2 37
here (often speaking of you),who is off to America
again; will sail, I think, along with this Letter; a
semi-articulate but solid-minded worthy man.
here (often speaking of you),who is off to America
again; will sail, I think, along with this Letter; a
semi-articulate but solid-minded worthy man.
Thomas Carlyle
Such a sanhedrim of
windy fools from all countries of the Globe were
surely never gathered in one city before. But they
will go their ways again, they surely will! One
sits quiet in that faith ; -- nay, looks abroad with a
kind of pathetic grandfatherly feeling over this
universal Children's Ball which the British Nation
in these extraordinary circumstances is giving it-
self! Silence above all, silence is very behove-
full-
I read lately a small old brown French duodeci-
mo, which I mean to send you by the first chance
there is. The writer is a Capitaine _Bossu; the
production, a Journal of his experiences in "La
Louisiane," "Oyo" (Ohio), and those regions,which
looks very genuine, and has a strange interest to
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? 228 Carlyle to Emerson.
me,like some fractional Odyssey or letter} Only a
hundred years ago, and the Mississippi has changed
as never valley did: in 1751 older and stranger,
looked at from its present date, than Balbec or
Nineveh! Say what we will, Jonathan is doing
miracles (of a sort) under the sun in these times
now passing. --Do you know Bartram's Travels?
This is of the Seventies (1770) or so; treats of
Florida chiefly, has a wondrous kind of flounder-
ing elolluence in it; and has also grown immeasu-
rably old. All American libraries ought to provide
themselves with that kind of book; and keep them
as a kind of future biblical article. --Finally on this
head, can you tell me of any good Book on Cali-
fornia? Good: I have read several bad. But that
too is worthy of some wonder ; that too, like the
Old Bucaniers, hungers and thirsts (in ingenuous
minds) to have some true record and description
given of it.
And poor Miss Fuller, was there any Life ever
published of her ? or is any competent hand engaged
on it? Poor Margaret, I often remember her ; and
think how she is asleep now under the surges of
1 Bossu wrote two books which are known to the student of
the history of the settlement of America ; one, " Nouveaux Voyages
aux lndes occidentales," Paris, 1768 ; the other, " Nouveaux Voy-
ages dans l'Ame? rique septentrionale," Amsterdam (Paris), 1777.
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? Carlyle to Emerson. 229
the sea. Mazzini, as you perhaps know, is with us
this summer; comes across once in the week or
so, and tells me, or at least my Wife, all his news.
The Roman revolution has made a man of him,--
quite brightened up ever since ; --and the best
friend he ever saw, I believe, was that same Quack-
President of France, who relieved him while it was
still time.
My Brother is in Annandale, working hard over
Dante at last; talks of coming up hither shortly;
I am myself very ill and miserable in the liver re-
gions ; very tough otherwise,-- though I have now
got spectacles for small print in the twilight.
Eheu fugaces,-- and yet why Eheu ? In fact it is
better to be silent. --Adieu, dear Emerson; I ex-
pect to get a great deal brisker by and by,--and in
the first place to have a Missive from Boston again.
My Wife sends you many regards. I am as ever,
--- affectionately Yours
T. CARLYLE.
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? 230 Ihnerson to Carlyle.
CXLV.
EMERSON TO CARLYLE.
Conconn, 28 July, 1851.
MY DEAR CARLYLE, -- You must always thank
me for silence, be it never so long, and must put
on it the most generous interpretations. For I am
too sure of your genius and goodness, and too glad
that they shine steadily for all, to importune you to
make assurance sure by a private beam very often.
There is very little in this village to be said to you,
and, with all my love of your letters, I think it the
kind part to defend you from our imbecilities,--
my own, and other men's. Besides, my eyes are
bad, and prone to mutiny at any hint of white
paper.
And yet I owe you all my story, if story I have.
I have been something of a traveller the last
year, and went down the Ohio River to its mouth;
walked nine miles into, and nine miles out of the
Mammoth Cave, in Kentucky,--walked or sailed,
for we crossed small underground streams,--and
lost one day's light; then steamed up the Missis-
sippi, five days, to Galena. In the Upper Missis-
sippi, you are always in a lake with many islands.
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? Emerson to Carlyle. 2 31
"The Far West" is the right name for these
verdant deserts. On all the shores, interminable
silent forest. If you land, there is prairie behind
prairie, forest behind forest, sites of nations, no
nations. The raw bullion of nature; what we call
"moral" value not yet stamped on it. But in a
thousand miles the immense material values will
show twenty or fifty Californias; that a good cipher-
ing head will make one where he is. Thus at
Pittsburg, on the Ohio, the Iron City, whither, from
want of railroads, few Yankees have penetrated,
every acre of land has three or four bottoms; first
of rich soil; then nine feet of bituminous coal;
a little lower, fourteen feet of coal; then iron, or
-salt; salt springs, with a valuable oil called petro-
leum floating on their surface. Yet this acre sells
for the price of any tillage acre in Massachusetts;
and, in a year, the railroads will reach it, east and
west. --I came home by the great Northern Lakes
and Niagara.
