Generated for (University of
Chicago)
on 2014-11-14 09:13 GMT / http://hdl.
Thomas Carlyle
But do not fancy that I
send any one-to you heedlessly; for I value your
time at its rate to nations, and refuse many more
letters than I give. I shall not send you any more
people without good reason. /
Your visit to Germany will stand you in stead,
when the annoyances of the journey are forgotten,
and, in spite of your disclaimers, I am preparing
to read your history of Frederic. You are an
inveterate European, and rightfully stand for your
polity and antiquities and culture: and I have
long since forborne to importune you with America,
as if it were a humorous repetition of Johnson's
visit to Scotland. And yet since Thackeray's ad-
venture, I have often thought how you would bear
the pains and penalties; and have painted out
your march triumphal. I was at New York, lately,
for a few days, and fell into some traces of Thack-
eray,lwho has made a good mark in this country
by a certain manly blurting out of his opinion in
various companies, where so much honesty was
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? Emerson to Carlyle. 257 d
rare and useful. I am sorry never once to have
been in the same town with him whilst he was
here. I hope to see him, if he comes again. New
York would interest you, as I am told it did him;
you both less and more. The " society " there is
at least self-pleased, and its own; it has a con-
tempt of Boston, and a very modest opinion of
London. There is already all the play and fury
that belong to great wealth. A new fortune drops
into the city every day; no end is to palaces, none
to diamonds, none to dinners and suppers. All
Spanish America discovers that only in the U.
States, of all the continent, is safe investment;
and money gravitates therefore to New York. The
Southern naphtha, too, comes in as an ingredient,
and lubricates manners and tastes to that degree,
that Boston . is hated for stiffness, and excellence
in luxury is rapidly attained. Of course, dining,
dancing, equipaging, etc. are the exclusive beati-
tudes,--and Thackeray will not cure us of this
distemper. Have you a physician that can? Are
you a physician, and will you come? If you will
come, cities will go out to meet you. '
And now I see I have so much to say to you that
I ought to write once a month, and I must begin at
this point again incontinently. Ever yours,
R. W. EMERsON.
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? 258 Carlyle to Emerson.
CLIII.
CARLYLE TO EMERSON.
Crmnsnn, LONDON, 9 September, 1853.
DEAR EMERSON,---YOU. l' Letter came ten days
ago; very kind, and however late, surely right
welcome! You ought to stir yourself up a little,
and actually begin to speak to me again. If we
are getting old, that is no reason why we should
fall silent, and entirely abstruse to one another.
Alas, I do not find as I grow older that the num-
ber of articulate-speaking human souls increases
around me, in proportion to the inarticulate and
palavering species! I am often abundantly soli-
tary in heart; and regret the old days when we
used to speak oftener together.
I have not quitted Town this year at all; have
resisted calls to Scotland both of a gay and a sad
description (for the Ashburtons are gone to John
of Groat's House, or the Scottish Thule, to rusti-
cate and hunt ; and, alas, in poor old Annandale a
tragedy seems preparing for me, and the thing I
have dreaded all my days is perhaps now drawing
nigh, ah me ! ) --I felt so utterly broken and dis-
gusted with the jangle of last year's locomotion, I
judged it would be better to sit obstinately still,
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? - Carlyle to Emerson. 259
and let my thoughts settle (into sediment and into
clearness, as it might be) ; and so, in spite of great
and peculiar noises moreover, here I am and re-
main. London is not a bad place at all in these
months, --with its long clean streets, green parks,
and nobody in them, or nobody one has ever seen
before. Out of La Trappe, which does not suit a
Protestant man, there is perhaps no place where
one can be so perfectly alone. I might study even :
but, as I said, there are noises going on; a last
desperate spasmodic effort of building,--a new
top-story to the house, out of which is to be made
one " spacious room" (so they call it, though it is
under twenty feet square) where there shall be air
ad libitum, light from the sky, and no sound, not
even that of the Cremorne Cannons, shall find ac-
cess to me any more! Such is the prophecy; may
the gods grant it! We shall see now in about a
month ; --then adieu to mortar-tubs to all Eter-
nity : --I endure the thing, meanwhile, as well as
I can; might rqn to a certain rural retreat near
by, if I liked at any time; but do not yet: the
worst uproar here is but a trifle to that of Ger-
man inns, and horrible squeaking, choking railway
trains; and one does not go to seek this, this is
here of its own will, and for a purpose ! Seriously,
I had for twelve years had such a sound-proof
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? 260 Carlyle to Emerson.
inaccessible apartment schemed out in my head;
and last year, under a poor, helpless builder, had
finally given it up: but Chelsea, as London gener-
ally, swelling out as if it were mad, grows every
year noisier; a good builder turned up, and with a
'last paroxysm of enthusiasm I set him to. My
notion is, he will succeed ; in which case, it will be
a great possession to me for the rest of my life.
Alas, this is not the kind of silence I could have
coveted, and could once get,--with green fields
and clear skies to accompany it! But one must
take such as can be had,-- and thank the gods.
