5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, London
3 February, 1835
My Dear Sir,--I owe you a speedy answer as well as a grateful
one; for, in spite of the swift ships of the Americans, our
communings pass too slowly. Your letter, written in November,
did not reach me till a few days ago; your Books or Papers have
not yet come,--though the ever-punctual Rich, I can hope, will
now soon get them for me. He showed me his _way-bill_ or
invoice, and the consignment of these friendly effects "to
another gentleman," and undertook with an air of great fidelity
to bring all to a right bearing. On the whole, as the Atlantic
is so broad and deep, ought we not rather to esteem it a
beneficent miracle that messages can arrive at all; that a
little slip of paper will skim over all these weltering floods,
and other inextricable confusions, and come at last, in the hand
of the Twopenny Postman, safe to your lurking-place, like green
leaf in the bill of Noah's Dove? Let us be grateful for mercies;
let us use them while they are granted us. Time was when "they
that feared the Lord spake _often_ one to another." A friendly
thought is the purest gift that man can afford to man. "Speech"
also, they say, "is cheerfuler than light itself."
The date of your letter gives me unhappily no idea but that of
Space and Time. As you know my whereabout, will you throw a
little light on your own? I can imagine Boston, and have often
seen the musket volleys on Bunker Hill; but in this new spot
there is nothing for me save sky and earth, the chance of
retirement, peace, and winter seclusion. Alas! I can too well
fancy one other thing: the bereavement you allude to, the sorrow
that will so long be painful before it can become merely sad and
sacred. Brothers, especially in these days, are much to us: had
one no brother, one could hardly understand what it was to have a
Friend; they are the Friends whom Nature chose for us; Society
and Fortune, as things now go, are scarcely compatible with
Friendship, and contrive to get along, miserably enough, without
it. Yet sorrow not above measure for him that is gone. He is,
in very deed and truth, with God,--_where_ you and I both are.
What a thin film it is that divides the Living from the Dead! In
still nights, as Jean Paul says, "the limbs of my Buried Ones
touched cold on my soul, and drove away its blots, as dead hands
heal eruptions of the skin." Let us turn back into Life.
That you sit there bethinking yourself, and have yet taken no
course of activity, and can without inward or outward hurt so
sit, is on the whole rather pleasing news to me. It is a great
truth which you say, that Providence can well afford to have one
sit: another great truth which you feel without saying it is
that a course wherein clear faith cannot go with you may be worse
than none; if clear faith go never so slightly against it, then
it is certainly worse than none. To speak with perhaps ill-bred
candor, I like as well to fancy you _not_ preaching to Unitarians
a Gospel after their heart. I will say farther, that you are the
only man I ever met with of that persuasion whom I could
unobstructedly like. The others that I have seen were all a kind
of halfway-house characters, who, I thought, should, if they had
not wanted courage, have ended in unbelief; in "faint possible
Theism," which I like considerably worse than Atheism. Such, I
could not but feel, deserve the fate they find here; the bat
fate: to be killed among the rats as a bird, among the birds as
a rat.... Nay, who knows but it is doubts of the like kind in
your own mind that keep you for a time inactive even now? For
the rest, that you have liberty to choose by your own will
merely, is a great blessing: too rare for those that could use
it so well; nay, often it is difficult to use. But till _ill
health_ of body or of mind warns you that the moving, not the
sitting, position is essential, _sit_ still, contented in
conscience; understanding well that no man, that God only knows
_what_ we are working, and will show it one day; that such and
such a one, who filled the whole Earth with his hammering and
troweling, and would not let men pass for his rubbish, turns out
to have built of mere coagulated froth, and vanishes with his
edifice, traceless, silently, or amid hootings illimitable;
while again that other still man, by the word of his mouth, by
the very look of his face, was scattering influences, as _seeds_
are scattered, "to be found flourishing as a banyan grove after a
thousand years." I beg your pardon for all this preaching, if it
be superfluous impute it to no miserable motive.
