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I hope you liked John Dwight's translations of Goethe, and his notes. He is a good, susceptible, yearning soul, not so apt to create as to receive with the freest allowance, but I like his books very much.
Do think to say in a letter whether you received from me a copy of our edition of your French Revolution. I ordered a copy sent to you,—probably wrote your name in it,—but it does not appear in the bookseller's account. Farewell.
—R.W. Emerson
XXXVI. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, London, 13 April, 1839
My Dear Emerson,—Has anything gone wrong with you? How is it that you do not write to me? These three or four weeks, I know not whether duly or not so long, I have been in daily hope of some sign from you; but none comes; not even a Newspaper,—open at the ends. The German Translator, Mr. Dwight, mentioned, at the end of a Letter I had not long ago, that you had given a brilliant course of Lectures at Boston, but had been obliged to intermit it on account of illness. Bad news indeed, that latter clause; at the same time, it was thrown in so cursorily I would not let myself be much alarmed; and since that, various New England friends have assured me here that there was nothing of great moment in it, that the business was all well over now, and you safe at Concord again. Yet how is it that I do not hear? I will tell you my guess is that those Boston Carlylean Miscellanies are to blame. The Printer is slack and lazy as Printers are; and you do not wish to write till you can send some news of him? I will hope and believe that only this is it, till I hear worse.
I sent you a Dumfries Newspaper the other week, for a sign of my existence and anxiety. A certain Mr. Ellis of Boston is this day packing up a very small memorial of me to your Wife; a poor Print rolled about a bit of wood: let her receive it graciously in defect of better. It comes under your address. Nay, properly it is my Wife's memorial to your Wife. It is to be hung up in the Concord drawing-room. The two Households, divided by wide seas, are to understand always that they are united nevertheless.
My special cause for writing this day rather than another is the old story, book business. You have brought that upon yourself, my friend; and must do the best you can with it. After all, why should not Letters be on business too? Many a kind thought, uniting man with man, in gratitude and helpfulness, is founded on business. The speaker at Dartmouth College seems to think it ought to be so. Nor do I dissent.—But the case is this, Fraser and I are just about bargaining for a second edition of the Revolution. He will print fifteen hundred for the English market, in a somewhat closer style, and sell them here at twenty- four shillings a copy. His first edition is all gone but some handful; and the man is in haste, and has taken into a mood of hope,—for he is weak and aguish, alternating from hot to cold; otherwise, I find, a very accurate creature, and deals in his unjust trade as justly as any other will. He has settled with me; his half-profits amount to some L130, which by charging me for every presentation copy he cuts down to somewhere about L110; not the lion's share in the gross produce, yet a great share compared with an expectancy no higher than zero! We continue on the same system for this second adventure; I cannot go hawking about in search of new terms; I might go farther and fare worse. And now comes your part of the affair; in which I would fain have had your counsel; but must ask your help, proceeding with my own light alone. After Fraser's fifteen hundred are printed off, the types remain standing, and I for my own behoof throw off five hundred more, designed for your market. Whether five hundred are too many or too few, I can only guess; if too many, we can retain them here and turn them to account; if too few, there is no remedy. At all events, costing me only the paper and press-work, there is surely no Pirate in the Union that can undersell us! Nay, it seems they have a drawback on our taxed paper, sufficient or nearly so to land the cargo at Boston without more charge. You see, therefore, how it is. Can you find me a Bookseller, as for yourself; he and you can fix what price the ware will carry when you see it. Meanwhile I must have his Title-page; I must have his directions (if any be needed); nay, for that matter, you might write a Preface if you liked,—though I see not what you have to say, and recommend silence rather! The book is to be in three volumes duodecimo, and we will take care it be fit to show its face in your market. A few errors of the press; and one correction (about the sinking of the Vengeur, which I find lately to be an indisputable falsehood); these are all the changes. We are to have done printing, Fraser predicts, "in two months";—say two and a half! I suppose you decipher the matter out of this plastering and smearing; and will do what is needful in it. "Great inquiry" is made for the Miscellanies, Fraser says; though he suspects it may perhaps be but one or two men inquiring often,—the dog!
I am again upon the threshold of extempore lecturing: on "the Revolutions of Modern Europe"; Protestantism, 2 lectures; Puritanism, 2; French Revolution, 2. I almost regret that I had undertaken the thing this year at all, for I am no longer driven by Poverty as heretofore. Nay, I am richer than I have been for ten years; and have a kind of prospect, for the first time this great while, of being allowed to subsist in this world for the future: a great blessing, perhaps the greatest, when it comes as a novelty! However, I thought it right to keep this Lecture business open, come what might. I care less about it than I did; it is not agony and wretched trembling to the marrow of the bone, as it was the last two times. I believe, in spite of all my perpetual indigestions and nervous woes, I am actually getting into better health; the weary heart of me is quieter; I wait in silence for the new chapter,—feeling truly that we are at the end of one period here. I count it two in my autobiography: we shall see what the third is; [if] third there be. But I am in small haste for a third. How true is that of the old Prophets, "The word of the Lord came unto" such and such a one! When it does not come, both Prophet and Prosaist ought to be thankful (after a sort), and rigorously hold their tongue.—Lord Durham's people have come over with golden reports of the Americans, and their brotherly feelings. One Arthur Buller preaches to me, with emphasis, on a quite personal topic till one explodes in laughter to hear him, the good soul: That I, namely, am the most esteemed, &c., and ought to go over and Lecture in all great towns of the Union, and make, &c., &c.! I really do begin to think of it in this interregnum that I am in. But then my Lectures must be written; but then I must become a hawker, —ach Gott!
The people are beginning to quote you here: tant pis pour eux! I have found you in two Cambridge books. A certain Mr. Richard M. Milnes, M.P., a beautiful little Tory dilettante poet and politician whom I love much, applied to me for Nature (the others he has) that he might write upon it. Somebody has stolen Nature from me, or many have thumbed it to pieces; I could not find a copy. Send me one, the first chance you have. And see Miss Martineau in the last Westminster Review:—these things you are old enough to stand? They are even of benefit? Emerson is not without a select public, the root of a select public on this side of the water too.—Popular Sumner is off to Italy, the most popular of men,—inoffensive, like a worn sixpence that has no physiognomy left. We preferred Coolidge to him in this circle; a square-cut iron man, yet with clear symptoms of a heart in him. Your people will come more and more to their maternal Babylon, will they not, by the steamers?— Adieu, my dear friend. My Wife joins me in all good prayers for you and yours.
—Thomas Carlyle
XXXVII. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, London, 17 April, 1839
Dear Friend,—Some four days ago I wrote you a long Letter, rather expressive of anxiety about you; it will probably come to hand along with this. I had heard vaguely that you were unwell, and wondered why you did not write. Happily, that point is as good as settled now, even by your silence about it. I have, half an hour ago, received your Concord Letter of the 19th of March. The Letter you speak of there as "written last Saturday" has not yet made its appearance, but may be looked for now shortly: as there is no mention here of any mischance, except the shortcoming of Printers' copy, I infer that all else is in a tolerably correct state; I wait patiently for the "last Saturday" tidings, and will answer as to the matters of copy, in good heart, without loss of a moment.
There is nothing of the manuscript sort in Teufelsdrockh's repositories that would suit you well; nothing at all in a completed state, except a long rigmarole dissertation (in a crabbed sardonic vein) about the early history of the Teutonic Kindred, wriggling itself along not in the best style through Proverb lore, and I know not what, till it end (if my memory serve) in a kind of Essay on the Minnesingers. It was written almost ten years ago, and never contented me well. It formed part of a lucklessly projected History of German Literature, subsequent portions of which, the Nibelungen and Reinecke Fox, you have already printed. The unfortunate "Cabinet Library Editor," or whatever his title was, broke down; and I let him off,—without paying me; and this alone remains of the misventure; a thing not fit for you, nor indeed at bottom for anybody, though I have never burnt it yet. My other Manuscripts are scratchings and scrawlings;—children's infant souls weeping because they never could be born, but were left there whimpering in limine primo!
On this side, therefore, is no help. Nevertheless, it seems to me, otherwise there is. Varnhagen may be printed I think without offence, since there is need of it: if that will make up your fourth volume to a due size, why not? It is the last faint murmur one gives in Periodical Literature, and may indicate the approach of silence and slumber. I know no errors of the Press in Varnhagen: there is one thing about Jean Paul F. Richter's want of humor in his speech, which somehow I could like to have the opportunity of uttering a word on, though what word I see not very well. My notion is partly that V. overstates the thing, taking a Berlin propos de salon for a scientifically accurate record; and partly farther that the defect (if any) was creditable to Jean Paul, indicating that he talked from the abundance of the heart, not burning himself off in miserable perpetual sputter like a Town-wit, but speaking what he had to say, were it dull, were it not dull,—for his own satisfaction first of all! If you in a line or two could express at the right point something of that sort, it were well; yet on the whole, if not, then is almost no matter. Let the whole stand then as the commencement of slumber and stertorous breathing!
