About that same time my health and humors being evidently so, the Dowager Lady Ashburton (not the high Lady you saw, but a Successor of Mackenzie-Highland type), who wanders mostly about the Continent since her widowhood, for the sake of a child's health, began pressing and inviting me to spend the blade months of Winter here in her Villa with her;—all friends warmly seconding and urging; by one of whom I was at last snatched off, as if by the hair of the head, (in spite of my violent No, no!) on the eve of Christmas last, and have been here ever since,— really with improved omens. The place is beautiful as a very picture, the climate superlative (today a sun and sky like very June); the hospitality of usage beyond example. It is likely I shall be here another six weeks, or longer. If you please to write me, the address is on the margin; and I will answer. Adieu.

—T. Carlyle

CLXXVI. Carlyle to Emerson

5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, 18 November, 1869

Dear Emerson,—It is near three years since I last wrote to you; from Mentone, under the Ligurian Olive and Orange trees, and their sombre foreign shadows, and still more sombre suggestings and promptings; the saddest, probably, of all living men. That you made no answer I know right well means only, "Alas, what can I say to him of consolatory that he does not himself know!" Far from a fault, or perhaps even a mistake on your part;—nor have I felt it otherwise. Sure enough, among the lights that have gone out for me, and are still going, one after one, under the inexorable Decree, in this now dusky and lonely world, I count with frequent regret that our Correspondence (not by absolute hest of Fate) should have fallen extinct, or into such abeyance: but I interpret it as you see; and my love and brotherhood to you remain alive, and will while I myself do. Enough of this. By lucky chance, as you perceive, you are again to get one written Letter from me, and I a reply from you, before the final Silence come. The case is this.

For many years back, a thought, which I used to check again as fond and silly, has been occasionally present to me,—Of testifying my gratitude to New England (New England, acting mainly through one of her Sons called Waldo Emerson), by bequeathing to it my poor Falstaf Regiment, latterly two Falstaf Regiments of Books, those I purchased and used in writing Cromwell, and ditto those on Friedrich the Great. "This could be done," I often said to myself; "this could perhaps; and this would be a real satisfaction to me. But who then would march through Coventry with such a set!" The extreme insignificance of the Gift, this and nothing else, always gave me pause.

Last Summer, I was lucky enough to meet with your friend C.E. Norton, and renew many old Massachusetts recollections, in free talk with [him]….; to him I spoke of the affair; candidly describing it, especially the above questionable feature of it, so far as I could; and his answer, then, and more deliberately afterwards, was so hopeful, hearty, and decisive, that—in effect it has decided me; and I am this day writing to him that such is the poor fact, and that I need farther instructions on it so soon as you two have taken counsel together.

To say more about the infinitesimally small value of the Books would be superfluous: nay, in truth, many or most of them are not without intrinsic value, one or two are even excellent as Books; and all of them, it may perhaps be said, have a kind of symbolic or biographic value; and testify (a thing not useless) on what slender commissariat stores considerable campaigns, twelve years long or so, may be carried on in this world. Perhaps you already knew of me, what the Cromwell and Friedrich collection might itself intimate, that much buying of Books was never a habit of mine,—far the reverse, even to this day!

Well, my Friend, you will have a meeting with Norton so soon as handy; and let me know what is next to be done. And that, in your official capacity, is all I have to say to you at present.

Unofficially there were much,—much that is mournful, but perhaps also something that is good and blessed, and though the saddest, also the highest, the lovingest and best; as beseems Time's sunset, now coming nigh. At present I will say only that, in bodily health, I am not to be called Ill, for a man who will be seventy-four next month; nor, on the spiritual side, has anything been laid upon me that is quite beyond my strength. More miserable I have often been; though as solitary, soft of heart, and sad, of course never.