Even so, my friend. In the course of about a year
of that garret sanctuary, I hope to have swept
away much litter from my existence : in fact I am
already, by dint of mere obstinate quiescence in
such circumstances as there are, intrinsically grow-
ing fairly sounder in nerves. What a business a
poor human being has with those nerves of his,
with that crazy clay tabernacle of his! Enough,
enough; there will be all Eternity to rest in, as
Arnauld said : " Why in such a fuss, little sir? " ---
You "apologize" for sending people to me: O
you of little faith! Never dream of such a thing:
nay, whom did you send? The Cincinnati Lec-
turerl I had provided for with Owen; they would
1 Mr. O. M. Mitchell, the astronomer.
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? Carlyle to Emerson. 261
have been glad to hear him, on the Cedar forests,
on the pigs making rattlesnakes into bacon, and the
general adipocere question, under any form, at the
Albemarle Street rooms ;--and he never came to
hand. As for Miss Bacon, we find her, with her
modest shy dignity, with her solid character and
strange enterprise, a real acquisition; and hope we
shall now see more of her, now that she has come
nearer to us to lodge. I have not in my life seen
anything so tragically quixotic as her Shakspeare
enterprise: alas, alas, there can be nothing but sor-
row, toil, and utter disappointment in it for her!
I do cheerfully what I can;--which is far more
than she asks of me (for I have not seen a prouder
silent soul) ;-- but there is not the least possibility
of truth in the notion she has taken up: and the
hope of ever proving it, or finding the least doc-
ument that countenances it, is equal to that of
vanquishing the windmills by stroke of lance. I
am often truly sorry about the poor lady: but she
troubles nobody with her difficulties, with her the-
ories; she must try the matter to the end, and
charitable souls must further her so far.
Clough is settled in his Oflice; gets familiarized
to it rapidly (he says), and seems to be doing well.
I see little of him hitherto; I did not, and will not,
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? 262 Carlyle to Emerson.
-\. \__\
try to influence him in his choice of countries ; but
I think he is now likely to continue here, and here
too he may do us some good. Of America, at least
of New England, I can perceive he has brought
away an altogether kindly, almost filial impression,
--especially of a certain man who lives in that
section of the Earth. More power to his elbow ! --
--Thackeray has very rarely come athwart me
since his return: he is a big fellow, soul and body ;
of many gifts and qualities (particularly in the
Hogarth line, with a dash of Sterne superadded),
of enormous appetite withal, and very uncertain
and chaotic in all points except his outer breeding,
which is fixed enough, and perfect according to the
modern English style. I rather dread explosions
in his history. A big, fierce, weeping, hungry man;
not a strong one. Ag de mi ! But I must end,
I must end. Your Letter awakened in me, while
reading it, one mad notion. I said to myself,
"Well, if I live to finish this Frederic impossi-
bility, or even to fling it fairly into the fire, why
should not I go, in my old days, and see Concord,
Yankeeland, and that man again, after all! "--
Adieu, dear friend; all good be with you and
yours always.
T. CARLYLE.
'-' "--\/*. . |"7Jl? "Ym
. . , ' I-
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? Emerson to Carlyle. 263
GLIV.
EMERSON T0 CARLYLE.
CONCORD, 11 March, 1854.
MY DEAR CARLYLE,--The sight of Mr. Samuel
Laurence, the day before yesterday, in New York,
and of your head among his sketches, set me on
thinking which had some pain where should be
only cheer. For Mr. Laurence I hailed his arrival,
1
on every account. I wish to see a good man whom
you prize; and I like to have good Englishmen
come to America, which, of all countries, after
their own, has the best claim to them. He prom-
ises to come and see me, and has begun most pro-
pitiously in New York. For you, -- I have too much
constitutional regard and i, not to feel remorse
for my short-comings and slow-comings, and I
remember the maxim which the French stole from
our Indians,-- and it was worth stealing, --" Let
not the grass grow on the path of friendship. " Ah!
my brave giant, you can never understand the
silence and forbearances of such as are not giants.
To those to whom we owe affection, let us be dumb
until we are strong, though we should never be
strong. I hate mumped and measled lovers. I
hate cramp in all men,--most in myself.
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? 264 Emerson to Carlyle.
And yet I should have been pushed to write
without Samuel Laurence ; for I lately looked into
Jesuitism, a Latter-Day Pamphlet, and found why
you like those papers so _well. I think you have
cleared your skirts; it is a pretty good minority of
one, enunciating with brilliant malice what shall
be the universal opinion of the next edition of
mankind. And the sanity was so manifest, that I
felt that the over-gods had cleared their skirts also
to this generation, in not leaving themselves with-
'out witness, though without this single voice per-
haps I should not acquit them. Also I pardon the
world that reads the book as though it read it not,
when I see your inveterated humors. It required
courage and required conditions that feuilleton-
ists are not the persons to name or qualify, this
writing Rabelais in 1850. And to do this alone.
--You must even pitch your tune to suit your-
self. We must let Arctic Navigators and deep-
sea divers wear what astonishing coats, and eat
what meats -- wheat or whale --they like, without
criticism.
I read further, sidewise and backwards, in these
pamphlets, without exhausting them. I have not
ceased to think of the great warm heart that sends
them forth, and which I, with others, sometimes
tax with satire, and with not being warm enough --
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? Emerson to Carlyle. 265
for this poor world ;--I too, -- though I know its
meltings to-me-ward. Then I learned that the news-
papers had announced the death of your mother
(which I heard of casually on the Rock River,
Illinois), and that you and your brother John had
been with her in Scotland. I remembered what
you had once and again said of her to me, and
your apprehensions of the event which has come.
I can well believe you were grieved. The best son
is not enough a son. My mother died in my house
in November, who had lived with me all my life,
and kept her heart and mind clear, and her own,
until the end. It is very necessary that we should
have mothers,--we that read and write, --- to keep
us from becoming paper. I had found that age
did not make that she should die without causing
me pain. In my journeying lately, when I think
of home the heart is taken out.
Miss Bacon wrote me in joyful fulness of the
cordial kindness and aid she had found at your
hands, and at your wife's ; and I have never thanked
you, and much less acknowledged her copious let-
ter,--copious with desired details. Clough, too,
wrote about you, and I have not written to him
since his return to England. You will see how
total is my ossification. Meantime I have nothing
to tell you that can explain this mild palsy. I
? ?
Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:13 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/pst. 000028736530 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? 266 Emerson to Carlyle.
worked for a time on my English Notes with a
view of printing, but was forced to leave them to
go read some lectures in Philadelphia and some
Western towns. I went out Northwest to great
countries which I had not visited before ; rode one
day, fault of broken railroads, in a sleigh, sixty-
five miles through the snow, by Lake. Michigan,
(seeing how prairies and oak-openings look in
winter,) to reach Milwaukee; "the world there
was done up in large lots," as a settler told me.
The farmer, as he is now a colonist and has drawn
from his local necessities great doses of energy, is
interesting, and makes the heroic age for Wis-
consin. He lives on venison and quails. I was
made much of, as the only man of the pen
within five hundred miles, and by rarity worth
more than venison and quails.
Greeley of the New York Tribune is the right
spiritual father of all this region; he prints and
disperses one hundred and ten thousand newspa-
pers in one day,--multitudes of them in these
very parts. He had preceded me, by a few days,
and people had flocked together, coming thirty and
forty miles to hear him speak; as was right, for
he does all their thinking and theory for them, for
two dollars a year. Other than Colonists, I saw no
man. " There are no singing birds in the prairie,"
-~
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? Emerson to Carlyle. 267
I truly heard. All the life of the land and water
had distilled no thought. Younger and better, I
had no doubt been tormented to read and speak
their sense for them. Now I only gazed at them
and their boundless land.
One good word closed your letter in September,
which ought to have had an instant reply, namely,
that you might come westward when Frederic was
disposed of. Speed Frederic, then, for all reasons
and for this! America is growing furiously, town
and state; new Kansas, new Nebraska looming
up in these days, vicious politicians seething a
wretched destiny for them already at Washington.
The politicians shall be sodden, the States escape,
please God! _ The fight . of slave and freeman
drawing nearer, the question is sharply, whether
slavery or whether freedom shall be abolished.
Come and see. Wealth, which is always interest-
ing, for from wealth power refuses to be divorced,
is on a new scale. Californian quartz mountains
dumped down in New York to be repiled archi-
tecturally along shore from Canada to Cuba, and
thence west to California again. John Bull inter-
ests you at home, and is all your subject. Come
and see the Jonathanization of John. What, you
scorn all this? Well, then, come and see a few
good people, impossible to be seen on any other
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? 268 Carlyle lo Emerson.
shore, who heartily and always greet you. There
is a very serious welcome for you here. And
I too -shall wake from sleep. My wife entreats
that an invitation shall go from her to you.
Faithfully yours,
R. W. Emnnson.
CLV.
CARLYLE TO EMERSON.
Cnnnsna, 8 April, 1854.
DEAR EMERSON, -- It was a morning not like any
other which lay round it, a morning to be marked
white, that one, about -a week ago, when your
Letter came to me; a word from you yet again,
after so long a silence! On the whole, I perceive
you will not utterly give up answering me, but will
rouse yourself now and then to a word of human
brotherhood on my behalf, so long as we both con-
tinue in this Planet. And I declare, the Heavens
will reward you; and as to me, I will be thankful
for what I get, and submissive 'to delays and to all
things: all things are good compared with flat
want in that respect. It remains true, and will
remain, what I have often told you, that properly
there is no voice in this world which is completely
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? Carlyle to Emerson. 269
human to me, which fully understands all I say,
and with clear sympathy and sense answers to me,
but your voice only. That is a curious fact, and
not quite a joyful one to me. The solitude, the
silence of my poor soul, in the centre of this roar-
ing whirlpool called Universe, is great always, and
sometimes strange and almost awful. I have two
million talking bipeds without feathers, close at my
elbow, too; and of these it is often hard for me to
say whether the so-called "wise" or the almost
professedly foolish are the more inexpressibly un-
productive to me. " Silence, Silence ! " I often say
to myself: " Be silent, thou poor fool; and pre-
pare for that Divine Silence which is now not far! "
-- --On the whole, write to me whenever you
can; and be not weary of well-doing.
I have had sad things to do and see since I wrote
to you: the loss of my dear and good old Mother,
which could not be spared me forever, has come
more like a kind of total bankruptcy upon me than
might have been expected, considering her age and
mine. Oh those last two days, that last Christmas
Sunday! She was a true, pious, brave, and noble
Mother to me; and it is now all over; and the
Past has all become pale and sad and sacred;--
and the all-devouring potency of Death, what we
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? 270 Carlyle l0 Emerson.
call Death, has never looked so strange, cruel and
unspeakable to me. Nay not cruel altogether, let
me say: huge, profound, unspeakable, that is the
word. --You too have lost your good old Mother,
who stayed with you like mine, clear to the last:
alas, alas, it is the oldest Law of Nature; and it
comes on every one of us with a strange original-
ity, as if it had never happened before. -- Forward,
however; and no more lamenting ; no more than
cannot be helped. " Paradise is under the shadow
of our swords," said the Emir: " Forward! " --
I make no way in my Prussian History; I bore
and dig toilsomely through the unutterablest mass
of dead rubbish, which is not even English, which
is German and inhuman ; and hardly from ten tons
of learned inanity is there to be riddled one old
rusty nail. For I have been back as far as Pytheas
who, first of speaking creatures, beheld the Teu-
tonic Countries; and have questioned all manner of
extinct German shadows,--who answer nothing
but mumblings. And on the whole Fritz himself
is not sufficiently divine to me, far from it; and I
am getting old, and heavy of heart ;-- and in short,
it oftenest seems to me I shall never write any
word about that matter; and have again fairly got
into the element of the IMPOSSIBLE. Very well:
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? Carlyle to 1/hnersrm. 2 7 1
could I help it? I can at least be honestly silent;
and " bear my indigence with dignity," as you once
said. The insuperable difficulty of Frederic is,
that he, the genuine little ray of Veritable and
Eternal that was in him, lay imbedded in the pu-
trid Eighteenth Century, such an Ocean of sordid
nothingness, shams, and scandalous hypocrisies, as
never weltered in the world before; and that in
everything I can find yet written or recorded of
him, he still, to all intents and purposes, most
tragically lies THERE ;-- and ought not to lie there,
if any use is ever to be had of him, or at least of
writing about him ; for as to him, he with his work
is safe enough to us, far elsewhere. --Pity me, pity
me; I know not on what hand to turn; and have
such a Chaos filling all my Earth and Heaven as
was seldom seen in British or Foreign Literature!
