A high-
soaring, clear, enthusiast soul; in whose speech
there is much of all that one wants to find in
speech.
soaring, clear, enthusiast soul; in whose speech
there is much of all that one wants to find in
speech.
Thomas Carlyle
org/access_use#pd-us-google
? 134 Carlyle to Emerson.
I was lately inquired of again by an agent of a
huge Boston society of young men, whether Mr.
Carlyle would not come to America and read Lec-
tures, on some terms which they could propose. I
advised them to make him an offer, and a better
one than they had in view. Joy and Peace to you
in your new freedom.
R. W. E.
0'
CXIV.
CARLYLE TO EMERSON.
CnELSEA, 17 July, 1846.
DEAR EMERsoN,--Sin0e I wrote last to you,-
I think, with the Wiley-and-Putnam Covenant en-
closed, --the Photograph, after some days of loi-
tering at the Liverpool Custom-house, came safe to
hand. Many thanks to you for this punctuality: this
poor Shadow, it is all you could do at present in
that matter! But it must not rest there, no. This
Image is altogether unsatisfactory, illusive, and
even in some measure tragical to me! First of all,
it is a bad Photograph; no eyes discernible, at least
one of the eyes not, except in rare favorable lights:
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? Carlyle to Emerson. I35
then, alas, Time itself and Oblivion must have been
busy. I could not at first, nor can I yet with per-
fect decisiveness, bring out any feature completely
recalling to me the old Emerson, that lighted on
us from the Blue, at Craigenputtock, long ago,--
eheu I Here is a genial, smiling, energetic face,
full of sunny strength, intelligence, integrity, good
humor; but it lies imprisoned in baleful shades, as
of the valley of Death; seems smiling on me as if
in mockery. "Dost know me, friend? I am dead,
thou seest, and distant, and forever hidden from
thee ;--I belong already to the Eternities, and thou
recognizest me not! " On the whole, it is the
strangest feeling I have : -- and practically the
thing will be, that you get us by the earliest oppor-
tunity some living pictorial sketch, chalk-drawing
or the like, from a trustworthy hand; and send it
hither to represent you. Out of the two I shall
compile for myself a likeness by degrees: but as for
this present, we cannot put up with it at all; to my
Wife and me, and to sundry other parties far and
near that have interest in it, there is no satisfaction
in this. So there will be nothing for you but com-
pliance, by the first fair chance you have: further-
more, I bargain that the Lady Emerson have, within
reasonable limits, a royal veto in the business (not
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? r 36 Carlyle to Emerson.
,/---\_. '-
absolute, if that threaten extinction to the enter-
prise, but absolute within the limits of possibility) ;
and that she take our case in hand, and graciously
consider what can and shall be done. That will
answer, I think. _
Of late weeks I have been either idle, or sunk
in the sorrowfulest cobbling of old shoes again;
sorrowfully reading over old Books for the Putnams
and Chapmans, namely. It is really painful, look-
ing in one's own old face; said "old face" no
longer a thing extant now ! -- Happily I have at last
finished it; the whole Lumber-troop with clothes
duly brushed (French Revolution has even got an
Index too) travels to New York in the Steamer
that brings you this. Quad faustum sit:--or in-
deed I do not much care whether it be faustum or
not; I grow to care about an astonishingly small
number of things as times turn with me! Man, all
men seem radically dumb; jabbering mere jargons
and noises from the teeth outwards; the inner
meaning of them,--of them and of me, poor devils,
--remaining shut, buried forever. If almost all
Books were burnt (my own laid next the coal), I
sometimes in my spleen feel as if it really would be
better with us! Certainly could one generation of
men be forced to live without rhetoric, babblement,
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? Carlyle to Emerson. I 37
hearsay, in short with the tongue well cut out
of them altogether, -- their fortunate successors
would find a most improved world to start upon!
For Cant does lie piled on us, high as the zenith; an
Augean Stable with the poisonous confusion piled
so high: which, simply if there once could be noth-
ing said, would mostly dwindle like summer snow
gradually about its business, and leave us free to
use our eyes again! When I see painful Professors
of Greek, poring in their sumptuous Oxfords over
dead Greek for a thousand years or more, and
leaving live English all the while to develop itself
under charge of Pickwicks and Sam Wellers, as if
it were nothing and the other were all things: this,
and the like of it everywhere, fills me with reflec-
tions! Good Heavens, will the people not come out
of their wretched Old-Clothes Monmouth-Streets,
Hebrew and other; but lie there dying of the
basest pestilence,--dying and as good as dead!
On the whole, I am very weary of most "Litera-
ture":--and indeed, in very sorrowful abstruse
humor otherwise at present.
For remedy to which I am, in these very hours,
preparing for a sally into the green Country and
deep silence; I know not altogether how or whither-
ward as yet; only that I must tend towards Lanca-
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? 138 Carlyle to Emerson.
\
shire; towards Scotland at last. My Wife already
waits me in Lancashire ; went ofi, in rather poor
case, much burnt by the hot Town, some ten days
ago; and does not yet report much improvement.
I will write to you somewhere in my wanderings.
The address, "Scotsbrig, Ecclefechan, N. B. ," if
you chance to write directly or soon after this
arrives, will, likely, be the shortest: at any rate,
that, or "Cheyne Row" either, is always sure
enough to find me in a day or two after trying.
By a kind of accident I have fallen considerably
into American History in these days; and am even
looking out for American Geography to help me.
Jared Sparks, Marshall, &c. are hickory and buck-
skin; but I do catch a credible trait of human life
from them here and there; Michelet's genial cham-
pagne froth,--alas, I could find no fact in it that
would stand handling; and so have broken down in
the middle of La France, and run over to hickory
and Jared for shelter! Z Do you know Beriah
Green? 1 A body of Albany newspapers represent
to me the people quarrelling in my name, in a
1 The Reverend Beriah Green, President for some years of Oneida
Institute, a manual-labor school at Whitesboro', N. Y. He was an
active reformer, and a leading member of the National Convention
which met in Philadelphia, December 4th, 1833, to form the Ameri-
can Antislavery Society. He died in 1874, seventy-nine years old.
