5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, London
13 May, 1835
Thanks, my kind friend, for the news you again send me. Good
news, good new friends; nothing that is not good comes to me
across these waters. As if the "Golden West" seen by Poets were
no longer a mere optical phenomenon, but growing a reality, and
coining itself into solid blessings! To me it seems very
strange; as indeed generally this whole Existence here below
more and more does.
We have seen your Barnard: a most modest, intelligent, compact,
hopeful-looking man, who will not revisit you without conquests
from his expedition hither. We expect to see much more of
him; to instruct him, to learn of him: especially about that
real-imaginary locality of "Concord," where a kindly-speaking
voice lives incarnated, there is much to learn.
That you will take to yourself a wife is the cheerfulest tidings
you could send us. It is in no wise meet for man to be alone;
and indeed the beneficent Heavens, in creating Eve, did
mercifully guard against that. May it prove blessed, this new
arrangement! I delight to prophesy for you peaceful days in it;
peaceful, not idle; filled rather with that best activity which
is the stillest. To the future, or perhaps at this hour actual
Mrs. Emerson, will you offer true wishes from two British
Friends; who have not seen her with their eyes, but whose
thoughts need not be strangers to the Home she will make for you.
Nay, you add the most chivalrous summons: which who knows but
one day we may actually stir ourselves to obey! It may hover for
the present among the gentlest of our day-dreams; mild-lustrous;
an impossible possibility. May all go well with you, my worthy
Countryman, Kinsman, and brother Man!
This so astonishing reception of Teufelsdrockh in your
New England circle seems to me not only astonishing, but
questionable; not, however, to be quarreled with. I may say:
If the New. England cup is dangerously sweet, there are here in
Old England whole antiseptic floods of good _hop_-decoction;
therein let it mingle; work wholesomely towards what clear
benefit it can. Your young ones too, as all exaggeration is
transient, and exaggerated love almost itself a blessing, will
get through it without damage. As for Fraser, however, the idea
of a new Edition is frightful to him; or rather ludicrous,
unimaginable. Of him no man has inquired for a _Sartor:_
in his whole wonderful world of Tory Pamphleteers, Conservative
Younger-brothers, Regent-Street Loungers, Crockford Gamblers, Irish
Jesuits, drunken Reporters, and miscellaneous unclean persons
(whom nitre and much soap will not wash clean), not a soul has
expressed the smallest wish that way. He shrieks at the idea.
Accordingly I realized these four copies from [him,] all he will
surrender; and can do no more. Take them with my blessing. I
beg you will present one to the honorablest of those "honorable
women"; say to her that her (unknown) image as she reads
shall be to me a bright faultless vision, textured out of
mere sunbeams; to be loved and worshiped; the best of all
Transatlantic women! Do at any rate, in a more business like
style, offer my respectful regards to Dr. Channing, whom
certainly I could not count on for a reader, or other than a
grieved condemnatory one; for I reckoned tolerance had its
limits. His own faithful, long-continued striving towards what
is Best, I knew and honored; that he will let me go my own way
thitherward, with a God-speed from him, is surely a new honor to
us both.
Finally, on behalf of the British world (which is not all
contained in Fraser's shop) I should tell you that various
persons, some of them in a dialect not to be doubted of, have
privately expressed their recognition of this poor Rhapsody,
the best the poor Clothes-Professor could produce in the
circumstances; nay, I have Scottish Presbyterian Elders who
read, and thank. So true is what you say about the aptitude of
all natural hearts for receiving what is from the heart spoken to
them. As face answereth to face! Brother, if thou wish me to
believe, do thou thyself believe first: this is as true as that
of the _flere_ and _dolendum;_ perhaps truer. Wherefore,
putting all things together, cannot I feel that I have washed my
hands of this business in a quite tolerable manner? Let a man be
thankful; and on the whole go along, while he has strength left
to go.
This Boston _Transcendentalist,_ whatever the fate or merit of it
prove to be, is surely an interesting symptom. There must be
things not dreamt of, over in that Transoceanic Parish! I shall
cordially wish well to this thing; and hail it as the sure
forerunner of things better. The Visible becomes the Bestial
when it rests not on the Invisible. Innumerable tumults of
Metaphysic must be struggled through (whole generations perishing
by the way), and at last Transcendentalism evolve itself (if I
construe aright), as the _Euthanasia_ of Metaphysic altogether.
May it be sure, may it be speedy! Thou shalt open thy _eyes,_ O
Son of Adam; thou shalt _look,_ and not forever jargon about
_laws_ of Optics and the making of spectacles! For myself, I
rejoice very much that I seem to be flinging aside innumerable
sets of spectacles (could I but _lay_ them aside,--with
gentleness!) and hope one day actually to see a thing or two.
Man _lives_ by Belief (as it was well written of old); by logic
he can only at best long to live. Oh, I am dreadfully, afflicted
with Logic here, and wish often (in my haste) that I had the
besom of destruction to lay to it for a little!
"Why? and WHEREFORE? God wot, simply THEREFORE! Ask not WHY;
't is SITH thou hast to care for."