Add to which, the Sacred Entity, Literature itself,
is not growing more venerable to me, but less and
and ever less: good Heavens, I feel often as if
there were no madder set of bladders tumbling on
the billows of the general Bedlam at this moment
than even the Literary ones,--dear at twopence a
gross, I should say, unless one could annihilate
them by purchase on those easy terms! But do
not tell this in Gath; let it be a sad family-
secret.
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? 272 Carlyle to Emerson.
I smile, with a kind of grave joy, over your
American speculations, and wild dashing portrait-
ures of things as they are with you; and recognize
well, under your light caricature, the outlines of a
right true picture, which has often made me sad
and grim in late years. Yes, I consider that the
" Battle of Freedom and Slavery " is very far from
ended; and that the fate of poor " Freedom" in
the quarrel is very questionable indeed! Alas,
there is but one Slavery, as I wrote somewhere;
and that, I think, is mounting towards a height,
which may bring strokes to bear upon it again!
Meanwhile, patience; for us there is nothing else
appointed. --Tell me, however, what has become
of your Book on England? We shall really be
obliged to you for that. A piece of it went
through all the Newspapers, some years ago ;
which was really unique for its quaint kindly in-
sight, humor, and other qualities ;_ like an etching
by Hollar or Diirer, amid the continents of vile
smearing which are called "pictures" at present.
Come on, Come on; give us the Book, and don't
loiter! --
Miss Bacon has fled away to St. Alban's (the
Great Bacon's place) five or six months ago ; and is
there working out her Shakespeare Problem, from
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? Emerson to Carlyle. 27 3
the depths of her own mind, disdainful apparently,
or desperate and careless, of all evidence from
Museums or Archives; I have not had an answer
from her since before Christmas, and have now
lost her address. Poor Lady: I sometimes silently
wish she were safe home again ; for truly there can
no madder enterprise than her present one be well
figured. -i Adieu, my Friend; I must stop short
here. Write soon, if you have any charity. Good
be with you ever.
T. CARLYLE.
CLVI.
EMERSON TO CARLYLE.
CONCORD, 17 April, 1855.
MY DEAR FRIEND,--0n this delicious spring day,
I will obey the beautiful voices of the winds, long
disobeyed, and address you; nor cloud the hour by
looking at the letters in my drawer to know if a
twelvemonth has been allowed to elapse since this
tardy writing was due. Mr. Everett sent me one
day a letter he had received from you, containing
a kind message to me, which gave me pleasure
vor. . II 18
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? 274 Emerson to Carlyle.
--\_\_ \
and pain. I returned the letter with thanks, and
with promises I would sin no more. Instantly, I
was whisked, by "the stormy wing of Fate," out
of my chain, and whirled, like a dry leaf, through
the State of New York.
Now at home again, I read English Newspapers,
with all the world, and claim an imaginary privi-
lege over my compatriots, that I revolve therein
my friend's large part. Ward said to me yesterday,
that Carlyle's star was daily rising. For C. had
said years ago, when all men thought him mad,
that which the rest of mortals, including the Times
Newspaper, have at last got near enough to see
with eyes, and therefore to believe. And one day,
in Philadelphia, you should have heard the wise
young Philip Randolph defend you against objec-
tions of mine. But when I have such testimony,
I say to myself, the high-seeing austerely exigent
friend whom I elected, and who elected me, twenty
years and more ago, finds me heavy and silent,
when all the world elects and loves him. Yet I
have not changed. I have the same pride in his
genius, the same sympathy with the Genius that
governs his, the old love with the old limitations,
though love and limitation be all untold. And I
see well what a piece of Providence he is, how
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? Emerson to Carlyle. 275
material he is to the times, which must always
have a solo Soprano to balance the roar of the
Orchestra. The solo sings the theme; the orches-
tra roars antagonistically but follows. --And have I
not put him into my Chapter of "English Spiritual
Tendencies," with all thankfulness to. the Eternal
Creator, -- though the chapter lie unborn in a
trunk ?
'T is fine for us to excuse ourselves, and patch
with promises. c We shall do as before, and sci-
ence is a fatalist. I follow, I find, the fortunes of
my Country, in my privatest ways. An American
is pioneer and man of all work, and reads up his
newspaper on Saturday night, as farmers and for-
esters do. We admire the [L? 'Ya7\. 0'\lI'UxL'a, and mean
to give our boys the grand habit; but we only
sketch what they may do. No leisure except for
the strong, the nimble have none. --I ought to tell
you what I do, or I ought to have to tell you what
I have done. But what can I? the same conces-
sion to the levity of the times; the noise of America
comes again. I have even run on wrong topics for
my parsimonious Muse, and waste my time from
my true studies.