No books, a few lectures, each winter, I write
and read. In the spring, the abomination of our
Fugitive Slave Bill drove me to some writing and
speech-making, without hope of effect, but to clear
my own skirts. I am sorry I did not print whilst
it was yet time. I am now told that the time will
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? 2 32 Emerson to Carlyle.
come again, more 's the pity. Now I am trying to
make a sort of memoir of Margaret Fuller, or my
part in one;--for Channing and Ward are to do
theirs. Without either beauty or genius, she had a
certain wealth and generosity of nature which have
left a kind of claim on our consciences to build
her a cairn. And this reminds me that I am to
write a note to Mazzini on this matter; and, as
you say you see him, you must charge yourself
with delivering it. What we do must be ended by
October.
You too are working for Sterling. It is right
and kind. I learned so much from the New York
Tribune, and, a few days after, was on the point of
writing to you, provoked by a foolish paragraph
which appeared in Rufus Griswold's Journal, (New
York,) purporting that R. W". E. possessed impor-
tant letters of Sterling, without which Thomas
Carlyle could not write the Life. What scrap of
hearsay about contents of Sterling's letters to
me, or that I had letters, this paltry journalist
swelled into this puff-ball, I know not. He once
came to my house, and,,since that time, may have
known Margaret Fuller in New York; but probably
never saw any letter of Sterling's or heard the con-
tents of any. I have not read again Sterling's
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? Emerson to Carlyle. 2 3 3
letters, which I keep as good Lares in a special
niche, but I have no recollection of anything that
would be valuable to you. For the American Pub-
lic for the Book, I think it important that you
should take the precise step of sending Phillips
and Sampson the early copy, and at the earliest. I
saw them, and also E. P. Clark, and put them in
communication, and Clark is to write you at once.
Having got so far in my writing to you, I do not
know but I shall gain heart, and write more letters
over sea. You will think my sloth suicidal enough.
So many men as I learned to value in your country,
--so many as offered me opportunities of inter-
course,--and I lose them all by silence. Arthur
Helps is a chief benefactor of mine. I wrote him
a letter by Ward,--who brought the letter back.
I ought to thank John Carlyle, not only for me, but
for a multitude of good men and women here who
read his Inferno duly. W. E. Forster sent me his
Penn Pamphlet; I sent it to Bancroft, who liked
it well, only he thought Forster might have made a
still stronger case. Clough I prize at a high rate,
the man and his poetry, but write not. Wilkinson
I thought a man of prodigious talent, who somehow
held it and so taught others to hold it cheap, as
we do one of those bushel-basket memories which
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? 2 34 Carlyle lo Emerson.
school-boys and school-girls often show,--and we
stop their mouths lest they be troublesome with
their alarming profusion". But there is no need of
beginning to count the long catalogue. Kindest,
kindest remembrance to 'my benefactress also in
your house, and health and strength and victory
to you.
Your affectionate
WALDO EMERsoN.
CXLVI.
CARLYLE TO EMERSON.
GREAT MALVERN, Woncasrnnsnmn, 25 August, 1851.
DEAR EMERsoN,-- Many thanks for your Letter,
which found me here about a week ago, and gave a
full solution to my bibliopolic difliculties. How-
ever sore your eyes, or however taciturn your mood,
there is . no delay of writing when any service is to
be done by it! In fact you are very good to me,
and always were, in all manner of ways ; for which
I do, as I ought, thank the Upper Powers and you.
That truly has been and is one of the possessions
of my life in this perverse epoch of the world. . . . .
. 4 ~- __A-- -_. ~--- E -- '
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? Carlyle to _Emers0n. 2 3 5
' I have sent ofl' by John Chapman a Copy of the
1'/ife qf Sterling, which is all printed and ready, but
is not to appear till the first week of October. . . . .
Along with the Sheets was a poor little French Book
for you,--Book of a poor Naval Mississippi French-
man, one "Bossu," I think; written only a Century
ago, yet which already seemed old as the Pyramids
in reference to those strange fast-growing countries.
I read it as a kind of defaced romance; very thin
and lean, but all true, and very marvellous as
such.
It is above three weeks since my Wife and I
left London, (the Printer having done,) and came
hither with the purpose of a month of what is
called " Water Cure "; for which this place, other-
wise extremely pleasant and wholesome, has become
celebrated of late years. Dr. Gully, the pontifi of
the business in our Island, warmly encouraged my
purpose so soon as he heard of it; nay, urgently
ofiered at once that both of us should become his
own guests till the experiment were tried: and
here accordingly we are ; I water-curing, assidu-
ously walking on the sunny mountains, drinking of
the clear wells, not to speak of wet wrappages, soli-
tary sad steepages, and other singular procedures;
my Wife not meddling for her own behoof, but only
F
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? 236 Carlyle to Enerson.
