Adieu, dear Emerson; good be with you always. Hoar gave me your American Poems: thanks. Vale et me ama.
—T. Carlyle
CXXII. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 4 June, 1847
Dear Carlyle,—I have just got your friendliest letter of May 18, with its varied news and new invitations. Really you are a dangerous correspondent with your solid and urgent ways of speaking. No affairs and no studies of mine, I fear, will be able to make any head against these bribes. Well, I will adorn the brow of the coming months with this fine hope; then if the rich God at last refuses the jewel, no doubt he will give something better—to both of us. But thinking on this project lately, I see one thing plainly, that I must not come to London as a lecturer. If the plan proceed, I will come and see you,— thankful to Heaven for that mercy, should such a romance looking reality come to pass,—I will come and see you and Jane Carlyle, and will hear what you have to say. You shall even show me, if you will, such other men and women as will suffer themselves to be seen and heard, asking for nothing again. Then I will depart in peace, as I came.
At Mr. Ireland's "Institutes," I will read lectures; and possibly in London too, if, when there, you looking with your clear eyes shall say that it is desired by persons who ought to be gratified. But I wish such lecturing to be a mere contingency, and nowise a settled purpose. I had rather stay at home, and forego the happiness of seeing you, and the excitement of England, than to have the smallest pains taken to collect an audience for me. So now we will leave this egg in the desert for the ostrich Time to hatch it or not.
It seems you are not tired of pale Americans, or will not own it. You have sent our Country-Senator* where he wanted to go, and to the best hospitalities as we learn today directly from him. I cannot avoid sending you another of a different stamp. Henry Hedge is a recluse but Catholic scholar in our remote Bangor, who reads German and smokes in his solitary study through nearly eight months of snow in the year, and deals out, every Sunday, his witty apothegms to the lumber-merchants and township-owners of Penobscot River, who have actually grown intelligent interpreters of his riddles by long hearkening after them. They have shown themselves very loving and generous lately, in making a quite munificent provision for his traveling. Hedge has a true and mellow heart,… and I hope you will like him.
———— * The Hon. E. Rockwood Hoar. ————
I have seen lately a Texan, ardent and vigorous, who assured me that Carlyle's Writings were read with eagerness on the banks of the Colorado. There was more to tell, but it is too late.
Ever yours,
R.W. Emerson