Dear Carlyle,--I have just got your friendliest letter of May 18,
with its varied news and new invitations. Really you are a
dangerous correspondent with your solid and urgent ways of
speaking. No affairs and no studies of mine, I fear, will be
able to make any head against these bribes. Well, I will adorn
the brow of the coming months with this fine hope; then if the
rich God at last refuses the jewel, no doubt he will give
something better--to both of us. But thinking on this project
lately, I see one thing plainly, that I must not come to London
as a lecturer. If the plan proceed, I will come and see you,--
thankful to Heaven for that mercy, should such a romance looking
reality come to pass,--I will come and see you and Jane Carlyle,
and will hear what you have to say. You shall even show me, if
you will, such other men and women as will suffer themselves to
be seen and heard, asking for nothing again. Then I will depart
in peace, as I came.
At Mr. Ireland's "Institutes," I will read lectures; and
possibly in London too, if, when there, you looking with your
clear eyes shall say that it is desired by persons who ought to
be gratified. But I wish such lecturing to be a mere
contingency, and nowise a settled purpose. I had rather stay at
home, and forego the happiness of seeing you, and the excitement
of England, than to have the smallest pains taken to collect an
audience for me. So now we will leave this egg in the desert for
the ostrich Time to hatch it or not.
It seems you are not tired of pale Americans, or will not own it.
You have sent our Country-Senator* where he wanted to go, and to
the best hospitalities as we learn today directly from him. I
cannot avoid sending you another of a different stamp. Henry
Hedge is a recluse but Catholic scholar in our remote Bangor, who
reads German and smokes in his solitary study through nearly
eight months of snow in the year, and deals out, every Sunday,
his witty apothegms to the lumber-merchants and township-owners
of Penobscot River, who have actually grown intelligent
interpreters of his riddles by long hearkening after them. They
have shown themselves very loving and generous lately, in making
a quite munificent provision for his traveling. Hedge has a true
and mellow heart,... and I hope you will like him.
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* The Hon. E. Rockwood Hoar.
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I have seen lately a Texan, ardent and vigorous, who assured me
that Carlyle's Writings were read with eagerness on the banks of
the Colorado. There was more to tell, but it is too late.
Ever yours,
R.W. Emerson