seeing me do it. These have been three of the
idlest weeks I ever spent, and there is still one
to come: after which we go northward to Lanca-
shire, and across the Border where my good old
Mother still expects me ; and so, after some little
visiting and dawdling, hope to find ourselves home
again before September end, and the inexpressible
Glass Palace with its noisy inanity have taken
itself quite away again. It was no increase of ill-
health that drove me hither, rather the reverse;
but I have long been minded to try this thing: and
now I think the result will be,--zero pretty nearly,
and one imagination the less. My long walks, my
strenuous idleness, have certainly done me good;
nor has the "water" done me any ill, which per-
haps is much to say of it. For the rest, it is a
strange quasi-monastic-- godless and yet devotion-
al --way of life which human creatures have here,
and useful to them beyond doubt. I foresee, this
"Water Cure," under better forms, will become the
Ramadhan of the overworked unbelieving English
in time coming; an institution they were dreadfully
in want of, this long while! --We had Twisletonl
1 The late Hon. Edward Twisleton, a man of high character and
large attainments, and with a personal disposition that won the re-
spect and affection of a wide circle of friends on both sides of the
0
I
'
I
i
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? Carlyle to I}merson. .
2 37
here (often speaking of you),who is off to America
again; will sail, I think, along with this Letter; a
semi-articulate but solid-minded worthy man. We
have other oflicials and other litterateurs (T. B.
Macaulay in his hired villa for one): but the mind
rather shuns than seeks them, one finds solitary
quasi-devotion preferable, and &'pw-rov /ie? u z'58mp, as
Pindar had it!
Richard Milnes is married, about two weeks ago,
and gone to Vienna for a jaunt. His wife, a Miss
Grewe (Lord CreWe's sister), about forty, pleasant,
intelligent, and rather rich: that is the end of
Richard's long first act. Alfred Tennyson, perhaps
you heard, is gone to Italy with his wife: their
baby died or was dead-born; they found England
wearisome: Alfred has been taken up on the top of
the wave, and a good deal jumbled about since you
were here. Item Thackeray; who is coming over
to lecture to you: a mad world, my Masters !
Your Letter to Mazzini was duly despatched; and
we hear from him that he will write to you, on the
subject required, without delay. Browning and his
wife, home from Florence, are both in London at
Atlantic. He was the author of a curious and learned treatise enti-
tled "The Tongue not Essential to Speech," and his remarkable
volume on "The Handwriting of J unius " seems to have effectually
closed a long controversy.
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? 238 Carlyle to Emerson.
present; mean to live in Paris henceforth for some
time. They had seen something both of Margaret
and her d'Ossoli, and appeared to have a true and
lively interest in them ; Browning spoke a long while
to me, with emphasis, on the subject: I think it was
I that had introduced poor Margaret to them. I
said he ought to send these reminiscences to Amer-
ica,--that was the night before we left London,
three weeks ago; his answer gave me the impres-
sion there had been some hindrance somewhere.
Accordingly, when your Letter and Mazzini's reached
me here, I wrote to Browning urgently on the sub-
ject: but he informs me that they have sent all
their reminiscences, at the request of Mr. Story; so
that it is already all well. -Z Dear Emerson, you
see I am at the bottom of my paper. I will write to
you again before long_; we cannot let you lie fallow
in that manner altogether. Have you got proper
spectacles for your eyes? I have adopted that
beautiful symbol of old age, and feel myself very
venerable: take care of your eyes!
Yours ever,
T. "CARLYLE.
U
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? Enerson to Carlyle. 2 39
"'-"--"*"'*'-"-r--r --i___ _, 7''
CXLVII.
EMERSON TO CARLYLE.
Couconn, 14 April, 1852.
MY DEAR CARLYLE,--I have not grown so cal-
lous by my sulky habit, but that I know where my
friends are, and who can help me, in time of need.
And I have to crave your good oflices to-day, and
in a matter relating once more to Margaret Fuller.
. . . . You were so kind as to interest yourself, many
months ago, to set Mazzini and Browning on writ-
ing their Reminiscences for us. But we never heard
from either of them. Lately I have learned, by
way of Sam Longfellow, in Paris, brother of our
poet Longfellow, that Browning assured him that
he did write and send a memoir to this country, --
to whom, I know not. It never arrived at the
hands of the Fullers, nor of Story, Channing, or
me ; -- though the book was delayed in the hope of
such help. I hate that his paper should be lost.
The little French Voyage, &c. of Bossu, I got
safely, and compared its pictures with my own, at
the Mississippi, the Illinois, and Chicago. It is
curious and true enough, no doubt, though its In-
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? 240 Enerson to Carlyle.
dians are rather dim and vague, and " Messieurs
Sauvages. " Good Indians we have in Alexan-
der Henry's Travels in Canada, and in our modern
Catlin, and the best Western America, perhaps,
in F. A. Michaux, Voyage cl. Z'ouest ales monts Alle-
ghanis, and in Fremont. But it was California I
believe you asked about, and, after looking at
Taylor, Parkman, and the rest, I saw that the only
course is to read them all, and every private letter
that gets into the newspapers. So there was noth-
ing to say.
I rejoiced with the rest of mankind in the Life
of Sterling, and now peace will be to his Manes,
down in this lower sphere. Yet I see well that I
should have held to his opinion, in all those con-
ferences where you have so quietly assumed the
palms. It is said here, that you work upon Freder-
ick the Great ? ? However that be, health, strength,
love, joy, and victory to you.
R. W. EMERSON.
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? Carlyle to Emerson. 241
CXLVIII.
