—T. Carlyle
CLI. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 19 April, 1853
My Dear Friend,—As I find I never write a letter except at the dunning of the Penny Post,—which is the pest of the century,—I have thought lately of crossing to England to excuse to you my negligence of your injunction, which so flattered me by its affectionateness a year ago. I was to write once a month. My own disobedience is wonderful, and explains to me all the sins of omission of the whole world. The levity with which we can let fall into disuse such a sacrament as the exchange of greeting at short periods, is a kind of magnanimity, and should be an astonishing argument of the "Immortality"; and I wonder how it has escaped the notice of philosophers. But what had I, dear wise man, to tell you? What, but that life was still tolerable; still absurdly sweet; still promising, promising, to credulous idleness;—but step of mine taken in a true direction, or clear solution of any the least secret,—none whatever. I scribble always a little,—much less than formerly,—and I did within a year or eighteen months write a chapter on Fate, which—if we all live long enough, that is, you, and I, and the chapter—I hope to send you in fair print. Comfort yourself—as you will—you will survive the reading, and will be a sure proof that the nut is not cracked. For when we find out what Fate is, I suppose, the Sphinx and we are done for; and Sphinx, Oedipus, and world ought, by good rights, to roll down the steep into the sea.
But I was going to say, my neglect of your request will show you how little saliency is in my weeks and months. They are hardly distinguished in memory other than as a running web out of a loom, a bright stripe for day, a dark stripe for night, and, when it goes faster, even these run together into endless gray… I went lately to St. Louis and saw the Mississippi again. The powers of the River, the insatiate craving for nations of men to reap and cure its harvests, the conditions it imposes,—for it yields to no engineering,—are interesting enough. The Prairie exists to yield the greatest possible quantity of adipocere. For corn makes pig, pig is the export of all the land, and you shall see the instant dependence of aristocracy and civility on the fat four legs. Workingmen, ability to do the work of the River, abounded. Nothing higher was to be thought of. America is incomplete. Room for us all, since it has not ended, nor given sign of ending, in bard or hero. 'T is a wild democracy, the riot of mediocrities, and none of your selfish Italies and Englands, where an age sublimates into a genius, and the whole population is made into Paddies to feed his porcelain veins, by transfusion from their brick arteries. Our few fine persons are apt to die. Horatio Greenough, a sculptor, whose tongue was far cunninger in talk than his chisel to carve, and who inspired great hopes, died two months ago at forty-seven years. Nature has only so much vital force, and must dilute it, if it is to be multiplied into millions. "The beautiful is never plentiful." On the whole, I say to myself, that our conditions in America are not easier or less expensive than the European. For the poor scholar everywhere must be compromise or alternation, and, after many remorses, the consoling himself that there has been pecuniary honesty, and that things might have been worse. But no; we must think much better things than these. Let Lazarus believe that Heaven does not corrupt into maggots, and that heroes do not succumb.
Clough is here, and comes to spend a Sunday with me, now and then. He begins to have pupils, and, if his courage holds out, will have as many as he wants…. I have written hundreds of pages about England and America, and may send them to you in print. And now be good and write me once more, and I think I will never cease to write again. And give my homage to Jane Carlyle.
Ever yours,
R.W. Emerson
CLII. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, 13 May, 1853
Dear Emerson,—The sight of your handwriting was a real blessing to me, after so long an abstinence. You shall not know all the sad reflections I have made upon your silence within the last year. I never doubted your fidelity of heart; your genial deep and friendly recognition of my bits of merits, and my bits of sufferings, difficulties and obstructions; your forgiveness of my faults; or in fact that you ever would forget me, or cease to think kindly of me: but it seemed as if practically Old Age had come upon the scene here too; and as if upon the whole one must make up one's mind to know that all this likewise had fallen silent, and could be possessed henceforth only on those new terms. Alas, there goes much over, year after year, into the regions of the Immortals; inexpressibly beautiful, but also inexpressibly sad. I have not many voices to commune with in the world. In fact I have properly no voice at all; and yours, I have often said, was the unique among my fellow-creatures, from which came full response, and discourse of reason: the solitude one lives in, if one has any spiritual thought at all, is very great in these epochs!—The truth is, moreover, I bought spectacles to myself about two years ago (bad print in candle- light having fairly become troublesome to me); much may lie in that! "The buying of your first pair of spectacles," I said to an old Scotch gentleman, "is an important epoch; like the buying of your first razor."—"Yes," answered he, "but not quite so joyful perhaps!"—Well, well, I have heard from you again; and you promise to be again constant in writing. Shall I believe you, this time? Do it, and shame the Devil! I really am persuaded it will do yourself good; and to me I know right well, and have always known, what it will do. The gaunt lonesomeness of this Midnight Hour, in the ugly universal snoring hum of the overfilled deep-sunk Posterity of Adam, renders an articulate speaker precious indeed! Watchman, what sayest thou, then? Watchman, what of the night?—