My Dear Emerson,—Lest Opportunity again escape me, I will take her, this time, by the forelock, and write while the matter is still hot. You have been too long without hearing of me; far longer, at least, than I meant. Here is a second Letter from you, besides various intermediate Notes by the hands of Friends, since that Templand Letter of mine: the Letter arrived yesterday; my answer shall get under way today.
First under the head of business let it be authenticated that the Letter enclosed a Draft for L51; a new, unexpected munificence out of America; which is ever and anon dropping gifts upon me,— to be received, as indeed they partly are, like Manna dropped out of the sky; the gift of unseen Divinities! The last money I got from you changed itself in the usual soft manner from dollars into sovereigns, and was what they call "all right,"—all except the little Bill (of Eight Pounds and odds, I think) drawn on Fraser's Executors by Brown (Little and Brown?); which Bill the said Executors having refused for I know not what reason, I returned it to Brown with note of the dishonor done it, and so the sum still stands on his Books in our favor. Fraser's people are not now my Booksellers, except in the matter of your Essays and a second edition of Sartor; the other Books I got transferred to a certain pair of people named "Chapman and Hall, 186 Strand"; which operation, though (I understand) it was transacted with great and vehement reluctance on the part of the Fraser people, yet produced no quarrel between them and me, and they still forward parcels, &c., and are full of civility when I see them:—so that whether this had any effect or none in their treatment of Brown and his Bill I never knew; nor indeed, having as you explained it no concern with Brown's and their affairs, did I ever happen to inquire. I avoid all Booksellers; see them rarely, the blockheads; study never to think of them at all. Book-sales, reputation, profit, &c., &c.; all this at present is really of the nature of an encumbrance to me; which I study, not without success, to sweep almost altogether out of my head. One good is still possible to me in Life, one only: To screw a little more work out of myself, my miserable, despicable, yet living, acting, and so far imperial and celestial self; and this, God knows, is difficulty enough without any foreign one!
You ask after Cromwell: ask not of him; he is like to drive me mad. There he lies, shining clear enough to me, nay glowing, or painfully burning; but far down; sunk under two hundred years of Cant, Oblivion, Unbelief, and Triviality of every kind: through all which, and to the top of all which, what mortal industry or energy will avail to raise him! A thousand times I have rued that my poor activity ever took that direction. The likelihood still is that I may abandon the task undone. I have bored through the dreariest mountains of rubbish; I have visited Naseby Field, and how many other unintelligible fields and places; I have &c., &c.:—alas, what a talent have I for getting into the Impossible! Meanwhile my studies still proceed; I even take a ghoulish kind of pleasure in raking through these old bone-houses and burial-aisles now; I have the strangest fellowship with that huge Genius of DEATH (universal president there), and catch sometimes, through some chink or other, glimpses into blessed ulterior regions,—blessed, but as yet altogether silent. There is no use of writing of things past, unless they can be made in fact things present: not yesterday at all, but simply today and what it holds of fulfilment and of promises is ours: the dead ought to bury their dead, ought they not? In short, I am very unfortunate, and deserve your prayers,—in a quiet kind of way! If you lose tidings of me altogether, and never hear of me more,—consider simply that I have gone to my natal element, that the Mud Nymphs have sucked me in; as they have done several in their time!
Sterling was here about the time your Letters to him came: your American reprint of his pieces was naturally gratifying him much.* He seems getting yearly more restless; necessitated to find an outlet for himself, unable as yet to do it well. I think he will now write Review articles for a while; which craft is really, perhaps, the one he is fittest for hitherto. I love Sterling: a radiant creature; but very restless;—incapable either of rest or of effectual motion: aurora borealis and sheet lightning; which if it could but concentrate itself, as I [say] always—!—We had much talk; but, on the whole, even his talk is not much better for me than silence at present. Me miserum!
———— * "The Poetical Works of John Sterling," Philadelphia, 1842. ————
Directly about the time of Sterling's departure came Alcott, some two weeks after I had heard of his arrival on these shores. He has been twice here, at considerable length; the second time, all night. He is a genial, innocent, simple-hearted man, of much natural intelligence and goodness, with an air of rusticity, veracity, and dignity withal, which in many ways appeals to one. The good Alcott: with his long, lean face and figure, with his gray worn temples and mild radiant eyes; all bent on saving the world by a return to acorns and the golden age; he comes before one like a kind of venerable Don Quixote, whom nobody can even laugh at without loving!….
My poor Wife is still weak, overshadowed with sorrow: her loss is great, the loss almost as of the widow's mite; for except her good Mother she had almost no kindred left; and as for friends— they are not rife in this world.—God be thanked withal they are not entirely non-extant! Have I not a Friend, and Friends, though they too are in sorrow? Good be with you all.
—T. Carlyle.
By far the valuablest thing that Alcott brought me was the Newspaper report of Emerson's last Lectures in New York. Really a right wholesome thing; radiant, fresh as the morning; a thing worth reading; which accordingly I clipped from the Newspaper, and have in a state of assiduous circulation to the comfort of many.—I cannot bid you quit the Dial, though it, too, alas, is Antinomian somewhat! Perge, perge, nevertheless. —And so now an end.