England I see as a roaring volcano of Fate, which
threatens to roast or smother the poor literary
? ?
send any one-to you heedlessly; for I value your
time at its rate to nations, and refuse many more
letters than I give. I shall not send you any more
people without good reason. /
Your visit to Germany will stand you in stead,
when the annoyances of the journey are forgotten,
and, in spite of your disclaimers, I am preparing
to read your history of Frederic. You are an
inveterate European, and rightfully stand for your
polity and antiquities and culture: and I have
long since forborne to importune you with America,
as if it were a humorous repetition of Johnson's
visit to Scotland. And yet since Thackeray's ad-
venture, I have often thought how you would bear
the pains and penalties; and have painted out
your march triumphal. I was at New York, lately,
for a few days, and fell into some traces of Thack-
eray,lwho has made a good mark in this country
by a certain manly blurting out of his opinion in
various companies, where so much honesty was
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? Emerson to Carlyle. 257 d
rare and useful. I am sorry never once to have
been in the same town with him whilst he was
here. I hope to see him, if he comes again. New
York would interest you, as I am told it did him;
you both less and more. The " society " there is
at least self-pleased, and its own; it has a con-
tempt of Boston, and a very modest opinion of
London. There is already all the play and fury
that belong to great wealth. A new fortune drops
into the city every day; no end is to palaces, none
to diamonds, none to dinners and suppers. All
Spanish America discovers that only in the U.
States, of all the continent, is safe investment;
and money gravitates therefore to New York. The
Southern naphtha, too, comes in as an ingredient,
and lubricates manners and tastes to that degree,
that Boston . is hated for stiffness, and excellence
in luxury is rapidly attained. Of course, dining,
dancing, equipaging, etc. are the exclusive beati-
tudes,--and Thackeray will not cure us of this
distemper. Have you a physician that can? Are
you a physician, and will you come? If you will
come, cities will go out to meet you. '
And now I see I have so much to say to you that
I ought to write once a month, and I must begin at
this point again incontinently. Ever yours,
R. W. EMERsON.
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? 258 Carlyle to Emerson.
CLIII.
CARLYLE TO EMERSON.
Crmnsnn, LONDON, 9 September, 1853.
DEAR EMERSON,---YOU. l' Letter came ten days
ago; very kind, and however late, surely right
welcome! You ought to stir yourself up a little,
and actually begin to speak to me again. If we
are getting old, that is no reason why we should
fall silent, and entirely abstruse to one another.
Alas, I do not find as I grow older that the num-
ber of articulate-speaking human souls increases
around me, in proportion to the inarticulate and
palavering species! I am often abundantly soli-
tary in heart; and regret the old days when we
used to speak oftener together.
I have not quitted Town this year at all; have
resisted calls to Scotland both of a gay and a sad
description (for the Ashburtons are gone to John
of Groat's House, or the Scottish Thule, to rusti-
cate and hunt ; and, alas, in poor old Annandale a
tragedy seems preparing for me, and the thing I
have dreaded all my days is perhaps now drawing
nigh, ah me ! ) --I felt so utterly broken and dis-
gusted with the jangle of last year's locomotion, I
judged it would be better to sit obstinately still,
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? - Carlyle to Emerson. 259
and let my thoughts settle (into sediment and into
clearness, as it might be) ; and so, in spite of great
and peculiar noises moreover, here I am and re-
main. London is not a bad place at all in these
months, --with its long clean streets, green parks,
and nobody in them, or nobody one has ever seen
before. Out of La Trappe, which does not suit a
Protestant man, there is perhaps no place where
one can be so perfectly alone. I might study even :
but, as I said, there are noises going on; a last
desperate spasmodic effort of building,--a new
top-story to the house, out of which is to be made
one " spacious room" (so they call it, though it is
under twenty feet square) where there shall be air
ad libitum, light from the sky, and no sound, not
even that of the Cremorne Cannons, shall find ac-
cess to me any more! Such is the prophecy; may
the gods grant it! We shall see now in about a
month ; --then adieu to mortar-tubs to all Eter-
nity : --I endure the thing, meanwhile, as well as
I can; might rqn to a certain rural retreat near
by, if I liked at any time; but do not yet: the
worst uproar here is but a trifle to that of Ger-
man inns, and horrible squeaking, choking railway
trains; and one does not go to seek this, this is
here of its own will, and for a purpose ! Seriously,
I had for twelve years had such a sound-proof
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? 260 Carlyle to Emerson.
inaccessible apartment schemed out in my head;
and last year, under a poor, helpless builder, had
finally given it up: but Chelsea, as London gener-
ally, swelling out as if it were mad, grows every
year noisier; a good builder turned up, and with a
'last paroxysm of enthusiasm I set him to. My
notion is, he will succeed ; in which case, it will be
a great possession to me for the rest of my life.
Alas, this is not the kind of silence I could have
coveted, and could once get,--with green fields
and clear skies to accompany it! But one must
take such as can be had,-- and thank the gods.
Even so, my friend. In the course of about a year
of that garret sanctuary, I hope to have swept
away much litter from my existence : in fact I am
already, by dint of mere obstinate quiescence in
such circumstances as there are, intrinsically grow-
ing fairly sounder in nerves. What a business a
poor human being has with those nerves of his,
with that crazy clay tabernacle of his! Enough,
enough; there will be all Eternity to rest in, as
Arnauld said : " Why in such a fuss, little sir? " ---
You "apologize" for sending people to me: O
you of little faith! Never dream of such a thing:
nay, whom did you send? The Cincinnati Lec-
turerl I had provided for with Owen; they would
1 Mr. O. M. Mitchell, the astronomer.
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? Carlyle to Emerson. 261
have been glad to hear him, on the Cedar forests,
on the pigs making rattlesnakes into bacon, and the
general adipocere question, under any form, at the
Albemarle Street rooms ;--and he never came to
hand. As for Miss Bacon, we find her, with her
modest shy dignity, with her solid character and
strange enterprise, a real acquisition; and hope we
shall now see more of her, now that she has come
nearer to us to lodge. I have not in my life seen
anything so tragically quixotic as her Shakspeare
enterprise: alas, alas, there can be nothing but sor-
row, toil, and utter disappointment in it for her!
