My Dear Carlyle,--Above you have a bill of exchange for one
hundred pounds sterling drawn by T.W. Ward & Co. on the Messrs.
Barings, payable at sight. Let us hope it is but the first of a
long series. I have vainly endeavored to get your account to be
rendered by Munroe & Co. to the date of the 1st of April. It was
conditionally promised for the day of the last steamer (15
April). It is not ready for that which sails tomorrow and
carries this. Little & Co. acknowledge a debt of $607.90 due to
you 1st of April, and just now paid me; and regret that their
sales have been so slow, which they attribute to the dulness of
all trade among us for the last two years. You shall have the
particulars of their account from Munroe's statement of the
account between you and me. Munroe & Co. have a long apology for
not rendering their own account; their book keeper left them at
a critical moment, they were without one six weeks, &c.;--but
they add, if we could give you it, to what use, since we should
be utterly unable to make you any payment at this time? To what
use, surely? I am too much used to similar statements from
our booksellers and others in the last few years to be much
surprised; nor do I doubt their readiness or their power to pay
all their debts at last; but a great deal of mutual concession
and accommodation has been the familiar resort of our tradesmen
now for a good while, a vice which they are all fain to lay at
the doors of the Government, whilst it belongs in the first
instance, no doubt, to the rashness of the individual traders.
These men I believe to be prudent, honest, and solvent, and that
we shall get all our debt from them at last. They are not
reckoned as rich as Little and Brown. By the next steamer they
think they can promise to have their account ready. I am sorry
to find that we have been driven from the market by the New
York Pirates in the affair of the Six Lectures.* The book was
received from London and for sale in New York and Boston before
my last sheets arrived by the "Columbia." Appleton in New York
braved us and printed it, and furthermore told us that he intends
to print in future everything of yours that shall be printed in
London,--complaining in rude terms of the monopoly your
publishers here exercise, and the small commissions they allow to
the trade, &c., &c. Munroe showed me the letter, which certainly
was not an amiable one. In this distress, then, I beg you, when
you have more histories and lectures to print, to have the
manuscript copied by a scrivener before you print at home, and
send it out to me, and I will keep all Appletons and Corsairs
whatsoever out of the lists. Not only these men made a book (of
which, by the by, Munroe sends you by this steamer a copy, which
you will find at John Green's, Newgate Street), but the New York
newspapers print the book in chapters, and you circulate for six
cents per newspaper at the corners of all streets in New York and
Boston; gaining in fame what you lose in coin.--The book is a
good book, and goes to make men brave and happy. I bear glad
witness to its cheering and arming quality.
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* "Heroes and Hero-Worship."
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I have put into Munroe's box which goes to Green a _Dial_ No. 4
also, which I could heartily wish were a better book. But
Margaret Fuller, who is a noble woman, is not in sufficiently
vigorous health to do this editing work as she would and should,
and there is no other who can and will.
Yours affectionately,
R.W. Emerson