Dear Emerson,--Glad indeed I am to hear of you on any terms, on
any subject. For the last eighteen months I have pretty much
ceased all human correspondence,--writing no Note that was not in
a sense wrung from me; my one society the _Nightmares_ (Prussian
and other) all that while:--but often and often the image of you,
and the thoughts of old days between us, has risen sad upon me;
and I have waited to get loose from the Nightmares to appeal to
you again,--to edacious Time and you. Most likely in a couple of
weeks you would have heard from me again at any rate.--Your
friends shall be welcome to me; no friend of yours can be other
at any time. Nor in fact did anybody ever sent by you prove
other than pleasant in this house, so pray no apologies on that
small score.--If only these Cincinnati Patricians can find me
here when they come? For I am off to the deepest solitudes
discoverable (native Scotland probably) so soon as I can shake
the final tag rags of Printer people off me;--"surely within
three weeks now!" I say to myself. But I shall be back, too, if
all prosper; and your Longworths will be back; and Madam will
stand to her point, I hope.
That book on Friedrich of Prussia--first half of it, two swoln
unlovely volumes, which treat mainly of his Father, &c., and
leave him at his accession--is just getting out of my hands. One
packet more of Proofs, and I have done with it,--thanks to all
the gods! No job approaching in ugliness to it was ever cut out
for me; nor had I any motive to go on, except the sad negative
one, "Shall we be beaten in our old days, then?"--But it has
thoroughly humbled me,--trampled me down into the _mud,_ there to
wrestle with the accumulated stupidities of Mankind, German,
English, French, and other, for _all_ have borne a hand in these
sad centuries;--and here I emerge at last, not _killed,_ but
almost as good. Seek not to look at the Book,--nay in fact it is
"not to be _published_ till September" (so the man of affairs
settles with me yesterday, "owing to the political &c., to the
season," &c.); my only stipulation was that in ten days I should
be utterly out of it,--not to hear of it again till the Day of
Judgment, and if possible not even then! In fact it is a bad
book, poor, misshapen, feeble, _nearly_ worthless (thanks to
_past_ generations and to me); and my one excuse is, I could not
make it better, all the world having played such a game with it.
Well, well!--How true is that you say about the skater; and the
rider too depending on his vehicles, on his roads, on his et
ceteras! Dismally true have I a thousand times felt it, in these
late operations; never in any so much. And in short the
business of writing has altogether become contemptible to me;
and I am become confirmed in the notion that nobody ought to
write,--unless sheer Fate force him to do it;--and then he ought
(if _not_ of the mountebank genus) to beg to be shot rather.
That is deliberately my opinion,--or far nearer it than you
will believe.
Once or twice I caught some tone of you in some American
Magazine; utterances highly noteworthy to me; in a sense, the
only thing that is _speech_ at all among my fellow-creatures in
this time. For the years that remain, I suppose we must continue
to grumble out some occasional utterance of that kind: what can
we do, at this late stage? But in the _real_ "Model Republic,"
it would have been different with two good boys of this kind!--
Though shattered and trampled down to an immense degree, I do not
think any bones are broken yet,--though age truly is here, and
you may engage your berth in the steamer whenever you like. In a
few months I expect to be sensibly improved; but my poor Wife
suffers sadly the last two winters; and I am much distressed by
that item of our affairs. Adieu, dear Emerson: I have lost many
things; let me not lose you till I must in some way!
Yours ever,
T. Carlyle
P.S. If you read the Newspapers (which I carefully abstain from
doing) they will babble to you about Dickens's "Separation from
Wife," &c., &c.; fact of Separation I believe is true; but all
the rest is mere lies and nonsense. No crime or misdemeanor
specifiable on either side; _unhappy_ together, these good many
years past, and they at length end it.--Sulzer said, "Men are by
nature _good._" "Ach, mein lieber Sulzer, Er kennt nicht diese
verdammte Race," ejaculated Fritz, at hearing such an axiom.