The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. CLXXXV. Carlyle to Emerson
by Thomas Carlyle
5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, 28 September, 1870
Dear Emerson,--Your Letter, dated 15 June, never got to me till
about ten days ago; when my little Niece and I returned out of
Scotland, and a long, rather empty Visit there! It had missed me
here only by two or three days; and my highly infelicitous
Selectress of Letters to be forwarded had left it carefully
aside as undeserving that honor,--good faithful old Woman, one
hopes she is greatly stronger on some sides than in this
literary-selective one. Certainly no Letter was forwarded that
had the hundredth part of the right to be so; certainly, of all
the Letters that came to me, or were left waiting here, this was,
in comparison, the one which might not with propriety have been
left to lie stranded forever, or to wander on the winds forever!--
One of my first journeys was to Chapman, with vehement rebuke
of this inconceivable "Cincinnati-Massachusetts" business.
Stupiditas stupiditatum; I never in my life, not even in that
unpunctual House, fell in with anything that equaled it. Instant
amendment was at once undertaken for, nay it seems had been
already in part performed: "Ten volumes, following the nine you
already had, were despatched in Field & Co.'s box above two
months ago," so Chapman solemnly said and asseverated to me; so
that by this time you ought actually to have in hand nineteen
volumes; and the twentieth (first of Friedrich), which came
out ten days ago, is to go in Field & Co.'s Box this week, and
ought, not many days after the arrival of this Letter, to be in
Boston waiting for you there. The Chapman's Homer (two
volumes) had gone with that first Field Packet; and would be
handed to you along with the ten volumes which were overdue. All
this was solemnly declared to me as on Affidavit; Chapman also
took extract of the Massachusetts passage in your Letter, in
order to pour it like ice-cold water on the head of his stupid
old Chief-Clerk, the instant the poor creature got back from his
rustication: alas, I am by no means certain that it will make a
new man of him, nor, in fact, that the whole of this amendatory
programme will get itself performed to equal satisfaction! But
you must write to me at once if it is not so; and done it shall
be in spite of human stupidity itself. Note, withal, these
things: Chapman sends no Books to America except through Field
& Co.; he does not regularly send a Box at the middle of the
month; but he does "almost monthly send one Bog"; so that if
your monthly Volume do not start from London about the 15th, it
is due by the very next Chapman-Field box; and if it at any
time don't come, I beg of you very much to make instant complaint
through Field & Co., or what would be still more effectual,
direct to myself. My malison on all Blockheadisms and torpid
stupidities and infidelities; of which this world is full!--
Your Letter had been anxiously enough waited for, a month before
my departure; but we will not mention the delay in presence of
what you were engaged with then. Faustum sit; that truly was
and will be a Work worth doing your best upon; and I, if alive,
can promise you at least one reader that will do his best upon
your Work. I myself, often think of the Philosophies precisely
in that manner. To say truth, they do not otherwise rise in
esteem with me at all, but rather sink. The last thing I read of
that kind was a piece by Hegel, in an excellent Translation by
Stirling, right well translated, I could see, for every bit of it
was intelligible to me; but my feeling at the end of it was,
"Good Heavens, I have walked this road before many a good time;
but never with a Cannon-ball at each ankle before!" Science
also, Science falsely so called, is--But I will not enter upon
that with you just now.
The Visit to America, alas, alas, is pure Moonshine. Never had
I, in late years, the least shadow of intention to undertake that
adventure; and I am quite at a loss to understand how the rumor
originated. One Boston Gentleman (a kind of universal
Undertaker, or Lion's Provider of Lecturers I think) informed me
that "the Cable" had told him; and I had to remark, "And who
the devil told the Cable?" Alas, no, I fear I shall never dare
to undertake that big Voyage; which has so much of romance and
of reality behind it to me; zu spat, zu spat. I do sometimes
talk dreamily of a long Sea-Voyage, and the good the Sea has
often done me,--in times when good was still possible. It may
have been some vague folly of that kind that originated this
rumor; for rumors are like dandelion-seeds; and the Cable I
dare say welcomes them all that have a guinea in their pocket.
Thank you for blocking up that Harvard matter; provided it don't
go into the Newspapers, all is right. Thank you a thousand times
for that thrice-kind potential welcome, and flinging wide open
your doors and your hearts to me at Concord. The gleam of it is
like sunshine in a subterranean place. Ah me, Ah me! May God be
with you all, dear Emerson.