Varnhagen himself will not bring up your fourth volume to the right size; hardly beyond 380 pages, I should think; yet what more can be done? Do you remember Fraser's Magazine for October, 1832, and a Translation there, with Notes, of a thing called Goethe's Mahrchen? It is by me; I regard it as a most remarkable piece, well worthy of perusal, especially by all readers of mine. The printing of your third volume will of course be finished before this letter arrive; nevertheless I have a plan: that you (as might be done, I suppose, by cancelling and reprinting the concluding leaf or leaves) append the said Translated Tale, in a smaller type, to that volume. It is 21 or 22 pages of Fraser, and will perhaps bring yours up to the mark. Nay, indeed there are two other little Translations from Goethe which I reckon good, though of far less interest than the Mahrchen; I think they are in the Frasers almost immediately preceding; one of them is called Fragment from Goethe (if I remember); in his Works, it is Novelle; it treats of a visit by some princely household to a strange Mountain ruin or castle, and the catastrophe is the escape of a show-lion from its booth in the neighboring Market-Town. I have not the thing here,—alas, sinner that I am, it now strikes me that the "two other things" are this one thing, which my treacherous memory is making into two! This however you will find in the Number immediately, or not far from immediately, preceding that of the Mahrchen; along with which, in the same type with which, it would give us letter-press enough. It ought to stand before the Mahrchen: read it, and say whether it is worthy or not worthy. Will this Appendix do, then? I should really rather like the Mahrchen to be printed, and had thoughts of putting [it] at the end of the English Sartor. The other I care not for, intrinsically, but think it very beautiful in its kind.—Some rubbish of my own, in small quantity, exists here and there in Fraser; one story, entitled Cruthers and Jonson,* was written sixteen years ago, and printed somewhere early (probably the second year) in that rubbish heap, with several gross errors of the press (mares for maces was one!): it is the first thing I wrote, or among the very first;—otherwise a thing to be kept rather secret, except from the like of you! This or any other of the "original" immaturities I will not recommend as an Appendix; I hope the Mahrchen, or the Novelle and Mahrchen, will suffice. But on the whole, to thee, O Friend, and thy judgment and decision, without appeal, I leave it altogether. Say Yes, say No; do what seemeth good to thee.—Nay now, writing with the speed of light, another consideration strikes me: Why should Volume Third be interfered with if it is finished? Why will not this Appendix do, these Appendixes, to hang to the skirts of Volume Four as well? Perhaps better! the Mahrchen in any case closing the rear. I leave it all to Emerson and Stearns Wheeler, my more than kind Editors: E. knows it better than I; be his decision irrevocable.
—————- * "Cruthers and Jonson; or, The Outskirts of Life. A True Story." Fraser's Magazine, January, 1831. ——————
This letter is far too long, but I had not time to make it shorter.—I got your French Revolution, and have seen no other: my name is on it in your hand. I received Dwight's Book, liked it, and have answered him: a good youth, of the kind you describe; no Englishman, to my knowledge, has yet uttered as much sense about Goethe and German things. I go this day to settle with Fraser about printers and a second edition of the Revolution Book,—as specified in the other Letter: five hundred copies for America, which are to cost he computes about 2/7, and your Bookseller will bind them, and defy Piracy. My Lectures come on, this day two weeks: O Heaven! I cannot "speak"; I can only gasp and writhe and stutter, a spectacle to gods and fashionables,—being forced to it by want of money. In five weeks I shall be free, and then—! Shall it be Switzerland, shall it be Scotland, nay, shall it be America and Concord?
Ever your affectionate T. Carlyle
All love from both of us to the Mother and Boy. My Wife is better than usual; rejoices in the promise of summer now at last visible after a spring like Greenland. Scarcity, discontent, fast ripening towards desperation, extends far and wide among our working people. God help them! In man as yet is small help. There will be work yet, before that account is liquidated; a generation or two of work! Miss Martineau is gone to Switzerland, after emitting Deerwood [sic], a Novel.* How do you like it? people ask. To which there are serious answers returnable, but few so good as none. Ah me! Lady Bulwer too has written a Novel, in satire of her Husband. I saw the Husband not long since; one of the wretchedest Phantasms, it seemed to me, I had yet fallen in with,—many, many, as they are here.
The L100 Sterling Bill came, in due time, in perfect order; and will be payable one of these days. I forget dates; but had well calculated that before the 19th of March this piece of news and my gratitude for it had reached you.
———— * Deerbrook ————
XXXVIII. Emerson to Carlyle
Boston, 20 April, 1839
My Dear Friend,—Learning here in town that letters may go today to the "Great Western," I seize the hour to communicate a bookseller's message. I told Brown, of C.C. Little & Co., that you think of stereotyping the History. He says that he can make it profitable to himself and to you to use your plates here in this manner (which he desires may be kept secret here, and I suppose with you also). You are to get your plates made and proved, then you are to send them out here to him, having first insured them in London, and he is to pay you a price for every copy he prints from them. As soon as he has printed a supply for our market,—and we want, he says, five hundred copies now,—he will send them back to you. I told him I thought he had better fix the price per copy to be paid by him, and I would send it to you as his offer. He is willing to do so, but not today. It was only this morning I informed him of your plan. I think in a fortnight I shall need to write again,—probably to introduce to you my countrywoman, Miss Sedgwick, the writer of affectionate New England tales and the like, who is about to go to Europe for a year or more. I will then get somewhat definite from Brown as to rates and prices. Brown thought you might better send the plates here first, as we are in immediate want of copies; and afterwards print with them in London. He is quite sure that it would be more profitable to print them in this manner than to try to import and sell here the books after being manufactured in London.
On the 30th of April we shall ship at New York the first two volumes of the Miscellanies, two hundred and sixty copies. In four weeks, the second two volumes will be finished, unless we wait for something to be added by yourself, agreeably to a suggestion of Wheeler's and mine. Two copies of Schiller's Life will go in the same box. We send them to the port of London. When these are gone, only one hundred copies remain unsold of the first two volumes (Miscellanies).
Brown said it was important that the plates should be proved correct at London by striking off impressions before they were sent hither. This is the whole of my present message. I shall have somewhat presently to reply to your last letter, received three weeks since. And may health and peace dwell with you and yours!
—R.W. Emerson
XXXIX. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 25 April, 1839
My Dear Friend,—Behold my account! A very simple thing, is it not! A very mouse, after such months, almost years, of promise! Despise it not, however; for such is my extreme dulness at figures and statements that this nothing has been a fear to me, a long time, how to extract it from the bookseller's promiscuous account with me, and from obscure records of my own. You see that it promises yet to pay you between $60 and $70 more, if Mr. Fuller (a gentleman of Providence, who procured many subscribers for us there) and Mr. Owen (who owes us also for copies subscribed for) will pay us our demand. They have both been lately reminded of their delinquency. Herrick and Noyes, you will see credited for eight copies, $18. They are booksellers who supplied eight subscribers, and charged us $2 for their trouble and some alleged damage to a copy. One copy you will see is sold to Ann Pomeroy for $3. This lady bought the copy of me, and preferred sending me $3 to sending $2.50 for so good a book. You will notice one or two other variations in the prices, in each of which I aimed to use a friend's discretion. Add lastly, that you must revise all my figures, as I am a hopeless blunderer, and quite lately made a brilliant mistake in regard to the amount of 9 multiplied by 12.
Have I asked you whether you received from me a copy of the History? I designated a copy to go, and the bookseller's boy thinks he sent one, but there is none charged in their account. The account of the Miscellanies does not prosper quite so well....
Thanks for your too friendly and generous expectations from my wit. Alas! my friend, I can do no such gay thing as you say. I do not belong to the poets, but only to a low department of literature, the reporters; suburban men. But in God we are all great, all rich, each entitled to say, All is mine. I hope the advancing season has restored health to your wife, and, if benedictions will help her, tell her we send them on every west wind. My wife and babes are well.
—R.W.E.
XL. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 28 April, 1839
My Dear Friend,—I received last night C.C. Little & Co.'s proposition in reference to the stereotyping the History. Their offer is based on my statement that you proposed to print the book in two volumes similar to ours. They say, "We should be willing to pay three hundred dollars for the use of plates for striking off five hundred copies of the two volumes, with the farther agreement that, if we wished to strike off another five hundred in nine months after the publication of the first five hundred, we should have the liberty to do so, paying the same again; that is, another three hundred dollars for the privilege of printing another five hundred copies;—the plates to be furnished us ready for use and free of expense." They add, "Should Mr. Carlyle send the plates to this country, he should be particular to ship them to this port direct." I am no judge of the liberality of this offer, as I know nothing of the expense of the plates. The men, Little and Brown, are fair in their dealings, and the most respectable book-selling firm in Boston. When you have considered the matter, I hope you will send me as early an answer as you can. For as we have no protection from pirates we must use speed.
I ought to have added to my account and statement sent by Miss Sedgwick one explanation. You will find in the account a credit of $13.75, agreed on with Little & Co., as compensation for lost subscribers. We had a little book, kept in the bookshop, into which were transferred the names of subscribers from all lists which were returned from various places. These names amounted to two hundred, more or less. When we came to settle the account, this book could not be found. They expressed much regret, and made much vain searching. Their account with me recorded only one hundred and thirty-four copies delivered to subscribers. Thus, a large number, say sixty-six, had been sold by them to our subscribers, and our half-dollar on each copy put in their pocket as commission, expressly contrary to treaty! With some ado, I mustered fifty-five names of subscribers known to me as such, not recorded on their books as having received copies, and demanded $27.50. They replied that they also had claims; that they had sent the books to distant subscribers in various States, and had charged no freight (with one or two exceptions, when the books went alone); that other booksellers had, no doubt, in many cases, sold the copies to subscribers for which I claimed the half-dollar; and lastly, which is indeed the moving reason, that they had sent twenty copies up the Mississippi to a bookseller (in Vicksburg, I think), who had made them no return. On these grounds they proposed that they should pay half my demand, and so compromise. They said, however, that, if I insisted, they would pay the whole. I was so glad to close the affair with mutual goodwill that I said with the unjust steward, write $13.75. So are we all pleased at your expense. [Greek] I think I will not give you any more historiettes,—they take too much room; but as I write this time only on business, you are welcome to this from your friend,
—R.W. Emerson
XLI. Emerson to Carlyle*
Concord, 15 May, 1839.
