Somebody or somebodies in Liverpool and Manchester* have proposed once or twice, with more or less specification, that I should come to those cities to lecture. And who knows but I may come one day? Steam is strong, and Liverpool is near. I should find my account in the strong inducement of a new audience to finish pieces which have lain waiting with little hope for months or years.
————— * Mr. Alexander Ireland, who had made the acquaintance of Emerson at Edinburgh, in 1833, was his Manchester correspondent. His memorial volume on Emerson contains an interesting record of their relations. —————
Ah then, if I dared, I should be well content to add some golden hours to my life in seeing you, now all full-grown and acknowledged amidst your own people,—to hear and to speak is so little yet so much. But life is dangerous and delicate. I should like to see your solid England. The map of Britain is good reading for me. Then I have a very ignorant love of pictures, and a curiosity about the Greek statues and stumps in the British Museum. So beware of me, for on that distant day when I get ready I shall come.
Long before this time you ought to have received from John Chapman a copy of Emerson's Poems, so called, which he was directed to send you. Poor man, you need not open them. I know all you can say. I printed them, not because I was deceived into a belief that they were poems, but because of the softness or hardness of heart of many friends here who have made it a point to have them circulated.* Once having set out to print, I obeyed the solicitations of John Chapman, of an ill-omened street in London, to send him the book in manuscript, for the better securing of copyright. In printing them here I have corrected the most unpardonable negligences, which negligences must be all stereotyped under his fair London covers and gilt paper to the eyes of any curious London reader; from which recollection I strive to turn away.
————- * In the rough draft the following sentence comes in here "I reckon myself a good beginning of a poet, very urgent and decided in my bent, and in some coming millennium I shall yet sing." ————-
Little and Brown have just rendered me an account, by which it appears that we are not quite so well off as was thought last summer, when they said they had sold at auction the balance of your books which had been lying unsold. It seems now that the books supposed to be sold were not all taken, and are returned to them; one hundred Chartism, sixty-three Past and Present. Yet we are to have some eighty-three dollars ($83.68), which you shall probably have by the next steamer.
Yours affectionately,
R.W. Emerson
CXVIII. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, London, 2 March, 1847
Dear Emerson,—The Steamer goes tomorrow; I must, though in a very dim condition, have a little word for you conveyed by it. In the miscellaneous maw of that strange Steamer shall lie, among other things, a friendly word!