My Dear Friend,--I hope you do not measure my love by the
tardiness of my messages. I have few pleasures like that of
receiving your kind and eloquent letters. I should be most
impatient of the long interval between one and another, but that
they savor always of Eternity, and promise me a friendship and
friendly inspiration not reckoned or ended by days or years.
Your last letter, dated in April, found me a mourner, as did your
first. I have lost out of this world my brother Charles,* of
whom I have spoken to you,--the friend and companion of many
years, the inmate of my house, a man of a beautiful genius, born
to speak well, and whose conversation for these last years has
treated every grave question of humanity, and has been my daily
bread. I have put so much dependence on his gifts that we made
but one man together; for I needed never to do what he could do
by noble nature much better than I. He was to have been married
in this month, and at the time of his sickness and sudden
death I was adding apartments to my house for his permanent
accommodation. I wish that you could have known him. At
twenty-seven years the best life is only preparation. He built
his foundation so large that it needed the full age of man to make
evident the plan and proportions of his character. He postponed
always a particular to a final and absolute success, so that his
life was a silent appeal to the great and generous. But some
time I shall see you and speak of him.
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* Charles Chauncy Emerson,--died May 9, 1836,--whose memory still
survives fresh and beautiful in the hearts of the few who remain
who knew him in life. A few papers of his published in the
_Dial_ show to others what he was and what he might have become.
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We want but two or three friends, but these we cannot do without,
and they serve us in every thought we think. I find now I must
hold faster the remaining jewels of my social belt. And of you I
think much and anxiously since Mrs. Channing, amidst her delight
at what she calls the happiest hour of her absence, in her
acquaintance with you and your family, expresses much uneasiness
respecting your untempered devotion to study. I am the more
disturbed by her fears, because your letters avow a self-devotion
to your work, and I know there is no gentle dulness in your
temperament to counteract the mischief. I fear Nature has not
inlaid fat earth enough into your texture to keep the ethereal
blade from whetting it through. I write to implore you to be
careful of your health. You are the property of all whom you
rejoice in art and soul, and you must not deal with your body as
your own. O my friend, if you would come here and let me nurse
you and pasture you in my nook of this long continent, I will
thank God and you therefor morning and evening, and doubt not to
give you, in a quarter of a year, sound eyes, round cheeks, and
joyful spirits. My wife has been lately an invalid, but she
loves you thoroughly, and hardly stores a barrel of flour or lays
her new carpet without some hopeful reference to Mrs. Carlyle.
And in good earnest, why cannot you come here forthwith, and
deliver in lectures to the solid men of Boston the _History of
the French Revolution_ before it is published,--or at least
whilst it is publishing in England, and before it is published
here. There is no doubt of the perfect success of such a course
now that the _five hundred copies of the Sartor are all sold,_
and read with great delight by many persons.
This I suggest if you too must feel the vulgar necessity of
_doing;_ but if you will be governed by your friend, you shall
come into the meadows, and rest and talk with your friend in my
country pasture. If you will come here like a noble brother, you
shall have your solid day undisturbed, except at the hours of
eating and walking; and as I will abstain from you myself,
so I will defend you from others. I entreat Mrs. Carlyle,
with my affectionate remembrances, to second me in this
proposition, and not suffer the wayward man to think that in
these space-destroying days a prayer from Boston, Massachusetts,
is any less worthy of serious and prompt granting than one
from Edinburgh or Oxford.
I send you a little book I have just now published, as
an entering wedge, I hope, for something more worthy and
significant.* This is only a naming of topics on which I would
gladly speak and gladlier hear. I am mortified to learn the ill
fate of my former packet containing the _Sartor_ and Dr.
Channing's work. My mercantile friend is vexed, for he says
accurate orders were given to send it as a packet, not as a
letter. I shall endeavor before despatching this sheet to obtain
another copy of our American edition.
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* This was _Nature,_ the first clear manifesto of Emerson's
genius.
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I wish I could come to you instead of sending this sheet of
paper. I think I should persuade you to get into a ship this
Autumn, quit all study for a time, and follow the setting sun. I
have many, many things to learn of you. How melancholy to think
how much we need confession!...* Yet the great truths are always
at hand, and all the tragedy of individual life is separated how
thinly from that universal nature which obliterates all ranks,
all evils, all individualities. How little of you is in your
_will!_ Above your will how intimately are you related to all of
us! In God we meet. Therein we _are,_ thence we descend upon
Time and these infinitesimal facts of Christendom, and Trade, and
England Old and New. Wake the soul now drunk with a sleep, and
we overleap at a bound the obstructions, the griefs, the
mistakes, of years, and the air we breathe is so vital that the
Past serves to contribute nothing to the result.
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** Some words appear to be lost here.
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I read Goethe, and now lately the posthumous volumes, with a
great interest. A friend of mine who studies his life with care
would gladly know what records there are of his first ten years
after his settlement at Weimar, and what Books there are in
Germany about him beside what Mrs. Austin has collected and
Heine. Can you tell me?
Write me of your health, or else come.
Yours ever,
R.W. Emerson.
P.S.--I learn that an acquaintance is going to England, so send
the packet by him.