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? Emerson to Carlyle. I 39
very vague manner, as to the propriety of being
" governed," and Beriah's is the only rational voice
among them. Farewell, dear Friend. Speedy news
of you!
T. CARLYLE.
CXV.
EMERSON T0 CARLYLE.
CONCORD, 31 July, 1846.
MY DEAR FRIEND, -- The new edition of Crom-
well in its perfect form and in excellent dress, and
the copy of the Appendix, came munificently safe
by the last steamer. When thought is best, then
is there most,--is a faith of which you alone
among writing men at this day will give me ex-
perience. If it is the right frankincense and
sandal-wood, it is so good and heavenly to give me
a basketful and not a pinch. I read proudly, a
little at a time, and have not yet got through the
new matter. But I think neither the new letters
nor the commentary could be spared. Wiley and
Putnam shall do what they can, and we will see if
New England will not come to reckon this the best
chapter in her Pentateuch.
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? I40 Emerson to Carlyle.
I send this letter by Margaret Fuller, of whose
approach I believe I wrote you some word. There
is no foretelling how you visited and crowded
English will like our few educated men or women,
and in your learned populace my luminaries may
easily be overlooked. But of all the travellers
whom you have so kindly received from me, I
think of none, since Alcott went to England, whom
I so much desired that you should see and like, as
this dear old friend of mine. For two years now I
have scarcely seen her, as she has been at New
York, engaged by Horace Greeley as a literary
editor of his Tribune newspaper. This employ-
ment was made acceptable to her by good pay,
great local and personal conveniences of all kinds,
and unbounded confidence and respect from Gree-
ley himself, and all other parties connected with
this influential journal (of 30,000 subscribers, I be-
lieve). And Margaret Fuller's work as critic of
all new books, critic of the drama, of music, and
good arts in New York, has been honorable to her.
Still this employment is not satisfactory to me.
She is full of all nobleness, and with the generosity
native to her mind and character appears to me
an exotic in New England, a foreigner from some
more sultry and expansive climate. She is, I sup-
i
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? Emerson to Carlyle. I41
pose, the earliest reader and lover of Goethe in
this Country, and nobody here knows him so well.
Her love too of whatever is good in French, and
specially in Italian genius, give her the best title
to travel. In short, she is our citizen of the world
by quite special diploma. And I am heartily glad
that she has an opportunity of going abroad that
pleases her.
Mr. Spring, a merchant of great moral merits,
(and, as I am informed, an assiduous reader of your
books,) has grown rich, and resolves to see the
world with his wife and son, and has wisely invited
Miss Fuller to show it to him. Now, in the first
place, I wish you to see Margaret when you are in
special good humor, and have an hour of boundless
leisure. And I entreat Jane Carlyle to abet and
exalt and secure this satisfaction to me. I need
not, and yet perhaps I need say, that M. F. is the
safest of all possible persons who ever took pen in
hand. Prince Metternich's closet not closer or half
so honorable. In the next place, I should be glad
if you can easily manage to show her the faces of
Tennyson and of Browning. She has a sort of
right to them both, not only because she likes
their poetry, but because she has made their
merits widely known among our young people.
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? I42 Carlyle to Emerson.
And be it known to my friend Jane Carlyle, whom,
if I cannot see, I delight to name, that her visitor
is an immense favorite in the parlor, as well as in
the library, in all good houses where she is known.
And so I commend her to you.
Yours affectionately,
R. W. EMERsoN.
CXVI.
CARLYLE TO EMERSON.
CBELSEA, 18 December, 1846.
DEAR EMERsON,--This is the 18th of the month,
and it is a frightful length of time, I know not how
long, since I wrote to you,--sinner that I am!
Truly we are in no case for paying debts at pres-
ent, being all sick more or less, from the hard cold
weather, and in a state of great temporary puddle :
but, as the adage says, " one should own debt, and
crave days " ; --therefore accept a word from me,
such as it may be.
I went, as usual, to the North Country in the
Autumn; passed some two extremely disconsolate
months, -- for all things distress a wretched thin-
skinned creature like me, -- in that old region,
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? Carlyle to Emerson. 14 3
which is at once an Earth and a Hades to me, an
unutterable place, now that I have become mostly
a ghost there! I saw Ireland too on my return,
saw black potato-fields,a ragged noisy population,
that has long in a headlong baleful manner fol-
lowed the Devil's leading, listened namely to blus-
tering shallow-violent Impostors and Children of
Darkness, saying, " Yes, we know you, you are
Children of Light! "-- and so has fallen all out at
elbows in body and in soul; and now having lost
its potatoes is come as it were to a crisis; all its
windy nonsense cracking suddenly to pieces under
its feet: a very pregnant crisis indeed! A co1m-
try cast suddenly into the melting-pot,--say into
the Medea's-Caldron; to be boiled into horrid dis-
solution; whether into new youth, into sound healthy
life, or into eternal death and annihilation, one
does not yet know! Daniel O'Connell stood bodily
before me, in his green Mullaghmart Cap; ha-
ranguing his retinue of Dupables: certainly the
most sordid Humbug I have ever seen in this world ;
the emblem to me, he and his talk and the worship
and credence it found, of all the miseries that can be-
fall a Nation. I also conversed with Young Ireland
in a confidential manner; for Young Ireland, really
meaning what it says, is worth a little talk: the
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? 144 Carlyle to Emerson.
\,\_
0
Heroism and Patriotism of a new generation; well-
ing fresh and new from the breasts of Nature; and
already poisoned by O'Connellism and the Old Irish
atmosphere of bluster, falsity, fatuity, into one
knows not what. Very sad to see. On the whole,
no man ought, for any cause, to speak lies, or have
anything to do with lies; but either hold his
tongue, or speak a bit of the truth: that is the
meaning of a tongue, people used to know! --
Ireland was not the place to console my sorrows.
