Concord, 14 May, 1846
Dear Friend,—I daily expect the picture, and wonder—so long as I have wished it—I had never asked it before. I was in Boston the other day, and went to the best reputed Daguerreotypist, but though I brought home three transcripts of my face, the house- mates voted them rueful, supremely ridiculous. I must sit again; or, as true Elizabeth Hoar said, I must not sit again, not being of the right complexion which Daguerre and iodine delight in. I am minded to try once more, and if the sun will not take me, I must sit to a good crayon sketcher, Mr. Cheney, and send you his draught….
Good rides to you and the longest escapes from London streets. I too have a new plaything, the best I ever had,—a wood-lot. Last fall I bought a piece of more than forty acres, on the border of a little lake half a mile wide and more, called Walden Pond,—a place to which my feet have for years been accustomed to bring me once or twice a week at all seasons. My lot to be sure is on the further side of the water, not so familiar to me as the nearer shore. Some of the wood is an old growth, but most of it has been cut off within twenty years and is growing thriftily. In these May days, when maples, poplars, oaks, birches, walnut, and pine are in their spring glory, I go thither every afternoon, and cut with my hatchet an Indian path through the thicket all along the bold shore, and open the finest pictures.
My two little girls know the road now, though it is nearly two miles from my house, and find their way to the spring at the foot of a pine grove, and with some awe to the ruins of a village of shanties, all overgrown with mullein, which the Irish who built the railroad left behind them. At a good distance in from the shore the land rises to a rocky head, perhaps sixty feet above the water. Thereon I think to place a hut; perhaps it will have two stories and be a petty tower, looking out to Monadnoc and other New Hampshire Mountains. There I hope to go with book and pen when good hours come. I shall think there, a fortnight might bring you from London to Walden Pond.—Life wears on, and do you say the gray hairs appear? Few can so well afford them. The black have not hung over a vacant brain, as England and America know; nor, white or black, will it give itself any Sabbath for many a day henceforward, as I believe. What have we to do with old age? Our existence looks to me more than ever initial. We have come to see the ground and look up materials and tools. The men who have any positive quality are a flying advance party for reconnoitring. We shall yet have a right work, and kings for competitors. With ever affectionate remembrance to your wife, your friend,
—R.W. Emerson
CXI. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 31 May, 1846
My Dear Friend,—It is late at night and I have postponed writing not knowing but that my parcel would be ready to go,—and now a public meeting and the speech of a rarely honest and eloquent man have left me but a span of time for the morning's messenger.
The photograph came safely, to my thorough content. I have what I have wished. This head is to me out of comparison more satisfying than any picture. I confirm my recollections and I make new observations; it is life to life. Thanks to the Sun. This artist remembers what every other forgets to report, and what I wish to know, the true sculpture of the features, the angles, the special organism, the rooting of the hair, the form and the placing of the head. I am accustomed to expect of the English a securing of the essentials in their work, and the sun does that, and you have done it in this portrait, which gives me much to think and feel.* I was instantly stirred to an emulation of your love and punctuality, and, last Monday, which was my forty-third birthday, I went to a new Daguerreotypist, who took much pains to make his picture right. I brought home three shadows not agreeable to my own eyes. The machine has a bad effect on me. My wife protests against the imprints as slanderous. My friends say they look ten years older, and, as I think, with the air of a decayed gentleman touched with his first paralysis. However I got yesterday a trusty vote or two for sending one of them to you, on the ground that I am not likely to get a better. But it now seems probable that it will not get cased and into the hands of Harnden in time for the steamer tomorrow. It will then go by that of the 16th.
————- * From Emerson's Diary, May 23, 1846:—"In Carlyle's head (photograph), which came last night, how much appears! How unattainable this truth to any painter! Here have I the inevitable traits which the sun forgets not to copy, and which I thirst to see, but which no painter remembers to give me. Here have I the exact sculpture, the form of the head, the rooting of the hair, thickness of the lips, the man that God made. And all the Laurences and D'Orsays now serve me well as illustration. I have the form and organism, and can better spare the expression and color. What would I not give for a head of Shakespeare by the same artist? of Plato? of Demosthenes? Here I have the jutting brow, and the excellent shape of the head. And here the organism of the eye full of England, the valid eye, in which I see the strong executive talent which has made his thought available to the nations, whilst others as intellectual as he are pale and powerless. The photograph comes dated 25 April, 1846, and he writes, 'I am fifty years old."' ————-