My Dear Friend,--Last night, I said I would write to you
forthwith. This morning I received your letter of February 13th,
and _with it_ the _Diamond Necklace,_ the _Mirabeau,_ and the
olive leaf of a proof-sheet. I write out the sum of my debt as
the best acknowledgment I can make. I had already received,
about New-Year's-Day, the preceding letter. It came in the midst
of my washbowl-storm of a course of Lectures on the Philosophy of
History. For all these gifts and pledges,--thanks. Over the
finished _History,_ joy and evergreen laurels. I embrace you
with all my heart. I solace myself with the noble nature God has
given you, and in you to me, and to all. I had read the _Diamond
Necklace_ three weeks ago at the Boston Athenaeum, and the
_Mirabeau_ I had just read when my copy came. But the proof-sheet
was virgin gold. The _Mirabeau_ I forebode is to establish your
kingdom in England. That is genuine thunder, which nobody that
wears ears can affect to mistake for the rumbling of cart-wheels.
I please myself with thinking that my Angelo has blocked
a Colossus which may stand in the public square to defy all
competitors. To be sure, that is its least merit,--that nobody
can do the like,--yet is it a gag to Cerberus. Its better merit
is that it inspires self-trust, by teaching the immense resources
that are in human nature; so I sent it to be read by a brave man
who is poor and decried. The doctrine is indeed true and grand
which you preach as by cannonade, that God made a man, and it
were as well to stand by and see what is in him, and, if he act
ever from his impulses, believe that he has his own checks, and,
however extravagant, will keep his orbit, and return from far; a
faith that draws confirmation from the sempiternal ignorance and
stationariness of society, and the sempiternal growth of all
the individuals.
The _Diamond Necklace_ I read with joy, whilst I read with my own
eyes. When I read with English or New-English eyes, my joy is
marred by the roaring of the opposition. I doubt not the exact
story is there told as it fell out, and told for the first time;
but the eye of your readers, as you will easily guess, will be
bewildered by the multitude of brilliant-colored hieroglyphics
whereby the meaning is conveyed. And for the Gig,--the Gig,--it
is fairly worn out, and such a cloud-compeller must mock that
particular symbol no more.
I thought as I read this piece that your strange genius was the
instant fruit of your London. It is the aroma of Babylon. Such
as the great metropolis, such is this style: so vast, enormous,
related to all the world, and so endless in details. I think you
see as pictures every street, church, parliament-house, barrack,
baker's shop, mutton-stall, forge, wharf, and ship, and whatever
stands, creeps, rolls, or swims thereabouts, and make all your
own. Hence your encyclopediacal allusion to all knowables, and
the virtues and vices of your panoramic pages. Well, it is your
own; and it is English; and every word stands for somewhat;
and it cheers and fortifies me. And what more can a man ask of
his writing fellow-man? Why, all things; inasmuch as a good
mind creates wants at every stroke.
The proof-sheet rhymes well with _Mirabeau,_ and has abated my
fears from your own and your brother's account of the new book.
I greet it well. Auspicious Babe, be born! The first good of
the book is that it makes you free, and as I anxiously hope makes
your body sound. A possible good is that it will cause me to see
your face. But I seemed to read in _Mirabeau_ what you intimate
in your letter, that you will not come westward. Old England is
to find you out, and then the New will have no charm. For me it
will be the worst; for you, not. A man, a few men, cannot be to
you (with your ministering eyes) that which you should travel far
to find. Moreover, I observe that America looks, to those who
come hither, as unromantic and unexciting as the Dutch canals. I
see plainly that our Society, for the most part, is as bigoted to
the _respectabilities_ of religion and education as yours; that
there is no more appetite for a revelation here than elsewhere;
and the educated class are, of course, less fair-minded than
others. Yet, in the moments when my eyes are open, I see that
here are rich materials for the philosopher and poet, and, what
is more to your purpose as an artist, that we have had in these
parts no one philosopher or poet to put a sickle to the prairie
wheat. I have really never believed that you would do us that
crowning grace of coming hither, yet if God should be kinder to
us than our belief, I meant and mean to hold you fast in my
little meadows on the Musketaquid (now Concord) River, and show
you (as in this country we can anywhere) an America in miniature
in the April or November town meeting. Therein should you
conveniently study and master the whole of our hemispherical
politics reduced to a nutshell, and have a new version of
Oxenstiern's little wit; and yet be consoled by seeing that here
the farmers patient as their bulls of head-boards--provided for
them in relation to distant national objects, by kind editors of
newspapers--do yet their will, and a good will, in their own
parish. If a wise man would pass by New York, and be content to
sit still in this village a few months, he should get a thorough
native knowledge which no foreigner has yet acquired. So I leave
you with God, and if any oracle in the great Delphos should say
"Go," why fly to us instantly. Come and spend a year with me,
and see if I cannot respect your retirements.
I must love you for your interest in me and my way of life, and
the more that we only look for good-nature in the creative class.
They pay the tag of grandeur, and, attracted irresistibly to
make, their living is usually weak and hapless. But you are so
companionable--God has made you Man as well as Poet--that I
lament the three thousand miles of mountainous water. Burns
might have added a better verse to his poem, importing that one
might write Iliads or Hamlets, and yet come short of Truth by
infinity, as every written word must; but "the man's the gowd
for a' that." And I heartily thank the Lady for her good-will.
Please God she may be already well. We all grieve to know of her
ill health. People who have seen her never stop with _Mr._
Carlyle, but count him thrice blest in her. My wife believes in
nothing for her but the American voyage. I shall never cease to
expect you both until you come.
My boy is five months old, he is called Waldo,--a lovely wonder
that made the Universe look friendlier to me.
My Wife, one of your best lovers, sends her affectionate regards
to Mrs. Carlyle, and says that she takes exception in your
letters only to that sentence that she would go to Scotland if
you came here. My Wife beseeches her to come and possess her
new-dressed chamber. Do not cease to write whenever you can
spare me an hour. A man named Bronson Alcott is great, and one
of the jewels we have to show you. Good bye.
--R.W. Emerson
The second edition of _Sartor_ is out and sells well. I
learned the other day that twenty-five copies of it were ordered
for England. It was very amiable of you, that word about it
in _Mirabeau._*
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* This refers to Carlyle's introducing, in his paper on
_Mirabeau,_ a citation from _Sartor,_ with the words, "We quote
from a New England Book."
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