I returned home very sad out of Ireland;--and
indeed have remained one of the saddest,idlest,
most useless of Adam's sons ever since; and do
still remain so. I care not to write anything more,
--so it seems to me at present. I am in my va-
cant interlunar cave (I suppose that is the truth) ;
-- and I ought to wrap my mantle round me, and
lie, if dark, silent also. But, alas, I have wasted
almost all your poor sheet first ! --
Miss Fuller came duly as you announced; was
welcomed for your sake and her own.
A high-
soaring, clear, enthusiast soul; in whose speech
there is much of all that one wants to find in
speech. A sharp, subtle intellect too; and less
of that shoreless Asiatic dreaminess than I have
sometimes met with in her writings. We liked
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? Carlyle to Emerson. ' 145
one another very well, I think, and the Springs too
were favorites. But, on the whole, it could not be
concealed, least of all from the sharp female intel-
lect, that this Carlyle was a dreadfully heterodox,
not to say a dreadfully savage fellow, at heart ; be-
lieving no syllable of all that Gospel of Fraternity,
Benevolence, and new Heaven-on-Earth, preached
forth by all manner of " advanced " creatures, from
George Sand to Elihu Burritt, in these days ; that
in fact the said Carlyle not only disbelieved all
that, but treated it as poisonous cant,--sweetness
of sugar-of-lead, -- a detestable phosphorescence
from the dead body of a Christianity, that would
not admit itself to be dead, and lie buried with all
its unspeakable putrescences, as a venerable dead
one ought ! -- Surely detestable enough. -- To all
which Margaret listened with much good nature;
though of course with sad reflections not a few} ---
She is coming back to us, she promises. Her dia-
lect is very vernacular,--extremely exotic in the
London climate. If she do not gravitate too ir-
resistibly towards that class of New-Era people
(which includes whatsoever we have of prurient,
1 Miss Fuller's impressions of Carlyle, much to this effect, may
be found in the "Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli," Boston,
1852, Vol. II. pp. 184-190.
von. 11. 10
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? 146 ' Carlyle to Emerson. -
esurient, morbid, flimsy, and in fact pitiable and
unprofitable, and is at a sad discount among men
of sense), she may get into good tracks of inquiry
and connection here, and be very useful to herself
and others. I could not show her Alfred (he has
been here since) nor Landor' but surely if I can I
V-'\. will,--that or a hundred ti_mes as much as that, --
when she returns. -- -- They tell me you are about
collecting your Poems. Well, though I do not ap-
prove of rhyme at all, yet it is impossible Emerson
in rhyme or prose can put down any thought that
was in his heart but 'I should wish to get into
mine. So let me have the Book as fast as may be.
And do others like it if you will take circumbend-
ibuses for sound's sake ! And excuse the Critic
who seems to you so unmusical ; and say, It is the
nature of beast! -- Adieu, dear Friend: write
to me, write to me.
. Yours ever,
T. CARLYLE.
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? lfhnerson to Carlyle. 147
CXVII.
EMERSON TO CARLYLE.
CONCORD, 31 January, 1847. -
MY DEAR CARLYLE, ~-- Your letter came with a
blessing last week. I had already learned from
Margaret Fuller, at Paris, that you had been very
good and gentle to her ; -- brilliant and prevailing,
of course, but, I inferred, had actually restrained
the volleys and modulated the thunder, out of true
courtesy and goodness of nature, which was worthy
of all praise in a spoiled conqueror at this time of
day. Especially, too, she expressed a true recogni-
tion and love of Jane Carlyle; and thus her visit
proved a solid satisfaction; to me, also, who think
that few people have so well earned their pleasures
as she.
She wrote me a long letter; she has been very
happy in England, and her time and strength fully
employed. Her description of you and your dis-
course (which I read with lively curiosity also) was
the best I have had on that subject.
I tried hard to write you by the December
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? 1 48 Emersem to Carlyle.
steamer, to tell you how forward was my book of
Poems ; but a little afl"'air makes me much writing.
I chanced to have three or four items of business
to despatch, when the steamer was ready to go,
and you escaped hearing of them. I am the
trustee of Charles Lane, who came out here with
Alcott and bought land, which, though sold, is not
paid for.
Somebody or somebodies in Liverpool and Man-
chesterl have proposed once or twice, with more
or less specification, that I should come to those
cities to lecture. And who knows but I may come
one day ? Steam is strong, and Liverpool is near.
I should find my account in the strong induce-
ment of a new audience to finish pieces which
have lain waiting with little hope for months or
years.
Ah then, if I dared, I should be well con-
tent to add some golden hours to my life in see-
ing you, now all full-grown and acknowledged
amidst your own people, --- to hear and to speak
is so little yet so much. But life is dangerous
' Mr. Alexander Ireland, who had made the acquaintance of
Emerson at Edinburgh, in 1833, was his Manchester correspondent.
His memorial volume on Emerson contains an interesting record of
their relations.
I
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? Emerson to Carlyle. I49
and delicate. I should like to see your solid Eng-
land. The map of Britain is good reading for
me. Then I have a very ignorant love of pic-
tures, and a curiosity about the Greek statues
and stumps in the British Museum. So beware
of me, for on that distant day when I get ready
I shall come.
Long before this time you ought to have received
from John Chapman a copy of Emerson's Poems,
so called, which he was directed to send you.
