Dear Emerson,--Since I wrote last to you, I think, with the
Wiley-and-Putnam Covenant enclosed,--the Photograph, after some
days of loitering at the Liverpool Custom-house, came safe to
hand. Many thanks to you for this punctuality: this poor
Shadow, it is all you could do at present in that matter!
But it must not rest there, no. This Image is altogether
unsatisfactory, illusive, and even in some measure tragical
to me! First of all, it is a bad Photograph; no _eyes_
discernible, at least one of the eyes not, except in rare
favorable lights then, alas, Time itself and Oblivion must have
been busy. I could not at first, nor can I yet with perfect
decisiveness, bring out any feature completely recalling to
me the old Emerson, that lighted on us from the Blue, at
Craigenputtock, long ago,--_eheu!_ Here is a genial, smiling,
energetic face, full of sunny strength, intelligence, integrity,
good humor; but it lies imprisoned in baleful shades, as of the
valley of Death; seems smiling on me as if in mockery. "Dost
know me, friend? I am dead, thou seest, and distant, and forever
hidden from thee;--I belong already to the Eternities, and thou
recognizest me not!" On the whole, it is the strangest feeling I
have:--and practically the thing will be, that you get us by the
earliest opportunity some _living_ pictorial sketch, chalk-
drawing or the like, from a trustworthy hand; and send _it_
hither to represent you. Out of the two I shall compile for
myself a likeness by degrees: but as for this present, we cannot
put up with it at all; to my Wife and me, and to sundry other
parties far and near that have interest in it, there is no
satisfaction in this. So there will be nothing for you but
compliance, by the first fair chance you have: furthermore, I
bargain that the _Lady_ Emerson have, within reasonable limits, a
royal veto in the business (not absolute, if that threaten
extinction to the enterprise, but absolute within the limits of
possibility); and that she take our case in hand, and graciously
consider what can and shall be done. That will answer, I think.
Of late weeks I have been either idle, or sunk in the
sorrowfulest cobbling of old shoes again; sorrowfully reading
over old Books for the Putnams and Chapmans, namely. It is
really painful, looking in one's own old face; said "old face"
no longer a thing extant now!--Happily I have at last finished
it; the whole Lumber-troop with clothes duly brushed (_French
Revolution_ has even got an Index too) travels to New York in the
Steamer that brings you this. _Quod faustum sit:_--or indeed I
do not much care whether it be faustum or not; I grow to care
about an astonishingly small number of things as times turn with
me! Man, all men seem radically _dumb;_ jabbering mere jargons
and noises from the teeth outwards; the inner meaning of them,--
of them and of me, poor devils,--remaining shut, buried forever.
If almost all Books were burnt (my own laid next the coal), I
sometimes in my spleen feel as if it really would be better with
us! Certainly could one generation of men be forced to live
without rhetoric, babblement, hearsay, in short with the tongue
well cut out of them altogether,--their fortunate successors
would find a most improved world to start upon! For Cant does
lie piled on us, high as the zenith; an Augean Stable with the
poisonous confusion piled so high: which, simply if there once
could be nothing said, would mostly dwindle like summer snow
gradually about its business, and leave us free to use our eyes
again! When I see painful Professors of Greek, poring in their
sumptuous Oxfords over dead _Greek_ for a thousand years or more,
and leaving live _English_ all the while to develop itself under
charge of Pickwicks and Sam Wellers, as if it were nothing and
the other were all things: this, and the like of it everywhere,
fills me with reflections! Good Heavens, will the people not
come out of their wretched Old-Clothes Monmouth-Streets, Hebrew
and other; but lie there dying of the basest pestilence,--dying
and as good as dead! On the whole, I am very weary of most
"Literature":--and indeed, in very sorrowful, abstruse humor
otherwise at present.
For remedy to which I am, in these very hours, preparing for a
sally into the green Country and deep silence; I know not
altogether how or whitherward as yet; only that I must tend
towards Lancashire; towards Scotland at last. My Wife already
waits me in Lancashire; went off, in rather poor case, much
burnt by the hot Town, some ten days ago; and does not yet
report much improvement. I will write to you somewhere in my
wanderings. The address, "Scotsbrig, Ecclefechan, N.B.," if you
chance to write directly or soon after this arrives, will,
likely, be the shortest: at any rate, that, or "Cheyne Row"
either, is always sure enough to find me in a day or two
after trying.
By a kind of accident I have fallen considerably into American
History in these days; and am even looking out for American
Geography to help me. Jared Sparks, Marshall, &c. are hickory
and buckskin; but I do catch a credible trait of human life from
them here and there; Michelet's genial champagne _froth,_--alas,
I could find no fact in it that would stand handling; and so
have broken down in the middle of _La France,_ and run over to
hickory and Jared for shelter! Do you know Beriah Green?* A
body of Albany newspapers represent to me the people quarreling
in my name, in a very vague manner, as to the propriety of being
"governed," and Beriah's is the only rational voice among them.
Farewell, dear Friend. Speedy news of you!
--T. Carlyle
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* The Reverend Beriah Green, President for some years of Oneida
Institute, a manual-labor school at Whitesboro, N.Y. He was an
active reformer, and a leading member of the National Convention
which met in Philadelphia, December 4th, 1833, to form the
American Antislavery Society. He died in 1874, seventy-nine
years old.
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