My Dear Friend,—Last Saturday, 11th instant, I had your two letters of 13th and 17th April. Before now, you must have one or two notes of mine touching the stereotype plates: a proposition superseded by your new plan. I have also despatched one or two sheets lately containing accounts. Now for the new matter. I was in Boston yesterday, and saw Brown, the bookseller. He accedes gladly, to the project of five hundred American copies of the History. He says, that the duty is the same on books in sheets and books in boards; and desires, therefore, that the books may come out bound. You bind yours in cloth? Put up his in the same style as those for your market, only a little more strongly than is the custom with London books, as it will only cost a little more. He would be glad also to have his name added in the titlepage (London: Published by J. Fraser; and Boston: by C.C. Little and James Brown, 112 Washington St.), or is not this the right way? He only said he should like to have his name added. He threatens to charge me 20 percent commission. If, as he computes from your hint of 2/7, the work costs you, say, 70 cents per copy, unbound; he reckons it at a dollar, when bound; then 75 cents duty in Boston, $1.75. He thinks we cannot set a higher price on it than $3.50, because we sold our former edition for $2.50. On that price, his commissions would be 70 cents; and $1.05 per copy will to you. If when we see the book, we venture to put a higher price on it, your remainder shall be more. I confess, when I set this forth on paper, it looks as bad as your English trade,—this barefaced 20 percent; but their plea is, We guarantee the sales; we advertise; we pay you when it is sold, though we give our customers six months' credit. I have made no final bargain with the man, and perhaps before the books arrive I shall be better advised, and may get better terms from him. Meantime, give me the best advice you can; and despatch the books with all speed, and if you send six hundred, I think, we will sell them.
—————— * In the first edition of this Correspondence a portion of this letter was printed from a rough draft, such as Emerson was accustomed to make of his letters to Carlyle. I owe the original to the kindness of the editor of the Athenaeum, in the pages of which it was printed. —————-
I went to the Athenaeum, and procured the Frasers' and will print the Novelle and the Mahrchen at the end of the Fourth Volume, which has been loitering under one workman for a week or two past, awaiting this arrival. Now we will finish at once. Cruthers and Jonson I read gladly. It is indispensable to such as would see the fountains of Nile: but I incline to what seems your opinion, that it will be better in the final edition of your Works than in this present First Collection of them. I believe I could find more matter now of yours if we should be pinched again. The Cat-Raphael? and Mirabeau and Macaulay? Stearns Wheeler is very faithful in his loving labor,—has taken a world of pains with the sweetest smile. We are very fortunate in having him to friend.—For the Miscellanies once more, the two boxes containing two hundred and sixty copies of the first series went to sea in the "St. James," Captain Sebor, addressed to Mr. Fraser. (I hope rightly addressed; yet I saw a memorandum at Munroe's in which he was named John Fraser.)
Arthur Buller has my hearty thanks for his good and true witnessing. And now that our old advice is indorsed by John Bull himself, you will believe and come. Nothing can be better. As soon as the lectures are over, let the trunks be packed. Only my wife and my blessed sister dear—Elizabeth Hoar, betrothed in better times to my brother Charles,—my wife and this lovely nun do say that Mrs. Carlyle must come hither also; that it will make her strong, and lengthen her days on the earth, and cheer theirs also. Come, and make a home with me; and let us make a truth that is better than dreams. From this farm-house of mine you shall sally forth as God shall invite you, and "lecture in the great cities." You shall do it by proclamation of your own, or by the mediation of a committee, which will readily be found. Wife, mother, and sister shall nurse thy wife meantime, and you shall bring your republican laurels home so fast that she shall not sigh for the Old England. Eyes here do sparkle at the very thought. And my little placid Musketaquid River looked gayer today in the sun. In very sooth and love, my friend, I shall look for you in August. If aught that we know not must forbid your wife at present, you will still come. In October, you shall lecture in Boston; in November, in New York; in December, in Philadelphia; in January, in Washington. I can show you three or four great natures, as yet unsung by Harriet Martineau or Anna Jameson, that content the heart and provoke the mind. And for yourself, you shall be as cynical and headstrong and fantastical as you can be.
I rejoice in what you say of better health and better prospects. I was glad to hear of Milnes, whose Poems already lay on my table when your letter came. Since the little Nature book is not quite dead, I have sent you a few copies, and wish you would offer one to Mr. Milnes with my respects. I hope before a great while I may have somewhat better to send him. I am ashamed that my little books should be "quoted" as you say.
My affectionate salutations to Mrs. Carlyle, who is to sanction and enforce all I have written on the migration. In the prospect of your coming I feel it to be foolish to write. I have very much to say to you. But now only Good Bye.
—R.W. Emerson
XLII. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, London, 29 May, 1839
My Dear Emerson,—Your Letter, dated Boston, 20th April, has been here for some two weeks. Miss Sedgwick, whom it taught us to expect in "about a fortnight," has yet given no note of herself, but shall be right welcome whenever she appears. Miss Martineau's absence (she is in Switzerland this summer) will probably be a loss to the fair Pilgrim;—which of course the rest of us ought to exert ourselves to make good.... My Lectures are happily over ten days ago; with "success" enough, as it is called; the only valuable part of which is some L200, gained with great pain, but also with great brevity:—economical respite for another solar year! The people were boundlessly tolerant; my agitation beforehand was less this year, my remorse afterwards proportionally greater. There was but one moderately good Lecture, the last,—on Sausculottism, to an audience mostly Tory, and rustling with the beautifulest quality silks! Two things I find: first that I ought to have had a horse; I had only three incidental rides or gallops, hired rides; my horse Yankee is never yet purchased, but it shall be, for I cannot live, except in great pain, without a horse. It was sweet beyond measure to escape out of the dustwhirlpool here, and fly, in solitude, through the ocean of verdure and splendor, as far as Harrow and back again; and one's nerves were clear next day, and words lying in one like water in a well. But the second thing I found was, that extempore speaking, especially in the way of Lecture, is an art or craft, and requires an apprenticeship, which I have never served. Repeatedly it has come into my head that I should go to America, this very Fall, and belecture you from North to South till I learn it! Such a thing does lie in the bottom-scenes, should hard come to hard; and looks pleasant enough.—On the whole, I say sometimes, I must either begin a Book, or do it. Books are the lasting thing; Lectures are like corn ground into flour; there are loaves for today, but no wheat harvests for next year. Rudiments of a new Book (thank Heaven!) do sometimes disclose themselves in me. Festina lente. It ought to be better than the French Revolution; I mean better written. The greater part of that Book, as I read proof-sheets of it in these weeks, does nothing but disgust me. And yet it was, as nearly as was good, the utmost that lay in me. I should not like to be nearer killed with any other Book!—Books too are a triviality. Life alone is great; with its infinite spaces, its everlasting times, with its Death, with its Heaven and its Hell. Ah me!
Wordsworth is here at present; a garrulous, rather watery, not wearisome old man. There is a freshness as of brooks and mountain breezes in him; one says of him: Thou art not great, but thou art genuine; well speed thou. Sterling is home from Italy, recovered in health, indeed very well could he but sit still. He is for Clifton, near Bristol, for the next three months. I hear him speak of some sonnet or other he means to address to you: as for me he knows well that I call his verses timber toned, without true melody either in thought, phrase or sound. The good John! Did you ever see such a vacant turnip-lantern as that Walsingham Goethe? Iconoclast Collins strikes his wooden shoe through him, and passes on, saying almost nothing.—My space is done! I greet the little maidkin, and bid her welcome to this unutterable world. Commend her, poor little thing, to her little Brother, to her Mother and Father;— Nature, I suppose, has sent her strong letters of recommendation, without our help, to them all. Where I shall be in six weeks is not very certain; likeliest in Scotland, whither our whole household, servant and all, is pressingly invited, where they have provided horses and gigs. Letters sent hither will still find me, or lie waiting for me, safe: but perhaps the speediest address will be "Care of Fraser, 215 Regent Street." My Brother wants me to the Tyrol and Vienna; but I think I shall not go. Adieu, dear friend. It is a great treasure to me that I have you in this world. My Wife salutes you all.—
Yours ever and ever, T. Carlyle
XLIII. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, London, 24 June, 1833
Dear Friend,—Two Letters from you were brought hither by Miss Sedgwick last week. The series of post Letters is a little embroiled in my head; but I have a conviction that all hitherto due have arrived; that up to the date of my last despatch (a Proof-sheet and a Letter), which ought to be getting into your hands in these very days, our correspondence is clear. That Letter and Proof-sheet, two separate pieces, were sent to Liverpool some three weeks ago, to be despatched by the first conveyance thence; as I say, they are probably in Boston about this time. The Proof-sheet was one of the forty-seven such which the new French Revolution is to consist of: with this, as with a correct sample, you were to act upon some Boston Bookseller, and make a bargain for me,—or at least report that none was to be made. A bad bargain will content me now, my hopes are not at all high.
For the present, I am to announce on the part of Bookseller Fraser that the First Portion of our celebrated Miscellanies have been hovering about on these coasts for several weeks, have lain safe "in the River" for some two weeks, and ought at last to be safe in Fraser's shop today or else to morrow. I will ask there, and verify, before this Letter go. The reason of these "two weeks in the river" is that the packages were addressed "John Fraser, London," and the people had tried all the Frasers in London before they attempted the right individual, James, of 215 Regent Street. Of course, the like mistake in the second case will be avoided. A Letter, put ashore at Falmouth, and properly addressed, but without any signature, had first of all announced that the thing was at the door, and so with this "John Fraser," it has been knocking ever since, finding difficult admission. In the present instance, such delay has done no ill, for Fraser will not sell till the Second Portion come; and with this the mistake will be avoided. What has shocked poor James much more is a circumstance which your Boston Booksellers have no power to avoid: the "enormousness" of the charges in our Port here! He sends me the account of them last Saturday, with eyes— such as drew Priam's curtains: L31 and odd silver, whereof L28 as duty on Books at L5 per cwt. is charged by the rapacious Custom-house alone! What help, O James? I answer: we cannot bombard the British Custom-house, and sack it, and explode it; we must yield, and pay it the money; thankful for what is still left.—On the whole, one has to learn by trying. This notable finance-expedient, of printing in the one country what is to be sold in the other, did not take Vandalic custom-houses into view, which nevertheless do seem to exist. We must persist in it for the present reciprocal pair of times, having started in it for these: but on future occasions always, we can ask the past; and see whether it be not better to let each side of the water stand on its own basis.
