Chapter V: Part 5

But to go on with business; and the republication of books in that Transoceanic England, New and improved Edition of England. In January last, if I recollect right, Miss Martineau, in the name of a certain Mr. Loring, applied to me for a correct List of all my fugitive Papers; the said Mr. Loring meaning to publish them for my behoof. This List she, though not without solicitation, for I had small hope in it, did at last obtain, and send, coupled with a request from me that you should be consulted in the matter. Now it appears you had of yourself previously determined on something of the same sort, and probably are far on with the printing of your Two select volumes. I confess myself greatly better pleased with it on that footing than on another. Who Mr. Loring may be I know not, with any certainty, at first hand; but who Waldo Emerson is I do know; and more than one god from the machine is not necessary. I pray you, thank Mr. Loring for his goodness towards me (his intents are evidently charitable and not wicked); but consider yourself as in nowise bound at all by that blotted Paper he has, but do the best you can for me, consulting with him or not taking any counsel just as you see to be fittest on the spot. And so Heaven prosper you, both in your "aroused Yankee" state, and in all others;--and let us for the present consider that we have enough about Books and Guineas. I must add, however, that Fraser and I have yet made no bargain. We found, on computing, that there would be five good volumes, including _Teufelsdrockh._ For an edition of Seven hundred and Fifty I demanded L50 a volume, and Fraser refused: the poor man then fell dangerously ill, and there could not be a word farther said on the subject; till very lately, when it again became possible, but has not yet been put in practice. All the world cries out, Why _do you_ publish with Fraser? "Because my soul is sick of Booksellers, and of trade, and deception, and 'need and greed' altogether; and this poor Fraser, not worse than the rest of them, has in some sort grown less hideous to me by custom." I fancy, however, either Fraser will publish these things before long; or some Samaritan here will take me to some bolder brother of the trade that will. Great Samuel Johnson assisted at the beginning of Bibliopoly; small Thomas Carlyle assists at the ending of it: both are sorrowful seasons for a man. For the rest, people here continue to receive that _Revolution_ very much as you say they do _there:_ I am right well quit of it; and the elderly gentlemen on both sides of the water may take comfort, they will not soon have to suffer the like again. But really England is wonderfully changed within these ten years; the old gentlemen all shrunk into nooks, some of them even voting with the young.--The American ill-printed Two and-a-half-dollars Copy shall, for Emerson's sake, be welcomest to me of all. Kennet will send it when it comes.

The _Oration_ did arrive, with my name on it, one snowy night in January. It is off to Madeira; probably there now. I can dispose of a score of copies to good advantage. Friend Sterling has done the best of all his things in the current _Blackwood,_-- "Crystals from a Cavern,"--which see. He writes kind things of you from Madeira, in expectation of the Speech. I will gratify him with your message; he is to be here in May; better, we hope, and in the way towards safety. Miss Martineau has given you a luminous section in her new Book about America; you are one of the American "Originals,"--the good Harriet!

And now I have but one thing to add and to repeat: Be quiet, be quiet! The fire that is in one's own stomach is enough, without foreign bellows to blow it ever and anon. My whole heart shudders at the thrice-wretched self-combustion into which I see all manner of poor paper-lanterns go up, the wind of "popularity" puffing at them, and nothing left erelong but ashes and sooty wreck. It is sad, most sad. I shun all such persons and circles, as much as possible; and pray the gods to make me a brick layer's hodbearer rather. O the "cabriolets, neatflies," and blue twaddlers of both sexes therein, that drive many a poor Mrs. Rigmarole to the Devil!*--As for me, I continue doing as nearly nothing as I can manage. I decline all invitations of society that are declinable: a London rout is one of the maddest things under the moon; a London dinner makes me sicker for a week, and I say often, It is better to be even dull than to be witty, better to be silent than to speak.

-------- * This sentence is a variation on one at the beginning of the article on Scott. --------

Curious: your Course of Lectures "on Human Culture" seems to be on the very subject I am to discourse upon here in May coming; but I am to call it "on the History of Literature," and _speak_ it, not write it. While you read this, I shall be in the agonies! Ah me! often when I think of the matter, how my one sole wish is to be left to hold my tongue, and by what bayonets of Necessity clapt to my back I am driven into that Lecture-room, and in what mood, and ordered to speak or die, I feel as if my only utterance should be a flood of tears and blubbering! But that, clearly, will not do. Then again I think it is perhaps better so; who knows? At all events, we will try what is in this Lecturing in London. If something, well; if nothing, why also well. But I do want to get out of these coils for a tune. My Brother is to be home again in May; if he go back to Italy, if our Lecturing proved productive, why might we not all set off thitherward for the winter coming? There is a dream to that effect. It would suit my wife, too: she was alarmingly weak this time twelvemonth; and I can only yet tell you that she is stronger, not strong: she has not ventured out except at midday, and rarely then, since Autumn last; she sits here patiently waiting Summer, and charges me to send you her love.--America also always lies in the background: I do believe, if I live long, I shall get to Concord one day. Your wife must love me. If the little Boy be a well-behaved fellow, he shall ride on my back yet: if not, tell him I will have nothing to do with him, the riotous little imp that he is. And so God bless you always, my dear friend! Your affectionate,

