Chelsea, London, 13 April, 1839
My Dear Emerson,—Has anything gone wrong with you? How is it that you do not write to me? These three or four weeks, I know not whether duly or not so long, I have been in daily hope of some sign from you; but none comes; not even a Newspaper,—open at the ends. The German Translator, Mr. Dwight, mentioned, at the end of a Letter I had not long ago, that you had given a brilliant course of Lectures at Boston, but had been obliged to intermit it on account of illness. Bad news indeed, that latter clause; at the same time, it was thrown in so cursorily I would not let myself be much alarmed; and since that, various New England friends have assured me here that there was nothing of great moment in it, that the business was all well over now, and you safe at Concord again. Yet how is it that I do not hear? I will tell you my guess is that those Boston Carlylean Miscellanies are to blame. The Printer is slack and lazy as Printers are; and you do not wish to write till you can send some news of him? I will hope and believe that only this is it, till I hear worse.
I sent you a Dumfries Newspaper the other week, for a sign of my existence and anxiety. A certain Mr. Ellis of Boston is this day packing up a very small memorial of me to your Wife; a poor Print rolled about a bit of wood: let her receive it graciously in defect of better. It comes under your address. Nay, properly it is my Wife's memorial to your Wife. It is to be hung up in the Concord drawing-room. The two Households, divided by wide seas, are to understand always that they are united nevertheless.
My special cause for writing this day rather than another is the old story, book business. You have brought that upon yourself, my friend; and must do the best you can with it. After all, why should not Letters be on business too? Many a kind thought, uniting man with man, in gratitude and helpfulness, is founded on business. The speaker at Dartmouth College seems to think it ought to be so. Nor do I dissent.—But the case is this, Fraser and I are just about bargaining for a second edition of the Revolution. He will print fifteen hundred for the English market, in a somewhat closer style, and sell them here at twenty- four shillings a copy. His first edition is all gone but some handful; and the man is in haste, and has taken into a mood of hope,—for he is weak and aguish, alternating from hot to cold; otherwise, I find, a very accurate creature, and deals in his unjust trade as justly as any other will. He has settled with me; his half-profits amount to some L130, which by charging me for every presentation copy he cuts down to somewhere about L110; not the lion's share in the gross produce, yet a great share compared with an expectancy no higher than zero! We continue on the same system for this second adventure; I cannot go hawking about in search of new terms; I might go farther and fare worse. And now comes your part of the affair; in which I would fain have had your counsel; but must ask your help, proceeding with my own light alone. After Fraser's fifteen hundred are printed off, the types remain standing, and I for my own behoof throw off five hundred more, designed for your market. Whether five hundred are too many or too few, I can only guess; if too many, we can retain them here and turn them to account; if too few, there is no remedy. At all events, costing me only the paper and press-work, there is surely no Pirate in the Union that can undersell us! Nay, it seems they have a drawback on our taxed paper, sufficient or nearly so to land the cargo at Boston without more charge. You see, therefore, how it is. Can you find me a Bookseller, as for yourself; he and you can fix what price the ware will carry when you see it. Meanwhile I must have his Title-page; I must have his directions (if any be needed); nay, for that matter, you might write a Preface if you liked,—though I see not what you have to say, and recommend silence rather! The book is to be in three volumes duodecimo, and we will take care it be fit to show its face in your market. A few errors of the press; and one correction (about the sinking of the Vengeur, which I find lately to be an indisputable falsehood); these are all the changes. We are to have done printing, Fraser predicts, "in two months";—say two and a half! I suppose you decipher the matter out of this plastering and smearing; and will do what is needful in it. "Great inquiry" is made for the Miscellanies, Fraser says; though he suspects it may perhaps be but one or two men inquiring often,—the dog!
I am again upon the threshold of extempore lecturing: on "the Revolutions of Modern Europe"; Protestantism, 2 lectures; Puritanism, 2; French Revolution, 2. I almost regret that I had undertaken the thing this year at all, for I am no longer driven by Poverty as heretofore. Nay, I am richer than I have been for ten years; and have a kind of prospect, for the first time this great while, of being allowed to subsist in this world for the future: a great blessing, perhaps the greatest, when it comes as a novelty! However, I thought it right to keep this Lecture business open, come what might. I care less about it than I did; it is not agony and wretched trembling to the marrow of the bone, as it was the last two times. I believe, in spite of all my perpetual indigestions and nervous woes, I am actually getting into better health; the weary heart of me is quieter; I wait in silence for the new chapter,—feeling truly that we are at the end of one period here. I count it two in my autobiography: we shall see what the third is; [if] third there be. But I am in small haste for a third. How true is that of the old Prophets, "The word of the Lord came unto" such and such a one! When it does not come, both Prophet and Prosaist ought to be thankful (after a sort), and rigorously hold their tongue.—Lord Durham's people have come over with golden reports of the Americans, and their brotherly feelings. One Arthur Buller preaches to me, with emphasis, on a quite personal topic till one explodes in laughter to hear him, the good soul: That I, namely, am the most esteemed, &c., and ought to go over and Lecture in all great towns of the Union, and make, &c., &c.! I really do begin to think of it in this interregnum that I am in. But then my Lectures must be written; but then I must become a hawker, —ach Gott!
The people are beginning to quote you here: tant pis pour eux! I have found you in two Cambridge books. A certain Mr. Richard M. Milnes, M.P., a beautiful little Tory dilettante poet and politician whom I love much, applied to me for Nature (the others he has) that he might write upon it. Somebody has stolen Nature from me, or many have thumbed it to pieces; I could not find a copy. Send me one, the first chance you have. And see Miss Martineau in the last Westminster Review:—these things you are old enough to stand? They are even of benefit? Emerson is not without a select public, the root of a select public on this side of the water too.—Popular Sumner is off to Italy, the most popular of men,—inoffensive, like a worn sixpence that has no physiognomy left. We preferred Coolidge to him in this circle; a square-cut iron man, yet with clear symptoms of a heart in him. Your people will come more and more to their maternal Babylon, will they not, by the steamers?— Adieu, my dear friend. My Wife joins me in all good prayers for you and yours.
—Thomas Carlyle
XXXVII. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, London, 17 April, 1839
Dear Friend,—Some four days ago I wrote you a long Letter, rather expressive of anxiety about you; it will probably come to hand along with this. I had heard vaguely that you were unwell, and wondered why you did not write. Happily, that point is as good as settled now, even by your silence about it. I have, half an hour ago, received your Concord Letter of the 19th of March. The Letter you speak of there as "written last Saturday" has not yet made its appearance, but may be looked for now shortly: as there is no mention here of any mischance, except the shortcoming of Printers' copy, I infer that all else is in a tolerably correct state; I wait patiently for the "last Saturday" tidings, and will answer as to the matters of copy, in good heart, without loss of a moment.