Poor man, you need not open them. I know all
you can say. I printed them, not because I was
deceived into a belief that they were poems, but
because of the softness or hardness of heart of
many friends here who have made it a point to
have them circulated} Once having set out to
print, I obeyed the solicitations of John Chapman,
of an ill-omened street in London, to send him
the book in manuscript, for the better securing of
copyright. In printing them here I have corrected
the most unpardonable negligences, which negli-
gences must be all stereotyped under his fair
1 In the rough draft the following sentence comes in here:
"I reckon myself a good beginning of a poet, very urgent and
decided in my bent, and in some coming millennium I shall yet
sing. "
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? 1 50 Carlyle to lhnerson.
London covers and gilt paper to the eyes of any
curious London reader; from which recollection
I strive to turn away.
Little and Brown have just rendered me an ac-
count, by which it appears that we are not quite
so well off as was thought last summer, when they
said they had sold at auction the balance of your
books which had been lying unsold. It seems
now that the books supposed to be sold were
not all taken, and are returned to them; one
hundred Chartism, sixty-three Past and Present.
Yet we are to have some eighty-three dollars
($ 83. 68), which you shall probably have by the
next steamer.
Yours affectionately,
R. W. EMERSON.
. CXVIII.
CARLYLE TO EMERSON. '
CHELSEA, LONi>oN, 2 March, 1847.
DEAR EMERSON, --The Steamer goes to-morrow ;
I must, though in a very dim condition, have a little
word for you conveyed by it. In the miscellaneous
- 'Kn.
- . .
--. . _:. . ,. ' '---. -',-- __ ? DI'fI-('S\" sq
. , I _Q
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? Carlyle to Emerson. I 5 1
maw of that strange Steamer shall lie, among other
things, a friendly word!
Your very kind Letter. lay waiting me here, some
ten days ago; doubly welcome after so long a
silence. We had been in Hampshire, with the
Barings, where we were last year;--some four
weeks or more; totally idle: our winter had been,
and indeed- still is, unusually severe; my Wife's
health in consequence was sadly deranged; but
this idleness, these Isle-of-Wight sea-breezes, have
brought matters well round again; so we cannot
grudge the visit or the idleness, which otherwise
too might have its uses. Alas, at this time my
normal state is to be altogether idle, to look out
upon a very lonely universe, full of grim sorrow,
full of splendor too; and not to know at all, for
the moment, on what side I am to attack it again !
--I read your Book of Poems all faithfully, at Bay
House (our Hampshire quarters); where the ob-
stinate people,--with whom you are otherwise, in
prose, a first favorite,--foolishly refused to let me
read aloud; foolishly, for I would have made it
mostly all plain by commentary:--so I had to
read for myself ; and cad say, in spite of my hard-
heartedness, I did gain, though under impediments,
a real satisfaction and some tone of the Eternal
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? I52 _ Carlyle to Emerson.
Melodies sounding, afar off, ever and anon, in my
ear! This is fact; a truth in Natural History;
from which you are welcome to draw inferences.
A grand View of the Universe, everywhere the sound
(unhappily far of, as it were) of a valiant, genuine
Human Soul: this, even under rhyme, is a satisfac-
tion worth some struggling for. But indeed you
are very perverse; and through this perplexed un-
diaphanous element, you do not fall on me like
radiant summer rainbows, like floods of sunlight,
but with thin piercing radiances which affect me
like the light of the stars. It is so: I wish you
would become concrete, and write in prose the
straightest way; but under any form I must put
up with you; that is my lot. --Chapman's edition,
as you probably know, is very beautiful. I believe
there are enough of ardent silent seekers in Eng-
land to buy up this edition from him, and reso-
lutely study the same : as for the review multitude,
they dare not exactly call it " unintelligible moon-
shine," and so will probably hold their tongue. It
is my fixed opinion that we are all at sea as to
what is called Poetry, A'rt, &c. , in these times;
laboring under a dreadful incubus of Tradition,
and mere " Cant heaped balefully on us up to the
very Zenith," as men, in nearly all other provinces
0
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? - Carlyle to Emerson. I 5 3-
of their Life, except perhaps the railway province,
do now labor and stagger ;--in a word, that Goethe-
and-Schiller's " Kunst" has far more brotherhood
with Pusey-and-Newman's Shovelhattery, and other
the like deplorable phenomena, than it is in the
least aware of! I beg you take warning: I am
more serious in this than you suppose. But no,
you will not; you whistle lightly over my prophe-
cies, and go your own stifl'-necked road. Unfortu-
nate man ! --
I had read in the Newspapers, and even heard in
speech from Manchester people, that you were cer-
tainly coming this very summer to lecture among
us: but now it seems, in your Letter, all postponed
into the vague again. I do not personally know
your Manchester negotiators, but I know in gen-
eral that they are men of respectability, insight,
and activity; much connected with the lecturing
department, which is a very growing one, especially
in Lancashire, at present;-- men likely, for the
rest, to fulfil whatsoever they may become engaged
for to you. My own ignorant though confident
guess, moreover, is, that you would, in all senses of
the word, succeed there ; I think, also rather confi-
dently, we could promise you an audience of Brit-
ish aristocracy in London here,--and of British
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? 154 Carlyle to Emerson.
commonalty all manner of audiences that you liked
to stoop to. I heard an ignorant blockhead (or
mainly so) called 2-- ---- bow-wowing here,
some months ago, to an audience of several thou-
sands, in the City, one evening,--upon Universal
Peace, or some other field of balderdash; which
the poor people seemed very patient of. In a word,
I do not see what is to hinder you to come when-
ever you can resolve upon it. The adventure is
perfectly promising: an adventure familiar to you
withal; for Lecturing is with us fundamentally just
what it is with you: Much prurient curiosity, with
some ingenuous love of wisdom, an element of real
reverence for the same: everywhere a perfect open-
ness to any man speaking in any measure things
manful. Come, therefore; gird yourself together,
and come. With little or no peradventure, you
will realize what your modest hope is, and more;
--and I, for my share of it, shall see you once
again under this Sun! O Heavens, there might be
some good in that! Nay, if you will travel like a
private quiet person, who knows but I, the most
unlocomotive of mortals, might be able to escort
you up and down a little; to look at many a thing
along with you, and even to open my long-closed
heart and speak about the same? -- There is a
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? 134 Carlyle to Emerson.
