Dear Emerson;--Welcome was your Letter to me, after the long
interval; as welcome as any human Letter could now well be.
These many months and years I have been sunk in what disastrous
vortexes of foreign wreck you know, till I am fallen sick and
almost broken-hearted, and my life (if it were not this one
interest, of doing a problem which I see to be impossible, and of
smallish value if found doable!) is burdensome and without
meaning to me. It is so rarely I hear the voice of a magnanimous
Brother Man addressing any word to me: ninety-nine hundredths of
the Letters I get are impertinent clutchings of me by the button,
concerning which the one business is, How to get handsomely loose
again; What to say that shall soonest _end_ the intrusion,--if
saying Nothing will not be the best way. Which last I often in
my sorrow have recourse to, at what ever known risks. "We must
pay our tribute to Time": ah yes, yes;--and yet I will believe,
so long as we continue together in this sphere of things there
will always be a _potential_ Letter coming out of New England for
me, and the world not fallen irretrievably dumb.--The best is, I
am about going into Scotland, in two days, into deep solitude,
for a couple of months beside the Solway sea: I absolutely need
to have the dust blown out of me, and my mad nerves rested (there
is nothing else quite gone wrong): this unblest _Life of
Frederick_ is now actually to get along into the Printer's hand;
--a good Book being impossible upon it, there shall a bad one be
done, and one's poor existence rid of it:--for which great object
two months of voluntary torpor are considered the fair
preliminary. In another year's time, (if the Fates allow me to
live,) I expect to have got a great deal of rubbish swept into
chaos again. Unlucky it should ever have been dug up, much
of it!--
Your Mrs. --- should have had our best welcome, for the sake of
him who sent her, had there been nothing more: but the Lady
never showed face at all; nor could I for a long time get any
trace--and then it was a most faint and distant one as if by
_double_ reflex--of her whereabout: too distant, too difficult
for me, who do not make a call once in the six months lately. I
did mean to go in quest (never had an _address_); but had not
yet rallied for the Enterprise, when Mrs. --- herself wrote that
she had been unwell, that she was going directly for Paris, and
would see us on her return. So be it:--pray only I may not be
absent next! I have not seen or distinctly heard of Miss Bacon
for a year and half past: I often ask myself, what has become of
that poor Lady, and wish I knew of her being safe among her
friends again. I have even lost the address (which at any rate
was probably not a lasting one); perhaps I could find it by the
eye,--but it is five miles away; and my _non-plus-ultra_ for
years past is not above half that distance. Heigho!
My time is all up and more; and Chaos come again is lying round
me, in the shape of "packing," in a thousand shapes!--Browning is
coming tonight to take leave. Do you know Browning at all? He
is abstruse, but worth knowing.--And what of the _Discourse on
England_ by a certain man? Shame! We always hear of it again as
"out"; and it continues obstinately _in._ Adieu, my friend.
Ever yours,
T. Carlyle