The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol. I XXX. Carlyle to Emerson
by Thomas Carlyle
Chelsea, London,
15 November, 1835
Dear Emerson,--Hardly above a week ago, I wrote you in immediate
answer to some friendly inquiries produced by negligence of mine:
the Letter is probably tumbling on the salt waves at this hour,
in the belly of the "Great Western"; or perhaps it may be still
on firm land waiting, in which case this will go along with it.
I had written before out of Scotland a Letter of mere
acknowledgment and postponement; you must have received that
before now, I imagine. Our small piece of business is now become
articulate, and I will despatch it in a paragraph. Pity my
stupidity that I did not put the thing on this footing long ago!
It never struck me till the other day that though no copy of our
Miscellanies would turn up for inspection here, and no
Bookseller would bargain for a thing unseen, I myself might
bargain, and leave their hesitations resting on their own
basis. In fine, I have rejected all their schemes of printing
Miscellaneous Works here, printing Sketches of German
Literature, or printing anything whatever on the "half-profits
system," which is like toilsomely scattering seed into the sea:
and I settled yesterday with Fraser to give him the American
sheets, and let them sell themselves, on clear principles, or
remain unsold if they like. I find it infinitely the best plan,
and to all appearance the profitablest as to money that could
have been devised for me.
What you have to do therefore is to get Two Hundred and Fifty
copies (in sheets) of the whole Four Volumes, so soon as the
second two are printed, and have them, with the proper title-
page, sent off hither to Fraser's address; the sooner the
better. The American title-page, instead of "Boston," &c. at the
bottom, will require to bear, in three lines "London: / James
Fraser, 215 Regent Street, / 1839." Fraser is anxious that you
should not spell him with a z; your man can look on the Magazine
and beware. I suppose also you should print labels for the
backs of the four volumes, to be used by the half-binder; they
do the books in that way here now: but if it occasion any
difficulty, never mind this; it was not spoken of to Fraser, and
is my own conjecture merely; the thing can be managed in various
other ways. Two Hundred and Fifty copies, then, of the entire
book: there is nothing else to be attended to that you do not
understand as well as I. Fraser will announce it in his
Magazine: the eager, select public will wait. Probably, there
is no chance before the middle of March or so? Do not hurry
yourselves, or at all change your rate for us: but so soon as
the work is ready in the course of Nature, the earliest
conveyance to the Port of London will bring a little cargo which
one will welcome with a strange feeling! I declare myself
delighted with the plan; an altogether romantic kind of plan, of
romance and reality: fancy me riding on Yankee withal, at the
time, and considering what a curious world this is, that bakes
bread for one beyond the great Ocean-stream, and how a poor man
is not left after all to be trodden into the gutters, though the
fight went sore against him, and he saw no backing anywhere.
Allah akbar! God is great; no saying truer than that.--And so
now, by the blessing of Heaven, we will talk no more of business
this day.
My employments, my outlooks, condition, and history here, were a
long chapter; on which I could like so well to talk with you
face to face; but as for writing of them, it is a mere mockery.
In these four years, so full of pain and toil, I seem to have
lived four decades. By degrees, the creature gets accustomed to
its element; the salamander learns to live in fire, and be
of the same temperature with it. Ah me! I feel as if grown
old innumerable things are become weary, flat, stale, and
unprofitable. And yet perhaps I am not old, only wearied, and
there is a stroke or two of work in me yet. For the rest, the
fret and agitation of this Babylon wears me down: it is the most
unspeakable life; of sunbeams and miry clay; a contradiction
which no head can reconcile. Pain and poverty are not wholesome;
but praise and flattery along with them are poison: God deliver
us from that; it carries madness in the very breath of it! On
the whole, I say to myself, what thing is there so good as
rest? A sad case it is and a frequent one in my circle, to be
entirely cherubic, all face and wings. "Mes enfans," said a
French gentleman to the cherubs in the Picture, "Mes enfans,
asseyez-vous?"--"Monseigneur," answer they, "il n'y a pas de
quoi!" I rejoice rather in my laziness; proving that I can
sit.--But, after all, ought I not to be thankful? I positively
can, in some sort, exist here for the while; a thing I had been
for many years ambitious of to no purpose. I shall have to
lecture again in spring, Heaven knows on what; it will be a
wretched fever for me; but once through it there will be board
wages for another year. The wild Ishmael can hunt in this
desert too, it would seem. I say, I will be thankful; and wait
quietly what farther is to come, or whether anything farther.