--T. Carlyle

XXIII. Emerson to Carlyle*

Concord, 10 May, 1838

My Dear Friend,--Yesterday I had your letter of March. It quickens my purpose (always all but ripe) to write to you. If it had come earlier I should have been confirmed in my original purpose of publishing _Select Miscellanies of T.C._ As it is, we are far on in the printing of the first two volumes (to make 900 pages) of the papers as they stand in your list. And now I find we shall only get as far as the seventeenth or eighteenth article. I regret it, because this book will not embrace those papers I chiefly desire to provide people with, and it may be some time, in these years of bankruptcy and famine, before we shall think it prudent to publish two volumes more. But Loring is a good man, and thinks that many desire to see the sources of Nile. I, for my part, fancy that to meet the taste of the readers we should publish _from the last_ backwards, beginning with the paper on Scott, which has had the best reception ever known. Carlyleism is becoming so fashionable that the most austere Seniors are glad to qualify their reprobation by applauding this review. I have agreed with the bookseller publishing the _Miscellanies_ that he is to guarantee to you one dollar on every copy he sells; and you are to have the total profit on every copy subscribed for. The retail price [is] to be $2.50. The cost of the work is not yet precisely ascertained. The work will probably appear in six or seven weeks. We print one thousand copies. So whenever it is sold you shall have one thousand dollars.

---------- * Printed in the _Athenaeum,_ July 8, 1882. ----------

The _French Revolution_ continues to find friends and purchasers. It has gone to New Orleans, to Nashville, to Vicksburg. I have not been in Boston lately, but have determined that nearly or quite eight hundred copies should be gone. On the 1st of July I shall make up accounts with the booksellers, and I hope to make you the most favorable returns. I shall use the advice of Barnard, Adams, & Co. in regard to remittances.

When you publish your next book I think you must send it out to me in sheets, and let us print it here contemporaneously with the English edition. The _eclat_ of so new a book would help the sale very much.

But a better device would be, that you should embark in the "Victoria" steamer, and come in a fortnight to New York, and in twenty-four hours more to Concord. Your study arm-chair, fireplace, and bed, long vacant, auguring expect you. Then you shall revise your proofs and dictate wit and learning to the New World. Think of it in good earnest. In aid of your friendliest purpose, I will set down some of the facts. I occupy, or _improve,_ as we Yankees say, two acres only of God's earth; on which is my house, my kitchen-garden, my orchard of thirty young trees, my empty barn. My house is now a very good one for comfort, and abounding in room. Besides my house, I have, I believe, $22,000, whose income in ordinary years is six percent. I have no other tithe or glebe except the income of my winter lectures, which was last winter $800. Well, with this income, here at home, I am a rich man. I stay at home and go abroad at my own instance. I have food, warmth, leisure, books, friends. Go away from home, I am rich no longer. I never have a dollar to spend on a fancy. As no wise man, I suppose, ever was rich in the sense of _freedom to spend,_ because of the inundation of claims, so neither am I, who am not wise. But at home, I am rich,--rich enough for ten brothers. My wife Lidian is an incarnation of Christianity,--I call her Asia,--and keeps my philosophy from Antinomianism; my mother, whitest, mildest, most conservative of ladies, whose only exception to her universal preference for old things is her son; my boy, a piece of love and sunshine, well worth my watching from morning to night;--these, and three domestic women, who cook and sew and run for us, make all my household. Here I sit and read and write, with very little system, and, as far as regards composition, with the most fragmentary result: paragraphs incompressible, each sentence an infinitely repellent particle.

In summer, with the aid of a neighbor, I manage my garden; and a week ago I set out on the west side of my house forty young pine trees to protect me or my son from the wind of January. The ornament of the place is the occasional presence of some ten or twelve persons, good and wise, who visit us in the course of the year.--But my story is too long already. God grant that you will come and bring that blessed wife, whose protracted illness we heartily grieve to learn, and whom a voyage and my wife's and my mother's nursing would in less than a twelvemonth restore to blooming health. My wife sends to her this message: "Come, and I will be to you a sister." What have you to do with Italy? Your genius tendeth to the New, to the West. Come and live with me a year, and if you do not like New England well enough to stay, one of these years (when the _History_ has passed its ten editions, and been translated into as many languages) I will come and dwell with you.

I gladly hear what you say of Sterling. I am foolish enough to be delighted with being an object of kindness to a man I have never seen, and who has not seen me. I have not yet got the _Blackwood_ for March, which I long to see, but the other three papers I have read with great satisfaction. They lie here on my table. But he must get well.