I was lately inquired of again by an agent of a
huge Boston society of young men, whether Mr.
Carlyle would not come to America and read Lec-
tures, on some terms which they could propose. I
advised them to make him an offer, and a better
one than they had in view. Joy and Peace to you
in your new freedom.
R. W. E.
0'
CXIV.
CARLYLE TO EMERSON.
CnELSEA, 17 July, 1846.
DEAR EMERsoN,--Sin0e I wrote last to you,-
I think, with the Wiley-and-Putnam Covenant en-
closed, --the Photograph, after some days of loi-
tering at the Liverpool Custom-house, came safe to
hand. Many thanks to you for this punctuality: this
poor Shadow, it is all you could do at present in
that matter! But it must not rest there, no. This
Image is altogether unsatisfactory, illusive, and
even in some measure tragical to me! First of all,
it is a bad Photograph; no eyes discernible, at least
one of the eyes not, except in rare favorable lights:
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? Carlyle to Emerson. I35
then, alas, Time itself and Oblivion must have been
busy. I could not at first, nor can I yet with per-
fect decisiveness, bring out any feature completely
recalling to me the old Emerson, that lighted on
us from the Blue, at Craigenputtock, long ago,--
eheu I Here is a genial, smiling, energetic face,
full of sunny strength, intelligence, integrity, good
humor; but it lies imprisoned in baleful shades, as
of the valley of Death; seems smiling on me as if
in mockery. "Dost know me, friend? I am dead,
thou seest, and distant, and forever hidden from
thee ;--I belong already to the Eternities, and thou
recognizest me not! " On the whole, it is the
strangest feeling I have : -- and practically the
thing will be, that you get us by the earliest oppor-
tunity some living pictorial sketch, chalk-drawing
or the like, from a trustworthy hand; and send it
hither to represent you. Out of the two I shall
compile for myself a likeness by degrees: but as for
this present, we cannot put up with it at all; to my
Wife and me, and to sundry other parties far and
near that have interest in it, there is no satisfaction
in this. So there will be nothing for you but com-
pliance, by the first fair chance you have: further-
more, I bargain that the Lady Emerson have, within
reasonable limits, a royal veto in the business (not
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? r 36 Carlyle to Emerson.
,/---\_. '-
absolute, if that threaten extinction to the enter-
prise, but absolute within the limits of possibility) ;
and that she take our case in hand, and graciously
consider what can and shall be done. That will
answer, I think. _
Of late weeks I have been either idle, or sunk
in the sorrowfulest cobbling of old shoes again;
sorrowfully reading over old Books for the Putnams
and Chapmans, namely. It is really painful, look-
ing in one's own old face; said "old face" no
longer a thing extant now ! -- Happily I have at last
finished it; the whole Lumber-troop with clothes
duly brushed (French Revolution has even got an
Index too) travels to New York in the Steamer
that brings you this. Quad faustum sit:--or in-
deed I do not much care whether it be faustum or
not; I grow to care about an astonishingly small
number of things as times turn with me! Man, all
men seem radically dumb; jabbering mere jargons
and noises from the teeth outwards; the inner
meaning of them,--of them and of me, poor devils,
--remaining shut, buried forever. If almost all
Books were burnt (my own laid next the coal), I
sometimes in my spleen feel as if it really would be
better with us! Certainly could one generation of
men be forced to live without rhetoric, babblement,
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? Carlyle to Emerson. I 37
hearsay, in short with the tongue well cut out
of them altogether, -- their fortunate successors
would find a most improved world to start upon!
For Cant does lie piled on us, high as the zenith; an
Augean Stable with the poisonous confusion piled
so high: which, simply if there once could be noth-
ing said, would mostly dwindle like summer snow
gradually about its business, and leave us free to
use our eyes again! When I see painful Professors
of Greek, poring in their sumptuous Oxfords over
dead Greek for a thousand years or more, and
leaving live English all the while to develop itself
under charge of Pickwicks and Sam Wellers, as if
it were nothing and the other were all things: this,
and the like of it everywhere, fills me with reflec-
tions! Good Heavens, will the people not come out
of their wretched Old-Clothes Monmouth-Streets,
Hebrew and other; but lie there dying of the
basest pestilence,--dying and as good as dead!
On the whole, I am very weary of most "Litera-
ture":--and indeed, in very sorrowful abstruse
humor otherwise at present.
For remedy to which I am, in these very hours,
preparing for a sally into the green Country and
deep silence; I know not altogether how or whither-
ward as yet; only that I must tend towards Lanca-
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? 138 Carlyle to Emerson.
\
shire; towards Scotland at last. My Wife already
waits me in Lancashire ; went ofi, in rather poor
case, much burnt by the hot Town, some ten days
ago; and does not yet report much improvement.
I will write to you somewhere in my wanderings.
The address, "Scotsbrig, Ecclefechan, N. B. ," if
you chance to write directly or soon after this
arrives, will, likely, be the shortest: at any rate,
that, or "Cheyne Row" either, is always sure
enough to find me in a day or two after trying.
By a kind of accident I have fallen considerably
into American History in these days; and am even
looking out for American Geography to help me.
Jared Sparks, Marshall, &c. are hickory and buck-
skin; but I do catch a credible trait of human life
from them here and there; Michelet's genial cham-
pagne froth,--alas, I could find no fact in it that
would stand handling; and so have broken down in
the middle of La France, and run over to hickory
and Jared for shelter! Z Do you know Beriah
Green? 1 A body of Albany newspapers represent
to me the people quarrelling in my name, in a
1 The Reverend Beriah Green, President for some years of Oneida
Institute, a manual-labor school at Whitesboro', N. Y. He was an
active reformer, and a leading member of the National Convention
which met in Philadelphia, December 4th, 1833, to form the Ameri-
can Antislavery Society. He died in 1874, seventy-nine years old.