CARLYLE TO EMERSON.
CHELSEA, 7 May, 1852.
DEAR EMERSON, -- I was delighted at the sight of
your hand again. My manifold sins against you,
invohmtary all of them I may well say, are often
enough present to my sad thoughts ; and a kind of
remorse is mixed with the other sorrow,--as if I
could have helped growing to be, by aid of time
and destiny, the grim Ishmaelite I am, and so
shocking your serenity by my ferocities! I admit
you were like an angel to me, and absorbed in the
beautifulest manner all thunder-clouds into the
depths of your immeasurable aether ;--and it is in-
dubitable I love you very well, and have long done,
and mean to do. And on the whole you will have
to rally yourself into some kind of Correspond-
ence with me again; I believe you will find that
also to be a commanded duty by and by! To me
at any rate, I can say, it is a great want, and adds
perceptibly to the sternness of these years: deep
as is my dissent from your Gymnosophist view of
Heaven and Earth, I find an agreement that swal-
lows up all conceivable dissents; in the whole
VOL. II>> 16
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? 242 Carlyle to Emerson.
world I hardly get, to my spoken human word,
any other word of response which is authentically
human. God help us, this is growing a very lonely
place, this distracted dog-kennel of a world! And
it is no joy to me to see it about to have its throat
cut for its immeasurable devilries; that is not a
pleasant process to be concerned in either more or
less,--considering above all how many centuries,
base and dismal all of them, it is like to take!
Nevertheless Marchons, --and swift too, if we have
any speed, for the sun is sinking.
. . . . Poor Margaret, that is a strange tragedy that
history of hers; and has many traits of the Heroic
in it, though it is wild as the prophecy of a Sibyl.
Such a predetermination to eat this big Universe as
her oyster or her egg, and to be absolute empress
of all height and glory in it that her heart could
conceive, I have not before seen in any human
soul. Her "mountain me " indeed : -- but her cour-
age too is high and clear, her chivalrous nobleness
indeed is great; her veracity, in its deepest sense,
oi toute e? preuee. --Your Copy of the Bookl came to
me at last (to my joy): I had already read it;
there was considerable notice taken of it here;
and one half-volume of it (and I grieve to say only
1 The " Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. "
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? Carlyle to Emerson. 24 3
one, written by a man called Emerson) was com-
pletely approved by me and innumerable judges.
The rest of the Book is not without considerable
geniality and merits; but one wanted a clear con-
cise Narrative beyond all other merits ; and if you
ask here (except in that half-volume) about any
fact, you are answered (so to speak) not in words,
but by a symbolic tune on the bagpipe, symbolic
burst of wind-music from the brass band ; -- which
is not the plan at all! --Z ---- What can have
become of Mazzini's Letter, which he certainly did
write and despatched to you, is not easily conceiv-
able. Still less in the case of Browning: for
Browning and his Wife did also write; I myself
in the end of last July, having heard him talk
kindly and well of poor Margaret and her Husband,
took the liberty on your behalf of asking him to
put something down on paper; and he informed
me, then and repeatedly since, he had already done
it,--at the request of Mrs. Story, I think. His ad.
dress at present is, " No. 138 Avenue des Champs
Elyse? es, a Paris," if your American travellers still
thought of inquiring. --Adieu, dear Emerson, till
next week.
Yours ever,
T. CARLYLE.
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? 244 Carlyle lo Emerson.
CXLIX.
EMERSON TO CARLYLE. 1
Conconn, May [i], 1852.
You make me happy with your loving thoughts
and meanings towards me. I have always thanked
the good star which made us early neighbors, in
some sort, in time and space. And the beam is
twice warmed by your vigorous good-will, which
has steadily kept clear, kind eyes on me.
It is good to be born in good air and outlook,
and not less with a civilization, that is, with one
poet still living in the world. O yes, and I feel all
the solemnity and vital cheer of the benefit. --If
only the mountains of water and of land and the
steeper mountains of blighted and apathized moods
would permit a word to pass now and then. It is
very fine for you to tax yourself with all those in-
compatibilitios. I like that Thor should make
comets and thunder, as well as Iduna apples, or
Heimdal his rainbow bridge, and your wrath and
satire has all too much realism in it, than that we
1 From an imperfect rough draft.
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? Carlyle to Emerson. 245
can flatter ourselves by disposing of you as partial
and heated. Nor is it your fault that you do a
hero's work, nor do we love you less if we cannot
help you in it. Pity me, O strong man! I am of a
puny constitution half made up, and as I from child-
hood knew,-- not a poet but a lover of poetry, and
poets, and merely serving as writer, &c. in this
empty America, before the arrival of the poets.
You must not misconstrue my silences, but thank
me for them all, as a true homage to your diligence
which I love to defend. . . . .
Shel had such reverence and love for Landor
that I do not know but -at any moment in her
natural life she would have sunk in the sea, for an
ode from him; and now this most propitious cake
is offered to her Manes. The loss of the notes of
Browning and of Mazzini, which you confirm, as-
tonishes me.
1 Margaret Fuller. The break in continuity is in the rough
draft.
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? 246 Carlyle to Emerson.