As for your "accounts," my Friend, I find them clear as day, verifiable to the uttermost farthing. You are a good man to conquer your horror of arithmetic; and, like hydrophobic Peter of Russia making himself a sailor, become an Accountant for my sake. But now will you forgive me if I never do verify this same account, or look at it more in this world except as a memento of affection, its arithmetical ciphers so many hierograms, really sacred to me! A reflection I cannot but make is that at bottom this money was all yours; not a penny of it belonged to me by any law except that of helpful Friendship. I feel as if I could not examine it without a kind of crime. For the rest, you may rejoice to think that, thanks to you and the Books, and to Heaven over all, I am for the present no longer poor; but have a reasonable prospect of existing, which, as I calculate, is literally the most that money can do for a man. Not for these twelve years, never since I had a house to maintain with money, have I had as much money in my possession as even now. Allah kerim! We will hope all that is good on that side. And herewith enough of it.
You tell me you are but "a reporter": I like you for thinking so. And you will never know that it is not true, till you have tried. Meanwhile, far be it from me to urge you to a trial before your time come. Ah, it will come, and soon enough; much better, perhaps, if it never came!—A man has "such a baptism to be baptized withal," no easy baptism; and is "straitened till it be accomplished." As for me I honor peace before all things; the silence of a great soul is to me greater than anything it will ever say, it ever can say. Be tranquil, my friend; utter no word till you cannot help it;—and think yourself a "reporter," till you find (not with any great joy) that you are not altogether that!
We have not yet seen Miss Sedgwick: your Letters with her card were sent hither by post we went up next day, but she was out; no meeting could be arranged earlier than tomorrow evening, when we look for her here. Her reception, I have no doubt, will be abundantly flattering in this England. American Notabilities are daily becoming notabler among us; the ties of the two Parishes, Mother and Daughter, getting closer and closer knit. Indissoluble ties:—I reckon that this huge smoky Wen may, for some centuries yet, be the best Mycale for our Saxon Panionium, a yearly meeting-place of "All the Saxons," from beyond the Atlantic, from the Antipodes, or wherever the restless wanderers dwell and toil. After centuries, if Boston, if New York, have become the most convenient "All-Saxondom," we will right cheerfully go thither to hold such festival, and leave the Wen.— Not many days ago I saw at breakfast the notabest of all your Notabilities, Daniel Webster. He is a magnificent specimen; you might say to all the world, This is your Yankee Englishman, such Limbs we make in Yankeeland! As a Logic-fencer, Advocate, or Parliamentary Hercules, one would incline to back him at first sight against all the extant world. The tanned complexion, that amorphous crag-like face; the dull black eyes under their precipice of brows, like dull anthracite furnaces, needing only to be blown; the mastiff-mouth, accurately closed:—I have not traced as much of silent Berserkir-rage, that I remember of, in any other man. "I guess I should not like to be your nigger!"— Webster is not loquacious, but he is pertinent, conclusive; a dignified, perfectly bred man, though not English in breeding: a man worthy of the best reception from us; and meeting such, I understand. He did not speak much with me that morning, but seemed not at all to dislike me: I meditate whether it is fit or not fit that I should seek out his residence, and leave my card too, before I go? Probably not; for the man is political, seemingly altogether; has been at the Queen's levee, &c., &c.: it is simply as a mastiff-mouthed man that he is interesting to me, and not otherwise at all.
In about seven days hence we go to Scotland till the July heats be over. That is our resolution after all. Our address there, probably till the end of August, is "Templand, Thornhill, Dumfries, N. B.,"—the residence of my Mother-in-law, within a day's drive of my Mother's. Any Letter of yours sent by the old constant address (Cheyne Row, Chelsea) will still find me there; but the other, for that time, will be a day or two shorter. We all go, servant and all. I am bent on writing something; but have no faith that I shall be able. I must try. There is a thing of mine in Fraser for July, of no account, about the "sinking of the Vengeur" as you will see. The French Revolution printing is not to stop; two thirds of it are done; at this present rate, it ought to finish, and the whole be ready, within three weeks hence. A Letter will be here from you about that time, I think: I will print no title-page for the Five Hundred till it do come. "Published by Fraser and Little" would, I suppose, be unobjectionable, though Fraser is the most nervous of creatures: but why put him in at all, since these Five hundred copies are wholly Little's and yours? Adieu, my Friend. Our blessings are with you and your house. My wife grows better with the hot weather; I, always worse.
Yours ever, T. Carlyle
I say not a word about America or Lecturing at present; because I mean to consider it intently in Scotland, and there to decide. My Brother is to be at Ischl (not far from Salzburg) during Summer: he was anxious to have me there, and I to have gone; but—but—Adieu.
Fraser's Shop. Books not yet come, but known to be safe, and expected soon. Nay, the dexterous Fraser has argued away L15 of the duty, he says! All is right therefore. N.B. he says you are to send the second Portion in sheets, the weight will be less. This if it be still time.—Basta.
—T.C.
XLIV. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 4 July, 1839
I hear tonight, O excellent man! that, unless I send a letter to Boston tomorrow with the peep of day, it will miss the Liverpool steamer, which sails earlier than I dreamed of. O foolish Steamer! I am not ready to write. The facts are not yet ripe, though on the turn of the blush. Couldst not wait a little? Hurry is for slaves;—and Aristotle, if I rightly remember only that little from my college lesson, affirmed that the high-minded man never walked fast. O foolish Steamer! wait but a week, and we will style thee Megalopsyche, and hang thee by the Argo in the stars. Meantime I will not deny the dear and admirable man the fragments of intelligence I have. Be it known unto you then, Thomas Carlyle, that I received yesterday morning your letter by the "Liverpool" with great contentment of heart and mind, in all respects, saving that the American Hegira, so often predicted on your side and prayed on ours, is treated with a most unbecoming levity and oblivion; and, moreover, that you do not seem to have received all the letters I seem to have sent. With the letter came the proof-sheet safe, and shall be presently exhibited to Little and Brown. You must have already the result of our first colloquy on that matter. I can now bring the thing nearer to certainty. But you must print their names as before advised on the title-page.
Nearly four weeks ago Ellis sent me the noble Italian print for my wife.* She is in Boston at this time, and I believe will be glad that I have written without her aid or word this time, for she was so deeply pleased with the gift that she said she never could write to you. It came timely to me at least. It is a right morning thought, full of health and flowing genius, and I rejoice in it. It is fitly framed and tomorrow is to be hung in the parlor.
———— * Morghen's engraving of Guido's Aurora. ————
Our Munroe's press, you must believe, was of Aristotle's category of the high-minded and slow. Chiding would do no good. They still said, "We have but one copy, and so but one hand at work"! At last, on the 1st of July, the book appeared in the market, but does not come from the binder fast enough to supply the instant demand; and therefore your two hundred and sixty copies cannot part from New York until the 20th of July. They will be on board the London packet which sails on that day. The publisher has his instructions to bind the volumes to match the old ones. Our year since the publication of the Vols. I. and II. is just complete, and I have set the man on the account, but doubt if I get it before twelve or fourteen days. All the edition is gone except forty copies, he told me; and asked me if I would not begin to print a small edition of this First Series, five hundred, as we have five hundred of the new Series too many, with that view. But I am now so old a fox that I suspend majestically my answer until I have his account. For on the 21st of July I am to pay $462 for the paper of this new book: and by and by the printer's bill,—whose amount I do not yet know; and it is better to be "slow and high-minded" a little more, since we have been so much, and not go deeper into these men's debt until we have tasted somewhat of their credit. We are to get, as you know, by contract, near a thousand dollars from these first two volumes; yet a month ago I was forced to borrow two hundred dollars for you on interest, such advances had the account required. But the coming account will enlighten us all.
I am very happy in the "success" of the London lectures. I have no word to add tonight, only that Sterling is not timber-toned, that I love his poetry, that I admire his prose with reservations here and there. What he knows he writes manly and well. Now and then he puts in a pasteboard man; but all our readers here take Blackwood for his sake, and lately seek him in vain. I am getting on with some studies of mine prosperously for me, have got three essays nearly done, and who knows but in the autumn I shall have a book? Meantime my little boy and maid, my mother and wife, are well, and the two ladies send to you and yours affectionate regards,—they would fain say urgent invitations. My mother sends tonight, my wife always.
I shall send you presently a copy of a translation published here of Eckermann, by Margaret Fuller, a friend of mine and of yours, for the sake of its preface mainly. She is a most accomplished lady, and her culture belongs rather to Europe than to America. Good bye.
—R.W. Emerson
XLV. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 8 August, 1839
Dear Friend,—This day came the letter dated 24 June, with "steam packet" written by you on the outside, but no paddles wheeled it through the sea. It is forty-five days old, and too old to do its errand even had it come twenty days sooner—so far as printer and bookbinder are concerned. I am truly grieved for the mischance of the John Fraser, and will duly lecture the sinning bookseller. I noticed the misnomer in a letter of his New York correspondent, and, I believe, mentioned to you in a letter my fear of such a mischance. I am more sorry for the costliness of this adventure to you, though in a gracious note to me you cut down the fine one half. The new books, tardily printed, were tardily bound and tardily put to sea on the packet ship "Ontario," which left New York for London on the 1st of August. At least this was the promise of Munroe & Co. I stood over the boxes in which they were packing them in the latter days of July. I hope they have not gone to John again, but you must keep an eye to both names....