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? Emerson to Carlyle. I 39
very vague manner, as to the propriety of being
" governed," and Beriah's is the only rational voice
among them. Farewell, dear Friend. Speedy news
of you!
T. CARLYLE.
CXV.
EMERSON T0 CARLYLE.
CONCORD, 31 July, 1846.
MY DEAR FRIEND, -- The new edition of Crom-
well in its perfect form and in excellent dress, and
the copy of the Appendix, came munificently safe
by the last steamer. When thought is best, then
is there most,--is a faith of which you alone
among writing men at this day will give me ex-
perience. If it is the right frankincense and
sandal-wood, it is so good and heavenly to give me
a basketful and not a pinch. I read proudly, a
little at a time, and have not yet got through the
new matter. But I think neither the new letters
nor the commentary could be spared. Wiley and
Putnam shall do what they can, and we will see if
New England will not come to reckon this the best
chapter in her Pentateuch.
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? I40 Emerson to Carlyle.
I send this letter by Margaret Fuller, of whose
approach I believe I wrote you some word. There
is no foretelling how you visited and crowded
English will like our few educated men or women,
and in your learned populace my luminaries may
easily be overlooked. But of all the travellers
whom you have so kindly received from me, I
think of none, since Alcott went to England, whom
I so much desired that you should see and like, as
this dear old friend of mine. For two years now I
have scarcely seen her, as she has been at New
York, engaged by Horace Greeley as a literary
editor of his Tribune newspaper. This employ-
ment was made acceptable to her by good pay,
great local and personal conveniences of all kinds,
and unbounded confidence and respect from Gree-
ley himself, and all other parties connected with
this influential journal (of 30,000 subscribers, I be-
lieve). And Margaret Fuller's work as critic of
all new books, critic of the drama, of music, and
good arts in New York, has been honorable to her.
Still this employment is not satisfactory to me.
She is full of all nobleness, and with the generosity
native to her mind and character appears to me
an exotic in New England, a foreigner from some
more sultry and expansive climate. She is, I sup-
i
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? Emerson to Carlyle. I41
pose, the earliest reader and lover of Goethe in
this Country, and nobody here knows him so well.
Her love too of whatever is good in French, and
specially in Italian genius, give her the best title
to travel. In short, she is our citizen of the world
by quite special diploma. And I am heartily glad
that she has an opportunity of going abroad that
pleases her.
Mr. Spring, a merchant of great moral merits,
(and, as I am informed, an assiduous reader of your
books,) has grown rich, and resolves to see the
world with his wife and son, and has wisely invited
Miss Fuller to show it to him. Now, in the first
place, I wish you to see Margaret when you are in
special good humor, and have an hour of boundless
leisure. And I entreat Jane Carlyle to abet and
exalt and secure this satisfaction to me. I need
not, and yet perhaps I need say, that M. F. is the
safest of all possible persons who ever took pen in
hand. Prince Metternich's closet not closer or half
so honorable. In the next place, I should be glad
if you can easily manage to show her the faces of
Tennyson and of Browning. She has a sort of
right to them both, not only because she likes
their poetry, but because she has made their
merits widely known among our young people.
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? I42 Carlyle to Emerson.
And be it known to my friend Jane Carlyle, whom,
if I cannot see, I delight to name, that her visitor
is an immense favorite in the parlor, as well as in
the library, in all good houses where she is known.
And so I commend her to you.
Yours affectionately,
R. W. EMERsoN.
CXVI.
CARLYLE TO EMERSON.
CBELSEA, 18 December, 1846.
DEAR EMERsON,--This is the 18th of the month,
and it is a frightful length of time, I know not how
long, since I wrote to you,--sinner that I am!
Truly we are in no case for paying debts at pres-
ent, being all sick more or less, from the hard cold
weather, and in a state of great temporary puddle :
but, as the adage says, " one should own debt, and
crave days " ; --therefore accept a word from me,
such as it may be.
I went, as usual, to the North Country in the
Autumn; passed some two extremely disconsolate
months, -- for all things distress a wretched thin-
skinned creature like me, -- in that old region,
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? Carlyle to Emerson. 14 3
which is at once an Earth and a Hades to me, an
unutterable place, now that I have become mostly
a ghost there! I saw Ireland too on my return,
saw black potato-fields,a ragged noisy population,
that has long in a headlong baleful manner fol-
lowed the Devil's leading, listened namely to blus-
tering shallow-violent Impostors and Children of
Darkness, saying, " Yes, we know you, you are
Children of Light! "-- and so has fallen all out at
elbows in body and in soul; and now having lost
its potatoes is come as it were to a crisis; all its
windy nonsense cracking suddenly to pieces under
its feet: a very pregnant crisis indeed! A co1m-
try cast suddenly into the melting-pot,--say into
the Medea's-Caldron; to be boiled into horrid dis-
solution; whether into new youth, into sound healthy
life, or into eternal death and annihilation, one
does not yet know! Daniel O'Connell stood bodily
before me, in his green Mullaghmart Cap; ha-
ranguing his retinue of Dupables: certainly the
most sordid Humbug I have ever seen in this world ;
the emblem to me, he and his talk and the worship
and credence it found, of all the miseries that can be-
fall a Nation. I also conversed with Young Ireland
in a confidential manner; for Young Ireland, really
meaning what it says, is worth a little talk: the
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? 144 Carlyle to Emerson.
\,\_
0
Heroism and Patriotism of a new generation; well-
ing fresh and new from the breasts of Nature; and
already poisoned by O'Connellism and the Old Irish
atmosphere of bluster, falsity, fatuity, into one
knows not what. Very sad to see. On the whole,
no man ought, for any cause, to speak lies, or have
anything to do with lies; but either hold his
tongue, or speak a bit of the truth: that is the
meaning of a tongue, people used to know! --
Ireland was not the place to console my sorrows.