I do cheerfully what I can;--which is far more
than she asks of me (for I have not seen a prouder
silent soul) ;-- but there is not the least possibility
of truth in the notion she has taken up: and the
hope of ever proving it, or finding the least doc-
ument that countenances it, is equal to that of
vanquishing the windmills by stroke of lance. I
am often truly sorry about the poor lady: but she
troubles nobody with her difficulties, with her the-
ories; she must try the matter to the end, and
charitable souls must further her so far.
Clough is settled in his Oflice; gets familiarized
to it rapidly (he says), and seems to be doing well.
I see little of him hitherto; I did not, and will not,
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? 262 Carlyle to Emerson.
-\. \__\
try to influence him in his choice of countries ; but
I think he is now likely to continue here, and here
too he may do us some good. Of America, at least
of New England, I can perceive he has brought
away an altogether kindly, almost filial impression,
--especially of a certain man who lives in that
section of the Earth. More power to his elbow ! --
--Thackeray has very rarely come athwart me
since his return: he is a big fellow, soul and body ;
of many gifts and qualities (particularly in the
Hogarth line, with a dash of Sterne superadded),
of enormous appetite withal, and very uncertain
and chaotic in all points except his outer breeding,
which is fixed enough, and perfect according to the
modern English style. I rather dread explosions
in his history. A big, fierce, weeping, hungry man;
not a strong one. Ag de mi ! But I must end,
I must end. Your Letter awakened in me, while
reading it, one mad notion. I said to myself,
"Well, if I live to finish this Frederic impossi-
bility, or even to fling it fairly into the fire, why
should not I go, in my old days, and see Concord,
Yankeeland, and that man again, after all! "--
Adieu, dear friend; all good be with you and
yours always.
T. CARLYLE.
'-' "--\/*. . |"7Jl? "Ym
. . , ' I-
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? Emerson to Carlyle. 263
GLIV.
EMERSON T0 CARLYLE.
CONCORD, 11 March, 1854.
MY DEAR CARLYLE,--The sight of Mr. Samuel
Laurence, the day before yesterday, in New York,
and of your head among his sketches, set me on
thinking which had some pain where should be
only cheer. For Mr. Laurence I hailed his arrival,
1
on every account. I wish to see a good man whom
you prize; and I like to have good Englishmen
come to America, which, of all countries, after
their own, has the best claim to them. He prom-
ises to come and see me, and has begun most pro-
pitiously in New York. For you, -- I have too much
constitutional regard and i, not to feel remorse
for my short-comings and slow-comings, and I
remember the maxim which the French stole from
our Indians,-- and it was worth stealing, --" Let
not the grass grow on the path of friendship. " Ah!
my brave giant, you can never understand the
silence and forbearances of such as are not giants.
To those to whom we owe affection, let us be dumb
until we are strong, though we should never be
strong. I hate mumped and measled lovers. I
hate cramp in all men,--most in myself.
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? 264 Emerson to Carlyle.
And yet I should have been pushed to write
without Samuel Laurence ; for I lately looked into
Jesuitism, a Latter-Day Pamphlet, and found why
you like those papers so _well. I think you have
cleared your skirts; it is a pretty good minority of
one, enunciating with brilliant malice what shall
be the universal opinion of the next edition of
mankind. And the sanity was so manifest, that I
felt that the over-gods had cleared their skirts also
to this generation, in not leaving themselves with-
'out witness, though without this single voice per-
haps I should not acquit them. Also I pardon the
world that reads the book as though it read it not,
when I see your inveterated humors. It required
courage and required conditions that feuilleton-
ists are not the persons to name or qualify, this
writing Rabelais in 1850. And to do this alone.
--You must even pitch your tune to suit your-
self. We must let Arctic Navigators and deep-
sea divers wear what astonishing coats, and eat
what meats -- wheat or whale --they like, without
criticism.
I read further, sidewise and backwards, in these
pamphlets, without exhausting them. I have not
ceased to think of the great warm heart that sends
them forth, and which I, with others, sometimes
tax with satire, and with not being warm enough --
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? Emerson to Carlyle. 265
for this poor world ;--I too, -- though I know its
meltings to-me-ward. Then I learned that the news-
papers had announced the death of your mother
(which I heard of casually on the Rock River,
Illinois), and that you and your brother John had
been with her in Scotland. I remembered what
you had once and again said of her to me, and
your apprehensions of the event which has come.
I can well believe you were grieved. The best son
is not enough a son. My mother died in my house
in November, who had lived with me all my life,
and kept her heart and mind clear, and her own,
until the end. It is very necessary that we should
have mothers,--we that read and write, --- to keep
us from becoming paper. I had found that age
did not make that she should die without causing
me pain. In my journeying lately, when I think
of home the heart is taken out.
Miss Bacon wrote me in joyful fulness of the
cordial kindness and aid she had found at your
hands, and at your wife's ; and I have never thanked
you, and much less acknowledged her copious let-
ter,--copious with desired details. Clough, too,
wrote about you, and I have not written to him
since his return to England. You will see how
total is my ossification. Meantime I have nothing
to tell you that can explain this mild palsy. I
? ?
