My Dear Friend,--It is ten days now--ten cold days--that your
last letter has kept my heart warm, and I have not been able to
write before. I have just finished--Wednesday evening--a course
of lectures which I ambitiously baptized "Human Culture," and
read once a week to the curious in Boston. I could write nothing
else the while, for weariness of the week's stated scribbling.
Now I am free as a wood-bird, and can take up the pen without
fretting or fear. Your letter should, and nearly did, make me
jump for joy,--fine things about our poor speech at Cambridge,--
fine things from CARLYLE. Scarcely could we maintain a decorous
gravity on the occasion. And then news of a friend, who is also
Carlyle's friend. What has life better to offer than such
tidings? You may suppose I went directly and got me _Blackwood,_
and read the prose and the verse of John Sterling, and saw that
my man had a head and a heart, and spent an hour or two very
happily in spelling his biography out of his own hand;--a species
of palmistry in which I have a perfect reliance. I found many
incidents grave and gay and beautiful, and have determined to
love him very much. In this romancing of the gentle affections
we are children evermore. We forget the age of life, the
barriers so thin yet so adamantean of space and circumstance;
and I have had the rarest poems self-singing in my head of brave
men that work and conspire in a perfect intelligence across seas
and conditions--and meet at last. I heartily pray that the Sea
and its vineyards may cheer with warm medicinal breath a Voyager
so kind and noble.
For the _Oration,_ I am so elated with your goodwill that I begin
to fear your heart has betrayed your head this time, and so the
praise is not good on Parnassus but only in friendship. I sent
it diffidently (I did send it through bookselling Munroe) to you,
and was not a little surprised by your generous commendations.
Yet here it interested young men a good deal for an academical
performance, and an edition of five hundred was disposed of in a
month. A new edition is now printing, and I will send you some
copies presently to give to anybody who you think will read.
I have a little budget of news myself. I hope you had my letter
--sent by young Sumner--saying that we meant to print the _French
Revolution_ here for the Author's benefit. It was published on
the 25th of December. It is published at my risk, the
booksellers agreeing to let me have at cost all the copies I can
get subscriptions for. All the rest they are to sell and to have
twenty percent on the retail price for their commission. The
selling price of the book is $2.50; the cost of a copy, $1.26;
the bookseller's commission, 50 cts.; so that T.C. only gains 74
cts. on each copy they sell. But we have two hundred
subscribers, and on each copy they buy you have $1.26, except in
cases where the distant residence of subscribers makes a cost of
freight. You ought to have three or four quarters of a dollar
more on each copy, but we put the lowest price on the book in
terror of the Philistines, and to secure its accessibleness to
the economical Public. We printed one thousand copies: of
these, five hundred are already sold, in six weeks; and Brown
the bookseller talks, as I think, much too modestly, of getting
rid of the whole edition in one year. I say six months. The
printing, &c. is to be paid and a settlement made in six months
from the day of publication; and I hope the settlement will be
the final one. And I confide in sending you seven hundred
dollars at least, as a certificate that you have so many readers
in the West. Yet, I own, I shake a little at the thought of the
bookseller's account. Whenever I have seen that species of
document, it was strange how the hopefulest ideal dwindled away
to a dwarfish actual. But you may be assured I shall on this
occasion summon to the bargain all the Yankee in my constitution,
and multiply and divide like a lion.
The book has the best success with the best. Young men say it is
the only history they have ever read. The middle-aged and the
old shake their heads, and cannot make anything of it. In short,
it has the success of a book which, as people have not fashioned,
has to fashion the people. It will take some time to win all,
but it wins and will win. I sent a notice of it to the
_Christian Examiner,_ but the editor sent it all back to me
except the first and last paragraphs; those he printed. And the
editor of the _North American_ declined giving a place to a paper
from another friend of yours. But we shall see. I am glad you
are to print your _Miscellanies;_ but--forgive our Transatlantic
effrontery--we are beforehand of you, and we are already
selecting a couple of volumes from the same, and shall print them
on the same plan as the _History,_ and hope so to turn a penny
for our friend again. I surely should not do this thing without
consulting you as to the selection but that I had no choice. If
I waited, the bookseller would have done it himself, and carried
off the profit. I sent you (to Kennet) a copy of the _French
Revolution._ I regret exceedingly the printer's blunder about
the numbering the Books in the volumes, but he had warranted me
in a literal, punctual reprint of the copy without its leaving
his office, and I trusted him. I am told there are many errors.
I am going to see for myself. I have filled my paper, and not
yet said a word of how many things. You tell me how ill was Mrs.
C., and you do not tell me that she is well again. But I see
plainly that I must take speedily another sheet. I love
you always.
--R.W. Emerson