I returned home very sad out of Ireland;--and
indeed have remained one of the saddest,idlest,
most useless of Adam's sons ever since; and do
still remain so. I care not to write anything more,
--so it seems to me at present. I am in my va-
cant interlunar cave (I suppose that is the truth) ;
-- and I ought to wrap my mantle round me, and
lie, if dark, silent also. But, alas, I have wasted
almost all your poor sheet first ! --
Miss Fuller came duly as you announced; was
welcomed for your sake and her own.
A high-
soaring, clear, enthusiast soul; in whose speech
there is much of all that one wants to find in
speech. A sharp, subtle intellect too; and less
of that shoreless Asiatic dreaminess than I have
sometimes met with in her writings. We liked
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? Carlyle to Emerson. ' 145
one another very well, I think, and the Springs too
were favorites. But, on the whole, it could not be
concealed, least of all from the sharp female intel-
lect, that this Carlyle was a dreadfully heterodox,
not to say a dreadfully savage fellow, at heart ; be-
lieving no syllable of all that Gospel of Fraternity,
Benevolence, and new Heaven-on-Earth, preached
forth by all manner of " advanced " creatures, from
George Sand to Elihu Burritt, in these days ; that
in fact the said Carlyle not only disbelieved all
that, but treated it as poisonous cant,--sweetness
of sugar-of-lead, -- a detestable phosphorescence
from the dead body of a Christianity, that would
not admit itself to be dead, and lie buried with all
its unspeakable putrescences, as a venerable dead
one ought ! -- Surely detestable enough. -- To all
which Margaret listened with much good nature;
though of course with sad reflections not a few} ---
She is coming back to us, she promises. Her dia-
lect is very vernacular,--extremely exotic in the
London climate. If she do not gravitate too ir-
resistibly towards that class of New-Era people
(which includes whatsoever we have of prurient,
1 Miss Fuller's impressions of Carlyle, much to this effect, may
be found in the "Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli," Boston,
1852, Vol. II. pp. 184-190.
von. 11. 10
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? 146 ' Carlyle to Emerson. -
esurient, morbid, flimsy, and in fact pitiable and
unprofitable, and is at a sad discount among men
of sense), she may get into good tracks of inquiry
and connection here, and be very useful to herself
and others. I could not show her Alfred (he has
been here since) nor Landor' but surely if I can I
V-'\. will,--that or a hundred ti_mes as much as that, --
when she returns. -- -- They tell me you are about
collecting your Poems. Well, though I do not ap-
prove of rhyme at all, yet it is impossible Emerson
in rhyme or prose can put down any thought that
was in his heart but 'I should wish to get into
mine. So let me have the Book as fast as may be.
And do others like it if you will take circumbend-
ibuses for sound's sake ! And excuse the Critic
who seems to you so unmusical ; and say, It is the
nature of beast! -- Adieu, dear Friend: write
to me, write to me.
. Yours ever,
T. CARLYLE.
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? lfhnerson to Carlyle. 147
CXVII.
EMERSON TO CARLYLE.
CONCORD, 31 January, 1847. -
MY DEAR CARLYLE, ~-- Your letter came with a
blessing last week. I had already learned from
Margaret Fuller, at Paris, that you had been very
good and gentle to her ; -- brilliant and prevailing,
of course, but, I inferred, had actually restrained
the volleys and modulated the thunder, out of true
courtesy and goodness of nature, which was worthy
of all praise in a spoiled conqueror at this time of
day. Especially, too, she expressed a true recogni-
tion and love of Jane Carlyle; and thus her visit
proved a solid satisfaction; to me, also, who think
that few people have so well earned their pleasures
as she.
She wrote me a long letter; she has been very
happy in England, and her time and strength fully
employed. Her description of you and your dis-
course (which I read with lively curiosity also) was
the best I have had on that subject.
I tried hard to write you by the December
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? 1 48 Emersem to Carlyle.
steamer, to tell you how forward was my book of
Poems ; but a little afl"'air makes me much writing.
I chanced to have three or four items of business
to despatch, when the steamer was ready to go,
and you escaped hearing of them. I am the
trustee of Charles Lane, who came out here with
Alcott and bought land, which, though sold, is not
paid for.
Somebody or somebodies in Liverpool and Man-
chesterl have proposed once or twice, with more
or less specification, that I should come to those
cities to lecture. And who knows but I may come
one day ? Steam is strong, and Liverpool is near.
I should find my account in the strong induce-
ment of a new audience to finish pieces which
have lain waiting with little hope for months or
years.
Ah then, if I dared, I should be well con-
tent to add some golden hours to my life in see-
ing you, now all full-grown and acknowledged
amidst your own people, --- to hear and to speak
is so little yet so much. But life is dangerous
' Mr. Alexander Ireland, who had made the acquaintance of
Emerson at Edinburgh, in 1833, was his Manchester correspondent.
His memorial volume on Emerson contains an interesting record of
their relations.
I
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? Emerson to Carlyle. I49
and delicate. I should like to see your solid Eng-
land. The map of Britain is good reading for
me. Then I have a very ignorant love of pic-
tures, and a curiosity about the Greek statues
and stumps in the British Museum. So beware
of me, for on that distant day when I get ready
I shall come.
Long before this time you ought to have received
from John Chapman a copy of Emerson's Poems,
so called, which he was directed to send you.
Poor man, you need not open them. I know all
you can say. I printed them, not because I was
deceived into a belief that they were poems, but
because of the softness or hardness of heart of
many friends here who have made it a point to
have them circulated} Once having set out to
print, I obeyed the solicitations of John Chapman,
of an ill-omened street in London, to send him
the book in manuscript, for the better securing of
copyright. In printing them here I have corrected
the most unpardonable negligences, which negli-
gences must be all stereotyped under his fair
1 In the rough draft the following sentence comes in here:
"I reckon myself a good beginning of a poet, very urgent and
decided in my bent, and in some coming millennium I shall yet
sing. "
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? 1 50 Carlyle to lhnerson.