Since I wrote last to you, (which seems some three months ago,)
there has a great mischance befallen me: the saddest, I think,
of the kind called Accidents I ever had to front. By dint of
continual endeavor for many weary weeks, I had got the first
volume of that miserable _French Revolution_ rather handsomely
finished: from amid infinite contradictions I felt as if my head
were fairly above water, and I could go on writing my poor Book,
defying the Devil and the World, with a certain degree of
assurance, and even of joy. A Friend borrowed this volume of
Manuscript,--a kind Friend but a careless one,--to write notes on
it, which he was well qualified to do. One evening about two
months ago he came in on us, "distraction (literally) in his
aspect"; the Manuscript, left carelessly out, had been torn up
as waste paper, and all but three or four tatters was clean gone!
I could not complain, or the poor man seemed as if he would have
shot himself: we had to gather ourselves together, and show a
smooth front to it; which happily, though difficult, was not
impossible to do. I began again at the beginning; to such a
wretched paralyzing torpedo of a task as my hand never found to
do: at which I have worn myself these two months to the hue of
saffron, to the humor of incipient desperation; and now, four
days ago, perceiving well that I was like a man swimming in an
element that grew ever rarer, till at last it became vacuum
(think of that!) I with a new effort of self-denial sealed up
all the paper fragments, and said to myself: In this mood thou
makest no way, writest _nothing_ that requires not to be erased
again; lay it by for one complete week! And so it lies, under
lock and key. I have digested the whole misery; I say, if thou
canst _never_ write this thing, why then never do write it:
God's Universe will go along _better_--without it. My Belief
in a special Providence grows yearly stronger, unsubduable,
impregnable: however, you see all the mad increase of entanglement
I have got to strive with, and will pity me in it. Bodily
exhaustion (and "Diana in the shape of bile")* I will at least
try to exclude from the controversy. By God's blessing, perhaps
the Book shall yet be written; but I find it will not do,
by sheer direct force; only by gentler side-methods. I have
much else to write too: I feel often as if with one year of
health and peace I could write something considerable;--the image
of which sails dim and great through my head. Which year of
health and peace, God, if He see meet, will give me yet; or
withhold from me, as shall be for the best.
---------
* This allusion to Diana as an obstruction was a favorite one
with Carlyle. "Sir Hudibras, according to Butler, was about to do
a dreadful homicide,--an all-important catastrophe,--and had
drawn his pistol with that full intent, and would decidedly have
done it, had not, says Butler, 'Diana in the shape of rust'
imperatively intervened. A miracle she has occasionally wrought
upon me in other shapes." So wrote Carlyle in a letter in 1874.
---------
I have dwelt and swum now for about a year in this World-Maelstrom
of London; with much pain, which however has given me many
thoughts, more than a counterbalance for that. Hitherto there
is no outlook, but confusion, darkness, innumerable things
against which a man must "set his face like a flint." Madness
rules the world, as it has generally done: one cannot,
unhappily, without loss, say to it, Rule then; and yet must say
it.--However, in two months more I expect my good Brother from
Italy (a brave fellow, who is a great comfort to me); we are
then for Scotland to gather a little health, to consider
ourselves a little. I must have this Book done before anything
else will prosper with me.
Your American Pamphlets got to hand only a few days ago; worthy
old Rich had them not originally; seemed since to have been
oblivious, out of Town, perhaps unwell. I called one day, and
unearthed them. Those papers you marked I have read. Genuine
endeavor; which may the Heavens forward!--In this poor Country
all is swallowed up in the barren Chaos of Politics: Ministries
tumbled out, Ministries tumbled in; all things (a fearful
substratum of "Ignorance and Hunger" weltering and heaving under
them) apparently in rapid progress towards--the melting-pot.
There will be news from England by and by: many things have
reached their term; Destiny "with lame foot" has overtaken them,
and there will be a reckoning. O blessed are you where,
what jargoning soever there be at Washington, the poor man
(_un_governed can govern himself) shoulders his age, and walks
into the Western Woods, sure of a nourishing Earth and an
overarching Sky! It is verily the Door of Hope to distracted
Europe; which otherwise I should see crumbling down into
blackness of darkness.--That too shall be for good.
I wish I had anything to send you besides these four poor
Pamphlets; but I fear there is nothing going. Our Ex-Chancellor
has been promulgating triticalities (significant as novelties,
when _he_ with his wig and lordhood utters them) against the
Aristocracy; whereat the upper circles are terribly scandalized.
In Literature, except a promised or obtained (but to me still
unknown) volume of Wordsworth, nothing nameworthy doing.--Did I
tell you that I _saw_ Wordsworth this winter? Twice, at
considerable length; with almost no disappointment. He is a
_natural_ man (which means whole immensities here and now);
flows like a natural well yielding mere wholesomeness,--though,
as it would not but seem to me, in _small_ quantity, and
astonishingly _diluted._ Franker utterance of mere garrulities
and even platitudes I never heard from any man; at least never,
whom I could _honor_ for uttering them. I am thankful for
Wordsworth; as in great darkness and perpetual _sky-rockets_ and
_coruscations,_ one were for the smallest clear-burning farthing
candle. Southey also I saw; a far _cleverer_ man in speech, yet
a considerably smaller man. Shovel-hatted; the shovel-hat is
_grown_ to him: one must take him as he is.
The second leaf is done; I must not venture on another. God
bless you, my worthy Friend; you and her who is to be yours! My
Wife bids me send heartiest wishes and regards from her too
across the Sea. Perhaps we shall all meet one another some day,
--if not Here, then Yonder!
Faithfully always,
T. Carlyle