My Dear Emerson,--You had promise of a letter to be despatched
you about New-year's-day; which promise I was myself in a
condition to fulfil at the time set, but delayed it, owing to
delays of printers and certain "Articles" that were to go with
it. Six weeks have not yet entirely brought up these laggard
animals: however, I will delay no longer for them. Nay, it
seems the Articles, were they never so ready, cannot go with the
Letter; but must fare round by Liverpool or Portsmouth, in a
separate conveyance. We will leave them to the bounty of Time.
Your little Book and the Copy of _Teufelsdrockh_ came safely;
soon after I had written. The _Teufelsdrockh_ I instantaneously
despatched to Hamburg, to a Scottish merchant there, to whom
there is an allusion in the Book; who used to be my _Speditor_
(one of the politest extant though totally a stranger) in my
missions and packages to and from Weimar.* The other, former
Copy, more specially yours, had already been, as I think I told
you, delivered out of durance; and got itself placed in the
bookshelf, as _the_ Teufelsdrockh. George Ripley tells me you
are printing another edition; much good may it do you! There is
now also a kind of whisper and whimper rising _here_ about
printing one. I said to myself once, when Bookseller Fraser
shrieked so loud at a certain message you sent him: "Perhaps
after all they will print this poor rag of a thing into a Book,
after I am dead it may be,--if so seem good to them. _Either_
way!" As it is, we leave the poor orphan to its destiny, all the
more cheerfully. Ripley says farther he has sent me a critique
of it by a better hand than the _North American:_ I expect it,
but have not got it Yet.** The _North American_ seems to say
that he too sent me one. It never came to hand, nor any hint of
it,--except I think once before through you. It was not at all
an unfriendly review; but had an opacity, of matter-of-fact in
it that filled one with amazement. Since the Irish Bishop who
said there were some things in _Gulliver_ on which he for one
would keep his belief _suspended,_ nothing equal to it, on that
side, has come athwart me. However, he _has_ made out that
Teufelsdrockh is, in all human probability, a fictitious
character; which is always something, for an Inquirer into
Truth.--Will you, finally, thank Friend Ripley in my name, till I
have time to write to him and thank him.
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* The allusion referred to is the following: "By the kindness of
a Scottish Hamburg merchant, whose name, known to the whole
mercantile world, he must not mention; but whose honorable
courtesy, now and before spontaneously manifested to him, a mere
literary stranger, he cannot soon forget,--the bulky Weissnichtwo
packet, with all its Custom-house seals, foreign hieroglyphs, and
miscellaneous tokens of travel, arrived here in perfect safety,
and free of cost."--_Sartor Resartus,_ Book I. ch. xi.
** An article by the Rev. N.L. Frothingham in the _Christian
Examiner._
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Your little azure-colored Nature gave me true satisfaction. I
read it, and then lent it about to all my acquaintance that had a
sense for such things; from whom a similar verdict always came
back. You say it is the first chapter of something greater. I
call it rather the Foundation and Ground-plan on which you may
build whatsoever of great and true has been given you to build.
It is the true Apocalypse, this when the "Open Secret" becomes
revealed to a man. I rejoice much in the glad serenity of soul
with which you look out on this wondrous Dwelling-place of yours
and mine--with an ear for the _Ewigen Melodien,_ which pipe in
the winds round us, and utter themselves forth in all sounds and
sights and things: not to be written down by gamut-machinery;
but which all right writing is a kind of attempt to write down.
You will see what the years will bring you. It is not one of
your smallest qualities in my mind, that you can wait so quietly
and let the years do their best. He that cannot keep himself
quiet is of a morbid nature; and the thing he yields us will be
like him in that, whatever else it be.
Miss Martineau (for I have seen her since I wrote) tells me you
"are the only man in America" who has quietly set himself down on
a competency to follow his own path, and do the work his own will
prescribes for him. Pity that you were the only one! But be
one, nevertheless; be the first, and there will come a second
and a third. It is a poor country where all men are _sold_ to
Mammon, and can make nothing but Railways and Bursts of
Parliamentary Eloquence! And yet your New England here too has
the upper hand of our Old England, of our Old Europe: we too are
sold to Mammon, soul, body, and spirit; but (mark that, I pray
you, with double pity) Mammon will not _pay_ us,--we, are "Two
Million three hundred thousand in Ireland that have not potatoes
enough"! I declare, in History I find nothing more tragical. I
find also that it will alter; that for me as one it has altered.
Me Mammon will _pay_ or not as he finds convenient; buy me he
will not.--In fine, I say, sit still at Concord, with such spirit
as you are of; under the blessed skyey influences, with an open
sense, with the great Book of Existence open round you: we shall
see whether you too get not something blessed to read us from it.
The Paper is declining fast, and all is yet speculation. Along
with these two "Articles" (to be sent by Liverpool; there are
two of them, _Diamond Necklace_ and _Mirabeau_), you will very
probably get some stray Proofsheet--of the unutterable _French
Revolution!_ It is actually at Press; two Printers working at
separate Volumes of it,--though still too slow. In not many
weeks, my hands will be washed of it! You, I hope, can have
little conception of the feeling with which I wrote the last word
of it, one night in early January, when the clock was striking
ten, and our frugal Scotch supper coming in! I did not cry; nor
I did not pray but could have done both. No such _spell_ shall
get itself fixed on me for some while to come! A beggarly
Distortion; that will please no mortal, not even myself; of
which I know not whether the fire were not after all the due
place! And yet I ought not to say so: there is a great blessing
in a man's doing what he utterly can, in the case he is in.
Perhaps great quantities of dross are burnt out of me by this
calcination I have had; perhaps I shall be far quieter and
healthier of mind and body than I have ever been since boyhood.
The world, though no man had ever less empire in it, seems to me
a thing lying _under_ my feet; a mean imbroglio, which I never
more shall fear, or court, or disturb myself with: welcome and
welcome to go wholly _its own way;_ I wholly clear for going
mine. Through the summer months I am, somewhere or other, to
rest myself, in the deepest possible sleep. The residue is vague
as the wind,--unheeded as the wind. Some way it will turn out
that a poor, well-meaning Son of Adam has bread growing for him
too, better or worse: _any_ way,--or even _no_ way, if that be
it,--I shall be content. There is a scheme here among Friends
for my Lecturing in a thing they call Royal Institution; but it
will not do there, I think. The instant two or three are
gathered together under any terms, who want to learn something I
can teach them,--then we will, most readily, as Burns says,
"loose our tinkler jaw"; but not I think till then; were the
Institution even Imperial.
America has faded considerably into the background of late:
indeed, to say truth, whenever I think of myself in America, it
is as in the Backwoods, with a rifle in my hand, God's sky over
my head, and this accursed Lazar-house of quacks and blockheads,
'and sin and misery (now near a head) lying all behind me
forevermore. A thing, you see, which is and can be at bottom but
a daydream! To rest through the summer: that is my only fixed
wisdom; a resolution taken; only the place where uncertain.--
What a pity this poor sheet is done! I had innumerable things to
tell you about people whom I have seen, about books,--Miss
Harriet Martineau, Mrs. Butler, Southey, Influenza, Parliament,
Literature and the Life of Man,--the whole of which must lie over
till next time. Write to me; do not forget me. My Wife, who is
sitting by me, in very poor health (this long while), sends
"kindest remembrances," "compliments" she expressly does not
send. Good be with you always, my dear Friend!
--T. Carlyle
We send our felicitation to the Mother and little Boy; which
latter you had better tell us the name of.