My Dear Friend,--I seize the occasion of having this morsel of
paper for twenty-five pounds sterling from the booksellers to
send you, (and which fail not to find enclosed, as clerks say,)
to inquire whether you still exist in Chelsea, London, and what
is the reason that my generous correspondent has become dumb for
weary months. I must go far back to resume my thread. I think
in April last I received your Manuscript, &c. of the Book, which
I forthwith proceeded to print, after some perplexing debate with
the booksellers, as I fully informed you in my letter of April or
beginning of May. Since that time I have had no line or word
from you. I must think that my letter did not reach you, or that
you have written what has never come to me. I assure myself that
no harm has befallen you, not only because you do not live in a
corner, and what chances in your dwelling will come at least
to my ears, but because I have read with great pleasure the
story of Dr. Francia,* which gave the best report of your health
and vivacity.
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* Carlyle's article on Dr. Francia in the _Foreign Quarterly
Review,_ No. 62. Reprinted in his _Miscellanies._
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I wrote you in April or May an account of the new state of things
which the cheap press has wrought in our book market, and
specially what difficulties it put in the way of our edition of
_Past and Present._ For a few weeks I believed that the letters
I had written to the principal New York and Philadelphia
booksellers, and the Preface, had succeeded in repelling the
pirates. But in the fourth or fifth week appeared a mean edition
in New York, published by one Collyer (an unknown person and
supposed to be a mask of some other bookseller), sold for twelve
and one half cents, and of this wretched copy several thousands
were sold, whilst our seventy-five cents edition went off slower.
There was no remedy, and we must be content that there was no
expense from our edition, which before September had paid all its
cost, and since that time has been earning a little, I believe.
I am not fairly entitled to an account of the book from the
publishers until the 1st of January.... I have never yet done
what I have thought this other last week seriously to do, namely,
to charge the good and faithful E.P. Clark, a man of accounts as
he is a cashier in a bank, with the total auditing and analyzing
of these accounts of yours. My hesitation has grown from the
imperfect materials which I have to offer him to make up so long
a story. But he is a good man, and, do you know it? a Carlylese
of that intensity that I have often heard he has collected a sort
of album of several volumes, containing illustrations of every
kind, historical, critical, &c., to the _Sartor._ I must go to
Boston and challenge him. Once when I asked him, he seemed
willing to assume it. No more of accounts tonight.
I send you by this ship a volume of translations from Dante, by
Doctor Parsons of Boston, a practising dentist and the son of a
dentist. It is his gift to you. Lately went Henry James to
you with a letter from me. He is a fine companion from his
intelligence, valor, and worth, and is and has been a very
beneficent person as I learn. He carried a volume of poems from
my friend and nearest neighbor, W. Ellery Channing, whereof give
me, I pray you, the best opinion you can. I am determined he
shall be a poet, and you must find him such.* I have too many
things to tell you to begin at the end of this sheet, which after
all this waiting I have been compelled to scribble in a corner,
with company waiting for me. Send me instant word of yourself
if you love me, and of those whom you love, and so God keep you
and yours.
--R. Waldo Emerson
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* In the second number of the _Dial,_ in October, 1840, Emerson
had published, under the title of "New Poetry," an article warmly
commending Mr. Channing's then unpublished poems.
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