The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol. I · Thomas Carlyle
XIV. Carlyle to Emerson
5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, London, 13 February, 1837 My Dear Emerson,--You had promise of a letter to be despatched you about New-year's-day; which promise I was myself in a condition to fulfil at the time set, but delayed it, owing to delays of printers and certain "Articles" that were to go with it. Six weeks have not yet entirely brought up these laggard animals: however, I will delay no longer for them. Nay, it seems the Articles, were they never so ready, cannot go with the Letter; but must fare round by Liverpool or Portsmouth, in a separate conveyance. We will leave them to the bounty of Time. Your little Book and the Copy of _Teufelsdrockh_ came safely; soon after I had written. The _Teufelsdrockh_ I instantaneously despatched to Hamburg, to a Scottish merchant there, to whom there is an allusion in the Book; who used to be my _Speditor_ (one of the politest extant though totally a stranger) in my missions and packages to and from Weimar.* The other, former Copy, more specially yours, had already been, as I think I told you, delivered out of durance; and got itself placed in the bookshelf, as _the_ Teufelsdrockh. George Ripley tells me you are printing another edition; much good may it do you! There is now also a kind of whisper and whimper rising _here_ about printing one. I said to myself once, when Bookseller Fraser shrieked so loud at a certain message you sent him: "Perhaps after all they will print this poor rag of a thing into a Book, after I am dead it may be,--if so seem good to them. _Either_ way!" As it is, we leave the poor orphan to its destiny, all the more cheerfully. Ripley says farther he has sent me a critique of it by a better hand than the _North American:_ I expect it, but have not got it Yet.** The _North American_ seems to say that he too sent me one. It never came to hand, nor any hint of it,--except I think once before through you. It was not at all an unfriendly review; but had an opacity, of matter-of-fact in it that filled one with amazement. Since the Irish Bishop who said there were some things in _Gulliver_ on which he for one would keep his belief _suspended,_ nothing equal to it, on that side, has come athwart me. However, he _has_ made out that Teufelsdrockh is, in all human probability, a fictitious character; which is always something, for an Inquirer into Truth.--Will you, finally, thank Friend Ripley in my name, till I have time to write to him and thank him.
Miss Martineau (for I have seen her since I wrote) tells me you "are the only man in America" who has quietly set himself down on a competency to follow his own path, and do the work his own will prescribes for him. Pity that you were the only one! But be one, nevertheless; be the first, and there will come a second and a third. It is a poor country where all men are _sold_ to Mammon, and can make nothing but Railways and Bursts of Parliamentary Eloquence! And yet your New England here too has the upper hand of our Old England, of our Old Europe: we too are sold to Mammon, soul, body, and spirit; but (mark that, I pray you, with double pity) Mammon will not _pay_ us,--we, are "Two Million three hundred thousand in Ireland that have not potatoes enough"! I declare, in History I find nothing more tragical. I find also that it will alter; that for me as one it has altered. Me Mammon will _pay_ or not as he finds convenient; buy me he will not.--In fine, I say, sit still at Concord, with such spirit as you are of; under the blessed skyey influences, with an open sense, with the great Book of Existence open round you: we shall see whether you too get not something blessed to read us from it.
The Paper is declining fast, and all is yet speculation. Along with these two "Articles" (to be sent by Liverpool; there are two of them, _Diamond Necklace_ and _Mirabeau_), you will very probably get some stray Proofsheet--of the unutterable _French Revolution!_ It is actually at Press; two Printers working at separate Volumes of it,--though still too slow. In not many weeks, my hands will be washed of it! You, I hope, can have little conception of the feeling with which I wrote the last word of it, one night in early January, when the clock was striking ten, and our frugal Scotch supper coming in! I did not cry; nor I did not pray but could have done both. No such _spell_ shall get itself fixed on me for some while to come! A beggarly Distortion; that will please no mortal, not even myself; of which I know not whether the fire were not after all the due place! And yet I ought not to say so: there is a great blessing in a man's doing what he utterly can, in the case he is in.
Perhaps great quantities of dross are burnt out of me by this calcination I have had; perhaps I shall be far quieter and healthier of mind and body than I have ever been since boyhood. The world, though no man had ever less empire in it, seems to me a thing lying _under_ my feet; a mean imbroglio, which I never more shall fear, or court, or disturb myself with: welcome and welcome to go wholly _its own way;_ I wholly clear for going mine. Through the summer months I am, somewhere or other, to rest myself, in the deepest possible sleep. The residue is vague as the wind,--unheeded as the wind. Some way it will turn out that a poor, well-meaning Son of Adam has bread growing for him too, better or worse: _any_ way,--or even _no_ way, if that be it,--I shall be content. There is a scheme here among Friends for my Lecturing in a thing they call Royal Institution; but it will not do there, I think. The instant two or three are gathered together under any terms, who want to learn something I can teach them,--then we will, most readily, as Burns says, "loose our tinkler jaw"; but not I think till then; were the Institution even Imperial.
America has faded considerably into the background of late: indeed, to say truth, whenever I think of myself in America, it is as in the Backwoods, with a rifle in my hand, God's sky over my head, and this accursed Lazar-house of quacks and blockheads, 'and sin and misery (now near a head) lying all behind me forevermore. A thing, you see, which is and can be at bottom but a daydream! To rest through the summer: that is my only fixed wisdom; a resolution taken; only the place where uncertain.-- What a pity this poor sheet is done! I had innumerable things to tell you about people whom I have seen, about books,--Miss Harriet Martineau, Mrs. Butler, Southey, Influenza, Parliament, Literature and the Life of Man,--the whole of which must lie over till next time. Write to me; do not forget me. My Wife, who is sitting by me, in very poor health (this long while), sends "kindest remembrances," "compliments" she expressly does not send. Good be with you always, my dear Friend! --T. Carlyle We send our felicitation to the Mother and little Boy; which latter you had better tell us the name of.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.