As to Miss Martineau, I know not well what to say. Meaning to do me a signal kindness (and a kindness quite out of all measure of justice) she does me a great annoyance,--to take away from me my privacy and thrust me before my time (if ever there be a time) into the arena of the gladiators to be stared at. I was ashamed to read, and am ashamed to remember. Yet, as you see her, I would not be wanting in gratitude to a gifted and generous lady who so liberally transfigures our demerits. So you shall tell her, if you please, that I read all her book with pleasure but that part, and if ever I shall travel West or South, I think she has furnished me with the eyes. Farewell, dear wise man. I think your poverty honorable above the common brightness of that thorn-crown of the great. It earns you the love of men and the praise of a thousand years. Yet I hope the angelical Beldame, all-helping, all-hated, has given you her last lessons, and, finding you so striding a proficient, will dismiss you to a hundred editions and the adoration of the booksellers.

--R.W. Emerson

I have never heard from Rich, who, you wrote, had sent his account to me. Let him direct to me at Concord.

A young engineer in Cambridge, by name McKean,* volunteers his services in correcting the proofs of the _Miscellanies,_--and he has your errata,--for the love of the reading. Shall we have anthracite coal or wood in your chamber? My old mother is glad you are coming.

----------- * The late Mr. Henry S. McKean, a son of Professor McKean, and a graduate of Harvard College in 1828. -----------

XXIV. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 15 June, 1838

My Dear Emerson,--Our correspondence has fallen into a raveled state; which would doubtless clear itself could I afford to wait for your next Letter, probably tumbling over the Atlantic brine about this very moment: but I cannot afford to wait; I must write straightway. Your answer to this will bring matters round again. I have had two irregular Notes of your writing, or perhaps three; two dated March, one by Mr. Bancroft's Parcel,-- bringing Twelve _Orations_ withal; then some ten days later, just in this very time, another Note by Mr. Sumner, whom I have not yet succeeded in seeing, though I have attempted it, and hope soon to do it. The Letter he forwarded me from Paris was acknowledged already, I think. And now if the Atlantic will but float me in safe that other promised Letter!

I got your American _French Revolution_ a good while ago. It seems to me a very pretty Book indeed, wonderfully so for the money; neither does it seem what we can call _incorrectly_ printed so far as I have seen; compared with the last _Sartor_ it is correctness itself. Many thanks to you, my Friend, and much good may it do us all! Should there be any more reprinting, I will request you to rectify at least the three following errors, copied out of the English text indeed; nay, mark them in your own New-English copy, whether there be reprinting or not: Vol. I. p. 81, last paragraph, _for_ September _read_ August; Vol. II. p. 344, first line, _for_ book of prayer _read_ look of prayer; p. 357, _for_ blank _read_ black (2d paragraph, "all black "). And so _basta._ And let us be well content about this F.R. on both sides of the water, yours as well as mine.

"Too many cooks"! the Proverb says: it is pity if this new apparition of a Mr. Loring should spoil the broth. But I calculate you will adjust it well and smoothly between you, some way or other. How you shall adjust it, or have adjusted it, is what I am practically anxious now to learn. For you are to understand that our English Edition has come to depend partly on yours. After long higgling with the foolish Fraser, I have quitted him, quite quietly, and given "Saunders and Ottley, Conduit Street," the privilege of printing a small edition of _Teufelsdrockh_ (Five Hundred copies), with a prospect of the "Miscellaneous Writings" soon following. Saunders and Ottley are at least more reputable persons, they are useful to me also in the business of Lecturing. _Teufelsdrockh_ is at Press, to be out very soon; I will send you a correct copy, the only one in America I fancy. The enterprise here too is on the "half-profits" plan, which I compute generally to mean equal partition of the oyster-shells and a net result of zero. But the thing will be economically useful to me otherwise; as a publication of the "Miscellaneous" also would be; which latter, however, I confess myself extremely unwilling to undertake the trouble of for _nothing._ To me they are grown or fast growing _obsolete,_ these Miscellanies, for most part; if money lie not in them, what does lie for me? Now it strikes me you will infallibly edit these things, at least as well as I, and are doing it at any rate; your printing too would seem to be cheaper than ours: I said to Saunders and Ottley, Why not have two hundred or three hundred of this American Edition struck off with "London: Saunders and Ottley, Conduit Street," on the title-page, and sent over hither in sheets at what price they have cost my friends yonder? Saunders of course threw cold water on this project, but was obliged to admit that there would be some profit in it, and that for me it would be far easier. The grand profit for me is that people would understand better what I mean, and come better about me if I lectured again, which seems the only way of getting any wages at all for me here at present. Pray meditate my project, if it be not already too late, hear what your Booksellers say about it, and understand that I will not in any case set to printing till I hear from you in answer to this.

How my sheet is filling with dull talk about mere economics! I must still add that the _Lecturing_ I talked of, last time, is verily over now; and well over. The superfine people listened to the rough utterance with patience, with favor, increasing to the last. I sent you a Newspaper once, to indicate that it was in progress. I know not yet what the money result is; but I suppose it will enable us to exist here thriftily another year; not without hope of at worst doing the like again when the time comes. It is a great novelty in my lot; felt as a very considerable blessing; and really it has arrived, if it have arrived, in _due_ time, for I had begun to get quite impatient of the other method. Poverty and Youth may do; Poverty and Age go badly together.--For the rest, I feel fretted to fiddle-strings; my head and heart all heated, sick,--ah me! The question as ever is: Rest. But then where? My Brother invites us to come to Rome for the winter; my poor sick Wife might perhaps profit by it; as for me, Natty Leatherstocking's lodge in the Western Wood, I think, were welcomer still. I have a great mind, too, to run off and see my Mother, by the new railways. What we shall do, whether not stay quietly here, must remain uncertain for a week or two. Write you always hither, till you hear otherwise.

