Dear Emerson,--It was a morning not like any other which lay
round it, a morning to be marked white, that one, about a week
ago, when your Letter came to me; a word from you yet again,
after so long a silence! On the whole, I perceive you will not
utterly give up answering me, but will rouse yourself now and
then to a word of human brotherhood on my behalf, so long as we
both continue in this Planet. And I declare, the Heavens will
reward you; and as to me, I will be thankful for what I get, and
submissive to delays and to all things: all things are good
compared with flat want in that respect. It remains true, and
will remain, what I have often told you, that properly there is
no voice in this world which is completely human to me, which
fully understands all I say and with clear sympathy and sense
answers to me, but your voice only. That is a curious fact, and
not quite a joyful one to me. The solitude, the silence of my
poor soul, in the centre of this roaring whirlpool called
Universe, is great, always, and sometimes strange and almost
awful. I have two million talking bipeds without feathers, close
at my elbow, too; and of these it is often hard for me to say
whether the so-called "wise" or the almost professedly foolish
are the more inexpressibly unproductive to me. "Silence,
Silence!" I often say to myself: "Be silent, thou poor fool;
and prepare for that Divine Silence which is now not far!"--On
the whole, write to me whenever you can; and be not weary of
well-doing.
I have had sad things to do and see since I wrote to you: the
loss of my dear and good old Mother, which could not be spared me
forever, has come more like a kind of total bankruptcy upon me
than might have been expected, considering her age and mine. Oh
those last two days, that last Christmas Sunday! She was a true,
pious, brave, and noble Mother to me; and it is now all over;
and the Past has all become pale and sad and sacred;--and the
all-devouring potency of Death, what we call Death, has never
looked so strange, cruel and unspeakable to me. Nay not _cruel_
altogether, let me say: huge, profound, _unspeakable,_ that is
the word.--You too have lost your good old Mother, who stayed
with you like mine, clear to the last: alas, alas, it is the
oldest Law of Nature; and it comes on every one of us with a
strange originality, as if it had never happened before.--
Forward, however; and no more lamenting; no more than cannot be
helped. "Paradise is under the shadow of our swords," said the
Emir: "Forward!"--
I make no way in my Prussian History; I bore and dig toilsomely
through the unutterablest mass of dead rubbish, which is not even
English, which is German and inhuman; and hardly from ten tons
of learned inanity is there to be riddled one old rusty nail.
For I have been back as far as Pytheas who, first of speaking
creatures, beheld the Teutonic Countries; and have questioned
all manner of extinct German shadows,--who answer nothing but
mumblings. And on the whole Fritz himself is not sufficiently
divine to me, far from it; and I am getting old, and heavy of
heart;--and in short, it oftenest seems to me I shall never write
any word about that matter; and have again fairly got into the
element of the IMPOSSIBLE. Very well: could I help it? I can
at least be honestly silent; and "bear my indigence with
dignity," as you once said. The insuperable difficulty of
_Frederic_ is, that he, the genuine little ray of Veritable and
Eternal that was in him, lay imbedded in the putrid Eighteenth
Century, such an Ocean of sordid nothingness, shams, and
scandalous hypocrisies, as never weltered in the world before;
and that in everything I can find yet written or recorded of him,
he still, to all intents and purposes, most tragically _lies_
THERE;--and ought not to lie there, if any use is ever to be had
of him, or at least of _writing_ about him; for as to him, he
with his work is safe enough to us, far elsewhere.--Pity me, pity
me; I know not on what hand to turn; and have such a Chaos
filling all my Earth and Heaven as was seldom seen in British or
Foreign Literature! Add to which, the Sacred Entity, Literature
itself, is not growing more venerable to me, but less and ever
less: good Heavens, I feel often as if there were no madder set
of bladders tumbling on the billows of the general Bedlam at this
moment than even the Literary ones,--dear at twopence a gross, I
should say, unless one could _annihilate_ them by purchase on
those easy terms! But do not tell this in Gath; let it be a sad
family secret.
I smile, with a kind of grave joy, over your American
speculations, and wild dashing portraitures of things as they are
with you; and recognize well, under your light caricature, the
outlines of a right true picture, which has often made me sad and
grim in late years. Yes, I consider that the "Battle of Freedom
and Slavery" is very far from ended; and that the fate of poor
"Freedom" in the quarrel is very questionable indeed! Alas,
there is but one _Slavery,_ as I wrote somewhere; and that, I
think, is mounting towards a height, which may bring strokes to
bear upon it again! Meanwhile, patience; for us there is
nothing else appointed.--Tell me, however, what has become of
your Book on England? We shall really be obliged to you for
that. A piece of it went through all the Newspapers, some years
ago; which was really unique for its quaint kindly insight,
humor, and other qualities; like an etching by Hollar or Durer,
amid the continents of vile smearing which are called "pictures" at
present. Come on, Come on; give us the Book, and don't loiter!--
Miss Bacon has fled away to _St. Alban's_ (the _Great_ Bacon's
place) five or six months ago; and is there working out her
Shakespeare Problem, from the depths of her own mind, disdainful
apparently, or desperate and careless, of all _evidence_ from
Museums or Archives; I have not had an answer from her since
before Christmas, and have now lost her address. Poor Lady: I
sometimes silently wish she were safe home again; for truly
there can no madder enterprise than her present one be well
figured. Adieu, my Friend; I must stop short here. Write soon,
if you have any charity. Good be with you ever.
--T. Carlyle