My Dear Emerson,--We are very glad to see your handwriting again,
and learn that you are well, and doing well. Our news of you
hitherto, from the dim Lecture-element, had been satisfactory
indeed, but vague. Go on and prosper.
I do not much think Miss Fuller would do any great good with the
Pepolis,--even if they are still in Rome, and not at Bologna as
our advices here seemed to indicate. Madam Pepoli is an elderly
Scotch lady, of excellent commonplace vernacular qualities,
hardly of more; the Count, some years younger, and a much airier
man, is on all sides a beautiful _Dilettante,_--little suitable,
I fear, to the serious mind that can recognize him as such!
However, if the people are still in Rome, Miss Fuller can easily
try: Bid Miss Fuller present my Wife's compliments, or mine, or
even _yours_ (for they know all our domesticities here, and are
very intimate, especially Madam with _My_ dame); upon which the
acquaintance is at once made, and can be continued if useful.
This morning Richard Milnes writes to me for your address; which
I have sent. He is just returned out of Spain; home swiftly to
"vote for the Jew Bill"; is doing hospitalities at Woburn Abbey;
and I suppose will be in Yorkshire (home, near Pontefract) before
long. See him if you have opportunity: a man very easy to _see_
and get into flowing talk with; a man of much sharpness of
faculty, well tempered by several inches of "Christian _fat_" he
has upon his ribs for covering. One of the idlest, cheeriest,
most gifted of fat little men.
Tennyson has been here for three weeks; dining daily till he is
near dead;--setting out a Poem withal. He came in to us on
Sunday evening last, and on the preceding Sunday: a truly
interesting Son of Earth, and Son of Heaven,--who has almost lost
his way, among the will-o'-wisps, I doubt; and may flounder ever
deeper, over neck and nose at last, among the quagmires that
abound! I like him well; but can do next to nothing for him.
Milnes, with general co-operation, got him a Pension; and he has
bread and tobacco: but that is a poor outfit for such a soul.
He wants a _task;_ and, alas, that of spinning rhymes, and
naming it "Art" and "high Art," in a Time like ours, will never
furnish him.
For myself I have been entirely _idle,_--I dare not even say, too
abstrusely _occupied;_ for I have merely been _looking_ at the
Chaos even, not by any means working in it. I have not even read
a Book,--that I liked. All "Literature" has grown inexpressibly
unsatisfactory to me. Better be silent than talk farther in
this mood.
We are going off, on Saturday come a week, into Hampshire, to
certain Friends you have heard me speak of. Our address, till
the beginning of February, is "Hon. W.B. Baring, Alverstoke,
Gosport, Hants." My Wife sends you many kind regards; remember
us across the Ocean too;--and be well and busy till we meet.
Yours ever,
T. Carlyle
Last night there arrived No. 1 of the _Massachusetts Review:_
beautiful paper and print; and very promising otherwise. In the
Introduction I well recognized the hand; in the first Article
too,--not in any of the others. _Faustum sit._