The _Orations_ were right welcome; my _Madeira_ one, returned thence with Sterling, was circulating over the West of England. Sterling and Harriet stretched out the right hand with wreathed smiles. I have read, a second or third time. Robert Southey has got a copy, for his own behoof and that of _Lake_land: if he keep his word as to _me,_ he may do as much for you, or more. Copies are at Cambridge; among the Oxonians too; I have with stingy discretion distributed all my copies but two. Old Rogers, a grim old Dilettante, full of sardonic sense, was heard saying, "It is German Poetry given out in American Prose." Friend Emerson ought to be content;--and has now above all things, as I said, to _be in no haste._ Slow fire does make sweet malt: how true, how true! Also his next work ought to be a _concrete_ thing; not _theory_ any longer, but _deed._ Let him "live it," as he says; that is the way to come to "painting of it." Geometry and the art of Design being once well over, take the brush, and _andar con Dios!_

Mrs. Child has sent me a Book, _Philothea,_ and a most magnanimous epistle. I have answered as I could. The Book is beautiful, but of a _hectic_ beauty; to me not pleasant, even fatal looking. Such things grow not in the ground, on Mother Earth's honest bosom, but in hothouses,--Sentimental-Calvinist fire traceable underneath! Bancroft also is of the hothouse partly: I have a Note to send him by Sumner; do you thank him meanwhile, and say nothing about _hothouses!_ But, on the whole, men ought in New England, too to "swallow their formulas";* there is no freedom till then: yet hitherto I find only one man there who seems fairly on the way towards that, or arrived at that. Good speed to _him._ I had to send my Wife's love: she is not dangerously ill; but always feeble, and has to _struggle_ to keep erect; the summer always improves her, and this summer too. Adieu, dear Friend; may Good always be with you and yours.

--T. Carlyle

----------- * This was the saying of the old Marquis de Mirabeau concerning his son, _Il a hume toutes les formules,_ and is used as a text by Carlyle in his article on Mirabeau. "Of inexpressible advantage is it that a man have 'an eye instead of a pair of spectacles merely'; that, seeing through the formulas of things and even 'making away' with many a formula, he see into the thing itself, and so know it and be master of it!" ----------

XXV. Emerson to Carlyle

Boston, 30 July, 1838

My Dear Sir,--I am in town today to get what money the booksellers will relinquish from their faithful gripe, and have succeeded now in obtaining a first instalment, however small. I enclose to you a bill of exchange for fifty pounds sterling, which costs here exactly $242.22, the rate of exchange being nine percent. I shall not today trouble you with any account, for my letter must be quickly ready to go by the steam-packet. An exact account has been rendered to me, which, though its present balance in our favor is less than I expected, yet, as far as I understand it, agrees well with all that has been promised: at least the balance in our favor when the edition is sold, which the booksellers assure me will assuredly be done within a year from the publication, must be seven hundred and sixty dollars, and what more Heaven and the subscribers may grant. I shall follow this letter and bill by a duplicate of the bill in the next packet.

The _Miscellanies_ is published in two volumes, a copy of which goes to you immediately. Munroe tells me that two hundred and fifty copies of it are already sold. Writing in a bookshop, my dear friend, I have no power to say aught than that I am heartily and always,

Yours,
R. Waldo Emerson

XXVI. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 6 August, 1838

My Dear Friend,--The swift ships are slow when they carry our letters. Your letter dated the 15th of June arrived here last Friday, the 3d of August. That day I was in Boston, and I have only now got the information necessary to answer it. You have probably already learned from my letter sent by the "Royal William" (enclosing a bill of exchange for L50), that our first two volumes of the _Miscellanies_ are published. I have sent you a copy. The edition consists of one thousand copies. Of these five hundred are bound, five hundred remain in sheets. The title-pages, of course, are all printed alike; but the publishers assure me that new title-pages can be struck off at a trifling expense, with the imprint of Saunders and Ottley. The cost of a copy in sheets or "folded" (if that means somewhat more?) is eighty-nine cents; and bound is $1.15. The retail price is $2.50 a copy; and the author's profit, $1; and the bookseller's, 35 cents per copy; according to my understanding of the written contract.

Here I believe you have all the material facts. I think there is no doubt that the book will sell very well here. But if, for the reasons you suggest, you wish any part of it, you can have it as soon as ships can bring your will.

When you see your copy, you will perceive that we have printed half the matter. I should presently begin to print the remainder, inclusive of the Article on Lockhart's Scott, in two more volumes; but now I think I shall wait until I hear from you. Of those books we will print a larger edition, say twelve hundred and fifty or fifteen hundred, if you want a part of it in London. For I feel confident now that our public here is one thousand strong. Write me therefore _by the steam packet_ your wishes.

