My Dear Carlyle,—Eight days ago—when I had gone to Nantasket Beach, to sit by the sea and inhale its air and refresh this puny body of mine—came to me your letter, all bounteous as all your letters are, generous to a fault, generous to the shaming of me, cold, fastidious, ebbing person that I am. Already in a former letter you had said too much good of my poor little arid book,— which is as sand to my eyes,—and now in this you tell me it shall be printed in London, and graced with a preface from the man of men. I can only say that I heartily wish the book were better, and I must try and deserve so much favor from the kind gods by a bolder and truer living in the months to come; such as may perchance one day relax and invigorate this cramp hand of mine, and teach it to draw some grand and adequate strokes, which other men may find their own account and not their good-nature in repeating. Yet I think I shall never be killed by my ambition. I behold my failures and shortcomings there in writing, wherein it would give me much joy to thrive, with an equanimity which my worst enemy might be glad to see. And yet it is not that I am occupied with better things. One could well leave to others the record, who was absorbed in the life. But I have done nothing. I think the branch of the "tree of life" which headed to a bud in me, curtailed me somehow of a drop or two of sap, and so dwarfed all my florets and drupes. Yet as I tell you I am very easy in my mind, and never dream of suicide. My whole philosophy—which is very real—teaches acquiescence and optimism. Only when I see how much work is to be done, what room for a poet—for any spiritualist—in this great, intelligent, sensual, and avaricious America, I lament my fumbling fingers and stammering tongue. I have sometimes fancied I was to catch sympathetic activity from contact with noble persons; that you would come and see me; that I should form stricter habits of love and conversation with some men and women here who are already dear to me,—and at some rate get off the numb palsy, and feel the new blood sting and tingle in my fingers' ends. Well, sure I am that the right word will be spoken though I cut out my tongue. Thanks, too, to your munificent Fraser for his liberal intention to divide the profits of the Essays. I wish, for the encouragement of such a bookseller, there were to be profits to divide. But I have no faith in your public for their heed to a mere book like mine. There are things I should like to say to them, in a lecture-room or in a "steeple house," if I were there. Seven hundred and fifty copies! Ah no!
And so my dear brother has quitted the roaring city, and gone back in peace to his own land,—not the man he left it, but richer every way, chiefly in the sense of having done something valiantly and well, which the land, and the lands, and all that wide elastic English race in all their dispersion, will know and thank him for. The holy gifts of nature and solitude be showered upon you! Do you not believe that the fields and woods have their proper virtue, and that there are good and great things which will not be spoken in the city? I give you joy in your new and rightful home, and the same greetings to Jane Carlyle! with thanks and hopes and loves to you both.
—R.W. Emerson
As usual at this season of the year, I, incorrigible spouting Yankee, am writing an oration to deliver to the boys in one of our little country colleges, nine days hence.* You will say I do not deserve the aid of any Muse. O but if you knew how natural it is to me to run to these places! Besides, I always am lured on by the hope of saying something which shall stick by the good boys. I hope Brown did not fail to find you, with thirty-eight sovereigns (I believe) which he should carry you.
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* "The Method of Nature. An Address to the Society of the
Adelphi, in Waterville College, Maine, August 11, 1841."
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LXVIII. Carlyle to Emerson
Newby, Annan, Scotland, 18 August, 1841
My Dear Emerson,—Two days ago your Letter, direct from Liverpool, reached me here; only fifteen days after date on the other side of the Ocean: one of the swiftest messengers that have yet come from you. Steamers have been known to come, they say, in nine days. By and by we shall visibly be, what I always say we virtually are, members of neighboring Parishes; paying continual visits to one another. What is to hinder huge London from being to universal Saxondom what small Mycale was to the Tribes of Greece,—a place to hold your [Greek] in? A meeting of All the English ought to be as good as one of All the Ionians; —and as Homeric "equal ships" are to Bristol steamers, so, or somewhat so, may New York and New Holland be to Ephesus and Crete, with their distances, relations, and etceteras!—Few things on this Earth look to me greater than the Future of that Family of Men.
It is some two months since I got into this region; my Wife followed me with her maid and equipments some five weeks ago. Newington Lodge, when I came to inspect it with eyes, proved to be too rough an undertaking: upholsterers, expense and confusion,—the Cynic snarled, "Give me a whole Tub rather! I want nothing but shelter from the elements, and to be let alone of all men." After a little groping, this little furnished cottage, close by the beach of the Solway Frith, was got hold of: here we have been, in absolute seclusion, for a month,—no company but the corn-fields and the everlasting sands and brine; mountains, and thousand-voiced memories on all hands, sending their regards to one, from the distance. Daily (sometimes even nightly!) I have swashed about in the sea; I have been perfectly idle, at least inarticulate; I fancy I feel myself considerably sounder of body and of mind. Deeply do I agree with you in the great unfathomable meaning of a colloquy with the dumb Ocean, with the dumb Earth, and their eloquence! A Legislator would prescribe some weeks of that annually as a religious duty for all mortals, if he could. A Legislator will prescribe it for himself, since he can! You too have been at Nantasket; my Friend, this great rough purple sea-flood that roars under my little garret-window here, this too comes from Nantasket and farther,—swung hitherward by the Moon and the Sun.
It cannot be said that I feel "happy" here, which means joyful;— as far as possible from that. The Cave of Trophonius could not be grimmer for one than this old Land of Graves. But it is a sadness worth any hundred "happinesses." N'en parlons plus. By the way, have you ever clearly remarked withal what a despicable function "view-hunting" is. Analogous to "philanthropy," "pleasures of virtue," &c., &c. I for my part, in these singular circumstances, often find an honestly ugly country the preferable one. Black eternal peat-bog, or these waste-howling sands with mews and seagulls: you meet at least no Cockney to exclaim, "How charming it is!"