But indeed, to speak candidly, I do feel sometimes as if another
Book were growing in me,--though I almost tremble to think of it.
Not for this winter, O no! I will write an Article merely, or
some such thing, and read trash if better be not. This, I do
believe, is my horoscope for the next season: an Article on
something about New-Year's-day (the Westminster Editor, a good-
natured, admiring swan-goose from the North Country, will not let
me rest); then Lectures; then--what? I am for some practical
subject too; none of your pictures in the air, or aesthetisches
Zeug (as Mullner's wife called it, Mullner of the Midnight
Blade): nay, I cannot get up the steam on any such best; it is
extremely irksome as well as fruitless at present. In the next
Westminster Review, therefore, if you see a small scrub of a
paper signed "S.P." on one Varnhagen a German, say that it is by
"Simon Pure," or by "Scissars and Paste," or even by "Soaped
Pig"--whom no man shall catch! Truly it is a secret which you
must not mention: I was driven to it by the Swan-goose above
mentioned, not Mill but another. Let this suffice for my
winter's history: may the summer be more productive.
As for Concord and New England, alas! my Friend, I should but
deface your Idyllion with an ugly contradiction, did I come in
such mood as mine is. I am older in years than you; but in
humor I am older by centuries. What a hope is in that ever young
heart, cheerful, healthful as the morning! And as for me, you
have no conception what a crabbed, sulky piece of sorrow and
dyspepsia I am grown; and growing, if I do not draw bridle. Let
me gather heart a little! I have not forgotten Concord or the
West; no, it lies always beautiful in the blue of the horizon,
afar off and yet attainable; it is a great possession to me;
should it even never be attained. But I have got to consider
lately that it is you who are coming hither first. That is the
right way, is it not? New England is becoming more than ever
part of Old England; why, you are nearer to us now than
Yorkshire was a hundred years ago; this is literally a fact:
you can come without making your will. It is one of my
calculations that all Englishmen from all zones and hemispheres
will, for a good while yet, resort occasionally to the Mother-
Babel, and see a thing or two there. Come if you dare; I said
there was a room, house-room and heart-room, constantly waiting
you here, and you shall see blockheads by the million.
Pickwick himself shall be visible; innocent young Dickens
reserved for a questionable fate. The great Wordsworth shall
talk till you yourself pronounce him to be a bore. Southey's
complexion is still healthy mahogany-brown, with a fleece of
white hair, and eyes that seem running at full gallop. Leigh
Hunt, "man of genius in the shape of a Cockney," is my near
neighbor, full of quips and cranks, with good humor and no common
sense. Old Rogers with his pale head, white, bare, and cold as
snow, will work on you with those large blue eyes, cruel,
sorrowful, and that sardonic shelf-chin:--This is the Man, O
Rogers, that wrote the German Poetry in American Prose; consider
him well!--But whither am I running? My sheet is done! My
Brother John returns again almost immediately to Italy. He has
got appointed Traveling Doctor to a certain Duke of Buccleuch,
the chief of our Scotch Dukes: an excellent position for him as
far as externals go. His departure will leave me lonelier; but
I must reckon it for the best: especially I must begin working.
Harriet Martineau is coming hither this evening; with beautiful
enthusiasm for the Blacks and others. She is writing a Novel.
The first American book proved generally rather wearisome, the
second not so; we have since been taught (not I) "How to
observe." Suppose you and I promulgate a treatise next, "How to
see"? The old plan was, to have a pair of eyes first of all,
and then to open them: and endeavor with your whole strength to
look. The good Harriet! But "God," as the Arabs say, "has
given to every people a Prophet (or Poet) in its own speech":
and behold now Unitarian mechanical Formalism was to have its
Poetess too; and stragglings of genius were to spring up even
through that like grass through a Macadam highway!--Adieu, my
Friend, I wait still for your heterodox Speech; and love
you always.
--T. Carlyle
An English Sartor goes off to you this day; through Kennet, to
C.C. Little and J. Brown of Boston; the likeliest conveyance.
It is correctly printed, and that is all. Its fate here (the
fate of the publication, I mean) remains unknown; "unknown
and unimportant."