I am sure you will like our edition. It has been most carefully corrected by two young gentlemen who successively volunteered their services, (the second when the first was called away,) and who, residing in Cambridge, where the book was printed, could easilier oversee it. They are Henry S. McBean, an engineer, and Charles Stearns Wheeler, a Divinity student,--working both for love of you. To one other gentleman I have brought you in debt, --Rev. Convers Francis* (brother of Mrs. Child), who supplied from his library all the numbers of the _Foreign Review_ from which we printed the work. We could not have done without his books, and he is a noble-hearted man, who rejoices in you. I have sent to all three copies of the work as from you, and I shall be glad if you will remember to sanction this expressly in your next letter.

---------- * This worthy man and lover of good books was, from 1842 till his death in 1863, Professor in the Divinity School of Harvard University. ----------

Thanks for the letter: thanks for your friendliest seeking of friends for the poor _Oration._ Poor little pamphlet, to have gone so far and so high! I am ashamed. I shall however send you a couple more of the thin gentry presently, maugre all your hopes and cautions. I have written and read a kind of sermon to the Senior Class of our Cambridge Theological School a fortnight ago; and an address to the Literary Societies of Dartmouth College;* for though I hate American pleniloquence, I cannot easily say No to young men who bid me speak also. And both these are now in press. The first I hear is very offensive. I will now try to hold my tongue until next winter. But I am asked continually when you will come to Boston. Your lectures are boldly and joyfully expected by brave young men. So do not forget us: and if ever the scale-beam trembles, I beseech you, let the love of me decide for America. I will not dare to tease you on a matter of so many relations, and so important, and especially as I have written out, I believe, my requests in a letter sent two or three months ago,--but I must see you somewhere, somehow, may it please God! I grieve to hear no better news of your wife. I hoped she was sound and strong ere this, and can only hope still. My wife and I send her our hearty love.

Yours affectionately,
R.W. Emerson

----------- * The Address at the Cambridge Divinity School was delivered on the 15th of July, and that at Dartmouth College on the 24th of the same month. The title of the latter was "Literary Ethics." Both are reprinted in Emerson's _Miscellanies._ These remarkable discourses excited deep interest and wide attention. They established Emerson's position as the leader of what was known as the Transcendental movement. They were the expressions of his inmost convictions and his matured thought. The Address at the Divinity School gave rise to a storm of controversy which did not disturb the serenity of its author. "It was," said Theodore Parker, "the noblest, the most inspiring strain I ever listened to." To others it seemed "neither good divinity nor good sense." The Address at Dartmouth College set forth the high ideals of intellectual life with an eloquence made irresistible by the character of the speaker. From this time Emerson's influence upon thought in America was acknowledged. ----------

XXVII. Carlyle to Emerson

Scotsbrig, Ecclefechan, (Annandale, Scotland) 25 September, 1838

My Dear Emerson,--There cannot any right answer be written you here and now; yet I must write such answer as I can. You said, "by steamship"; and it strikes me with a kind of remorse, on this my first day of leisure and composure, that I have delayed so long. For you must know, this is my Mother's house,--a place to me unutterable as Hades and the Land of Spectres were; likewise that my Brother is just home from Italy, and on the wing thitherward or somewhither swiftly again; in a word, that all is confusion and flutter with me here,--fit only for _silence!_ My Wife sent me off hitherward, very sickly and unhappy, out of the London dust, several weeks ago; I lingered in Fifeshire, I was in Edinburgh, in Roxburghshire; have some calls to Cumberland, which I believe I must refuse; and prepare to creep homeward again, refreshed in health, but with a head and heart all seething and tumbling (as the wont is, in such cases), and averse to pens beyond all earthly implements. But my Brother is off for Dumfries this morning; you before all others deserve an hour of my solitude. I will abide by business; one must write about that.

Your Bill and duplicate of a Bill for L50, with the two Letters that accompanied them, you are to know then, did duly arrive at Chelsea; and the larger Letter (of the 6th of August) was forwarded to me hither some two weeks ago. I had also, long before that, one of the friendliest of Letters from you, with a clear and most inviting description of the Concord Household, its inmates and appurtenances; and the announcement, evidently authentic, that an apartment and heart's welcome was ready there for my Wife and me; that we were to come quickly, and stay for a twelvemonth. Surely no man has such friends as I. We ought to say, May the Heavens give us thankful hearts! For, in truth, there are blessings which do, like sun-gleams in wild weather, make this rough life beautiful with rainbows here and there. Indicating, I suppose, that there is a Sun, and general Heart of Goodness, behind all that;--for which, as I say again, let us be thankful evermore.

My Wife says she received your American Bill of so many pounds sterling for the Revolution Book, with a "pathetic feeling" which brought "tears" to her eyes. From beyond the waters there is a hand held out; beyond the waters too live brothers. I would only the Book were an Epic, a _Dante,_ or undying thing, that New England might boast in after times of this feat of hers; and put stupid, poundless, and penniless Old England to the blush about it! But after all, that is no matter; the feebler the well- meant Book is, the more "pathetic" is the whole transaction: and so we will go on, fuller than ever of "desperate hope" (if you know what that is), with a feeling one would not give and could not get for several money-bags; and say or think, Long live true friends and Emersons, and (in Scotch phrase) "May ne'er waur be amang us!"--I will buy something permanent, I think, out of this L50, and call it either _Ebenezer_ or _Yankee-doodle-doo._ May good be repaid you manifold, my kind Brother! may good be ever with you, my kind Friends all!

