My Dear Friend,--It is late at night and I have postponed writing
not knowing but that my parcel would be ready to go,--and now a
public meeting and the speech of a rarely honest and eloquent man
have left me but a span of time for the morning's messenger.
The photograph came safely, to my thorough content. I have what
I have wished. This head is to me out of comparison more
satisfying than any picture. I confirm my recollections and I
make new observations; it is life to life. Thanks to the Sun.
This artist remembers what every other forgets to report, and
what I wish to know, the true sculpture of the features, the
angles, the special organism, the rooting of the hair, the form
and the placing of the head. I am accustomed to expect of the
English a securing of the essentials in their work, and the sun
does that, and you have done it in this portrait, which gives me
much to think and feel.* I was instantly stirred to an emulation
of your love and punctuality, and, last Monday, which was my
forty-third birthday, I went to a new Daguerreotypist, who took
much pains to make his picture right. I brought home three
shadows not agreeable to my own eyes. The machine has a bad
effect on me. My wife protests against the imprints as
slanderous. My friends say they look ten years older, and, as I
think, with the air of a decayed gentleman touched with his first
paralysis. However I got yesterday a trusty vote or two for
sending one of them to you, on the ground that I am not likely to
get a better. But it now seems probable that it will not get
cased and into the hands of Harnden in time for the steamer
tomorrow. It will then go by that of the 16th.
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* From Emerson's Diary, May 23, 1846:--"In Carlyle's head
(photograph), which came last night, how much appears! How
unattainable this truth to any painter! Here have I the
inevitable traits which the sun forgets not to copy, and which I
thirst to see, but which no painter remembers to give me. Here
have I the exact sculpture, the form of the head, the rooting of
the hair, thickness of the lips, the man that God made. And all
the Laurences and D'Orsays now serve me well as illustration. I
have the form and organism, and can better spare the expression
and color. What would I not give for a head of Shakespeare by
the same artist? of Plato? of Demosthenes? Here I have the
jutting brow, and the excellent shape of the head. And here the
organism of the eye full of England, the valid eye, in which I
see the strong executive talent which has made his thought
available to the nations, whilst others as intellectual as he are
pale and powerless. The photograph comes dated 25 April, 1846,
and he writes, 'I am fifty years old."'
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I am heartily glad that you are in direct communication with
these really energetic booksellers, Wiley and Putnam. I
understood from Wiley's letter to me, weeks ago, that their
ambition was not less than to have a monopoly of your books. I
answered, it is very desirable for us too; saving always the
rights of Mr. Hart in Philadelphia.--I told him you had no
interest in Munroe's _Sartor,_ which from the first was his own
adventure, and Little and Brown had never reprinted _Past and
Present_ or _Chartism._ The _French Revolution, Past and
Present, Chartism,_ and the _Sartor,_ I see no reason why they
should not have. Munroe and L. & B. have no real claims, and I
will speak to them. But there is one good particular in Putnam's
proffer to you, which Wiley has not established in his (first and
last) agreement with me, namely, that you shall have an interest
in what is already sold of their first edition of _Cromwell._ By
all means close with Putnam of the good mind, exempting only
Hart's interest. I have no recent correspondence with Wiley and
Putnam. And I greatly prefer that they should deal directly
with you. Yet it were best to leave an American reference open
for audit and umpirage to the stanch E.P. Clark of the New
England Bank.
Ever yours,
R.W. Emerson