My Dear Emerson,--Our correspondence has fallen into a raveled
state; which would doubtless clear itself could I afford to wait
for your next Letter, probably tumbling over the Atlantic brine
about this very moment: but I cannot afford to wait; I must
write straightway. Your answer to this will bring matters round
again. I have had two irregular Notes of your writing, or
perhaps three; two dated March, one by Mr. Bancroft's Parcel,--
bringing Twelve _Orations_ withal; then some ten days later,
just in this very time, another Note by Mr. Sumner, whom I have
not yet succeeded in seeing, though I have attempted it, and hope
soon to do it. The Letter he forwarded me from Paris was
acknowledged already, I think. And now if the Atlantic will but
float me in safe that other promised Letter!
I got your American _French Revolution_ a good while ago. It
seems to me a very pretty Book indeed, wonderfully so for the
money; neither does it seem what we can call _incorrectly_
printed so far as I have seen; compared with the last _Sartor_
it is correctness itself. Many thanks to you, my Friend, and
much good may it do us all! Should there be any more reprinting,
I will request you to rectify at least the three following
errors, copied out of the English text indeed; nay, mark them in
your own New-English copy, whether there be reprinting or not:
Vol. I. p. 81, last paragraph, _for_ September _read_ August;
Vol. II. p. 344, first line, _for_ book of prayer _read_ look of
prayer; p. 357, _for_ blank _read_ black (2d paragraph, "all
black "). And so _basta._ And let us be well content about this
F.R. on both sides of the water, yours as well as mine.
"Too many cooks"! the Proverb says: it is pity if this new
apparition of a Mr. Loring should spoil the broth. But I
calculate you will adjust it well and smoothly between you, some
way or other. How you shall adjust it, or have adjusted it, is
what I am practically anxious now to learn. For you are to
understand that our English Edition has come to depend partly on
yours. After long higgling with the foolish Fraser, I have
quitted him, quite quietly, and given "Saunders and Ottley,
Conduit Street," the privilege of printing a small edition of
_Teufelsdrockh_ (Five Hundred copies), with a prospect of the
"Miscellaneous Writings" soon following. Saunders and Ottley are
at least more reputable persons, they are useful to me also in
the business of Lecturing. _Teufelsdrockh_ is at Press, to be
out very soon; I will send you a correct copy, the only
one in America I fancy. The enterprise here too is on the
"half-profits" plan, which I compute generally to mean equal
partition of the oyster-shells and a net result of zero. But the
thing will be economically useful to me otherwise; as a
publication of the "Miscellaneous" also would be; which latter,
however, I confess myself extremely unwilling to undertake the
trouble of for _nothing._ To me they are grown or fast growing
_obsolete,_ these Miscellanies, for most part; if money lie not
in them, what does lie for me? Now it strikes me you will infallibly
edit these things, at least as well as I, and are doing it at any
rate; your printing too would seem to be cheaper than ours: I
said to Saunders and Ottley, Why not have two hundred or three
hundred of this American Edition struck off with "London:
Saunders and Ottley, Conduit Street," on the title-page, and sent
over hither in sheets at what price they have cost my friends
yonder? Saunders of course threw cold water on this project, but
was obliged to admit that there would be some profit in it, and
that for me it would be far easier. The grand profit for me is
that people would understand better what I mean, and come better
about me if I lectured again, which seems the only way of getting
any wages at all for me here at present. Pray meditate my
project, if it be not already too late, hear what your Booksellers
say about it, and understand that I will not in any case set to
printing till I hear from you in answer to this.
How my sheet is filling with dull talk about mere economics! I
must still add that the _Lecturing_ I talked of, last time, is
verily over now; and well over. The superfine people listened
to the rough utterance with patience, with favor, increasing to
the last. I sent you a Newspaper once, to indicate that it was
in progress. I know not yet what the money result is; but I
suppose it will enable us to exist here thriftily another year;
not without hope of at worst doing the like again when the time
comes. It is a great novelty in my lot; felt as a very
considerable blessing; and really it has arrived, if it have
arrived, in _due_ time, for I had begun to get quite impatient of
the other method. Poverty and Youth may do; Poverty and Age go
badly together.--For the rest, I feel fretted to fiddle-strings;
my head and heart all heated, sick,--ah me! The question as ever
is: Rest. But then where? My Brother invites us to come to
Rome for the winter; my poor sick Wife might perhaps profit by
it; as for me, Natty Leatherstocking's lodge in the Western
Wood, I think, were welcomer still. I have a great mind, too, to
run off and see my Mother, by the new railways. What we shall
do, whether not stay quietly here, must remain uncertain for a
week or two. Write you always hither, till you hear otherwise.
The _Orations_ were right welcome; my _Madeira_ one, returned
thence with Sterling, was circulating over the West of England.
Sterling and Harriet stretched out the right hand with wreathed
smiles. I have read, a second or third time. Robert Southey has
got a copy, for his own behoof and that of _Lake_land: if he
keep his word as to _me,_ he may do as much for you, or more.
Copies are at Cambridge; among the Oxonians too; I have with
stingy discretion distributed all my copies but two. Old Rogers,
a grim old Dilettante, full of sardonic sense, was heard saying,
"It is German Poetry given out in American Prose." Friend
Emerson ought to be content;--and has now above all things, as I
said, to _be in no haste._ Slow fire does make sweet malt: how
true, how true! Also his next work ought to be a _concrete_
thing; not _theory_ any longer, but _deed._ Let him "live it,"
as he says; that is the way to come to "painting of it."
Geometry and the art of Design being once well over, take the
brush, and _andar con Dios!_
Mrs. Child has sent me a Book, _Philothea,_ and a most
magnanimous epistle. I have answered as I could. The Book is
beautiful, but of a _hectic_ beauty; to me not pleasant, even
fatal looking. Such things grow not in the ground, on Mother
Earth's honest bosom, but in hothouses,--Sentimental-Calvinist
fire traceable underneath! Bancroft also is of the hothouse
partly: I have a Note to send him by Sumner; do you thank him
meanwhile, and say nothing about _hothouses!_ But, on the whole,
men ought in New England, too to "swallow their formulas";*
there is no freedom till then: yet hitherto I find only one man
there who seems fairly on the way towards that, or arrived at
that. Good speed to _him._ I had to send my Wife's love: she
is not dangerously ill; but always feeble, and has to _struggle_
to keep erect; the summer always improves her, and this summer
too. Adieu, dear Friend; may Good always be with you and yours.
--T. Carlyle
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* This was the saying of the old Marquis de Mirabeau concerning
his son, _Il a hume toutes les formules,_ and is used as a text
by Carlyle in his article on Mirabeau. "Of inexpressible
advantage is it that a man have 'an eye instead of a pair of
spectacles merely'; that, seeing through the formulas of things
and even 'making away' with many a formula, he see into the thing
itself, and so know it and be master of it!"
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