The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol. I · Thomas Carlyle
LXIV. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, London, 21 May, 1841 My Dear Emerson,--About a week ago I wrote to you, after too long a silence. Since that there has another Letter come, with a Draft of L100 in it, and other comfortable items not pecuniary; a line in acknowledgment of the money is again very clearly among my duties. Yesterday, on my first expedition up to Town, I gave the Paper to Fraser; who is to present the result to me in the shape of cash tomorrow. Thanks, and again thanks. This L100, I think, nearly clears off for me the outlay of the second _French Revolution;_ an ill-printed, ill-conditioned publication, the prime cost of which, once all lying saved from the Atlantic whirlpools and hard and fast in my own hand, it was not perhaps well done to venture thitherward again. To the new trouble of my friends withal! We will now let the rest of the game play itself out as it can; and my friends, and my one friend, must not take more trouble than their own kind feelings towards me will reward.
The Books, the _Dial_ No. 4, and Appleton's pirated _Lectures,_ are still expected from Green. In a day or two he will send them: if not, we will jog him into wakefulness, and remind him of the _Parcels Delivery Company,_ which carries luggage of all kinds, like mere letters, many times a day, over all corners of our Babylon. In this, in the universal British _Penny Post,_ and a thing or two of that sort, men begin to take advantage of their crowded ever-whirling condition in these days, which brings such enormous disadvantages along with it _un_sought for.-- Bibliopolist Appleton does not seem to be a "Hero,"--except after his own fashion. He is one of those of whom the Scotch say, "Thou wouldst do little for God if the Devil were dead!" The Devil is unhappily dead, in that international bibliopolic province, and little hope of his reviving for some time; whereupon this is what Squire Appleton does. My respects to him even in the Bedouin department, I like to see a complete man, a clear decisive Bedouin.
For the rest, there is one man who ought to be apprised that I can now stand robbery a little better; that I am no longer so very poor as I once was. In Fraser himself there do now lie vestiges of money! I feel it a great relief to see, for a year or two at least, the despicable bugbear of Beggary driven out of my sight; for _which_ small mercy, at any rate, be the Heavens thanked. Fraser himself, for these two editions, One thousand copies each, of the Lectures and _Sartor,_ pays me down on the nail L150; consider that miracle! Of the other Books which he is selling on a joint-stock basis, the poor man likewise promises something, though as yet, ever since New-Year's-day, I cannot learn what, owing to a grievous sickness of his,--for which otherwise I cannot but be sorry, poor Fraser within the Cockney limits being really a worthy, accurate, and rather friendly creature. So you see me here provided with bread and water for a season,--it is but for a season one needs either water or bread, --and rejoice with me accordingly.
It is the one useful, nay, I will say the one _innoxious,_ result of all this trumpeting, reviewing, and dinner-invitationing; from which I feel it indispensable to withdraw myself more and more resolutely, and altogether count it as a thing not there. Solitude is what I long and pray for. In the babble of men my own soul goes all to babble: like soil you were forever _screening,_ tumbling over with shovels and riddles; in _which_ soil no fruit can grow! My trust in Heaven is, I shall yet get away "to some cottage by the sea-shore"; far enough from all the mad and mad making things that dance round me here, which I shall then look on only as a theatrical phantasmagory, with an eye only to the _meaning_ that lies hidden in it. You, friend Emerson, are to be a Farmer, you say, and dig Earth for your living? Well; I envy you that as much as any other of your blessednesses.
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