My Dear Friend,--I have just seen the steamer "British Queen"
enter the harbor from sea, and here lies the "Great Western," to
sail tomorrow. I will not resist hints so broad upon my long
procrastinations. You shall have at least a tardy acknowledgment
that I received in January your letter of December, which I
should have answered at once had it not found me absorbed in
writing foolish lectures which were then in high tide. I had
written you, a little earlier, tidings of the receipt of your
_French Revolution._ Your letter was very welcome, as all
your letters are. I have since seen tidings of the _Essay on
Chartism_ in an English periodical, but have not yet got my
proof-sheets. They are probably still rolling somewhere outside
of this port, for all our packetships have had the longest
passages: only one has come in for many a week. We will be as
patient as we can.
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* This letter appeared in the _Athenaeum,_ for July 22, 1882
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I am here on a visit to my brother, who is a lawyer in this city,
and lives at Staten Island, at a distance of half an hour's sail.
The city has such immense natural advantages and such
capabilities of boundless growth, and such varied and ever
increasing accommodations and appliances for eye and ear, for
memory and wit, for locomotion and lavation, and all manner of
delectation, that I see that the poor fellows that live here do
get some compensation for the sale of their souls. And how they
multiply! They estimate the population today at 350,000, and
forty years ago, it is said, there were but 20,000. But I always
seem to suffer some loss of faith on entering cities. They are
great conspiracies; the parties are all maskers, who have taken
mutual oaths of silence not to betray each other's secret and
each to keep the other's madness in countenance. You can scarce
drive any craft here that does not seem a subornation of the
treason. I believe in the spade and an acre of good ground.
Whoso cuts a straight path to his own bread, by the help of God
in the sun and rain and sprouting of the grain, seems to me an
_universal_ workman. He solves the problem of life, not for one,
but for all men of sound body. I wish I may one day send you
word, or, better, show you the fact, that I live by my hands
without loss of memory or of hope. And yet I am of such a puny
constitution, as far as concerns bodily labor, that perhaps I
never shall. We will see.
Did I tell you that we hope shortly to send you some American
verses and prose of good intent? My vivacious friend Margaret
Fuller is to edit a journal whose first number she promises for
the 1st of July next, which I think will be written with a good
will if written at all. I saw some poetical fragments which
charmed me,--if only the writer consents to give them to
the public.
I believe I have yet little to tell you of myself. I ended in
the middle of February my ten lectures on the Present Age. They
are attended by four hundred and fifty to five hundred people,
and the young people are so attentive; and out of the hall ask
me so many questions, that I assume all the airs of Age and
Sapience. I am very happy in the sympathy and society of from
six to a dozen persons, who teach me to hope and expect
everything from my countrymen. We shall have many Richmonds in
the field presently. I turn my face homeward to-morrow, and this
summer I mean to resume my endeavor to make some presentable book
of Essays out of my mountain of manuscript, were it only for the
sake of clearance. I left my wife, and boy, and girl,--the
softest, gracefulest little maiden alive, creeping like a turtle
with head erect all about the house,--well at home a week ago.
The boy has two deep blue wells for eyes, into which I gladly
peer when I am tired. Ellen, they say, has no such depth of orb,
but I believe I love her better than ever I did the boy. I
brought my mother with me here to spend the summer with William
Emerson and his wife and ruddy boy of four years. All these
persons love and honour you in proportion to their knowledge
and years.
My letter will find you, I suppose, meditating new lectures for
your London disciples. May love and truth inspire them! I can
see easily that my predictions are coming to pass, and that.
having waited until your Fame wag in the floodtide, we shall not
now see you at all on western shores. Our saintly Dr. T---, I am
told, had a letter within a year from Lord Byron's daughter,
_informing_ the good man of the appearance of a certain wonderful
genius in London named Thomas Carlyle, and all his astonishing
workings on her own and her friends' brains, and him the very
monster whom the Doctor had been honoring with his best dread and
consternation these five years. But do come in one of Mr.
Cunard's ships as soon as the booksellers have made you rich. If
they fail to do so, come and read lectures which the Yankees will
pay for. Give my love and hope and perpetual remembrance to your
wife, and my wife's also, who bears her in her kindest heart, and
who resolves every now and then to write to her, that she may
thank her for the beautiful Guido.
You told me to send you no more accounts. But I certainly shall,
as our financial relations are grown more complex, and I wish at
least to relieve myself of this unwonted burden of booksellers'
accounts and long delays, by sharing them. I have had one of
their estimates by me a year, waiting to send. Farewell.
--R.W.E.