Your objections to Goethe are very natural, and even bring you
nearer me: nevertheless, I am by no means sure that it were not
your wisdom, at this moment, to set about learning the German
Language, with a view towards studying _him_ mainly! I do not
assert this; but the truth of it would not surprise me. Believe
me, it is impossible you can be more a Puritan than I; nay, I
often feel as if I were far too much so: but John Knox himself,
could he have seen the peaceable impregnable _fidelity_ of that
man's mind, and how to him also Duty was _infinite,_--Knox would
have passed on, wondering not reproaching. But I will tell you
in a word why I like Goethe: his is the only _healthy_ mind,
of any extent, that I have discovered in Europe for long
generations; it was he that first convincingly proclaimed to me
(convincingly, for I saw it _done_): Behold, even in this
scandalous Sceptico-Epicurean generation, when all is gone but
hunger and cant, it is still possible that Man be a Man! For
which last Evangel, the confirmation and rehabilitation of all
other Evangels whatsoever, how can I be too grateful? On the
whole, I suspect you yet know only Goethe the Heathen (Ethnic);
but you will know Goethe the Christian by and by, and like that
one far better. Rich showed me a Compilation* in green cloth
boards that you had beckoned across the water: pray read the
fourth volume of that, and let a man of your clearness of feeling
say whether that was a Parasite or a Prophet.--And then as to
"misery" and the other dark ground on which you love to see
genius paint itself,--alas! consider whether misery is not _ill
health_ too; also whether good fortune is not worse to bear than
bad; and on the whole whether the glorious serene summer is not
greater than the wildest hurricane,--as Light, the Naturalists
say, is stronger a thousand times than Lightning. And so I
appeal to Philip sober;--and indeed have hardly said as much
about Goethe since I saw you, for nothing reigns here but
twilight delusion (falser for the time than midnight darkness) on
that subject, and I feel that the most suffer nothing thereby,
having properly nothing or little to do with such a matter but
with you, who are not "seeking recipes for happiness," but
something far higher, it is not so, and _therefore_ I have spoken
and appealed; and hope the new curiosity, if I have awakened
any, will do you no mischief.
------------
* Obviously Carlyle's _Specimens of German Romance,_ of which the
fourth volume was devoted to Goethe.
------------
But now as to myself; for you will grumble at a sheet of
speculation sent so far: I am here still, as Rob Roy was on
Glasgow Bridge, _biding tryste;_ busy extremely, with work that
will not profit me at all in some senses; suffering rather in
health and nerves; and still with nothing like dawn on any
quarter of my horizon. _The Diamond Necklace_ has not been
printed, but will be, were this _French Revolution_ out; which
latter, however, drags itself along in a way that would fill your
benevolent heart with pity. I am for three small volumes now,
and have one done. It is the dreadfulest labor (with these
nerves, this liver) I ever undertook; all is so inaccurate,
superficial, vague, in the numberless books I consult; and
without accuracy at least, what other good is possible? Add to
this that I have no hope about the thing, except only that I
_shall be done with it:_ I can reasonably expect nothing from
any considerable class here, but at _best_ to be scolded and
reproached; perhaps to be left standing "on my own basis,"
without note or comment of any kind, save from the Bookseller,
who will lose his printing. The hope I have however is sure: if
life is lent me, I shall be _done with_ the business; I will
write this "History of Sansculottism," the notablest phenomenon I
meet with since the time of the Crusades or earlier; after which
my part is played. As for the future, I heed it little when so
busy; but it often seems to me as if one thing were becoming
indisputable: that I must seek another craft than literature for
these years that may remain to me. Surely, I often say, if ever
man had a finger-of-Providence shown him, thou hast it; literature
will neither yield thee bread, nor a stomach to digest bread with:
quit it in God's name, shouldst thou take spade and mattock instead.
The truth is, I believe literature to be as good as dead and gone
in all parts of Europe at this moment, and nothing but hungry
Revolt and Radicalism appointed us for perhaps three generations;
I do not see how a man can honestly live by writing in another
dialect than that, in England at least; so that if you determine
on not living dishonestly, it will behove you to look several
things full in the face, and ascertain what is what with some
distinctness. I suffer also terribly from the solitary existence
I have all along had; it is becoming a kind of passion with me,
to feel myself among my brothers. And then, How? Alas! I
care not a doit for Radicalism, nay I feel it to be a wretched
necessity, unfit for me; Conservatism being not unfit only
but false for me: yet these two are the grand Categories
under which all English spiritual activity that so much as
thinks remuneration possible must range itself. I look
around accordingly on a most wonderful vortex of things; and
pray to God only, that as my day, is so my strength may be.