But now as to this edition of the _Miscellanies_ (poor things), I really think my Wife is wisest, who says I ought to leave you altogether to your own resources with it, America having an art of making money out of my Books which England is unfortunately altogether without. Besides, till I once see the Two Volumes now under way, and can let a Bookseller see them, there could no bargain be made on the subject. We will let it rest there, therefore. Go on with your second Two Volumes, as if there were no England extant, according to your own good judgment. When I get to London, I will consult some of the blockheads with the Book in my hand: if we do want Two Hundred copies, you can give us them with a trifling loss. It is possible they may make some better proposal about an Edition here: that depends on the fate of _Sartor_ here, at present trying itself; which I have not in the least ascertained. For the present, thank as is meet all friends in your world that have interested themselves for me. Alas! I have nothing to give them but thanks. Henry McKean, Charles Wheeler, Convers Francis; these Names shall, if it please Heaven, become Persons for me, one day. Well!--But I will say nothing more. That too is of the things on which all Words are poor to Silence. Good to the Good and Kind!

A Letter from me must have crossed that _descriptive_ Concord one, on the Ocean, I think. Our correspondence is now standing on its feet. I will write to you again, whether I hear from you or not, so soon as my hand finds its cunning again in London,--so soon as I can see there what is to be done or said. All goes decidedly better, I think. My Wife was and is much healthier than last year, than in any late year. I myself get visibly quieter my preternatural _Meditations in Hades,_ apropos of this Annandale of mine, are calm compared with those of last year. By another Course of Lectures I have a fair prospect of living for another season; nay, people call it a "new profession" I have devised for myself, and say I may live by it as many years as I like. This too is partly the fruit of my poor Book; one should not say that it was worth nothing to me even in money. Last year I fancied my Audience mainly the readers of it; drawn round me, in spite of many things, by force of it. Let us be content. I have Jesuits, Swedenborgians, old Quakeresses, _omne cum Proteus,_ --God help me, no man ever had so confused a public!--I salute you, my dear Friend, and your hospitable circle. May blessings be on your kind household, on your kind hearts!

--T. Carlyle

A copy of the English _Teufelsdrockh_ has lain with your name on it these two months in Chelsea; waiting an opportunity. It is worth nothing to you: a dingy, ill-managed edition; but correct or nearly correct as to printing; it is right that such should be in your hands in case of need. The New England Pamphlets will be greedily expected. More than one inquires of me, Has that Emerson of yours written nothing else? And I have lent them the little Book _Nature,_ till it is nearly thumbed to pieces. Sterling is gone to Italy for the winter since I left town; swift as a flash! I cannot teach him the great art of _sitting still;_ his fine qualities are really like to waste for want of that.

I read your paragraph to Miss Martineau; she received it, as she was bound, with a good grace. But I doubt, I doubt, O Ralph Waldo Emerson, thou hast not been sufficiently ecstatic about her,--thou graceless exception, confirmatory of a rule! In truth there _are_ bores, of the first and of all lower magnitudes. Patience and shuffle the cards.

XXVIII. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 17 October, 1838

My Dear Friend,--I am quite uneasy that I do not hear from you. On the 21st of July I wrote to you and enclosed a remittance of L50 by a Bill of Exchange on Baring Brothers, drawn by Chandler, Howard, & Co., which was sent in the steamer "Royal William." On the 2d of August I received your letter of inquiry respecting our edition of the _Miscellanies,_ and wrote a few days later in reply, that we could send you out two or three hundred copies of our first two volumes, in sheets, at eighty-nine cents per copy of two volumes, and the small additional price of the new title- page. I said also that I would wait until I heard from you before commencing the printing of the last two volumes of the _Miscellanies,_ and, if you desired it, would print any number of copies with a title-page for London. This letter went in a steamer--he "Great Western" probably--about the 10th or 12th of August. (Perhaps I misremember the names [of the steamers], and the first should be last.) I have heard nothing from you since. I trust my letters have not miscarried. (A third was sent also by another channel inclosing a duplicate of the Bill of Exchange.) With more fervency, I trust that all goes well in the house of my friend,--and I suppose that you are absent on some salutary errand of repairs and recreation. _Use, I pray you, your earliest_ hour in certifying me of the facts.

One word more in regard to business. I believe I expressed some surprise, in the July letter, that the booksellers should have no greater balance for us at this settlement. I have since studied the account better, and see that we shall not be disappointed in the year of obtaining at least the sum first promised,--seven hundred and sixty dollars; but the whole expense of the edition is paid out of the copies first sold, and our profits depend on the last sales. The edition is almost gone, and you shall have an account at the end of the year.