N.
CL.
CARLYLE TO EMERSON.
. CnELSEA, 25 June, 1852.
DEAR EMERSON,-- . . .
windy fools from all countries of the Globe were
surely never gathered in one city before. But they
will go their ways again, they surely will! One
sits quiet in that faith ; -- nay, looks abroad with a
kind of pathetic grandfatherly feeling over this
universal Children's Ball which the British Nation
in these extraordinary circumstances is giving it-
self! Silence above all, silence is very behove-
full-
I read lately a small old brown French duodeci-
mo, which I mean to send you by the first chance
there is. The writer is a Capitaine _Bossu; the
production, a Journal of his experiences in "La
Louisiane," "Oyo" (Ohio), and those regions,which
looks very genuine, and has a strange interest to
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? 228 Carlyle to Emerson.
me,like some fractional Odyssey or letter} Only a
hundred years ago, and the Mississippi has changed
as never valley did: in 1751 older and stranger,
looked at from its present date, than Balbec or
Nineveh! Say what we will, Jonathan is doing
miracles (of a sort) under the sun in these times
now passing. --Do you know Bartram's Travels?
This is of the Seventies (1770) or so; treats of
Florida chiefly, has a wondrous kind of flounder-
ing elolluence in it; and has also grown immeasu-
rably old. All American libraries ought to provide
themselves with that kind of book; and keep them
as a kind of future biblical article. --Finally on this
head, can you tell me of any good Book on Cali-
fornia? Good: I have read several bad. But that
too is worthy of some wonder ; that too, like the
Old Bucaniers, hungers and thirsts (in ingenuous
minds) to have some true record and description
given of it.
And poor Miss Fuller, was there any Life ever
published of her ? or is any competent hand engaged
on it? Poor Margaret, I often remember her ; and
think how she is asleep now under the surges of
1 Bossu wrote two books which are known to the student of
the history of the settlement of America ; one, " Nouveaux Voyages
aux lndes occidentales," Paris, 1768 ; the other, " Nouveaux Voy-
ages dans l'Ame? rique septentrionale," Amsterdam (Paris), 1777.
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? Carlyle to Emerson. 229
the sea. Mazzini, as you perhaps know, is with us
this summer; comes across once in the week or
so, and tells me, or at least my Wife, all his news.
The Roman revolution has made a man of him,--
quite brightened up ever since ; --and the best
friend he ever saw, I believe, was that same Quack-
President of France, who relieved him while it was
still time.
My Brother is in Annandale, working hard over
Dante at last; talks of coming up hither shortly;
I am myself very ill and miserable in the liver re-
gions ; very tough otherwise,-- though I have now
got spectacles for small print in the twilight.
Eheu fugaces,-- and yet why Eheu ? In fact it is
better to be silent. --Adieu, dear Emerson; I ex-
pect to get a great deal brisker by and by,--and in
the first place to have a Missive from Boston again.
My Wife sends you many regards. I am as ever,
--- affectionately Yours
T. CARLYLE.
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? 230 Ihnerson to Carlyle.
CXLV.
EMERSON TO CARLYLE.
Conconn, 28 July, 1851.
MY DEAR CARLYLE, -- You must always thank
me for silence, be it never so long, and must put
on it the most generous interpretations. For I am
too sure of your genius and goodness, and too glad
that they shine steadily for all, to importune you to
make assurance sure by a private beam very often.
There is very little in this village to be said to you,
and, with all my love of your letters, I think it the
kind part to defend you from our imbecilities,--
my own, and other men's. Besides, my eyes are
bad, and prone to mutiny at any hint of white
paper.
And yet I owe you all my story, if story I have.
I have been something of a traveller the last
year, and went down the Ohio River to its mouth;
walked nine miles into, and nine miles out of the
Mammoth Cave, in Kentucky,--walked or sailed,
for we crossed small underground streams,--and
lost one day's light; then steamed up the Missis-
sippi, five days, to Galena. In the Upper Missis-
sippi, you are always in a lake with many islands.
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? Emerson to Carlyle. 2 31
"The Far West" is the right name for these
verdant deserts. On all the shores, interminable
silent forest. If you land, there is prairie behind
prairie, forest behind forest, sites of nations, no
nations. The raw bullion of nature; what we call
"moral" value not yet stamped on it. But in a
thousand miles the immense material values will
show twenty or fifty Californias; that a good cipher-
ing head will make one where he is. Thus at
Pittsburg, on the Ohio, the Iron City, whither, from
want of railroads, few Yankees have penetrated,
every acre of land has three or four bottoms; first
of rich soil; then nine feet of bituminous coal;
a little lower, fourteen feet of coal; then iron, or
-salt; salt springs, with a valuable oil called petro-
leum floating on their surface. Yet this acre sells
for the price of any tillage acre in Massachusetts;
and, in a year, the railroads will reach it, east and
west. --I came home by the great Northern Lakes
and Niagara.
