One of my first journeys was to Chapman, with vehement rebuke of this inconceivable "Cincinnati-Massachusetts" business. Stupiditas stupiditatum; I never in my life, not even in that unpunctual House, fell in with anything that equaled it. Instant amendment was at once undertaken for, nay it seems had been already in part performed: "Ten volumes, following the nine you already had, were despatched in Field & Co.'s box above two months ago," so Chapman solemnly said and asseverated to me; so that by this time you ought actually to have in hand nineteen volumes; and the twentieth (first of Friedrich), which came out ten days ago, is to go in Field & Co.'s Box this week, and ought, not many days after the arrival of this Letter, to be in Boston waiting for you there. The Chapman's Homer (two volumes) had gone with that first Field Packet; and would be handed to you along with the ten volumes which were overdue. All this was solemnly declared to me as on Affidavit; Chapman also took extract of the Massachusetts passage in your Letter, in order to pour it like ice-cold water on the head of his stupid old Chief-Clerk, the instant the poor creature got back from his rustication: alas, I am by no means certain that it will make a new man of him, nor, in fact, that the whole of this amendatory programme will get itself performed to equal satisfaction! But you must write to me at once if it is not so; and done it shall be in spite of human stupidity itself. Note, withal, these things: Chapman sends no Books to America except through Field & Co.; he does not regularly send a Box at the middle of the month; but he does "almost monthly send one Bog"; so that if your monthly Volume do not start from London about the 15th, it is due by the very next Chapman-Field box; and if it at any time don't come, I beg of you very much to make instant complaint through Field & Co., or what would be still more effectual, direct to myself. My malison on all Blockheadisms and torpid stupidities and infidelities; of which this world is full!—
Your Letter had been anxiously enough waited for, a month before my departure; but we will not mention the delay in presence of what you were engaged with then. Faustum sit; that truly was and will be a Work worth doing your best upon; and I, if alive, can promise you at least one reader that will do his best upon your Work. I myself, often think of the Philosophies precisely in that manner. To say truth, they do not otherwise rise in esteem with me at all, but rather sink. The last thing I read of that kind was a piece by Hegel, in an excellent Translation by Stirling, right well translated, I could see, for every bit of it was intelligible to me; but my feeling at the end of it was, "Good Heavens, I have walked this road before many a good time; but never with a Cannon-ball at each ankle before!" Science also, Science falsely so called, is—But I will not enter upon that with you just now.
The Visit to America, alas, alas, is pure Moonshine. Never had I, in late years, the least shadow of intention to undertake that adventure; and I am quite at a loss to understand how the rumor originated. One Boston Gentleman (a kind of universal Undertaker, or Lion's Provider of Lecturers I think) informed me that "the Cable" had told him; and I had to remark, "And who the devil told the Cable?" Alas, no, I fear I shall never dare to undertake that big Voyage; which has so much of romance and of reality behind it to me; zu spat, zu spat. I do sometimes talk dreamily of a long Sea-Voyage, and the good the Sea has often done me,—in times when good was still possible. It may have been some vague folly of that kind that originated this rumor; for rumors are like dandelion-seeds; and the Cable I dare say welcomes them all that have a guinea in their pocket.
Thank you for blocking up that Harvard matter; provided it don't go into the Newspapers, all is right. Thank you a thousand times for that thrice-kind potential welcome, and flinging wide open your doors and your hearts to me at Concord. The gleam of it is like sunshine in a subterranean place. Ah me, Ah me! May God be with you all, dear Emerson.
Yours ever,
T. Carlyle
CLXXXVI. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 15 October, 1870
My Dear Carlyle,—I am the ignoblest of all men in my perpetual short-comings to you. There is no example of constancy like yours, and it always stings my stupor into temporary recovery and wonderful resolution to accept the noble challenge. But "the strong hours conquer us," and I am the victim of miscellany,— miscellany of designs, vast debility, and procrastination.
Already many days before your letter came, Fields sent me a package from you, which he said he had found a little late, because they were covered up in a box of printed sheets of other character, and this treasure was not at first discovered. They are,—Life of Sterling; Latter Day Pamphlets; Past and Present; Heroes; 5 Vols. Cromwell's Letters and Speeches. Unhappily, Vol. II. of Cromwell is wanting, and there is a duplicate of Vol. V. instead of it. Now, two days ago came your letter, and tells me that the good old gods have also inspired you to send me Chapman's Homer! and that it came—heroes with heroes—in the same enchanted box. I went to Fields yesterday and demanded the book. He ignored all,—even to the books he had already sent me; called Osgood to council, and they agreed that it must be that all these came in a bog of sheets of Dickens from Chapman, which was sent to the Stereotypers at Cambridge; and the box shall be instantly explored. We will see what tomorrow shall find. As to the duplicates, I will say here, that I have received two: first, the above-mentioned Vol. II. of Cromwell; and, second, long before, a second copy of Sartor Resartus, apparently instead of the Vol. I. of the French Revolution, which did not come. I proposed to Fields to send back to Chapman these two duplicates. But he said, "No, it will cost as much as the price of the books." I shall try to find in New York who represents Chapman and sells these books, and put them to his credit there, in exchange for the volumes I lack. Meantime, my serious thanks for all these treasures go to you,—steadily good to my youth and my age.
Your letter was most welcome, and most in that I thought I read, in what you say of not making the long-promised visit hither, a little willingness to come. Think again, I pray you, of that Ocean Voyage, which is probably the best medicine and restorative which remains to us at your age and mine. Nine or ten days will bring you (and commonly with unexpected comfort and easements on the way) to Boston. Every reading person in America holds you in exceptional regard, and will rejoice in your arrival. They have forgotten your scarlet sins before or during the war. I have long ceased to apologize for or explain your savage sayings about American or other republics or publics, and am willing that anointed men bearing with them authentic charters shall be laws to themselves as Plato willed. Genius is but a large infusion of Deity, and so brings a prerogative all its own. It has a right and duty to affront and amaze men by carrying out its perceptions defiantly, knowing well that time and fate will verify and explain what time and fate have through them said. We must not suggest to Michel Angelo, or Machiavel, or Rabelais, or Voltaire, or John Brown of Osawatomie (a great man), or Carlyle, how they shall suppress their paradoxes and check their huge gait to keep accurate step with the procession on the street sidewalk. They are privileged persons, and may have their own swing for me.