My Dear Emerson,--Lest Opportunity again escape me, I will take
her, this time, by the forelock, and write while the matter is
still hot. You have been too long without hearing of me; far
longer, at least, than I meant. Here is a second Letter from
you, besides various intermediate Notes by the hands of Friends,
since that Templand Letter of mine: the Letter arrived
yesterday; my answer shall get under way today.
First under the head of business let it be authenticated that the
Letter enclosed a Draft for L51; a new, unexpected munificence
out of America; which is ever and anon dropping gifts upon me,--
to be received, as indeed they partly are, like Manna dropped out
of the sky; the gift of unseen Divinities! The last money I got
from you changed itself in the usual soft manner from dollars
into sovereigns, and was what they call "all right,"--all except
the little Bill (of Eight Pounds and odds, I think) drawn on
Fraser's Executors by Brown (Little and Brown?); which Bill the
said Executors having refused for I know not what reason, I
returned it to Brown with note of the dishonor done it, and so
the sum still stands on his Books in our favor. Fraser's people
are not now my Booksellers, except in the matter of your _Essays_
and a second edition of _Sartor;_ the other Books I got
transferred to a certain pair of people named "Chapman and Hall,
186 Strand"; which operation, though (I understand) it was
transacted with great and vehement reluctance on the part of the
Fraser people, yet produced no _quarrel_ between them and me, and
they still forward parcels, &c., and are full of civility when I
see them:--so that whether this had any effect or none in their
treatment of Brown and his Bill I never knew; nor indeed, having
as you explained it no concern with Brown's and their affairs,
did I ever happen to inquire. I avoid all Booksellers; see them
rarely, the blockheads; study never to think of them at all.
Book-sales, reputation, profit, &c., &c.; all this at present is
really of the nature of an encumbrance to me; which I study, not
without success, to sweep almost altogether out of my head. One
good is still possible to me in Life, one only: To screw a
little more work out of myself, my miserable, despicable, yet
living, acting, and so far imperial and celestial _self;_ and
this, God knows, is difficulty enough without any foreign one!
You ask after _Cromwell:_ ask not of him; he is like to drive
me mad. There he lies, shining clear enough to me, nay glowing,
or painfully burning; but far down; sunk under two hundred
years of Cant, Oblivion, Unbelief, and Triviality of every kind:
through all which, and to the top of all which, what mortal
industry or energy will avail to raise him! A thousand times I
have rued that my poor activity ever took that direction. The
likelihood still is that I may abandon the task undone. I have
bored through the dreariest mountains of rubbish; I have visited
Naseby Field, and how many other unintelligible fields and
places; I have &c., &c.:--alas, what a talent have I for getting
into the Impossible! Meanwhile my studies still proceed; I even
take a ghoulish kind of pleasure in raking through these old
bone-houses and burial-aisles now; I have the strangest
fellowship with that huge Genius of DEATH (universal president
there), and catch sometimes, through some chink or other,
glimpses into blessed _ulterior_ regions,--blessed, but as yet
altogether _silent._ There is no use of writing of things past,
unless they can be made in fact things present: not yesterday at
all, but simply today and what it holds of fulfilment and of
promises is _ours:_ the dead ought to bury their dead, ought
they not? In short, I am very unfortunate, and deserve your
prayers,--in a quiet kind of way! If you lose tidings of me
altogether, and never hear of me more,--consider simply that I
have gone to my natal element, that the Mud Nymphs have sucked me
in; as they have done several in their time!
Sterling was here about the time your Letters to him came: your
American reprint of his pieces was naturally gratifying him
much.* He seems getting yearly more restless; necessitated to
find an outlet for himself, unable as yet to do it well. I think
he will now write Review articles for a while; which craft is
really, perhaps, the one he is fittest for hitherto. I love
Sterling: a radiant creature; but very restless;--incapable
either of rest or of effectual motion: aurora borealis and sheet
lightning; which if it could but _concentrate_ itself, as I
[say] always--!--We had much talk; but, on the whole, even
his talk is not much better for me than silence at present.
_Me miserum!_
--------
* "The Poetical Works of John Sterling," Philadelphia, 1842.
--------
Directly about the time of Sterling's departure came Alcott, some
two weeks after I had heard of his arrival on these shores. He
has been twice here, at considerable length; the second time,
all night. He is a genial, innocent, simple-hearted man, of much
natural intelligence and goodness, with an air of rusticity,
veracity, and dignity withal, which in many ways appeals to one.
The good Alcott: with his long, lean face and figure, with his
gray worn temples and mild radiant eyes; all bent on saving the
world by a return to acorns and the golden age; he comes before
one like a kind of venerable Don Quixote, whom nobody can even
laugh at without loving!....
My poor Wife is still weak, overshadowed with sorrow: her loss
is great, the loss almost as of the widow's mite; for except her
good Mother she had almost no kindred left; and as for friends--
they are not rife in this world.--God be thanked withal they are
not entirely non-extant! Have I not a Friend, and Friends,
though they too are in sorrow? Good be with you all.
--T. Carlyle.
By far the valuablest thing that Alcott brought me was the
Newspaper report of Emerson's last Lectures in New York. Really
a right wholesome thing; radiant, fresh as the _morning;_ a
thing _worth_ reading; which accordingly I clipped from the
Newspaper, and have in a state of assiduous circulation to the
comfort of many.--I cannot bid you quit the _Dial,_ though it,
too, alas, is Antinomian somewhat! _Perge, perge,_ nevertheless.
--And so now an end.
--T. C.