I cannot tell you how glad I am that you have seen my brave Senator, and seen him as I see him. All my days I have wished that he should go to England, and never more than when I listened two or three times to debates in the House of Commons. We send out usually mean persons as public agents, mere partisans, for whom I can only hope that no man with eyes will meet them; and now those thirsty eyes, those portrait-eating, portrait-painting eyes of thine, those fatal perceptions, have fallen full on the great forehead which I followed about all my young days, from court-house to senate-chamber, from caucus to street. He has his own sins no doubt, is no saint, is a prodigal. He has drunk this rum of Party too so long, that his strong head is soaked, sometimes even like the soft sponges, but the "man's a man for a' that." Better, he is a great boy,—as wilful, as nonchalant and good-humored. But you must hear him speak, not a show speech which he never does well, but with cause he can strike a stroke like a smith. I owe to him a hundred fine hours and two or three moments of Eloquence. His voice in a great house is admirable. I am sorry if you decided not to visit him. He loves a man, too. I do not know him, but my brother Edward read law with him, and loved him, and afterwards in sick and unfortunate days received the steadiest kindness from him.
Well, I am glad you are to think in earnest in Scotland of our Cisatlantic claims. We shall have more rights over the wise and brave, I believe before many years or months. We shall have more men and a better cause than has yet moved on our stagnant waters. I think our Church, so called, must presently vanish. There is a universal timidity, conformity, and rage; and on the other hand the most resolute realism in the young. The man Alcott bides his time. I have a young poet in this village named Thoreau, who writes the truest verses. I pine to show you my treasures; and tell your wife, we have women who deserve to know her.
—R.W. Emerson
The Yankees read and study the new volumes of Miscellanies even more than the old. The "Sam Johnson" and "Scott" are great favorites. Stearns Wheeler corrected proofs affectionately to the last. Truth and Health be with you alway!
XLVI. Carlyle to Emerson
Scotsbrig, Ecclefechan, 4 September, 1839
Dear Emerson,—A cheerful and right welcome Letter of yours, dated 4th July, reached me here, duly forwarded, some three weeks ago; I delayed answering till there could some definite statement, as to bales of literature shipped or landed, or other matter of business forwarded a stage, be made. I am here, with my Wife, rusticating again, these two months; amid diluvian rains, Chartism, Teetotalism, deficient harvest, and general complaint and confusion; which not being able to mend, all that I can do is to heed them as little as possible. "What care I for the house? I am only a lodger." On the whole, I have sat under the wing of Saint Swithin; uncheery, sluggish, murky, as the wettest of his Days;—hoping always, nevertheless, that blue sky, figurative and real, does exist, and will demonstrate itself by and by. I have been the stupidest and laziest of men. I could not write even to you, till some palpable call told me I must.
Yesternight, however, there arrives a despatch from Fraser, apprising me that the American Miscellanies, second cargo, are announced from Portsmouth, and "will probably be in the River tomorrow"; where accordingly they in all likelihood now are, a fair landing and good welcome to them! Fraser "knows not whether they are bound or not"; but will soon know. The first cargo, of which I have a specimen here, contented him extremely; only there was one fatality, the cloth of the binding was multiplex, party-colored, some sets done in green, others in red, blue, perhaps skyblue! Now if the second cargo were not multiplex, party-colored, nay multiplex, in exact concordance with the first, as seemed almost impossible—?—Alas, in that case, one could not well predict the issue!—Seriously, it is a most handsome Book you have made; and I have nothing to return but thanks and again thanks. By the bye, if you do print a small second edition of the First Portion, I might have had a small set of errata ready: but where are they? The Book only came into my hand here a few days ago; and I have been whipt from post to pillar without will of my own, without energy to form a will! The only glaring error I recollect at this moment is one somewhere in the second article on Jean Paul: "Osion" (I think, or some such thing) instead of "Orson": it is not an original American error, but copied from the English; if the Printer get his eye upon it, let him rectify; if not, not, I deserve to have it stand against me there. Fraser's joy, should the Books prove either unbound or multiplex in the right way, will be great and unalloyed; he calculates on selling all the copies very soon. He has begun reprinting Goethe's Wilhelm Meister too, the Apprenticeship and Travels under one; and hopes to remunerate himself for that by and by: whether there will then remain any small peculium for me is but uncertain; meanwhile I correct the press, nothing doubting. One of these I call my best Translation, the other my worst; I have read that latter, the Apprenticeship, again in these weeks; not without surprise, disappointment, nay, aversion here and there, yet on the whole with ever new esteem. I find I can pardon all things in a man except purblindness, falseness of vision,—for, indeed, does not that presuppose every other kind of falseness?
But let me hasten to say that the French Revolution, five hundred strong for the New England market, is also, as Fraser advises, "to go to sea in three days." It is bound in red cloth, gilt; a pretty book, James says; which he will sell for twenty-five shillings here;—nay, the London brotherhood have "subscribed" for one hundred and eighty at once, which he considers great work. I directed him to consign to Little and Brown in Boston, the property of the thing yours, with such phraseology and formalities as they use in those cases. I paid him for it yesterday (to save discount) L95; that is the whole cost to me, twenty or thirty pounds more than was once calculated on. Do the best with it you can, my friend; and never mind the result. If the thing fail, as is likely enough, we will simply quit that transport trade, and my experience must be paid for. The Title-page was "Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown," then in a second line and smaller type, "London James Fraser"; to which arrangement James made not the slightest objection, or indeed rather seemed to like it.—So much for trade matters: is it not enough? I declare I blush sometimes, and wonder where the good Emerson gets all his patience. We shall be through the affair one day, and find something better to speak about than dollars and pounds. And yet, as you will say, why not even of dollars? Ah, there are leaden-worded [bills] of exchange I have seen which have had an almost sacred character to me! Pauca verba.
Doubt not your new utterances are eagerly waited for here; above all things the "Book" is what I want to see. You might have told me what it was about. We shall see by and by. A man that has discerned somewhat, and knows it for himself, let him speak it out, and thank Heaven. I pray that they do not confuse you by praises; their blame will do no harm at all. Praise is sweet to all men; and yet alas, alas, if the light of one's own heart go out, bedimmed with poor vapors and sickly false glitterings and flashings, what profit is it! Happier in darkness, in all manner of mere outward darkness, misfortune and neglect, "so that thou canst endure,"—which however one cannot to all lengths. God speed you, my Brother! I hope all good things of you; and wonder whether like Phoebus Apollo you are destined to be a youth forever.—Sterling will be right glad to hear your praises; not unmerited, for he is a man among millions that John of mine, though his perpetual mobility wears me out at times. Did he ever write to you? His latest speculation was that he should and would; but I fancy it is among the clouds again. I hear from him the other day, out of Welsh villages where he passed his boyhood, &c., all in a flow of "lyrical recognition," hope, faith, and sanguine unrest; I have even some thoughts of returning by Bristol (in a week or so, that must be), and seeing him. The dog has been reviewing me, he says, and it is coming out in the next Westminster! He hates terribly my doctrine of "Silence." As to America and lecturing, I cannot in this torpid condition venture to say one word. Really it is not impossible; and yet lecturing is a thing I shall never grow to like; still less lionizing, Martineau-ing: Ach Gott! My Wife sends a thousand regards; she will never get across the ocean, you must come to her; she was almost dead crossing from Liverpool hither, and declares she will never go to sea for any purpose whatsoever again. Never till next time! My good old Mother is here, my Brother John (home with his Duke from Italy); all send blessings and affection to you and yours. Adieu till I get to London.
Yours ever, T. Carlyle
XLVII. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, London, 8 December, 1839
My Dear Emerson,—What a time since we have written to one another! was it you that defalcated? Alas, I fear it was myself; I have had a feeling these nine or ten weeks that you were expecting to hear from me; that I absolutely could not write. Your kind gift of Fuller's Eckermann* was handed in to our Hackney coach, in Regent Street, as we wended homewards from the railway and Scotland, on perhaps the 8th of September last; a welcome memorial of distant friends and doings: nay, perhaps there was a Letter two weeks prior to that:—I am a great sinner! But the truth is, I could not write; and now I can and do it!
————— * "Conversations with Goethe. Translated from the German of Eckermann. By S.M. Fuller." Boston, 1839. This was the fourth volume in the series of "Specimens of Foreign Standard Literature," edited by George Ripley. The book has a characteristic Preface by Miss Fuller, in which she speaks of Carlyle as "the only competent English critic" of Goethe. —————
Our sojourn in Scotland was stagnant, sad; but tranquil, well let alone,—an indispensable blessing to a poor creature fretted to fiddle-strings, as I grow to be in this Babylon, take it as I will. We had eight weeks of desolate rain; with about eight days bright as diamonds intercalated in that black monotony of bad weather. The old Hills are the same; the old Streams go gushing along as in past years, in past ages; but he that looks on them is no longer the same: and the old Friends, where are they? I walk silent through my old haunts in that country; sunk usually in inexpressible reflections, in an immeasurable chaos of musings and mopings that cannot be reflected or articulated. The only work I had on hand was one that would not prosper with me: an Article for the Quarterly Review on the state of the Working Classes here. The thoughts were familiar to me, old, many years old; but the utterance of them, in what spoken dialect to utter them! The Quarterly Review was not an eligible vehicle, and yet the eligiblest; of Whigs, abandoned to Dilettantism and withered sceptical conventionality, there was no hope at all; the London-and-Westminster Radicals, wedded to their Benthamee Formulas, and tremulous at their own shadows, expressly rejected my proposal many months ago: Tories alone remained; Tories I often think have more stuff in them, in spite of their blindness, than any other class we have;—Walter Scott's sympathy with his fellow creatures, what is it compared with Sydney Smith's, with a Poor Law Commissioner's! Well: this thing would not prosper with me in Scotland at all; nor here at all, where nevertheless I had to persist writing; writing and burning, and cursing my destiny, and then again writing. Finally the thing came out, as an Essay on Chartism; was shown to Lockhart, according to agreement; was praised by him, but was also found unsuitable by him; suitable to explode a whole fleet of Quarterlies into sky-rockets in these times! And now Fraser publishes it himself, with some additions, as a little Volume; and it will go forth in a week or two on its own footing; and England will see what she has to say to it, whether something or nothing; and one man, as usual, is right glad that he has nothing more to do with it. This is the reason why I could not write. I mean to send you the Proof-sheets of this thing, to do with as you see cause; there will be but some five or six, I think. It is probable my New England brothers may approve some portions of it; may be curious to see it reprinted; you ought to say Yes or No in regard to that. I think I will send all the sheets together; or at farthest, at two times.
