The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. CLVII. Carlyle to Emerson
by Thomas Carlyle
Chelsea, 18 May, 1855
Dear Emerson,--Last Sunday, Clough was here; and we were
speaking about you, (much to your discredit, you need not doubt,)
and how stingy in the way of Letters you were grown; when, next
morning, your Letter itself made its appearance. Thanks, thanks.
You know not in the least, I perceive, nor can be made to
understand at all, how indispensable your Letters are to me. How
you are, and have for a long time been, the one of all the sons
of Adam who, I felt, completely understood what I was saying;
and answered with a truly human voice,--inexpressibly
consolatory to a poor man, in his lonesome pilgrimage, towards
the evening of the day! So many voices are not human; but more
or less bovine, porcine, canine; and one's soul dies away in
sorrow in the sound of them, and is reduced to a dialogue with
the "Silences," which is of a very abstruse nature!--Well,
whether you write to me or not, I reserve to myself the privilege
of writing to you, so long as we both continue in this world! As
the beneficent Presences vanish from me, one after the other,
those that remain are the more precious, and I will not part with
them, not with the chief of them, beyond all.
This last year has been a grimmer lonelier one with me than any I
can recollect for a long time. I did not go to the Country at
all in summer or winter; refused even my Christmas at The Grange
with the Ashburtons,--it was too sad an anniversary for me;--I
have sat here in my garret, wriggling and wrestling on the worst
terms with a Task that I cannot do, that generally seems to me
not worth doing, and yet must be done. These are truly the
terms. I never had such a business in my life before. Frederick
himself is a pretty little man to me, veracious, courageous,
invincible in his small sphere; but he does not rise into the
empyrean regions, or kindle my heart round him at all; and his
history, upon which there are wagon-loads of dull bad books, is
the most dislocated, unmanageably incoherent, altogether dusty,
barren and beggarly production of the modern Muses as given
hitherto. No man of genius ever saw him with eyes, except
twice Mirabeau, for half an hour each time. And the wretched
Books have no indexes, no precision of detail; and I am far
away from Berlin and the seat of information;--and, in brief,
shall be beaten miserably with this unwise enterprise in my old
days; and (in fine) will consent to be so, and get through it
if I can before I die. This of obstinacy is the one quality I
still show; all my other qualities (hope, among them) often seem
to have pretty much taken leave of me; but it is necessary to
hold by this last. Pray for me; I will complain no more at
present. General Washington gained the freedom of America--
chiefly by this respectable quality I talk of; nor can a history
of Frederick be written, in Chelsea in the year 1855, except as
against hope, and by planting yourself upon it in an extremely
dogged manner.
We are all wool-gathering here, with wide eyes and astonished
minds, at a singular rate, since you heard last from me!
"Balaklava," I can perceive, is likely to be a substantive in the
English language henceforth: it in truth expresses compendiously
what an earnest mind will experience everywhere in English life;
if his soul rise at all above cotton and scrip, a man has to
pronounce it all a Balaklava these many years. A Balaklava now
yielding, under the pressure of rains and unexpected transit of
heavy wagons; champing itself down into mere mud-gulfs,--towards
the bottomless Pool, if some flooring be not found. To me it is
not intrinsically a new phenomenon, only an extremely hideous
one. Altum Silentium, what else can I reply to it at present?
The Turk War, undertaken under pressure of the mere mobility,
seemed to me an enterprise worthy of Bedlam from the first; and
this method of carrying it on, without any general, or with a
mere sash and cocked-hat for one, is of the same block of stuff.
Ach Gott! Is not Anarchy, and parliamentary eloquence instead
of work, continued for half a century everywhere, a beautiful
piece of business? We are in alliance with Louis Napoleon (a
gentleman who has shown only housebreaker qualities hitherto,
and is required now to show heroic ones, or go to the Devil);
and under Marechal Saint-Arnaud (who was once a dancing-master in
this city, and continued a thief in all cities), a Commander of
the Playactor-Pirate description, resembling a General as
Alexander Dumas does Dante Alighieri,--we have got into a very
strange problem indeed!--But there is something almost grand in
the stubborn thickside patience and persistence of this English
People; and I do not question but they will work themselves
through in one fashion or another; nay probably, get a great
deal of benefit out of this astonishing slap on the nose to their
self-complacency before all the world. They have not done yet,
I calculate, by any manner of means: they are, however,
admonished in an ignominious and convincing manner, amid the
laughter of nations, that they are altogether on the wrong road
this great while (two hundred years, as I have been calculating
often),--and I shudder to think of the plunging and struggle they
will have to get into the approximately right one again. Pray
for them also, poor stupid overfed heavy-laden souls!--Before my
paper quite end, I must in my own name, and that of a select
company of others, inquire rigorously of R.W.E. why he does not
give us that little Book on England he has promised so long? I
am very serious in saying, I myself want much to see it;--and
that I can see no reason why we all should not, without delay.
Bring it out, I say, and print it, tale quale. You will never
get it in the least like what you wish it, clearly no! But I
venture to warrant, it is good enough,--far too good for the
readers that are to get it. Such a pack of blockheads, and
disloyal and bewildered unfortunates who know not their right
hand from their left, as fill me with astonishment, and are more
and more forfeiting all respect from me. Publish the Book, I
say; let us have it and so have done! Adieu, my dear friend,
for this time. I had a thousand things more to write, but have
wasted my sheet, and must end. I will take another before long,
whatever you do. In my lonely thoughts you are never long
absent: Valete all of you at Concord!
