My Dear Sir,--Your letter, which I received last week, made a
bright light in a solitary and saddened place. I had quite
recently received the news of the death of a brother** in the
island of Porto Rico, whose loss to me will be a lifelong sorrow.
As he passes out of sight, come to me visible as well as
spiritual tokens of a fraternal friendliness which, by its own
law, transcends the tedious barriers of custom and nation; and
opens its way to the heart. This is a true consolation, and I
thanked my jealous [Greek] for the godsend so significantly
timed. It, for the moment, realizes the hope to which I have
clung with both hands, through each disappointment, that I might
converse with a man whose ear of faith was not stopped, and whose
argument I could not predict. May I use the word, "I thank my
God whenever I call you to remembrance."
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* This letter was printed in the _Athenaeum,_ London, June 24,
1882. It, as well as three others which appeared in the same
journal, is now reprinted, through the courtesy of its editor,
from the original.
** Edward Bliss Emerson, his next younger brother, "brother of
the brief but blazing star," of whom Emerson wrote _In Memoriam:_--
"There is no record left on earth,
Save in tablets of the heart,
Of the rich, inherent worth,
Of the grace that on him shone,
Of eloquent lips, of joyful wit;
He could not frame a word unfit,
An act unworthy to be done.
On his young promise Beauty smiled,
Drew his free homage unbeguiled,
And prosperous Age held out his hand,
And richly his large future planned,
And troops of friends enjoyed the tide,--
All, all was given, and only health denied."
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I receive with great pleasure the wonderful Professor now that
first the decent limbs of Osiris are collected.* We greet him
well to Cape Cod and Boston Bay. The rigid laws of matter
prohibit that the soul imprisoned within the strait edges of
these types should add one syllable thereto, or we had adjured
the Sage by every name of veneration to take possession by so
much as a Salve! of his Western World, but he remained inexorable
for any new communications.
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* The four copies of _Sartor_ which Carlyle had sent were a
"stitched pamphlet," with a title-page bearing the words: "Sartor
Resartus: in Three Books. Reprinted for Friends, from Fraser's
Magazine. London, 1834."
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I feel like congratulating you upon the cold welcome which you
say Teufelsdrockh* has met. As it is not earthly happy, it is
marked of a high sacred sort. I like it a great deal better than
ever, and before it was all published I had eaten nearly all my
words of objection. But do not think it shall lack a present
popularity. That it should not be known seems possible, for if a
memoir of Laplace had been thrown into that muck-heap of Fraser's
Magazine, who would be the wiser? But this has too much wit and
imagination not to strike a class who would not care for it as a
faithful mirror of this very Hour. But you know the proverb, "To
be fortunate, be not too wise." The great men of the day are on
a plane so low as to be thoroughly intelligible to the vulgar.
Nevertheless, as God maketh the world forevermore, whatever the
devils may seem to do, so the thoughts of the best minds always
become the last opinion of Society. Truth is ever born in a
manger, but is compensated by living till it has all souls for
its kingdom. Far, far better seems to me the unpopularity of
this Philosophical Poem (shall I call it?) than the adulation
that followed your eminent friend Goethe. With him I am becoming
better acquainted, but mine must be a qualified admiration. It
is a singular piece of good-nature in you to apotheosize him. I
cannot but regard it as his misfortune, with conspicuous bad
influence on his genius, that velvet life he led. What
incongruity for genius, whose fit ornaments and reliefs are
poverty and hatred, to repose fifty years on chairs of state and
what pity that his Duke did not cut off his head to save him from
the mean end (forgive) of retiring from the municipal incense "to
arrange tastefully his gifts and medals"! Then the Puritan in me
accepts no apology for bad morals in such as he. We can tolerate
vice in a splendid nature whilst that nature is battling with the
brute majority in defence of some human principle. The sympathy
his manhood and his misfortunes call out adopts even his faults;
but genius pampered, acknowledged, crowned, can only retain our
sympathy by turning the same force once expended against outward
enemies now against inward, and carrying forward and planting the
standard of Oromasdes so many leagues farther on into the envious
Dark. Failing this, it loses its nature and becomes talent,
according to the definition,--mere skill in attaining vulgar
ends. A certain wonderful friend of mine said that "a false
priest is the falsest of false things." But what makes the
priest? A cassock? O Diogenes! Or the power (and thence the
call) to teach man's duties as they flow from the Superhuman? Is
not he who perceives and proclaims the Superhumanities, he who
has once intelligently pronounced the words "Self-Renouncement,"
"Invisible Leader," "Heavenly Powers of Sorrow," and so on,
forever the liege of the same?
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* Emerson uniformly spells this name "Teufelsdroch."