In a letter within a twelvemonth I have urged you to pay us a visit in America, and in Concord. I have believed that you would come one day, and do believe it. But if, on your part, you have been generous and affectionate enough to your friends here--or curious enough concerning our society--to wish to come, I think you must postpone, for the present, the satisfaction of your friendship and your curiosity. At this moment I would not have you here, on any account. The publication of my _Address to the Divinity College_ (copies of which I sent you) has been the occasion of an outcry in all our leading local newspapers against my "infidelity," "pantheism," and "atheism." The writers warn all and sundry against me, and against whatever is supposed to be related to my connection of opinion, &c.; against Transcendentalism, Goethe, and _Carlyle._ I am heartily sorry to see this last aspect of the storm in our washbowl. For, as Carlyle is nowise guilty, and has unpopularities of his own, I do not wish to embroil him in my parish differences. You were getting to be a great favorite with us all here, and are daily a greater with the American public, but just now, _in Boston,_ where I am known as your editor, I fear you lose by the association. Now it is indispensable to your right influence here, that you should never come before our people as one of a clique, but as a detached, that is, universally associated man; so I am happy, as I could not have thought, that you have not yielded yourself to my entreaties. Let us wait a little until this foolish clamor be overblown. My position is fortunately such as to put me quite out of the reach of any real inconvenience from the panic-strikers or the panic-struck; and, indeed, so far as this uneasiness is a necessary result of mere inaction of mind, it seems very clear to me that, if I live, my neighbors must look for a great many more shocks, and perhaps harder to bear.

The article on German Religious Writers in the last _Foreign Quarterly Review_ suits our meridian as well as yours; as is plainly signified by the circumstance that our newspapers copy into their columns the opening tirade and _no more._ Who wrote that paper? And who wrote the paper on Montaigne in the _Westminster?_ I read with great satisfaction the Poems and Thoughts of Archaeus in _Blackwood._ "The Sexton's Daughter" is a beautiful poem: and I recognize in them all _the_ Soul, with joy and love. Tell me of the author's health and welfare; or, will not he love me so much as to write me a letter with his own hand? And tell me of yourself, what task of love and wisdom the Muses impose; and what happiness the good God sends to you and yours. I hope your wife has not forgotten me.

Yours affectionately,
R.W. Emerson

The _Miscellanies,_ Vols. I. and II., are a popular book. About five hundred copies have been sold. The second article on Jean Paul works with might on the inner man of young men. I hate to write you letters on business and facts like this. There are so few Friends that I think some time I shall meet you nearer, for I love you more than is fit to say. W.H. Channing has written a critique on you, which I suppose he has sent you, in the _Boston Review._

XXIX. Carlyle to Emerson

5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, London 7 November, 1838

My Dear Friend,--It is all right; all your Letters with their inclosures have arrived in due succession: the last, inquiring after the fate of the others, came this morning. I was in Scotland, as you partly conjecture; I wrote to you already (though not without blamable delay), from my Mother's house in Annandale, a confused scrawl, which I hope has already got to hand, and quieted your kind anxieties. I am as well as usual in health, my Wife better than usual; nothing is amiss, except my negligence and indolence, which has put you to this superfluous solicitude on my account. However, I have an additional Letter by it; you must pardon me, you must not grudge me that undeserved pleasure, the reward of evil-doing. I may well say, you are a blessing to me on this Earth; no Letter comes from you with other than good tidings,--or can come while you live there to love me.

The Bill was thrust duly into Baring's brass slit "for acceptance," on my return hither some three weeks ago; and will, no doubt, were the days of grace run, come out in the shape of Fifty Pounds Sterling; a very curious product indeed. Do you know what I think of doing with it? _Dyspepsia,_ my constant attendant in London, is incapable of help in my case by any medicine or appliance except one only, Riding on horseback. With a good horse to whirl me over the world for two hours daily, I used to keep myself supportably well. Here, the maintenance of a Horse far transcends my means; yet it seems hard I should not for a little while be in a kind of approximate health in this Babylon where I have my bread to seek it is like swimming with a millstone round your neck,--ah me! In brief, I am about half resolved to buy myself a sharp little nag with Twenty of these Transatlantic Pounds, and ride him till the other Thirty be eaten: I will call the creature "Yankee," and kind thoughts of those far away shall be with me every time I mount him. Will not that do? My Wife says it is the best plan I have had for years, and strongly urges it on. My kind friends!