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? 266 Emerson to Carlyle.
worked for a time on my English Notes with a
view of printing, but was forced to leave them to
go read some lectures in Philadelphia and some
Western towns. I went out Northwest to great
countries which I had not visited before ; rode one
day, fault of broken railroads, in a sleigh, sixty-
five miles through the snow, by Lake. Michigan,
(seeing how prairies and oak-openings look in
winter,) to reach Milwaukee; "the world there
was done up in large lots," as a settler told me.
The farmer, as he is now a colonist and has drawn
from his local necessities great doses of energy, is
interesting, and makes the heroic age for Wis-
consin. He lives on venison and quails. I was
made much of, as the only man of the pen
within five hundred miles, and by rarity worth
more than venison and quails.
Greeley of the New York Tribune is the right
spiritual father of all this region; he prints and
disperses one hundred and ten thousand newspa-
pers in one day,--multitudes of them in these
very parts. He had preceded me, by a few days,
and people had flocked together, coming thirty and
forty miles to hear him speak; as was right, for
he does all their thinking and theory for them, for
two dollars a year. Other than Colonists, I saw no
man. " There are no singing birds in the prairie,"
-~
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? Emerson to Carlyle. 267
I truly heard. All the life of the land and water
had distilled no thought. Younger and better, I
had no doubt been tormented to read and speak
their sense for them. Now I only gazed at them
and their boundless land.
One good word closed your letter in September,
which ought to have had an instant reply, namely,
that you might come westward when Frederic was
disposed of. Speed Frederic, then, for all reasons
and for this! America is growing furiously, town
and state; new Kansas, new Nebraska looming
up in these days, vicious politicians seething a
wretched destiny for them already at Washington.
The politicians shall be sodden, the States escape,
please God! _ The fight . of slave and freeman
drawing nearer, the question is sharply, whether
slavery or whether freedom shall be abolished.
Come and see. Wealth, which is always interest-
ing, for from wealth power refuses to be divorced,
is on a new scale. Californian quartz mountains
dumped down in New York to be repiled archi-
tecturally along shore from Canada to Cuba, and
thence west to California again. John Bull inter-
ests you at home, and is all your subject. Come
and see the Jonathanization of John. What, you
scorn all this? Well, then, come and see a few
good people, impossible to be seen on any other
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? 268 Carlyle lo Emerson.
shore, who heartily and always greet you. There
is a very serious welcome for you here. And
I too -shall wake from sleep. My wife entreats
that an invitation shall go from her to you.
Faithfully yours,
R. W. Emnnson.
CLV.
CARLYLE TO EMERSON.
Cnnnsna, 8 April, 1854.
DEAR EMERSON, -- It was a morning not like any
other which lay round it, a morning to be marked
white, that one, about -a week ago, when your
Letter came to me; a word from you yet again,
after so long a silence! On the whole, I perceive
you will not utterly give up answering me, but will
rouse yourself now and then to a word of human
brotherhood on my behalf, so long as we both con-
tinue in this Planet. And I declare, the Heavens
will reward you; and as to me, I will be thankful
for what I get, and submissive 'to delays and to all
things: all things are good compared with flat
want in that respect. It remains true, and will
remain, what I have often told you, that properly
there is no voice in this world which is completely
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? Carlyle to Emerson. 269
human to me, which fully understands all I say,
and with clear sympathy and sense answers to me,
but your voice only. That is a curious fact, and
not quite a joyful one to me. The solitude, the
silence of my poor soul, in the centre of this roar-
ing whirlpool called Universe, is great always, and
sometimes strange and almost awful. I have two
million talking bipeds without feathers, close at my
elbow, too; and of these it is often hard for me to
say whether the so-called "wise" or the almost
professedly foolish are the more inexpressibly un-
productive to me. " Silence, Silence ! " I often say
to myself: " Be silent, thou poor fool; and pre-
pare for that Divine Silence which is now not far! "
-- --On the whole, write to me whenever you
can; and be not weary of well-doing.
I have had sad things to do and see since I wrote
to you: the loss of my dear and good old Mother,
which could not be spared me forever, has come
more like a kind of total bankruptcy upon me than
might have been expected, considering her age and
mine. Oh those last two days, that last Christmas
Sunday! She was a true, pious, brave, and noble
Mother to me; and it is now all over; and the
Past has all become pale and sad and sacred;--
and the all-devouring potency of Death, what we
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? 270 Carlyle l0 Emerson.
call Death, has never looked so strange, cruel and
unspeakable to me. Nay not cruel altogether, let
me say: huge, profound, unspeakable, that is the
word. --You too have lost your good old Mother,
who stayed with you like mine, clear to the last:
alas, alas, it is the oldest Law of Nature; and it
comes on every one of us with a strange original-
ity, as if it had never happened before. -- Forward,
however; and no more lamenting ; no more than
cannot be helped. " Paradise is under the shadow
of our swords," said the Emir: " Forward! " --
I make no way in my Prussian History; I bore
and dig toilsomely through the unutterablest mass
of dead rubbish, which is not even English, which
is German and inhuman ; and hardly from ten tons
of learned inanity is there to be riddled one old
rusty nail. For I have been back as far as Pytheas
who, first of speaking creatures, beheld the Teu-
tonic Countries; and have questioned all manner of
extinct German shadows,--who answer nothing
but mumblings. And on the whole Fritz himself
is not sufficiently divine to me, far from it; and I
am getting old, and heavy of heart ;-- and in short,
it oftenest seems to me I shall never write any
word about that matter; and have again fairly got
into the element of the IMPOSSIBLE. Very well:
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? Carlyle to 1/hnersrm. 2 7 1
could I help it? I can at least be honestly silent;
and " bear my indigence with dignity," as you once
said. The insuperable difficulty of Frederic is,
that he, the genuine little ray of Veritable and
Eternal that was in him, lay imbedded in the pu-
trid Eighteenth Century, such an Ocean of sordid
nothingness, shams, and scandalous hypocrisies, as
never weltered in the world before; and that in
everything I can find yet written or recorded of
him, he still, to all intents and purposes, most
tragically lies THERE ;-- and ought not to lie there,
if any use is ever to be had of him, or at least of
writing about him ; for as to him, he with his work
is safe enough to us, far elsewhere. --Pity me, pity
me; I know not on what hand to turn; and have
such a Chaos filling all my Earth and Heaven as
was seldom seen in British or Foreign Literature!