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Then to write luxuriously is not the same thing as to live so,
but a new and worse offence. It implies an intellectual defect
also, the not perceiving that the present corrupt condition of
human nature (which condition this harlot muse helps to
perpetuate) is a temporary or superficial state. The good word
lasts forever: the impure word can only buoy itself in the gross
gas that now envelops us, and will sink altogether to ground as
that works itself clear in the everlasting effort of God.
May I not call it temporary? for when I ascend into the pure
region of truth (or under my undermost garment, as Epictetus and
Teufelsdrockh would say), I see that to abide inviolate, although
all men fall away from it; yea, though the whole generation of
Adam should be healed as a sore off the face of the creation.
So, my friend, live Socrates and Milton, those starch Puritans,
for evermore! Strange is it to me that you should not sympathize
(yet so you said) with Socrates, so ironical, so true, and who
"tramped in the mire with wooden shoes whenever they would force
him into the clouds." I seem to see him offering the hand to you
across the ages which some time you will grasp.
I am glad you like Sampson Reed, and that he has inspired some
curiosity respecting his Church. Swedenborgianism, if you should
be fortunate in your first meetings, has many points of
attraction for you: for instance, this article, "The poetry of
the Old Church is the reality of the New," which is to be
literally understood, for they esteem, in common with all the
Trismegisti, the Natural World as strictly the symbol or exponent
of the Spiritual, and part for part; the animals to be the
incarnations of certain affections; and scarce a popular
expression esteemed figurative, but they affirm to be the
simplest statement of fact. Then is their whole theory of social
relations--both in and out of the body--most philosophical, and,
though at variance with the popular theology, self-evident. It
is only when they come to their descriptive theism, if I may say
so, and then to their drollest heaven, and to some autocratic not
moral decrees of God, that the mythus loses me. In general, too,
they receive the fable instead of the moral of their Aesop. They
are to me, however, deeply interesting, as a sect which I think
must contribute more than all other sects to the new faith which
must arise out of all.
You express a desire to know something of myself. Account me "a
drop in the ocean seeking another drop," or God-ward, striving to
keep so true a sphericity as to receive the due ray from every
point of the concave heaven. Since my return home, I have been
left very much at leisure. It were long to tell all my
speculations on my profession and my doings thereon; but,
possessing my liberty, I am determined to keep it, at the risk of
uselessness (which risk God can very well abide), until such
duties offer themselves as I can with integrity discharge. One
thing I believe,--that Utterance is place enough: and should I
attain through any inward revelation to a more clear perception
of my assigned task, I shall embrace it with joy and praise. I
shall not esteem it a low place, for instance, if I could
strengthen your hands by true expressions of the hope and
pleasure which your writings communicate to me and to some of my
countrymen. Yet the best poem of the Poet is his own mind, and
more even than in any of the works I rejoice in the promise of
the workman. Now I am only reading and musing, and when I have
any news to tell of myself, you shall hear them.
Now as to the welcome hint that you might come to America, it
shall be to me a joyful hope. Come and found a new Academy that
shall be church and school and Parnassus, as a true Poet's house
should be. I dare not say that wit has better chance here than
in England of winning world-wages, but it can always live, and it
can scarce find competition. Indeed, indeed, you shall have the
continent to yourself were it only as Crusoe was king. If you
cared to read literary lectures, our people have vast curiosity,
and the apparatus is very easy to set agoing. Such 'pulpit' as
you pleased to erect would at least find no hindrance in the
building. A friend of mine and of yours remarked, when I
expressed the wish that you would come here, "that people were
not here, as in England, sacramented to organized schools of
opinion, but were a far more convertible audience." If at all
you can think of coming here, I would send you any and all
particulars of information with cheerfulest speed.
I have written a very long letter, yet have said nothing of much
that I would say upon chapters of the _Sartor._ I must keep
that, and the thoughts I had upon 'poetry in history',' for
another letter, or (might it be!) for a dialogue face to face.
Let me not fail of _The Diamond Necklace._ I found three greedy
receivers of Teufelsdrockh, who also radiate its light. For the
sake of your knowing what manner of men you move, I send you two
pieces writ by one of them, Frederic Henry Hedge, the article on
Swedenborg and that on Phrenology. And as you like Sampson Reed,
here are one or two more of his papers. Do read them. And since
you study French history do not fail to look at our Yankee
portrait of Lafayette. Present my best remembrances to Mrs.
Carlyle, whom that stern and blessed solitude has armed and
sublimed out of all reach of the littleness and unreason of
London. If I thought we could win her to the American shore, I
would send her the story of those godly women, the contemporaries
of John Knox's daughter, who came out hither to enjoy the worship
of God amidst wild men and wild beasts.
Your friend and servant,
R. Waldo Emerson