London covers and gilt paper to the eyes of any
curious London reader; from which recollection
I strive to turn away.
Little and Brown have just rendered me an ac-
count, by which it appears that we are not quite
so well off as was thought last summer, when they
said they had sold at auction the balance of your
books which had been lying unsold. It seems
now that the books supposed to be sold were
not all taken, and are returned to them; one
hundred Chartism, sixty-three Past and Present.
Yet we are to have some eighty-three dollars
($ 83. 68), which you shall probably have by the
next steamer.
Yours affectionately,
R. W. EMERSON.
. CXVIII.
CARLYLE TO EMERSON. '
CHELSEA, LONi>oN, 2 March, 1847.
DEAR EMERSON, --The Steamer goes to-morrow ;
I must, though in a very dim condition, have a little
word for you conveyed by it. In the miscellaneous
- 'Kn.
- . .
--. . _:. . ,. ' '---. -',-- __ ? DI'fI-('S\" sq
. , I _Q
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? Carlyle to Emerson. I 5 1
maw of that strange Steamer shall lie, among other
things, a friendly word!
Your very kind Letter. lay waiting me here, some
ten days ago; doubly welcome after so long a
silence. We had been in Hampshire, with the
Barings, where we were last year;--some four
weeks or more; totally idle: our winter had been,
and indeed- still is, unusually severe; my Wife's
health in consequence was sadly deranged; but
this idleness, these Isle-of-Wight sea-breezes, have
brought matters well round again; so we cannot
grudge the visit or the idleness, which otherwise
too might have its uses. Alas, at this time my
normal state is to be altogether idle, to look out
upon a very lonely universe, full of grim sorrow,
full of splendor too; and not to know at all, for
the moment, on what side I am to attack it again !
--I read your Book of Poems all faithfully, at Bay
House (our Hampshire quarters); where the ob-
stinate people,--with whom you are otherwise, in
prose, a first favorite,--foolishly refused to let me
read aloud; foolishly, for I would have made it
mostly all plain by commentary:--so I had to
read for myself ; and cad say, in spite of my hard-
heartedness, I did gain, though under impediments,
a real satisfaction and some tone of the Eternal
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? I52 _ Carlyle to Emerson.
Melodies sounding, afar off, ever and anon, in my
ear! This is fact; a truth in Natural History;
from which you are welcome to draw inferences.
A grand View of the Universe, everywhere the sound
(unhappily far of, as it were) of a valiant, genuine
Human Soul: this, even under rhyme, is a satisfac-
tion worth some struggling for. But indeed you
are very perverse; and through this perplexed un-
diaphanous element, you do not fall on me like
radiant summer rainbows, like floods of sunlight,
but with thin piercing radiances which affect me
like the light of the stars. It is so: I wish you
would become concrete, and write in prose the
straightest way; but under any form I must put
up with you; that is my lot. --Chapman's edition,
as you probably know, is very beautiful. I believe
there are enough of ardent silent seekers in Eng-
land to buy up this edition from him, and reso-
lutely study the same : as for the review multitude,
they dare not exactly call it " unintelligible moon-
shine," and so will probably hold their tongue. It
is my fixed opinion that we are all at sea as to
what is called Poetry, A'rt, &c. , in these times;
laboring under a dreadful incubus of Tradition,
and mere " Cant heaped balefully on us up to the
very Zenith," as men, in nearly all other provinces
0
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? - Carlyle to Emerson. I 5 3-
of their Life, except perhaps the railway province,
do now labor and stagger ;--in a word, that Goethe-
and-Schiller's " Kunst" has far more brotherhood
with Pusey-and-Newman's Shovelhattery, and other
the like deplorable phenomena, than it is in the
least aware of! I beg you take warning: I am
more serious in this than you suppose. But no,
you will not; you whistle lightly over my prophe-
cies, and go your own stifl'-necked road. Unfortu-
nate man ! --
I had read in the Newspapers, and even heard in
speech from Manchester people, that you were cer-
tainly coming this very summer to lecture among
us: but now it seems, in your Letter, all postponed
into the vague again. I do not personally know
your Manchester negotiators, but I know in gen-
eral that they are men of respectability, insight,
and activity; much connected with the lecturing
department, which is a very growing one, especially
in Lancashire, at present;-- men likely, for the
rest, to fulfil whatsoever they may become engaged
for to you. My own ignorant though confident
guess, moreover, is, that you would, in all senses of
the word, succeed there ; I think, also rather confi-
dently, we could promise you an audience of Brit-
ish aristocracy in London here,--and of British
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? 154 Carlyle to Emerson.
commonalty all manner of audiences that you liked
to stoop to. I heard an ignorant blockhead (or
mainly so) called 2-- ---- bow-wowing here,
some months ago, to an audience of several thou-
sands, in the City, one evening,--upon Universal
Peace, or some other field of balderdash; which
the poor people seemed very patient of. In a word,
I do not see what is to hinder you to come when-
ever you can resolve upon it. The adventure is
perfectly promising: an adventure familiar to you
withal; for Lecturing is with us fundamentally just
what it is with you: Much prurient curiosity, with
some ingenuous love of wisdom, an element of real
reverence for the same: everywhere a perfect open-
ness to any man speaking in any measure things
manful. Come, therefore; gird yourself together,
and come. With little or no peradventure, you
will realize what your modest hope is, and more;
--and I, for my share of it, shall see you once
again under this Sun! O Heavens, there might be
some good in that! Nay, if you will travel like a
private quiet person, who knows but I, the most
unlocomotive of mortals, might be able to escort
you up and down a little; to look at many a thing
along with you, and even to open my long-closed
heart and speak about the same? -- There is a
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