The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol. I IX. Emerson to Carlyle*
by John Stuart Mill
Concord,
7 October, 1835
My Dear Friend,--Please God I will never again sit six weeks of
this short human life over a letter of yours without answering it.
* The original of this letter is missing; what is printed here
is from the rough draft.
I received in August your letter of June, and just then hearing
that a lady, a little lady with a mighty heart, Mrs. Child,* whom
I scarcely know but do much respect, was about to visit England
(invited thither for work's sake by the African or Abolition
Society) and that she begged an introduction to you, I used
the occasion to say the godsend was come, and that I would
acknowledge it as soon as three then impending tasks were ended.
I have now learned that Mrs. Child was detained for weeks in New
York and did not sail. Only last night I received your letter
written in May, with the four copies of the Sartor, which by a
strange oversight have been lying weeks, probably months, in the
Custom-House. On such provocation I can sit still no longer.
* The excellent Mrs. Lydia Maria Child, whose romance of
Philothea was published in this year, 1835.
"If her heart at high floods swamps her brain now and then,
'T is but richer for that when the tide ebbs agen."
says Lowell, in his Fable for Critics.
The three tasks were, a literary address; a historical discourse
on the two-hundredth anniversary of our little town of Concord*
(my first adventure in print, which I shall send you); the
third, my marriage, now happily consummated. All three, from the
least to the greatest, trod so fast upon each other's heel as to
leave me, who am a slow and awkward workman, no interstice big
enough for a letter that should hope to convey any information.
Again I waited that the Discourse might go in his new jacket to
show how busy I had been, but the creeping country press has not
dressed it yet. Now congratulate me, my friend, as indeed you
have already done, that I live with my wife in my own house,
waiting on the good future. The house is not large, but
convenient and very elastic. The more hearts (specially great
hearts) it holds, the better it looks and feels. I have not had
so much leisure yet but that the fact of having ample space to
spread my books and blotted paper is still gratifying. So know
now that your rooms in America wait for you, and that my wife is
making ready a closet for Mrs. Carlyle.
* "A Historical Discourse, delivered before the Citizens of
Concord, 12th September, 1835, on the Second Centennial
Anniversary of the Incorporation of the Town. By Ralph Waldo
Emerson. Published by Request. Concord: G.F. Bemis, Printer.
1835." 8vo, pp. 52.--A discourse worthy of the author and of the
town. It is reprinted in the eleventh volume of Emerson's Works,
Boston, 1883.
I could cry at the disaster that has befallen you in the loss of
the book. My brother Charles says the only thing the friend
could do on such an occasion was to shoot himself, and wishes to
know if he have done so. Such mischance might well quicken one's
curiosity to know what Oversight there is of us, and I greet you
well upon your faith and the resolution issuing out of it. You
have certainly found a right manly consolation, and can afford to
faint and rest a month or two on the laurels of such endeavor. I
trust ere this you have re-collected the entire creation out of
the secret cells where, under the smiles of every Muse, it first
took life. Believe, when you are weary, that you who stimulate
and rejoice virtuous young men do not write a line in vain. And
whatever betide us in the inexorable future, what is better than
to have awaked in many men the sweet sense of beauty, and to
double the courage of virtue. So do not, as you will not, let
the imps from all the fens of weariness and apathy have a minute
too much. To die of feeding the fires of others were sweet,
since it were not death but multiplication. And yet I hold to a
more orthodox immortality too.
This morning in happiest time I have a letter from George Ripley,
who tells me you have written him, and that you say pretty
confidently you will come next summer. Io paean! He tells me
also that Alexander Everett (brother of Edward) has sent you the
friendly notice that has just appeared in the North American
Review, with a letter.* All which I hope you have received. I
am delighted, for this man represents a clique to which I am a
stranger, and which I supposed might not love you. It must be
you shall succeed when Saul prophesies. Indeed, I have heard
that you may hear the Sartor preached from some of our best
pulpits and lecture-rooms. Don't think I speak of myself, for I
cherish carefully a salutary horror at the German style, and hold
off my admiration as long as ever I can. But all my importance
is quite at an end. For now that Doctors of Divinity and the
solemn Review itself have broke silence to praise you, I have
quite lost my plume as your harbinger.
* Mr. A.H. Everett's paper on Sartor Resartus was published in
the North American Review for October, 1835.
I read with interest what you say of the political omens in
England. I could wish our country a better comprehension of its
felicity. But government has come to be a trade, and is managed
solely on commercial principles. A man plunges into politics to
make his fortune, and only cares that the world should last his
day. We have had in different parts of the country mobs and
moblike legislation, and even moblike judicature, which have
betrayed an almost godless state of society; so that I begin to
think even here it behoves every man to quit his dependency on
society as much as he can, as he would learn to go without
crutches that will be soon plucked away from him, and settle with
himself the principles he can stand upon, happen what may. There
is reading, and public lecturing too, in this country, that I
could recommend as medicine to any gentleman who finds the love
of life too strong in him.
If virtue and friendship have not yet become fables, do believe
we keep your face for the living type. I was very glad to hear
of the brother you describe, for I have one too, and know what it
is to have presence in two places. Charles Chauncy Emerson is a
lawyer now settled in this town, and, as I believe, no better
Lord Hamlet was ever. He is our Doctor on all questions of
taste, manners, or action. And one of the pure pleasures I
promise myself in the months to come is to make you two gentlemen
know each other.