Fraser, when we returned hither, had already received his Miscellanies; had about despatched his five hundred French Revolutions, insured and so, forth, consigned, I suppose, to your protection and the proper booksellers; probably they have got over from New York into your neighborhood before now. Much good may they do you! The Miscellanies, with their variegated binding, proved to be in perfect order; and are now all sold; with much regret from poor James that we had not a thousand more of them! This thousand he now sets about providing by his own industry, poor man; I am revising the American copy in these days; the printer is to proceed forthwith. I admire the good Stearns Wheeler as I proceed; I write to him my thanks by this post, and send him by Kennet a copy of Goethe's Meister, for symbol of acknowledgment. Another copy goes off for you, to the care of Little and Company. Fraser has got it out two weeks ago; a respectable enough book, now that the version is corrected somewhat. Tell me whether you dislike it less; what you do think of it? By the by, have you not learned to read German now? I rather think you have. It is three months spent well, if ever months were, for a thinking Englishman of this age.—I hope Kennet will use more despatch than he sometimes does. Thank Heaven for these Boston Steamers they project! May the Nereids and Poseidon favor them! They will bring us a thousand miles nearer, at one step; by and by we shall be of one parish after all.
During Autumn I speculated often about a Hegira into New England this very year: but alas! my horror of Lecturing continues great; and what else is there for me to do there? These several years I have had no wish so pressing as to hold my peace. I begin again to feel some use in articulate speech; perhaps I shall one day have something that I want to utter even in your side of the water. We shall see. Patience, and shuffle the cards.—I saw no more of Webster; did not even learn well where he was, till lately I noticed in the Newspapers that he had gone home again. A certain Mr. Brown (I think) brought me a letter from you, not long since; I forwarded him to Cambridge and Scotland: a modest inoffensive man. He said he had never personally met with Emerson. My Wife recalled to him the story of the Scotch Traveler on the top of Vesuvius: "Never saw so beautiful a scene in the world!"—"Nor I," replied a stranger standing there, "except once; on the top of Dunmiot, in the Ochil Hills in Scotland."—"Good Heavens! That is a part of my Estate, and I was never there! I will go thither." Yes, do!—We have seen no other Transoceanic that I remember. We expect your Book soon! We know the subject of your Winter Lectures too; at least Miss Martineau thinks she does, and makes us think so. Heaven speed the work! Heaven send my good Emerson a clear utterance, in all right ways, of the nobleness that dwells in him! He knows what silence means; let him know speech also, in its season the two are like canvas and pigment, like darkness and light-image painted thereon; the one is essential to the other, not possible without the other.
Poor Miss Martineau is in Newcastle-on-Tyne this winter; sick, painfully not dangerously; with a surgical brother-in-law. Her meagre didacticalities afflict me no more; but also her blithe friendly presence cheers me no more. We wish she were back. This silence, I calculate, forced silence, will do her much good. If I were a Legislator, I would order every man, once a week or so, to lock his lips together, and utter no vocable at all for four-and-twenty hours: it would do him an immense benefit, poor fellow. Such racket, and cackle of mere hearsay and sincere-cant, grows at last entirely deafening, enough to drive one mad, —like the voice of mere infinite rookeries answering your voice! Silence, silence! Sterling sent you a Letter from Clifton, which I set under way here, having added the address. He is not well again, the good Sterling; talks of Madeira this season again: but I hope otherwise. You of course read his sublime "article"? I tell him it was—a thing untellable!
Mr. Southey has fallen, it seems, into a mournful condition: oblivion, mute hebetation, loss of all faculty. He suffered greatly, nursing his former wife in her insanity, for years till her relief by death; suffered, worked, and made no moan; the brunt of the task over, he sank into collapse in the hands of a new wife he had just wedded. What a lot for him; for her especially! The most excitable but most methodic man I have ever seen. [Greek] that is a word that awaits us all.—I have my brother here at present; though talking of Lisbon with his Buccleuchs. My Wife seems better than of late winters. I actually had a Horse, nay actually have it, though it has gone to the country till the mud abate again! It did me perceptible good; I mean to try it farther. I am no longer so desperately poor as I have been for twelve years back; sentence of starvation or beggary seems revoked at last, a blessedness really very considerable. Thanks, thanks! We send a thousand regards to the two little ones, to the two mothers. Valete nostrum memores.
—T. Carlyle
XLVIII. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 12 December, 1839
My Dear Friend,—Not until the 29th of November did the five hundred copies of the French Revolution arrive in Boston. Fraser unhappily sent them to New York, whence they came not without long delays. They came in perfectly good order, not in the pretty red you told us of, but in a sober green;—not so handsome and salable a back, our booksellers said, as their own; but in every other respect a good book. The duties at the New York Custom House on these and a quantity of other books sent by Fraser amounted to $400.36, whereof, I understand, the French Revolution pays for its share $243. No bill has been brought us for freight, so we conclude that you have paid it. I confided the book very much to the conscience and discretion of Little and Brown, and after some ciphering they settle to sell it at $3.75 per copy, wherefrom you are to get the cost of the book, and (say) $1.10 per copy profit, and no more. The booksellers eat the rest. The book is rather too dear for our market of cheap manufactures, and therefore we are obliged to give the booksellers a good percentage to get it off at all: for we stand in daily danger of a cheap edition from some rival neighbor. I hope to give you good news of its sale soon, although I have been assured today that no book sells, the times are so bad. Brown had disposed of fifty or sixty copies to the trade, and twelve at retail. He doubted not to sell them all in six months....
Several persons have asked me to get some copies of the German Romance sent over here for sale. Last week a gentleman desired me to say he wanted four copies, and today I have been charged to procure another. I think, if you will send me by Little and Brown, through Longman, six copies, we can find an immediate market.
It gives me great joy to write to my friend once more, slow as you may think me to use the privilege. For a good while I dared believe you were coming hither, and why should I write?—and now for weeks I have been absorbed in my foolish lectures, of which only two are yet delivered and ended. There should be eight more; subject, "The Present Age." Out of these follies I remember you with glad heart. Lately I had Sterling's letter, which, since I have read his article on you, I am determined to answer speedily. I delighted in the spirit of that paper, loving you so well and accusing you so conscientiously. What does he at Clifton? If you communicate with him, tell him I thank him for his letter, and hold him dear. I am very happy lately in adding one or two new friends to my little circle, and you may be sure every friend of mine is a friend of yours. So when you come here you shall not be lonely. A new person is always to me a great event, and will not let me sleep.—I believe I was not wise to volunteer myself to this fever fit of lecturing again. I ought to have written instead in silence and serenity. Yet I work better under this base necessity, and then I have a certain delight (base also?) in speaking to a multitude. But my joy in friends, those sacred people, is my consolation for the mishaps of the adventure, and they for the most part come to me from this publication of myself.—After ten or twelve weeks I think I shall address myself earnestly to writing, and give some form to my formless scripture.
I beg you will write to me and tell me what you do, and give me good news of your wife and your brother. Can they not see the necessity of your coming to look after your American interests? My wife and mother love both you and them. A young man of New York told me the other day he was about getting you an invitation from an Association in that city to give them a course of lectures on such terms as would at least make you whole in the expenses of coming thither. We could easily do that in Boston.
—R.W. Emerson
What manner of person is Heraud? Do you read Landor, or know him, O seeing man? Farewell!
XLIX. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, London, 6 January, 1840
My Dear Emerson,—It is you, I surely think, that are in my debt now;* nevertheless I must fling you another word: may it cross one from you coming hither—as near the Lizard Point as it likes!
————- * The preceding letter had not yet arrived. ————-
Some four sheets making a Pamphlet called Chartism addressed to you at Concord are, I suppose, snorting along through the waters this morning, part of the Cargo of the "British Queen." At least I gave them to Mr. Brown (your unseen friend) about ten days ago, who promised to dispose of them; the "British Queen," he said, was the earliest chance. The Pamphlet itself (or rather booklet, for Fraser has gilt it, &c., and asks five shillings for it as a Book) is out since then; radicals and others yelping considerably in a discordant manner about it; I have nothing other to say to you about it than what I said last time, that the sheets were yours to do with as you saw good,—to burn if you reckoned that fittest. It is not entirely a Political Pamphlet; nay, there are one or two things in it which my American Friends specially may like: but the interests discussed are altogether English, and cannot be considered as likely to concern New-Englishmen very much. However, it will probably be itself in your hand before this sheet, and you will have determined what is fit.
A copy of Wilhelm Meister, two copies, one for Stearns Wheeler, are probably in some of the "Line Ships" at this time too: good voyage to them! The French Revolutions were all shipped, invoiced, &c.; they have, I will suppose, arrived safe, as we shall hear by and by. What freightages, landings, and embarkments! For only two days ago I sent you off, through Kennet, another Book: John Sterling's Poems, which he has collected into a volume. Poor John has overworked himself again, or the climate without fault on his side has proved too hard for him: he sails for Madeira again next week! His Doctors tell me there is no intrinsic danger; but they judge the measure safe as one of precaution. It is very mortifying he had nestled himself down at Clifton, thinking he might now hope to continue there; and lo! he has to fly again.—Did you get his letter? The address to him now will be, for three months to come, "Edward Sterling, Esq., South Place, Knightsbridge, London," his Father's designation.