Add to which, the Sacred Entity, Literature itself,
is not growing more venerable to me, but less and
and ever less: good Heavens, I feel often as if
there were no madder set of bladders tumbling on
the billows of the general Bedlam at this moment
than even the Literary ones,--dear at twopence a
gross, I should say, unless one could annihilate
them by purchase on those easy terms! But do
not tell this in Gath; let it be a sad family-
secret.
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? 272 Carlyle to Emerson.
I smile, with a kind of grave joy, over your
American speculations, and wild dashing portrait-
ures of things as they are with you; and recognize
well, under your light caricature, the outlines of a
right true picture, which has often made me sad
and grim in late years. Yes, I consider that the
" Battle of Freedom and Slavery " is very far from
ended; and that the fate of poor " Freedom" in
the quarrel is very questionable indeed! Alas,
there is but one Slavery, as I wrote somewhere;
and that, I think, is mounting towards a height,
which may bring strokes to bear upon it again!
Meanwhile, patience; for us there is nothing else
appointed. --Tell me, however, what has become
of your Book on England? We shall really be
obliged to you for that. A piece of it went
through all the Newspapers, some years ago ;
which was really unique for its quaint kindly in-
sight, humor, and other qualities ;_ like an etching
by Hollar or Diirer, amid the continents of vile
smearing which are called "pictures" at present.
Come on, Come on; give us the Book, and don't
loiter! --
Miss Bacon has fled away to St. Alban's (the
Great Bacon's place) five or six months ago ; and is
there working out her Shakespeare Problem, from
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? Emerson to Carlyle. 27 3
the depths of her own mind, disdainful apparently,
or desperate and careless, of all evidence from
Museums or Archives; I have not had an answer
from her since before Christmas, and have now
lost her address. Poor Lady: I sometimes silently
wish she were safe home again ; for truly there can
no madder enterprise than her present one be well
figured. -i Adieu, my Friend; I must stop short
here. Write soon, if you have any charity. Good
be with you ever.
T. CARLYLE.
CLVI.
EMERSON TO CARLYLE.
CONCORD, 17 April, 1855.
MY DEAR FRIEND,--0n this delicious spring day,
I will obey the beautiful voices of the winds, long
disobeyed, and address you; nor cloud the hour by
looking at the letters in my drawer to know if a
twelvemonth has been allowed to elapse since this
tardy writing was due. Mr. Everett sent me one
day a letter he had received from you, containing
a kind message to me, which gave me pleasure
vor. . II 18
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? 274 Emerson to Carlyle.
--\_\_ \
and pain. I returned the letter with thanks, and
with promises I would sin no more. Instantly, I
was whisked, by "the stormy wing of Fate," out
of my chain, and whirled, like a dry leaf, through
the State of New York.
Now at home again, I read English Newspapers,
with all the world, and claim an imaginary privi-
lege over my compatriots, that I revolve therein
my friend's large part. Ward said to me yesterday,
that Carlyle's star was daily rising. For C. had
said years ago, when all men thought him mad,
that which the rest of mortals, including the Times
Newspaper, have at last got near enough to see
with eyes, and therefore to believe. And one day,
in Philadelphia, you should have heard the wise
young Philip Randolph defend you against objec-
tions of mine. But when I have such testimony,
I say to myself, the high-seeing austerely exigent
friend whom I elected, and who elected me, twenty
years and more ago, finds me heavy and silent,
when all the world elects and loves him. Yet I
have not changed. I have the same pride in his
genius, the same sympathy with the Genius that
governs his, the old love with the old limitations,
though love and limitation be all untold. And I
see well what a piece of Providence he is, how
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? Emerson to Carlyle. 275
material he is to the times, which must always
have a solo Soprano to balance the roar of the
Orchestra. The solo sings the theme; the orches-
tra roars antagonistically but follows. --And have I
not put him into my Chapter of "English Spiritual
Tendencies," with all thankfulness to. the Eternal
Creator, -- though the chapter lie unborn in a
trunk ?
'T is fine for us to excuse ourselves, and patch
with promises. c We shall do as before, and sci-
ence is a fatalist. I follow, I find, the fortunes of
my Country, in my privatest ways. An American
is pioneer and man of all work, and reads up his
newspaper on Saturday night, as farmers and for-
esters do. We admire the [L? 'Ya7\. 0'\lI'UxL'a, and mean
to give our boys the grand habit; but we only
sketch what they may do. No leisure except for
the strong, the nimble have none. --I ought to tell
you what I do, or I ought to have to tell you what
I have done. But what can I? the same conces-
sion to the levity of the times; the noise of America
comes again. I have even run on wrong topics for
my parsimonious Muse, and waste my time from
my true studies.
England I see as a roaring volcano of Fate, which
threatens to roast or smother the poor literary
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