My Dear Friend,--I will spare you my apologies for not writing,
they are so many. You have been very generous, I very promising
and dilatory. I desired to send you an Account of the sales of
the _History,_ thinking that the details might be more
intelligible to you than to me, and might give you some insight
into literary and social, as well as bibliopolical relations.
But many details of this account will not yet settle themselves
into sure facts, but do dance and mystify me as one green in
ledgers. Bookseller says nine hundred and ninety-one copies came
from Binder, nine remaining imperfect, and so not bound. But in
all my reckonings of the particulars of distribution I make
either more or less than nine hundred and ninety-one copies. And
some of my accounts are with private individuals at a distance,
and they have their uncertainties and misrememberings also. But
the facts will soon show themselves, and I count confidently on a
small balance against the world to your credit.
----------
* This letter appeared in the _Athenaeum,_ July 22, 1882.
----------
The _Miscellanies_ go forward too slowly, at about the rate of
seventy-two pages a week, as I understand. Of the _Fraser_
articles and of some others we have but a single copy, (such are
the tough limits of some English immortalities and editorial
renowns,) but we expect the end of the printing in six weeks.
The first two volumes, with title-pages, are gone to the binder--
two hundred and sixty copies--with strait directions; and I
presume will go to sea very soon. We shall send the last two
volumes by a later ship. You will pay nothing for the books
we send except freight. We shall deduct the cost of the
books from the credit side of your account here. We print
of the second series twelve hundred and fifty copies, with the
intention of printing a second edition of the first series of
five hundred, if we see fit hereafter to supply the place of the
emigrating portion of the first. You express some surprise at
the cheapness of our work. The publishers, I believe, generally
get more profits. They grumbled a little at the face of the
account on the 1st of January; so in the new contract for the
new volumes I have allowed them nine cents more on each copy sold
by them. So that you should receive ninety-one cents on a copy
instead of one dollar. When the two hundred and fifty copies of
our first two volumes are gone to you, I think they will have but
about one hundred copies more to sell.
Your books are read. I hear, I think, more gratitude expressed
for the _Miscellanies_ than for the _History._ Young men at all
our colleges study them in closets, and the Copernican is
eradicating the Ptolemaic lore. I have frequent and cordial
testimonies to the good working of the leaven, and continual
inquiry whether the man will come hither. _Speriamo._
I was a fool to tell you once you must not come if I did tell you
so. I knew better at the time, and did steadily believe, as far
as I was concerned, that no polemical mud, however much was
thrown, could by any possibility stick to me; for I was purely
an observer; had not the smallest personal or _partial_
interest; and merely spoke to the question as a historian; and
I knew whoever could see me must see that. But, at the moment,
the little pamphlet made much stir and excitement in the
newspapers; and the whole thousand copies were bought up. The
ill wind has blown over. I advertised, as usual, my winter
course of Lectures, and it prospered very well. Ten Lectures:
I. Doctrine of the Soul; II. Home; III. The School; IV. Love;
V. Genius; VI. The Protest; VII. Tragedy; VIII. Comedy; IX.
Duty; X. Demonology. I designed to add two more, but my lungs
played me false with unseasonable inflammation, so I discoursed
no more on "Human Life." Now I am well again.--But, as I said,
as I could not hurt myself, it was foolish to flatter myself that
I could mix your cause with mine and hurt you. Nothing is more
certain than that you shall have all our ears, whenever you wish
for them, and free from that partial position which I deprecated.
Yet I cannot regret my letter, which procured me so affectionate
and magnanimous a reply.
Thanks, too, for your friendliest invitation. But I have a new
reason why I should not come to England,--a blessed babe, named
Ellen, almost three weeks old,--a little, fair, soft lump of
contented humanity, incessantly sleeping, and with an air of
incurious security that says she has come to stay, has come to be
loved, which has nothing mean, and quite piques me.
Yet how gladly should I be near you for a time. The months and
years make me more desirous of an unlimited conversation with
you; and one day, I think, the God will grant it, after whatever
way is best. I am lately taken with _The Onyx Ring,_ which
seemed to me full of knowledge, and good, bold, true drawing.
Very saucy, was it not? in John Sterling to paint Collins; and
what intrepid iconoclasm in this new Alcibiades to break in among
your Lares and disfigure your sacred Hermes himself in
Walsingham.* To me, a profane man, it was good sport to see the
Olympic lover of Frederica, Lili, and so forth, lampooned. And
by Alcibiades too, over whom the wrath of Pericles must pause and
brood ere it falls. I delight in this Sterling, but now that I
know him better I shall no longer expect him to write to me. I
wish I could talk to you on the grave questions, graver than all
literature, which the trifles of each day open. Our doing seems
to be a gaudy screen or popinjay to divert the eye from our
nondoing. I wish, too, you could know my friends here. A man
named Bronson Alcott is a majestic soul, with whom conversation
is possible. He is capable of truth, and gives me the same glad
astonishment that he should exist which the world does.
--------
* Collins and Walsingham, two characters in _The Onyx Ring,_ are
partly drawn, not very felicitously, from Carlyle and Goethe. In
his _Life of Sterling,_ Carlyle says of the story: "A tale still
worth reading, in which, among the imaginary characters, various
friends of Sterling's are shadowed forth not always in the truest
manner." It is reprinted in the second volume of Sterling's
Essays and Tales, edited by Julius Hare.
---------
As I hear not yet of your reception of the bill of exchange,
which went by the "Royal William" in January, I enclose the
duplicate. And now all success to the Lectures of April or May!
A new Kingdom with new extravagances of power and splendor I
know. Unless you can keep your own secret better in _Rahel,_
&c., you must not give it me to keep. The London _Sartor_
arrived in my hands March 5th, dated the 15th of November, so
long is the way from Kennet to Little & Co. The book is welcome,
and awakens a sort of nepotism in me,--my brother's child.
--R.W. Emerson
I rejoice in the good accounts you give me of your household; in
your wife's health; in your brother's position. My wife wishes
to be affectionately remembered to you and yours. And the lady
must continue to love her _old_ Transatlantic friend.