it inspires self-trust, by teaching the immense resources that are in human nature; so I sent it to be read by a brave man who is poor and decried. The doctrine is indeed true and grand which you preach as by cannonade, that G.o.d made a man, and it were as well to stand by and see what is in him, and, if he act ever from his impulses, believe that he has his own checks, and, however extravagant, will keep his...o...b..t, and return from far; a faith that draws confirmation from the sempiternal ignorance and stationariness of society, and the sempiternal growth of all the individuals.

The _Diamond Necklace_ I read with joy, whilst I read with my own eyes. When I read with English or New-English eyes, my joy is marred by the roaring of the opposition. I doubt not the exact story is there told as it fell out, and told for the first time; but the eye of your readers, as you will easily guess, will be bewildered by the mult.i.tude of brilliant-colored hieroglyphics whereby the meaning is conveyed. And for the Gig,--the Gig,--it is fairly worn out, and such a cloud-compeller must mock that particular symbol no more.

I thought as I read this piece that your strange genius was the instant fruit of your London. It is the aroma of Babylon. Such as the great metropolis, such is this style: so vast, enormous, related to all the world, and so endless in details. I think you see as pictures every street, church, parliament-house, barrack, baker's shop, mutton-stall, forge, wharf, and s.h.i.+p, and whatever stands, creeps, rolls, or swims thereabouts, and make all your own. Hence your encyclopediacal allusion to all knowables, and the virtues and vices of your panoramic pages. Well, it is your own; and it is English; and every word stands for somewhat; and it cheers and fortifies me. And what more can a man ask of his writing fellow-man? Why, all things; inasmuch as a good mind creates wants at every stroke.

The proof-sheet rhymes well with _Mirabeau,_ and has abated my fears from your own and your brother's account of the new book.

I greet it well. Auspicious Babe, be born! The first good of the book is that it makes you free, and as I anxiously hope makes your body sound. A possible good is that it will cause me to see your face. But I seemed to read in _Mirabeau_ what you intimate in your letter, that you will not come westward. Old England is to find you out, and then the New will have no charm. For me it will be the worst; for you, not. A man, a few men, cannot be to you (with your ministering eyes) that which you should travel far to find. Moreover, I observe that America looks, to those who come hither, as unromantic and unexciting as the Dutch ca.n.a.ls. I see plainly that our Society, for the most part, is as bigoted to the _respectabilities_ of religion and education as yours; that there is no more appet.i.te for a revelation here than elsewhere; and the educated cla.s.s are, of course, less fair-minded than others. Yet, in the moments when my eyes are open, I see that here are rich materials for the philosopher and poet, and, what is more to your purpose as an artist, that we have had in these parts no one philosopher or poet to put a sickle to the prairie wheat. I have really never believed that you would do us that crowning grace of coming hither, yet if G.o.d should be kinder to us than our belief, I meant and mean to hold you fast in my little meadows on the Musketaquid (now Concord) River, and show you (as in this country we can anywhere) an America in miniature in the April or November town meeting. Therein should you conveniently study and master the whole of our hemispherical politics reduced to a nutsh.e.l.l, and have a new version of Oxenstiern's little wit; and yet be consoled by seeing that here the farmers patient as their bulls of head-boards--provided for them in relation to distant national objects, by kind editors of newspapers--do yet their will, and a good will, in their own parish. If a wise man would pa.s.s by New York, and be content to sit still in this village a few months, he should get a thorough native knowledge which no foreigner has yet acquired. So I leave you with G.o.d, and if any oracle in the great Delphos should say "Go," why fly to us instantly. Come and spend a year with me, and see if I cannot respect your retirements.

I must love you for your interest in me and my way of life, and the more that we only look for good-nature in the creative cla.s.s.

They pay the tag of grandeur, and, attracted irresistibly to make, their living is usually weak and hapless. But you are so companionable--G.o.d has made you Man as well as Poet--that I lament the three thousand miles of mountainous water. Burns might have added a better verse to his poem, importing that one might write Iliads or Hamlets, and yet come short of Truth by infinity, as every written word must; but "the man's the gowd for a' that." And I heartily thank the Lady for her good-will.