Farther I must not omit to say that Richard Monckton Milnes purposes, through the strength of Heaven, to review you! In the next Number of the London and Westminster, the courageous youth will do this feat, if they let him. Nay, he has already done it, the Paper being actually written he employed me last week in negotiating with the Editors about it; and their answer was, "Send us the Paper, it promises very well." We shall see whether it comes out or not; keeping silence till then. Milnes is a Tory Member of Parliament; think of that! For the rest, he describes his religion in these terms: "I profess to be a Crypto-Catholic." Conceive the man! A most bland-smiling, semi- quizzical, affectionate, high-bred, Italianized little man, who has long olive-blond hair, a dimple, next to no chin, and flings his arm round your neck when he addresses you in public society! Let us hear now what he will say, of the American Vates.*
————- * The end of this letter has been cut off. ————-
L. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, London, 17 January, 1840
Dear Emerson,—Your Letter of the 12th of December, greatly, to my satisfaction, has arrived; the struggling Steamship, in spite of all hurricanes, has brought it safe across the waters to me. I find it good to write you a word in return straightway; though I think there are already two, or perhaps even three, messages of mine to you flying about unacknowledged somewhere under the moon; nay, the last of them perhaps may go by the same packet as this, —having been forwarded, as this will be, to Liverpool, after the "British Queen" sailed from London.
Your account of the French Revolution packages, and prognosis of what Little and Brown will do with them, is altogether as it should be. I apprised Fraser instantly of his invoiceless Books, &c.; he answers, that order has been taken in that long since, "instructions" sent, and, I conclude, arrangements for bills least of all forgotten. I mentioned what share of the duty was his; and that your men meant to draw on him for it. That is all right. As to the French Revolution, I agree with your Booksellers altogether about it; the American Edition actually pleases myself better for looking at; nor do I know that this new English one has much superiority for use: it is despicably printed, I fear, so far as false spellings and other slovenlinesses can go. Fraser "finds the people like it"; credat Judaeus;—as for me, I have told him I will not print any more with that man, but with some other man. Curious enough, the price Little and Brown have fixed upon was the price I remember guessing at beforehand, and the result they propose to realize for me corresponds closely with my prophecy too. Thanks, a thousand thanks, for all the trouble you never grudge to take. We shall get ourselves handsomely out of this export and import speculation; and know, taught at a rather cheap rate, not to embark in the like again.
There went off a Wilhelm Meister for you, and a letter to announce it, several weeks ago; that was message first. Your traveling neighbor, Brown, took charge of a Pamphlet named Chartism, to be put into the "British Queen's" Letter-bag (where I hope, and doubt not, he did put it, though I have seen nothing of him since); that and a letter in reference to it was message second. Thirdly, I sent off a volume of Poems by Sterling, likewise announced in that letter. And now this that I actually write is the fourth (it turns out to be) and last of all the messages. Let us take Arithmetic along with us in all things.—Of Chartism I have nothing farther to say, except that Fraser is striking off another One Thousand copies to be called Second Edition; and that the people accuse me, not of being an incendiary and speculative Sansculotte threatening to become practical, but of being a Tory,—thank Heaven. The Miscellanies are at press; at two presses; to be out, as Hope asseverates, in March: five volumes, without Chartism; with Hoffmann and Tieck from German Romance, stuck in somewhere as Appendix; with some other trifles stuck in elsewhere, chiefly as Appendix; and no essential change from the Boston Edition. Fraser, "overwhelmed with business," does not yet send me his net result of those Two Hundred and Fifty Copies sold off some time ago; so soon as he does, you shall hear of it for your satisfaction.—As to German Romance, tell my friends that it has been out of print these ten years; procurable, of late not without difficulty, only in the Old-Bookshops. The comfort is that the best part of it stands in the new Wilhelm Meister: Fraser and I had some thought of adding Tieck's and Richter's parts, had they suited for a volume; the rest may without detriment to anybody perish.
Such press-correctings and arrangings waste my time here, not in the agreeablest way. I begin, though in as sulky a state of health as ever, to look again towards some new kind of work. I have often thought of Cromwell and Puritans; but do not see how the subject can be presented still alive. A subject dead is not worth presenting. Meanwhile I read rubbish of Books; Eichhorn, Grimm, &c.; very considerable rubbish; one grain in the cart load worth pocketing. It is pity I have no appetite for lecturing! Many applications have been made to me here;—none more touching to me than one, the day before yesterday, by a fine, innocent-looking Scotch lad, in the name of himself and certain other Booksellers' shopmen eastward in the City! I cannot get them out of my head. Poor fellows! they have nobody to say an honest word to them, in this articulate-speaking world, and they apply to me.—For you, good friend, I account you luckier; I do verily: lecture there what innumerable things you have got to say on "The Present Age";—yet withal do not forget to write either, for that is the lasting plan after all. I have a curious Note, sent me for inspection the other day; it is addressed to a Scotch Mr. Erskine (famed among the saints here) by a Madame Necker, Madame de Stael's kinswoman, to whom he, the said Mr. Erskine, had lent your first Pamphlet at Geneva. She regards you with a certain love, yet a shuddering love. She says, "Cela sent l'Americain qui apres avoir abattu les forets a coup de hache, croit qu'on doit de meme conquerir le monde intellectuel"! What R.M. Milnes will say of you we hope also to see.—I know both Heraud and Landor; but alas, what room is here! Another sheet with less of "Arithmetic" in it will soon be allowed me. Adieu, dear friend.
Yours, ever and ever, T. Carlyle
LI. Emerson to Carlyle*
New York, 18 March, 1840
My Dear Friend,—I have just seen the steamer "British Queen" enter the harbor from sea, and here lies the "Great Western," to sail tomorrow. I will not resist hints so broad upon my long procrastinations. You shall have at least a tardy acknowledgment that I received in January your letter of December, which I should have answered at once had it not found me absorbed in writing foolish lectures which were then in high tide. I had written you, a little earlier, tidings of the receipt of your French Revolution. Your letter was very welcome, as all your letters are. I have since seen tidings of the Essay on Chartism in an English periodical, but have not yet got my proof-sheets. They are probably still rolling somewhere outside of this port, for all our packetships have had the longest passages: only one has come in for many a week. We will be as patient as we can.
———— * This letter appeared in the Athenaeum, for July 22, 1882 ————
I am here on a visit to my brother, who is a lawyer in this city, and lives at Staten Island, at a distance of half an hour's sail. The city has such immense natural advantages and such capabilities of boundless growth, and such varied and ever increasing accommodations and appliances for eye and ear, for memory and wit, for locomotion and lavation, and all manner of delectation, that I see that the poor fellows that live here do get some compensation for the sale of their souls. And how they multiply! They estimate the population today at 350,000, and forty years ago, it is said, there were but 20,000. But I always seem to suffer some loss of faith on entering cities. They are great conspiracies; the parties are all maskers, who have taken mutual oaths of silence not to betray each other's secret and each to keep the other's madness in countenance. You can scarce drive any craft here that does not seem a subornation of the treason. I believe in the spade and an acre of good ground. Whoso cuts a straight path to his own bread, by the help of God in the sun and rain and sprouting of the grain, seems to me an universal workman. He solves the problem of life, not for one, but for all men of sound body. I wish I may one day send you word, or, better, show you the fact, that I live by my hands without loss of memory or of hope. And yet I am of such a puny constitution, as far as concerns bodily labor, that perhaps I never shall. We will see.
Did I tell you that we hope shortly to send you some American verses and prose of good intent? My vivacious friend Margaret Fuller is to edit a journal whose first number she promises for the 1st of July next, which I think will be written with a good will if written at all. I saw some poetical fragments which charmed me,—if only the writer consents to give them to the public.
I believe I have yet little to tell you of myself. I ended in the middle of February my ten lectures on the Present Age. They are attended by four hundred and fifty to five hundred people, and the young people are so attentive; and out of the hall ask me so many questions, that I assume all the airs of Age and Sapience. I am very happy in the sympathy and society of from six to a dozen persons, who teach me to hope and expect everything from my countrymen. We shall have many Richmonds in the field presently. I turn my face homeward to-morrow, and this summer I mean to resume my endeavor to make some presentable book of Essays out of my mountain of manuscript, were it only for the sake of clearance. I left my wife, and boy, and girl,—the softest, gracefulest little maiden alive, creeping like a turtle with head erect all about the house,—well at home a week ago. The boy has two deep blue wells for eyes, into which I gladly peer when I am tired. Ellen, they say, has no such depth of orb, but I believe I love her better than ever I did the boy. I brought my mother with me here to spend the summer with William Emerson and his wife and ruddy boy of four years. All these persons love and honour you in proportion to their knowledge and years.
My letter will find you, I suppose, meditating new lectures for your London disciples. May love and truth inspire them! I can see easily that my predictions are coming to pass, and that. having waited until your Fame wag in the floodtide, we shall not now see you at all on western shores. Our saintly Dr. T—-, I am told, had a letter within a year from Lord Byron's daughter, informing the good man of the appearance of a certain wonderful genius in London named Thomas Carlyle, and all his astonishing workings on her own and her friends' brains, and him the very monster whom the Doctor had been honoring with his best dread and consternation these five years. But do come in one of Mr. Cunard's ships as soon as the booksellers have made you rich. If they fail to do so, come and read lectures which the Yankees will pay for. Give my love and hope and perpetual remembrance to your wife, and my wife's also, who bears her in her kindest heart, and who resolves every now and then to write to her, that she may thank her for the beautiful Guido.
