Dear Emerson,--This is the 18th of the month, and it is a
frightful length of time, I know not how long, since I wrote to
you,--sinner that I am! Truly we are in no case for paying debts
at present, being all sick more or less, from the hard cold
weather, and in a state of great temporary puddle but, as the
adage says, "one should own debt, and crave days";--therefore
accept a word from me, such as it may be.
I went, as usual, to the North Country in the Autumn; passed
some two extremely disconsolate months,--for all things distress
a wretched thin-skinned creature like me,--in that old region,
which is at once an Earth and a Hades to me, an unutterable
place, now that I have become mostly a _ghost_ there! I saw
Ireland too on my return, saw black potato-fields, a ragged noisy
population, that has long in a headlong baleful manner followed
the _Devil's_ leading, listened namely to blustering shallow-
violent Impostors and Children of Darkness, saying, "Yes, we know
_you,_ you are Children of Light!"--and so has fallen all out at
elbows in body and in soul; and now having lost its _potatoes_
is come as it were to a crisis; all its windy nonsense cracking
suddenly to pieces under its feet: a very pregnant crisis
indeed! A country cast suddenly into the melting-pot,--say into
the Medea's-Caldron; to be boiled into horrid _dissolution;_
whether into new _youth,_ into sound healthy life, or into
eternal death and annihilation, one does not yet know! Daniel
O'Connell stood bodily before me, in his green Mullaghmart Cap;
haranguing his retinue of Dupables: certainly the most _sordid_
Humbug I have ever seen in this world; the emblem to me, he and
his talk and the worship and credence it found, of all the
miseries that can befall a Nation. I also conversed with Young
Ireland in a confidential manner; for Young Ireland, really
meaning what it says, is worth a little talk: the Heroism and
Patriotism of a new generation; welling fresh and new from the
breasts of Nature; and already poisoned by O'Connellism and the
_Old_ Irish atmosphere of bluster, falsity, fatuity, into one
knows not what. Very sad to see. On the whole, no man ought,
for any cause, to speak lies, or have anything to do with _lies;_
but either hold his tongue, or speak a bit of the truth: that is
the meaning of a _tongue,_ people used to know!--Ireland was not
the place to console my sorrows. I returned home very sad out of
Ireland;--and indeed have remained one of the saddest, idlest,
most useless of Adam's sons ever since; and do still remain so.
I care not to _write_ anything more,--so it seems to me at
present. I am in my vacant interlunar cave (I suppose that is
the truth);--and I ought to wrap my mantle round me, and lie, if
dark, _silent_ also. But, alas, I have wasted almost all your
poor sheet first!--
Miss Fuller came duly as you announced; was welcomed for your
sake and her own. A high-soaring, clear, enthusiast soul; in
whose speech there is much of all that one wants to find in
speech. A sharp, subtle intellect too; and less of that
shoreless Asiatic dreaminess than I have sometimes met with in
her writings. We liked one another very well, I think, and the
Springs too were favorites. But, on the whole, it could not be
concealed, least of all from the sharp female intellect, that
this Carlyle was a dreadfully heterodox, not to say a dreadfully
savage fellow, at heart; believing no syllable of all that
Gospel of Fraternity, Benevolence, and _new_ Heaven-on-Earth,
preached forth by all manner of "advanced" creatures, from George
Sand to Elihu Burritt, in these days; that in fact the said
Carlyle not only disbelieved all that, but treated it as
poisonous cant,--_sweetness_ of sugar-of-lead,--a detestable
_phosphorescence_ from the dead body of a Christianity, that
would not admit itself to be dead, and lie buried with all its
unspeakable putrescences, as a venerable dead one ought!--Surely
detestable enough.--To all which Margaret listened with much good
nature; though of course with sad reflections not a few.*--She
is coming back to us, she promises. Her dialect is very
vernacular,--extremely exotic in the London climate. If she do
not gravitate too irresistibly towards that class of New-Era
people (which includes whatsoever we have of prurient, esurient,
morbid, flimsy, and in fact pitiable and unprofitable, and is at
a sad discount among men of sense), she may get into good tracks
of inquiry and connection here, and be very useful to herself and
others. I could not show her Alfred (he has been here since) nor
Landor: but surely if I can I will,--that or a hundred times as
much as that,--when she returns.--They tell me you are about
collecting your Poems. Well, though I do not approve of rhyme at
all, yet it is impossible Emerson in rhyme or prose can put down
any thought that was in his heart but I should wish to get into
mine. So let me have the Book as fast as may be. And do others
like it if you will take circumbendibuses for sound's sake! And
excuse the Critic who seems to you so unmusical; and say, It is
the nature of beast! Adieu, dear Friend: write to me, write
to me.
Yours ever,
T. Carlyle
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* Miss Fullers impressions of Carlyle, much to this effect, may
be found in the "Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli," Boston,
1852, Vol. II. pp. 184-190.
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