Please G.o.d she may be already well. We all grieve to know of her ill health. People who have seen her never stop with _Mr._ Carlyle, but count him thrice blest in her. My wife believes in nothing for her but the American voyage. I shall never cease to expect you both until you come.

My boy is five months old, he is called Waldo,--a lovely wonder that made the Universe look friendlier to me.

My Wife, one of your best lovers, sends her affectionate regards to Mrs. Carlyle, and says that she takes exception in your letters only to that sentence that she would go to Scotland if you came here. My Wife beseeches her to come and possess her new-dressed chamber. Do not cease to write whenever you can spare me an hour. A man named Bronson Alcott is great, and one of the jewels we have to show you. Good bye.

--R.W. Emerson

The second edition of _Sartor_ is out and sells well. I learned the other day that twenty-five copies of it were ordered for England. It was very amiable of you, that word about it in _Mirabeau._*

- * This refers to Carlyle's introducing, in his paper on _Mirabeau,_ a citation from _Sartor,_ with the words, "We quote from a New England Book."

XVI. Carlyle to Emerson

5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, London, 1 June, 1857

My Dear Friend,--A word must go to Concord in answer to your last kind word. It reached me, that word of yours, on the morning of a most unspeakable day; the day when I, half dead with fret, agitation, and exasperation, was to address extempore an audience of London quality people on the subject of German Literature!

The heart's wish of me was that I might be left in deepest oblivion, wrapped in blankets and silence, not speaking, not spoken to, for a twelvemonth to come. My Printers had only let me go, out of their Treadmill, the day before. However, all that is over now; and I am still here alive to write to you, and hope for better days.

Almost a month ago there went a copy of a Book called _French Revolution,_ with your address on it, over to Red-Lion Square, and thence, as old Rich declared, himself now _emeritus,_ back to one Kennet (I think) near Covent Garden; who professes to correspond with Hilliard and Company, Boston, and undertook the service. The Book is not gone yet, I understand; but Kennet engages that it shall leave Liverpool infallibly on the 5th of June. I wish you a happy reading of it, therefore: it is the only copy of my sending that has crossed the water. Ill printed (there are many errors, one or two gross ones), ill written, ill thought! But in fine it _is_ off my hands: that is a fact worth all others. As to its reception here or elsewhere, I antic.i.p.ate nothing or little. Gabble, gabble, the astonishment of the dull public brain is likely to be considerable, and its e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns unedifying. We will let it go its way. Beat this thing, I say always, under thy dull hoofs, O dull Public! trample it and tumble it into all sinks and kennels; if thou canst kill it, kill it in G.o.d's name: if thou canst not kill it, why then thou wilt not.

By the by, speaking of dull Publics, I ought to say that I have seen a review of myself in the _Christian Examiner_ (I think that is it) of Boston; the author of which, if you know him, I desire you to thank on my part. For if a dull million is good, then withal a seeing unit or two is also good. This man images back a beautiful idealized Clothes-Philosopher, very satisfactory to look upon; in whose beatified features I did verily detect more similitude to what I myself meant to be, than in any or all the other criticisms I have yet seen written of me. That a man see himself reflected from the soul of his brother-man in this brotherly improved way: there surely is one of the most legitimate joys of existence. Friend Ripley took the trouble to send me this Review, in which I detected an Article of his own; there came also some Discourses of his much to be approved of; a Newspaper pa.s.sage-of-fence with a Philistine of yours; and a set of Essays on Progress-of-the-species and such like by a man whom I grieved to see confusing himself with that. Progress of the species is a thing I can get no good of at all. These Books, which Miss Martineau has borrowed from me, did not arrive till three weeks ago or less. I pray you to thank Ripley for them very kindly; which at present I still have not time to do. He seems to me a good man, with good aims; with considerable natural health of mind, wherein all goodness is likely to grow better, all clearness to grow clearer. Miss Martineau laments that he does not fling himself, or not with the due impetuosity, into the Black Controversy; a thing lamentable in the extreme, when one considers what a world this is, and how perfect it would be could Mungo once get his stupid case rectified, and eat his squash as a stupid _Apprentice_ instead of stupid _Slave!_

Miss Martineau's Book on America is out, here and with you. I have read it for the good Auth.o.r.ess's sake, whom I love much.

