My Dear Friend,--My hope is that you may live until this creeping
bookseller's balance shall incline at last to your side. My rude
ciphering, based on the last account of this kind which I sent
you in April from J. Munroe & Co., had convinced me that I was to
be in debt to you at this time L40 or more; so that I actually
bought L40 the day before the "Caledonia" sailed to send you;
but on giving my new accounts to J.M. & Co., to bring the
statement up to this time, they astonished me with the above
written result. I professed absolute incredulity, but Nichols*
labored to show me the rise and progress of all my blunders.
Please to send the account with the last to your Fraser, and have
it sifted. That I paid, a few weeks since, $481.34, and again,
$28.12, for printing and paper respectively, is true.--C.C.
Little & Co. acknowledge the sale of 82 more copies of the London
Edition _French Revolution_ since the 187 copies of July 1; but
these they do not get paid for until January 1, and we it seems
must wait as long. We will see if the New-Year's-day will bring
us more pence.
---------
* Partner in the firm of J. Munroe & Co.
---------
I received by the "Acadia" a letter from you, which I acknowledge
now, lest I should not answer it more at large on another sheet,
which I think to do. If you do not despair of American
booksellers send the new proofs of the Lectures when they are in
type to me by John Green, 121 Newgate Street (I believe), to the
care of J. Munroe & Co. He sends a box to Munroe by every
steamer. I sent a _Dial,_ No. 2, for you, to Green. Kennet, I
hear, has failed. I hope he did not give his creditors my
_Miscellanies,_ which you told me were there. I shall be glad if
you will draw Cromwell, though if I should choose it would be
Carlyle. You will not feel that you have done your work until
those devouring eyes and that portraying hand have achieved
England in the Nineteenth Century. Perhaps you cannot do it
until you have made your American visit. I assure you the view
of Britain is excellent from New England.
We are all a little wild here with numberless projects of social
reform. Not a reading man but has a draft of a new Community in
his waistcoat pocket. I am gently mad myself, and am resolved to
live cleanly. George Ripley is talking up a colony of
agriculturists and scholars, with whom he threatens to take the
field and the book.* One man renounces the use of animal food;
and another of coin; and another of domestic hired service; and
another of the State; and on the whole we have a commendable
share of reason and hope.
-----------
* Preliminary to the experiment of Brook Farm, in 1841.
-----------
I am ashamed to tell you, though it seems most due, anything of
my own studies, they seem so desultory, idle, and unproductive.
I still hope to print a book of essays this winter, but it cannot
be very large. I write myself into letters, the last few months,
to three or four dear and beautiful persons, my country-men and
women here. I lit my candle at both ends, but will now be colder
and scholastic. I mean to write no lectures this winter. I hear
gladly of your wife's better health; and a letter of Jane
Tuckerman's, which I saw, gave the happiest tidings of her. We
do not despair of seeing her yet in Concord, since it is now but
twelve and a half days to you.
I had a letter from Sterling, which I will answer. In all love
and good hope for you and yours, your affectionate
--R.W. Emerson