What will come out of it is wholly uncertain: for I have
possibilities too; the possibilities of London are far from
exhausted yet: I have a brave brother, who invites me to
come and be quiet with him in Rome; a brave friend (known to
you) who opens the door of a new Western world,--and so we will
stand considering and consulting, at least till the Book be over.
Are all these things interesting to you? I know they are.
As for America and Lecturing, it is a thing I do sometimes turn
over, but never yet with any seriousness. What your friend says
of the people being more persuadable, so far, as having no
Tithe-controversy, &c., &c. will go, I can most readily understand
it. But apart from that, I should rather fancy America mainly a
new Commercial England, with a fuller pantry,--little more or little
less. The same unquenchable, almost frightfully unresting spirit
of endeavor, directed (woe is me!) to the making of money, or
money's worth; namely, food finer and finer, and gigmanic
renown higher and higher: nay, must not your gigmanity be a
_purse_-gigmanity, some half-shade worse than a purse-and-pedigree
one? Or perhaps it is not a whit worse; only rougher, more
substantial; on the whole better? At all events ours is fast
becoming identical with it; for the pedigree ingredient is as
near as may be gone: _Gagnez de l'argent, et ne vous faites pas
pendre,_ this is very nearly the whole Law, first Table and
second. So that you see, when I set foot on American land, it
will be on no Utopia; but on a _conditional_ piece of ground
where some things are to be expected and other things not. I may
say, on the other hand, that Lecturing (or I would rather it were
_speaking_) is a thing I have always had some hankering after:
it seems to me I could really _swim_ in that element, were I once
thrown into it; that in fact it would develop several things in
me which struggle violently for development. The great want I
have towards such an enterprise is one you may guess at: want of
a _rubric,_ of a title to name my speech by. Could any one but
appoint me Lecturing Professor of Teufelsdrockh's science,--
"Things in general"! To discourse of Poets and Poetry in the
Hazlitt style, or talk stuff about the Spirit of the Age, were
most unedifying: one knows not what to call himself. However,
there is no doubt that were the child born it _might_ be
christened; wherefore I will really request you to take the
business into your consideration, and give me in the most
rigorous sober manner you can some scheme of it. How many
Discourses; what Towns; the probable Expenses, the probable net
Income, the Time, &c., &c.: all that you can suppose a man
wholly ignorant might want to know about it. America I should
like well enough to visit, much as I should another part of my
native country: it is, as you see, distinctly possible that such
a thing might be; we will keep it hanging, to solace ourselves
with it, till the time decide.
Have I involved you in double postage by this loquacity? or What
is your American rule? I did not intend it when I began; but
today my confusion of head is very great and words must be
multiplied with only a given quantity of meaning.
My wife, who is just gone out to spend the day with a certain
"celebrated Mrs. Austin," (called also the "celebrated Translatress
of Puckler-Muskau,") charged me very specially to send you
her love, her good wishes and thanks: I assure you there
is no hypocrisy in that. She votes often for taking the
Transatlantic scheme into contemplation; declares farther that
my Book and Books must and will indisputably prosper (at some
future era), and takes the world beside me--as a good wife and
daughter of John Knox should. Speaking of "celebrated" persons
here, let me mention that I have learned by stern experience, as
children do with fire, to keep in general quite out of the way of
celebrated persons, more especially celebrated women. This Mrs.
Austin, who is half ruined by celebrity (of a kind), is the only
woman I have seen not wholly ruined by it. Men, strong men, I
have seen die of it, or go mad by it. _Good_ fortune is far
worse than bad!
Will you write with all despatch, my dear sir; fancy me a
fellow-wayfarer, who cordially bids you God-speed, and would
fain keep in sight of you, within sound of you.
Yours with great sincerity,
T. Carlyle