She is one of the strangest phenomena to me. A genuine little Poetess, buckramed, swathed like a mummy into Socinian and Political-Economy formulas; and yet verily alive in the inside of that! "G.o.d has given a Prophet to every People in its own speech," say the Arabs. Even the English Unitarians were one day to have their Poet, and the best that could be said for them too was to be said. I admire this good lady's integrity, sincerity; her quick, sharp discernment to the depth it goes: her love also is great; nay, in fact it is too great: the host of ill.u.s.trious obscure mortals whom she produces on you, of Preachers, Pamphleteers, Antislavers, Able Editors, and other Atlases bearing (unknown to us) the world on their shoulder, is absolutely more than enough. What they say to her Book here I do not well know. I fancy the general reception will be good, and even brilliant. I saw Mrs. Butler* last night, "in an ocean of blonde and broadcloth," one of those oceans common at present.

Ach Gott! They are not of Persons, these soirdes, but of Cloth Figures.

- * Mrs f.a.n.n.y Kemble Butler.

I mean to retreat into Scotland very soon, to repose myself as I intended. My Wife continues here with her Mother; here at least till the weather grow too hot, or a journey to join me seem otherwise advisable for her. She is gathering strength, but continues still weak enough. I rest myself "on the sunny side of hedges" in native Annandale, one of the obscurest regions; no man shall speak to me, I will speak to no man; but have dialogues yonder with the old dumb crags, of the most unfathomable sort. Once rested, I think of returning to London for another season. Several things are beginning which I ought to see end before taking up my staff again. In this enormous Chaos the very mult.i.tude of conflicting perversions produces something more like a _calm_ than you can elsewhere meet with.

Men let you alone, which is an immense thing: they do it even because they have no time to meddle with you. London, or else the Backwoods of America, or Craigenputtock! We shall see.

I still beg the comfort of hearing from you. I am sick of soul and body, but not incurable; the loving word of a Waldo Emerson is as balm to me, medicinal now more than ever. My Wife earnestly joins me in love to the Concord Household. May a blessing be in it, on one and all! I do nowise give up the idea of sojourning there one time yet. On the contrary, it seems almost certain that I shall. Good be with you.

Yours always, T. Carlyle*

-- * Emerson wrote in his Diary, July 27, 1837: "A letter today from Carlyle rejoiced me. Pleasant would life be with such companions. But if you cannot have them on good mutual terms you cannot have them. If not the Deity but our wilfulness hews and shapes the new relations, their sweetness escapes, as strawberries lose their flavor by cultivation."

XVII. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 13 September, 1837

My Dear Friend,--Such a gift as the _French Revolution_ demanded a speedier acknowledgment. But you mountaineers that can scale Andes before breakfast for an airing have no measures for the performance of lowlanders and valetudinarians. I am ashamed to think, and will not tell, what little things have kept me silent.

The _French Revolution_ did not reach me until three weeks ago, having had at least two long pauses by the way, as I find, since landing. Between many visits received, and some literary haranguing done, I have read two volumes and half the third and I think you a very good giant; disporting yourself with an original and vast ambition of fun: pleasure and peace not being strong enough for you, you choose to suck pain also, and teach fever and famine to dance and sing. I think you have written a wonderful book, which will last a very long time. I see that you have created a history, which the world will own to be such. You have recognized the existence of other persons than officers, and of other relations than civism. You have broken away from all books, and written a mind. It is a brave experiment, and the success is great. We have men in your story and not names merely; always men, though I may doubt sometimes whether I have the historic men. We have great facts--and selected facts--truly set down. We have always the co-presence of Humanity along with the imperfect damaged individuals. The soul's right of wonder is still left to us; and we have righteous praise and doom awarded, a.s.suredly without cant. Yes, comfort yourself on that particular, O unG.o.dliest divine man! thou cantest never. Finally we have not--a dull word. Never was there a style so rapid as yours,--which no reader can outrun; and so it is for the most intelligent. I suppose nothing will astonish more than the audacious wit and cheerfulness which no tragedy and no magnitude of events can overpower or daunt. Henry VIII loved a Man, and I see with joy my bard always equal to the crisis he represents.