As to those copies of the Carlyle Miscellanies, I unfortunately still can say nothing, except what was said in the former (Scotch) letter, that you must proceed in the business with an eye to America and not to us. My Booksellers, Saunders and Ottley, have no money for me, no definite offer in money to make for those Two Hundred copies, of which you seem likely to make money if we simply leave them alone. I have asked these Booksellers, I have asked Fraser too: What will you _give me in ready money_ for Two Hundred and Fifty copies of that work, sell it afterwards as you can? They answer always, We must see it first. Now the copy long ago sent me has never come to hand; I have asked for it of Kennet, but without success; I have nothing for it but to wait the winds and chances. Meanwhile Saunders and Ottley want forsooth a _Sketches of German Literature_ in three volumes: then a _Miscellanies_ in three volumes: that is their plan of publishing an English edition; and the outlook they hold out for me is certain trouble in this matter, and recompense entirely uncertain. I think on the whole it is extremely likely I shall apply to you for Two Hundred and Fifty copies (that is their favorite number) of these four volumes, (nay, if it be of any moment, you can bind me down to it _now,_ and take it for sure,) but I cannot yet send you the title-page; no bookseller purchasing till "we see it first." But after all, will it suit America to print an _unequal_ number of your two pairs of volumes? Do not the two together make one work? On the whole, consider that I shall in all likelihood want Two Hundred and Fifty copies, and consider it certain if that will serve the enterprise: we must leave it here today. I will stir in it now, however, and take no rest till in one way or other you do get a title-page from me, or some definite deliverance on the matter. O Athenians, what a trouble I _give,_ having _got_ your applauses!

Kennet the Bookseller gave me yesterday (on my way to "the City" with that Brother of mine, the Italian Doctor who is here at present and a great lover of yours) ten copies of your Dartmouth Oration: we read it over dinner in a chop-house in Bucklersbury, amid the clatter of some fifty stand of knives and forks; and a second time more leisurely at Chelsea here. A right brave Speech; announcing, in its own way, with emphasis of full conviction, to all whom it may concern, that great forgotten truth, _Man is still man._ May it awaken a pulsation under the ribs of Death! I believe the time is come for such a Gospel. They must speak it out who have it,--with what audience there may be. I have given away two copies this morning; I will take care of the rest. Go on, and speed.--And now where is the heterodox Divinity one, which awakens such "tempest in a washbowl," brings Goethe, Transcendentalism, and Carlyle into question, and on the whole evinces "what [difference] New England also makes between _Pan_-theism and _Pot_-theism"? I long to see that; I expect to congratulate you on that too. Meanwhile we will let the washbowl storm itself out; and Emerson at Concord shall recognize it for a washbowl storming, and hold on his way. As to my share in it, grieve not for half an instant. Pantheism, Pottheism, Mydoxy, Thydoxy, are nothing at all to me; a weariness the whole jargon, which I avoid speaking of, decline listening to: _Live,_ for God's sake, with what Faith thou couldst get; leave off _speaking_ about Faith! Thou knowest it not. Be _silent,_ do not speak.--As to you, my friend, you are even to go on, giving still harder shocks if need be; and should I come into censure by means of you, there or here, think that I am proud of my company; that, as the boy Hazlitt said after hearing Coleridge, "I will go with that man"; or, as our wild Burns has it,

"Wi' sic as he, where'er he be,
May I be saved or damned!"

Oime! what a foolish goose of a world this is! If it were not [for] here and there an articulate-speaking man, one would be all-too lonely.

This is nothing at all like the letter I meant to write you; but I will write again, I trust, in few days, and the first paragraph shall, if possible, hold all the business. I have much to tell you, which perhaps is as well not written. O that I did see you face to face! But the time shall come, if Heaven will. Why not you come over, since I cannot? There is a room here, there is welcome here, and two friends always. It must be done one way or the other. I will take, care of your messages to Sterling. He is in Florence; he was the Author of _Montaigne._* The _Foreign Quarterly_ Reviewer of _Strauss_ I take to be one Blackie, an Advocate in Edinburgh, a frothy, semi-confused disciple of mine and other men's; I guess this, but I have not read the Article: the man Blackie is from Aberdeen, has been roaming over Europe, and carries more sail than ballast. Brother John, spoken of above, is knocking at the door even now; he is for Italy again, we expect, in few days, on a better appointment: know that you have a third friend in him under this roof,--a man who quarrels with me all day in a small way, and loves me with the whole soul of him. My Wife demanded to have "room for one line." What she is to write I know not, except it be what she has said, holding up the pamphlet, "Is it not a noble thing? None of them all but he," &c., &c. I will write again without delay when the stray volumes arrive; before that if they linger. Commend me to all the kind household of Concord: Wife, Mother, and Son.

Ever yours,
T. Carlyle

--------- * See _ante,_ p. 184. Sterling's essay on Montaigne was his first contribution, in 1837, to the _London and Westminster Review._ It is reprinted in "Essays and Tales, by John Sterling, collected and edited, with a Memoir of his Life, by Julius Charles Hare," London, 1848, Vol. I. p. 129. ----------

_"Forgotten you?"_ O, no indeed! If there were nothing else to remember you by, I should never forget the Visitor, who years ago in the Desert descended on us, out of the clouds as it were, and made one day there look like enchantment for us, and left me weeping that it was only _one_ day. When I think of America, it is of you,--neither Harriet Martineau nor any one else succeeds in giving me a more extended idea of it. When I wish to see America it is still you, and those that are yours. I read all that you write with an interest which I feel in no other writing but my Husband's,--or it were nearer the truth to say there is no other writing of living men but yours and his that I _can_ read. God Bless you and Weib and Kind. Surely I shall some day see you all.

Your affectionate
Jane Carlyle

XXX. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 15 November, 1835