No books, a few lectures, each winter, I write
and read. In the spring, the abomination of our
Fugitive Slave Bill drove me to some writing and
speech-making, without hope of effect, but to clear
my own skirts. I am sorry I did not print whilst
it was yet time. I am now told that the time will
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? 2 32 Emerson to Carlyle.
come again, more 's the pity. Now I am trying to
make a sort of memoir of Margaret Fuller, or my
part in one;--for Channing and Ward are to do
theirs. Without either beauty or genius, she had a
certain wealth and generosity of nature which have
left a kind of claim on our consciences to build
her a cairn. And this reminds me that I am to
write a note to Mazzini on this matter; and, as
you say you see him, you must charge yourself
with delivering it. What we do must be ended by
October.
You too are working for Sterling. It is right
and kind. I learned so much from the New York
Tribune, and, a few days after, was on the point of
writing to you, provoked by a foolish paragraph
which appeared in Rufus Griswold's Journal, (New
York,) purporting that R. W". E. possessed impor-
tant letters of Sterling, without which Thomas
Carlyle could not write the Life. What scrap of
hearsay about contents of Sterling's letters to
me, or that I had letters, this paltry journalist
swelled into this puff-ball, I know not. He once
came to my house, and,,since that time, may have
known Margaret Fuller in New York; but probably
never saw any letter of Sterling's or heard the con-
tents of any. I have not read again Sterling's
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? Emerson to Carlyle. 2 3 3
letters, which I keep as good Lares in a special
niche, but I have no recollection of anything that
would be valuable to you. For the American Pub-
lic for the Book, I think it important that you
should take the precise step of sending Phillips
and Sampson the early copy, and at the earliest. I
saw them, and also E. P. Clark, and put them in
communication, and Clark is to write you at once.
Having got so far in my writing to you, I do not
know but I shall gain heart, and write more letters
over sea. You will think my sloth suicidal enough.
So many men as I learned to value in your country,
--so many as offered me opportunities of inter-
course,--and I lose them all by silence. Arthur
Helps is a chief benefactor of mine. I wrote him
a letter by Ward,--who brought the letter back.
I ought to thank John Carlyle, not only for me, but
for a multitude of good men and women here who
read his Inferno duly. W. E. Forster sent me his
Penn Pamphlet; I sent it to Bancroft, who liked
it well, only he thought Forster might have made a
still stronger case. Clough I prize at a high rate,
the man and his poetry, but write not. Wilkinson
I thought a man of prodigious talent, who somehow
held it and so taught others to hold it cheap, as
we do one of those bushel-basket memories which
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? 2 34 Carlyle lo Emerson.
school-boys and school-girls often show,--and we
stop their mouths lest they be troublesome with
their alarming profusion". But there is no need of
beginning to count the long catalogue. Kindest,
kindest remembrance to 'my benefactress also in
your house, and health and strength and victory
to you.
Your affectionate
WALDO EMERsoN.
CXLVI.
CARLYLE TO EMERSON.
GREAT MALVERN, Woncasrnnsnmn, 25 August, 1851.
DEAR EMERsoN,-- Many thanks for your Letter,
which found me here about a week ago, and gave a
full solution to my bibliopolic difliculties. How-
ever sore your eyes, or however taciturn your mood,
there is . no delay of writing when any service is to
be done by it! In fact you are very good to me,
and always were, in all manner of ways ; for which
I do, as I ought, thank the Upper Powers and you.
That truly has been and is one of the possessions
of my life in this perverse epoch of the world. . . . .
. 4 ~- __A-- -_. ~--- E -- '
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? Carlyle to _Emers0n. 2 3 5
' I have sent ofl' by John Chapman a Copy of the
1'/ife qf Sterling, which is all printed and ready, but
is not to appear till the first week of October. . . . .
Along with the Sheets was a poor little French Book
for you,--Book of a poor Naval Mississippi French-
man, one "Bossu," I think; written only a Century
ago, yet which already seemed old as the Pyramids
in reference to those strange fast-growing countries.
I read it as a kind of defaced romance; very thin
and lean, but all true, and very marvellous as
such.
It is above three weeks since my Wife and I
left London, (the Printer having done,) and came
hither with the purpose of a month of what is
called " Water Cure "; for which this place, other-
wise extremely pleasant and wholesome, has become
celebrated of late years. Dr. Gully, the pontifi of
the business in our Island, warmly encouraged my
purpose so soon as he heard of it; nay, urgently
ofiered at once that both of us should become his
own guests till the experiment were tried: and
here accordingly we are ; I water-curing, assidu-
ously walking on the sunny mountains, drinking of
the clear wells, not to speak of wet wrappages, soli-
tary sad steepages, and other singular procedures;
my Wife not meddling for her own behoof, but only
F
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? 236 Carlyle to Enerson.
seeing me do it. These have been three of the
idlest weeks I ever spent, and there is still one
to come: after which we go northward to Lanca-
shire, and across the Border where my good old
Mother still expects me ; and so, after some little
visiting and dawdling, hope to find ourselves home
again before September end, and the inexpressible
Glass Palace with its noisy inanity have taken
itself quite away again. It was no increase of ill-
health that drove me hither, rather the reverse;
but I have long been minded to try this thing: and
now I think the result will be,--zero pretty nearly,
and one imagination the less. My long walks, my
strenuous idleness, have certainly done me good;
nor has the "water" done me any ill, which per-
haps is much to say of it. For the rest, it is a
strange quasi-monastic-- godless and yet devotion-
al --way of life which human creatures have here,
and useful to them beyond doubt. I foresee, this
"Water Cure," under better forms, will become the
Ramadhan of the overworked unbelieving English
in time coming; an institution they were dreadfully
in want of, this long while! --We had Twisletonl
1 The late Hon. Edward Twisleton, a man of high character and
large attainments, and with a personal disposition that won the re-
spect and affection of a wide circle of friends on both sides of the
0
I
'
I
i
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? Carlyle to I}merson. .