You told me to send you no more accounts. But I certainly shall, as our financial relations are grown more complex, and I wish at least to relieve myself of this unwonted burden of booksellers' accounts and long delays, by sharing them. I have had one of their estimates by me a year, waiting to send. Farewell.
—R.W.E.
LII. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, London, 1 April, 1840
My Dear Emerson,—A Letter has been due to you from me, if not by palpable law of reciprocity, yet by other law and right, for some week or two. I meant to write, so soon as Fraser and I had got a settlement effected. The traveling Sumner being about to return into your neighborhood, I gladly accept his offer to take a message to you. I wish I had anything beyond a dull Letter to send! But unless, as my Wife suggests, I go and get you a D'Orsay Portrait of myself, I see not what there is! Do you read German or not? I now and then fall in with a curious German volume, not perhaps so easily accessible in the Western world. Tell me. Or do you ever mean to learn it? I decidedly wish you would.—As to the D'Orsay Portrait, it is a real curiosity: Count D'Orsay the emperor of European Dandies portraying the Prophet of spiritual Sansculottism! He came rolling down hither one day, many months ago, in his sun-chariot, to the bedazzlement of all bystanders; found me in dusty gray-plaid dressing-gown, grim as the spirit of Presbyterianism (my Wife said), and contrived to get along well enough with me. I found him a man worth talking to, once and away; a man of decided natural gifts; every utterance of his containing in it a wild caricature likeness of some object or other; a dashing man, who might, some twenty years sooner born, have become one of Bonaparte's Marshals, and is, alas,—Count D'Orsay! The Portrait he dashed off in some twenty minutes (I was dining there, to meet Landor); we have not chanced to meet together since, and I refuse to undergo any more eight-o'clock dinners for such an object.—Now if I do not send you the Portrait, after all?
Fraser's account of the Miscellanies stood legibly extended over large spaces of paper, and was in several senses amazing to look upon. I trouble you only with the result. Two Hundred and forty-eight copies (for there were some one or two "imperfect"): all these he had sold, at two guineas each; and sold swiftly, for I recollect in December, or perhaps November, he told me he was "holding back," not to run entirely out. Well, of the L500 and odd so realized for these Books, the portion that belonged to me was L239,—the L261 had been the expense of handing the ware to Emerson over the counter, and drawing in the coin for it! "Rules of the Trade";—it is a Trade, one would surmise, in which the Devil has a large interest. However,—not to spend an instant polluting one's eyesight with that side of it,—let me feel joyfully, with thanks to Heaven and America, that I do receive such a sum in the shape of wages, by decidedly the noblest method in which wages could come to a man. Without Friendship, without Ralph Waldo Emerson, there had been no sixpence of that money here. Thanks, and again thanks. This earth is not an unmingled ball of Mud, after all. Sunbeams visit it;—mud and sunbeams are the stuff it has from of old consisted of.—I hasten away from the Ledger, with the mere good- news that James is altogether content with the "progress" of all these Books, including even the well-abused Chartism Book. We are just on the point of finishing our English reprint of the Miscellanies; of which I hope to send you a copy before long.
And now why do not you write to me? Your Lectures must be done long ago. Or are you perhaps writing a Book? I shall be right glad to hear of that; and withal to hear that you do not hurry yourself, but strive with deliberate energy to produce what in you is best. Certainly, I think, a right Book does lie in the man! It is to be remembered also always that the true value is determined by what we do not write! There is nothing truer than that now all but forgotten truth; it is eternally true. He whom it concerns can consider it.—You have doubtless seen Milnes's review of you. I know not that you will find it to strike direct upon the secret of Emerson, to hit the nail on the head, anywhere at all; I rather think not. But it is gently, not unlovingly done;—and lays the first plank of a kind of pulpit for you here and throughout all Saxondom: a thing rather to be thankful for. It on the whole surpassed my expectations. Milnes tells me he is sending you a copy and a Note, by Sumner. He is really a pretty little robin-redbreast of a man.
You asked me about Landor and Heraud. Before my paper entirely vanish, let me put down a word about them. Heraud is a loquacious scribacious little man, of middle age, of parboiled greasy aspect, whom Leigh Hunt describes as "wavering in the most astonishing manner between being Something and Nothing." To me he is chiefly remarkable as being still—with his entirely enormous vanity and very small stock of faculty—out of Bedlam. He picked up a notion or two from Coleridge many years ago; and has ever since been rattling them in his head, like peas in an empty bladder, and calling on the world to "List the Music of the spheres." He escapes assassination, as I calculate, chiefly by being the cheerfulest best-natured little creature extant.—You cannot kill him he laughs so softly, even when he is like killing you. John Mill said, "I forgive him freely for interpreting the Universe, now when I find he cannot pronounce the h's!" Really this is no caricature; you have not seen the match of Heraud in your days. I mentioned to him once that Novalis had said, "The highest problem of Authorship is the writing of a Bible."— "That is precisely what I am doing!" answered the aspiring, unaspirating.*—Of Landor I have not got much benefit either. We met first, some four years ago, on Cheyne Walk here: a tall, broad, burly man, with gray hair, and large, fierce-rolling eyes; of the most restless, impetuous vivacity, not to be held in by the most perfect breeding,—expressing itself in high-colored superlatives, indeed in reckless exaggeration, now and then in a dry sharp laugh not of sport but of mockery; a wild man, whom no extent of culture had been able to tame! His intellectual faculty seemed to me to be weak in proportion to his violence of temper: the judgment he gives about anything is more apt to be wrong than right,—as the inward whirlwind shows him this side or the other of the object; and sides of an object are all that he sees. He is not an original man; in most cases one but sighs over the spectacle of common place torn to rags. I find him painful as a writer; like a soul ever promising to take wing into the Aether, yet never doing it, ever splashing webfooted in the terrene mud, and only splashing the worse the more he strives! Two new tragedies of his that I read lately are the fatalest stuff I have seen for long: not an ingot; ah no, a distracted coil of wire-drawings salable in no market. Poor Landor has left his Wife (who is said to be a fool) in Italy, with his children, who would not quit her; but it seems he has honestly surrendered all his money to her, except a bare annuity for furnished lodgings; and now lives at Bath, a solitary sexagenarian, in that manner. He visits London in May; but says always it would kill him soon: alas, I can well believe that! They say he has a kind heart; nor does it seem unlikely: a perfectly honest heart, free and fearless, dwelling amid such hallucinations, excitations, tempestuous confusions, I can see he has. Enough of him! Me he likes well enough, more thanks to him; but two hours of such speech as his leave me giddy and undone. I have seen some other Lions, and Lion's-providers; but consider them a worthless species.—When will you write, then? Consider my frightful outlook with a Course of Lectures to give "On Heroes and Hero-worship,"—from Odin to Robert Burns! My Wife salutes you all. Good be in the Concord Household!
Yours ever, T. Carlyle
———— * There is an account of Heraud by an admirer in the Dial for October, 1842, p. 241. It contrasts curiously and instructively with Carlyle's sketch. ————
LIII. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 21 April, 1840
My Dear Friend,—Three weeks ago I received a letter from you following another in the week before, which I should have immediately acknowledged but that I was promised a private opportunity for the 25th of April, by which time I promised myself to send you sheets of accounts. I had also written you from New York about the middle of March. But now I suppose Mr. Grinnell—a hospitable, humane, modest gentleman in Providence, R.I., a merchant, much beloved by all his townspeople, and, though no scholar, yet very fond of silently listening to such— is packing his trunk to go to England. He offered to carry any letters for me, and as at his house during my visit to Providence I was eagerly catechised by all comers concerning Thomas Carlyle, I thought it behoved me to offer him for his brethren, sisters, and companions' sake, the joy of seeing the living face of that wonderful man. Let him see thy face and pass on his way. I who cannot see it, nor hear the voice that comes forth of it, must even betake me to this paper to repay the best I can the love of the Scottish man, and in the hope to deserve more.
Your letter announces Wilhelm Meister, Sterling's Poems, and Chartism. I am very rich, or am to be. But Kennet is no Mercury. Wilhelm and Sterling have not yet made their appearance, though diligently inquired after by Stearns Wheeler and me. Little and Brown now correspond with Longman, not with Kennet. But they will come soon, perhaps are already arrived.
Chartism arrived at Concord by mail not until one of the last days of March, though dated by you, I think, the 21st of December. I returned home on the 3d of April, and found it waiting. All that is therein said is well and strongly said, and as the words are barbed and feathered the memory of men cannot choose but carry them whithersoever men go. And yet I thought the book itself instructed me to look for more. We seemed to have a right to an answer less concise to a question so grave and humane, and put with energy and eloquence. I mean that whatever probabilities or possibilities of solution occurred should have been opened to us in some detail. But now it stands as a preliminary word, and you will one day, when the fact itself is riper; write the Second Lesson; or those whom you have influenced will. I read the book twice hastily through, and sent it directly to press, fearing to be forestalled, for the London book was in Boston already. Little and Brown are to print it. Their estimate is:—
Printing page for page with copy ....... $63.35 Paper .....................................44.00 Binding .................................. 90.00 Total .................................... $197.35
Costing say twenty cents per copy for one thousand copies bound. The book to sell for fifty cents: the Bookseller's commission twenty percent on the Retail price. The author's profit fifteen cents per copy. They intend, if a cheap edition is published,— no unlikely event,—to stitch the book as pamphlet, and sell it at thirty-eight cents. I expect it from the press in a few days. I shall not on this sheet break into the other accounts, as I am expecting hourly from Munroe's clerk an entire account of R.W.E. with T.C., of which I have furnished him with all the facts I had, and he is to write it out in the manner of his craft. I did not give it to him until I had made some unsuccessful experiments myself. |
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