And so I thank you for your labor, and feel that your contemporaries ought to say, All hail, Brother! live forever: not only in the great Soul which thou largely inhalest, but also as a named, person in this thy definite deed.

I will tell you more of the book when I have once got it at focal distance,--if that can ever be, and muster my objections when I am sure of their ground. I insist, of course, that it might be more simple, less Gothically efflorescent. You will say no rules for the illumination of windows can apply to the Aurora borealis.

However, I find refreshment when every now and then a special fact slips into the narrative couched in sharp and businesslike terms. This character-drawing in the book is certainly admirable; the lines are ploughed furrows; but there was cake and ale before, though thou be virtuous. Clarendon surely drew sharp outlines for me in Falkland, Hampden, and the rest, without defiance or sky-vaulting. I wish I could talk with you face to face for one day, and know what your uttermost frankness would say concerning the book. I feel a.s.sured of its good reception in this country. I learned last Sat.u.r.day that in all eleven hundred and sixty-six copies of _Sartor_ have been sold. I have told the publisher of that book that he must not print the _History_ until some s.p.a.ce has been given to people to import British copies. I have ordered Hilliard, Gray, & Co. to import twenty copies as an experiment. At the present very high rate of exchange, which makes a s.h.i.+lling worth thirty cents, they think, with freight and duties, the book would be too costly here for sale, but we confide in a speedy fall of Exchange; then my books shall come.

I am ashamed that you should educate our young men, and that we should pirate your books. One day we will have a better law, or perhaps you will make our law yours.

I had your letter long before your book. Very good work you have done in your lifetime, and very generously you adorn and cheer this pilgrimage of mine by your love. I find my highest prayer granted in calling a just and wise man my friend. Your profuse benefaction of genius in so few years makes me feel very poor and useless. I see that I must go on trust to you and to all the brave for some longer time, hoping yet to prove one day my truth and love. There are in this country so few scholars, that the services of each studious person are needed to do what he can for the circulation of thoughts, to the end of making some counterweight to the money force, and to give such food as he may to the nigh starving youth. So I religiously read lectures every winter, and at other times whenever summoned. Last year, "the Philosophy of History," twelve lectures; and now I meditate a course on what I call "Ethics." I peddle out all the wit I can gather from Time or from Nature, and am pained at heart to see how thankfully that little is received.

Write to me, good friend, tell me if you went to Scotland,--what you do, and will do,--tell me that your wife is strong and well again as when I saw her at Craigenputtock. I desire to be affectionately remembered to her. Tell me when you will come hither. I called together a little club a week ago, who spent a day with me,--counting fifteen souls,--each one of whom warmly loves you. So if the _French Revolution_ does not convert the "dull public" of your native Nineveh, I see not but you must shake their dust from your shoes and cross the Atlantic to a New England. Yours in love and honor.

--R. Waldo Emerson

May I trouble you with a commission when you are in the City?

You mention being at the shop of Rich in Red-Lion Square. Will you say to him that he sent me some books two or three years ago without any account of prices annexed? I wrote him once myself, once through S. Burdett, bookseller, and since through C.P.

Curtis, Esq., who professes to be his attorney in Boston,--three times,--to ask for this account. No answer has ever come. I wish he would send me the account, that I may settle it. If he persist in his self-denying contumacy, I think you may immortalize him as a bookseller of the G.o.ds.

I shall send you an Oration presently, delivered before a literary society here, which is now being printed.* Gladly I hear of the Carlylet--so they say--in the new Westminster.

* This was Emerson's famous Oration before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge, August 31, 1837, on "The American Scholar." In his admirable essay on Th.o.r.eau,--an essay which might serve as introduction and comment to the letters of Carlyle and Emerson during these years,--Lowell speaks of the impression made by this remarkable discourse. It "was an event without any former parallel in our literary annals, a scene to be always treasured in the memory for its picturesqueness and its inspiration. What crowded and breathless aisles, what windows cl.u.s.tering with eager heads, what enthusiasm of approval, what grim silence of foregone dissent! It was our Yankee version of a lecture by Abelard, our Harvard parallel to the last public appearances of Sch.e.l.ling."--_My Study Windows,_ p. 197