2 37
here (often speaking of you),who is off to America
again; will sail, I think, along with this Letter; a
semi-articulate but solid-minded worthy man. We
have other oflicials and other litterateurs (T. B.
Macaulay in his hired villa for one): but the mind
rather shuns than seeks them, one finds solitary
quasi-devotion preferable, and &'pw-rov /ie? u z'58mp, as
Pindar had it!
Richard Milnes is married, about two weeks ago,
and gone to Vienna for a jaunt. His wife, a Miss
Grewe (Lord CreWe's sister), about forty, pleasant,
intelligent, and rather rich: that is the end of
Richard's long first act. Alfred Tennyson, perhaps
you heard, is gone to Italy with his wife: their
baby died or was dead-born; they found England
wearisome: Alfred has been taken up on the top of
the wave, and a good deal jumbled about since you
were here. Item Thackeray; who is coming over
to lecture to you: a mad world, my Masters !
Your Letter to Mazzini was duly despatched; and
we hear from him that he will write to you, on the
subject required, without delay. Browning and his
wife, home from Florence, are both in London at
Atlantic. He was the author of a curious and learned treatise enti-
tled "The Tongue not Essential to Speech," and his remarkable
volume on "The Handwriting of J unius " seems to have effectually
closed a long controversy.
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? 238 Carlyle to Emerson.
present; mean to live in Paris henceforth for some
time. They had seen something both of Margaret
and her d'Ossoli, and appeared to have a true and
lively interest in them ; Browning spoke a long while
to me, with emphasis, on the subject: I think it was
I that had introduced poor Margaret to them. I
said he ought to send these reminiscences to Amer-
ica,--that was the night before we left London,
three weeks ago; his answer gave me the impres-
sion there had been some hindrance somewhere.
Accordingly, when your Letter and Mazzini's reached
me here, I wrote to Browning urgently on the sub-
ject: but he informs me that they have sent all
their reminiscences, at the request of Mr. Story; so
that it is already all well. -Z Dear Emerson, you
see I am at the bottom of my paper. I will write to
you again before long_; we cannot let you lie fallow
in that manner altogether. Have you got proper
spectacles for your eyes? I have adopted that
beautiful symbol of old age, and feel myself very
venerable: take care of your eyes!
Yours ever,
T. "CARLYLE.
U
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? Enerson to Carlyle. 2 39
"'-"--"*"'*'-"-r--r --i___ _, 7''
CXLVII.
EMERSON TO CARLYLE.
Couconn, 14 April, 1852.
MY DEAR CARLYLE,--I have not grown so cal-
lous by my sulky habit, but that I know where my
friends are, and who can help me, in time of need.
And I have to crave your good oflices to-day, and
in a matter relating once more to Margaret Fuller.
. . . . You were so kind as to interest yourself, many
months ago, to set Mazzini and Browning on writ-
ing their Reminiscences for us. But we never heard
from either of them. Lately I have learned, by
way of Sam Longfellow, in Paris, brother of our
poet Longfellow, that Browning assured him that
he did write and send a memoir to this country, --
to whom, I know not. It never arrived at the
hands of the Fullers, nor of Story, Channing, or
me ; -- though the book was delayed in the hope of
such help. I hate that his paper should be lost.
The little French Voyage, &c. of Bossu, I got
safely, and compared its pictures with my own, at
the Mississippi, the Illinois, and Chicago. It is
curious and true enough, no doubt, though its In-
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? 240 Enerson to Carlyle.
dians are rather dim and vague, and " Messieurs
Sauvages. " Good Indians we have in Alexan-
der Henry's Travels in Canada, and in our modern
Catlin, and the best Western America, perhaps,
in F. A. Michaux, Voyage cl. Z'ouest ales monts Alle-
ghanis, and in Fremont. But it was California I
believe you asked about, and, after looking at
Taylor, Parkman, and the rest, I saw that the only
course is to read them all, and every private letter
that gets into the newspapers. So there was noth-
ing to say.
I rejoiced with the rest of mankind in the Life
of Sterling, and now peace will be to his Manes,
down in this lower sphere. Yet I see well that I
should have held to his opinion, in all those con-
ferences where you have so quietly assumed the
palms. It is said here, that you work upon Freder-
ick the Great ? ? However that be, health, strength,
love, joy, and victory to you.
R. W. EMERSON.
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? Carlyle to Emerson. 241
CXLVIII.
CARLYLE TO EMERSON.
CHELSEA, 7 May, 1852.
DEAR EMERSON, -- I was delighted at the sight of
your hand again. My manifold sins against you,
invohmtary all of them I may well say, are often
enough present to my sad thoughts ; and a kind of
remorse is mixed with the other sorrow,--as if I
could have helped growing to be, by aid of time
and destiny, the grim Ishmaelite I am, and so
shocking your serenity by my ferocities! I admit
you were like an angel to me, and absorbed in the
beautifulest manner all thunder-clouds into the
depths of your immeasurable aether ;--and it is in-
dubitable I love you very well, and have long done,
and mean to do. And on the whole you will have
to rally yourself into some kind of Correspond-
ence with me again; I believe you will find that
also to be a commanded duty by and by! To me
at any rate, I can say, it is a great want, and adds
perceptibly to the sternness of these years: deep
as is my dissent from your Gymnosophist view of
Heaven and Earth, I find an agreement that swal-
lows up all conceivable dissents; in the whole
VOL. II>> 16
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? 242 Carlyle to Emerson.
world I hardly get, to my spoken human word,
any other word of response which is authentically
human. God help us, this is growing a very lonely
place, this distracted dog-kennel of a world! And
it is no joy to me to see it about to have its throat
cut for its immeasurable devilries; that is not a
pleasant process to be concerned in either more or
less,--considering above all how many centuries,
base and dismal all of them, it is like to take!
Nevertheless Marchons, --and swift too, if we have
any speed, for the sun is sinking.
. . . . Poor Margaret, that is a strange tragedy that
history of hers; and has many traits of the Heroic
in it, though it is wild as the prophecy of a Sibyl.
Such a predetermination to eat this big Universe as
her oyster or her egg, and to be absolute empress
of all height and glory in it that her heart could
conceive, I have not before seen in any human
soul. Her "mountain me " indeed : -- but her cour-
age too is high and clear, her chivalrous nobleness
indeed is great; her veracity, in its deepest sense,
oi toute e? preuee. --Your Copy of the Bookl came to
me at last (to my joy): I had already read it;
there was considerable notice taken of it here;
and one half-volume of it (and I grieve to say only
1 The " Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. "
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? Carlyle to Emerson. 24 3
one, written by a man called Emerson) was com-
pletely approved by me and innumerable judges.
The rest of the Book is not without considerable
geniality and merits; but one wanted a clear con-
cise Narrative beyond all other merits ; and if you
ask here (except in that half-volume) about any
fact, you are answered (so to speak) not in words,
but by a symbolic tune on the bagpipe, symbolic
burst of wind-music from the brass band ; -- which
is not the plan at all! --Z ---- What can have
become of Mazzini's Letter, which he certainly did
write and despatched to you, is not easily conceiv-
able. Still less in the case of Browning: for
Browning and his Wife did also write; I myself
in the end of last July, having heard him talk
kindly and well of poor Margaret and her Husband,
took the liberty on your behalf of asking him to
put something down on paper; and he informed
me, then and repeatedly since, he had already done
it,--at the request of Mrs. Story, I think. His ad.
dress at present is, " No. 138 Avenue des Champs
Elyse? es, a Paris," if your American travellers still
thought of inquiring. --Adieu, dear Emerson, till
next week.
Yours ever,
T. CARLYLE.
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? 244 Carlyle lo Emerson.
CXLIX.
EMERSON TO CARLYLE. 1
Conconn, May [i], 1852.
You make me happy with your loving thoughts
and meanings towards me. I have always thanked
the good star which made us early neighbors, in
some sort, in time and space. And the beam is
twice warmed by your vigorous good-will, which
has steadily kept clear, kind eyes on me.
It is good to be born in good air and outlook,
and not less with a civilization, that is, with one
poet still living in the world. O yes, and I feel all
the solemnity and vital cheer of the benefit. --If
only the mountains of water and of land and the
steeper mountains of blighted and apathized moods
would permit a word to pass now and then. It is
very fine for you to tax yourself with all those in-
compatibilitios. I like that Thor should make
comets and thunder, as well as Iduna apples, or
Heimdal his rainbow bridge, and your wrath and
satire has all too much realism in it, than that we
1 From an imperfect rough draft.
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? Carlyle to Emerson. 245
can flatter ourselves by disposing of you as partial
and heated. Nor is it your fault that you do a
hero's work, nor do we love you less if we cannot
help you in it. Pity me, O strong man! I am of a
puny constitution half made up, and as I from child-
hood knew,-- not a poet but a lover of poetry, and
poets, and merely serving as writer, &c. in this
empty America, before the arrival of the poets.
You must not misconstrue my silences, but thank
me for them all, as a true homage to your diligence
which I love to defend. . . . .
Shel had such reverence and love for Landor
that I do not know but -at any moment in her
natural life she would have sunk in the sea, for an
ode from him; and now this most propitious cake
is offered to her Manes. The loss of the notes of
Browning and of Mazzini, which you confirm, as-
tonishes me.
1 Margaret Fuller. The break in continuity is in the rough
draft.
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? 246 Carlyle to Emerson.
N.
CL.
CARLYLE TO EMERSON.
. CnELSEA, 25 June, 1852.
DEAR EMERSON,-- . . .
