HEADNOTE

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) was a Victorian-era writer whose works spanned a wide variety of topics, including sociology, literary theory, and politics. Often lauded for his innovations in the style of British writing of his day, Carlyle spent decades perfecting his craft and spreading his sphere of influence. Living in the Scottish countryside, Carlyle connected his techniques of composition to the natural landscape that surrounded him in his wife’s familial estate, Craigenputtock. A literary giant, he also popularised Germanic philosophers among Victorian readers.

A foundational friendship that connected both sides of the Atlantic over shared ideals of natural, transcendentalist thought, the relationship between Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson lasted almost fifty years. On a life-altering trip to England, Ralph Waldo Emerson met Thomas Carlyle, staying in the British writer’s house and walking together in the Scottish landscape while discussing rationalistic thought and theories. After this experience, Carlyle and Emerson sent letters back and forth regarding experiences in their lives, future publications, and their views on literary works. Many other prominent figures of English literature are mentioned within these letters as friends and colleagues.

In Carlyle, Emerson and the Transatlantic Uses of Authority, Tim Sommer argues for the placement of Emerson and Carlyle “as historical figures embedded in a transatlantic network of people, discourses, objects and institutions” (4). Sommer notes that, although Carlyle and Emerson differed in their philosophical thought and writing, they grew into a deep friendship and utilized a shared appreciation of Anglophone literary culture to shape their writings. The interventions and cross-cultural contact between the two authors occurred in both public and personal ventures.

This selection from a compilation of the two’s anthology of letters showcases the friendship and intellectual bonds between both men. Carlyle specifically mentions his joy at the arrival of his book, Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh in Three Books. Carlyle arranged for this book to first be printed within the United States, utilizing the help of Emerson to oversee its process. Carlyle then praises Emerson’s recent work, Nature, and emphasises his admiration of his friend’s ability to position oneself within a natural order. Finally, Carlyle mentions his The French Revolution project, which he had been working on printing in England.

Overall, the letters between Carlyle and Emerson showcase a personal, intimate connection between two friends across the Atlantic Ocean who bonded over shared ideals of literature and respect for each other’s craft.

Editorial work on this entry by Robert Benafield

‘Letter XIV, 13th February 1837’, From The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson (1883)

XIV.

Carlyle to Emerson

5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, London

13 February, 1837

MY DEAR EMERSON, — You had promise of a letter to be despatched you about New-year’s-day; which promise I was myself in a condition to fulful at the time set, but delayed it, owing to delays of printers and certain “Articles” that were to go with it. Six weeks have not yet entirely brought up these laggard animals: however, I will delay no longer for them. Nay, it seems the Articles, were they never so ready, cannot go with the Letter; but must fare round by Liverpool or Portsmouth, in a separate conveyance. We will leave them to the bounty of Time. Your little Book and the Copy of Teufelsdrӧckh came safely; soon after I had written. The Teufelsdrӧckh I instantaneously despatched to Hamburg, to a Scottish merchant there, to whom there is an allusion in the Book; who used to be my Speditor (one of the politest extant though totally a stranger) in my missions and packages to and from Weimar¹ [A footnote in the original.] The allusion is referred to is the following: “By the kindness of a Scottish Hamburg merchant, whose name, known to the whole mercantile world, he must not mention; but whose honorable courtesy, now and before spontaneously manifested to him, a mere literary stranger, he cannot soon forget, – the bulky Weissnichtwo packet, with all its Custom-house seals, foreign hieroglyphs, and miscellaneous tokens of travel, arrived here in perfect safety, and free of cost.” — Sartor Resartus, Book I. ch. Xi.. The other, former Copy, more specially yours, had already been, as I think I told you, delivered out of durance; and got itself placed in the bookshelf as the Teufelsdrӧckh. George Ripley²George Ripley was a prominent transcendentalist who worked as a Unitarian Priest, a literary critic, and founded the Brook Farm commune. tells me you are printing another edition; much good may it do you!! There is now also a kind of whisper and whimper rising here about printing one. I said to myself once, when Bookseller Fraser shrieked so loud at a certain message you sent him: “Perhaps after all they will print this poor rag of a thing into a Book, after I am dead it may be, — if so seem good to them. Either way!” — As it is, we leave the poor orphan to its destiny, all the more cheerfully. Ripley says farther he had sent me a critique of it by a better hand than the North American: I expect it, but have not got it yet.³ [A footnote in the original.] An Article by the Rev. N.L. Frothingham in the Christian Examiner. The North American seems to say that he too sent me one. It never came to hand, nor any hint of it, — except I think once before through you.

It was not at all an unfriendly review; but had an opacity of matter-of-fact in it that filled one with amazement. Since the Irish Bishop who said there were some things in Gulliver on which he for one would keep his belief suspended, nothing equal to it, on that side, has come athwart me. However, he has made out that Teufelsdrӧckh is, in all human probability, a fictitious character; which is always something, for an Inquirer into Truth. — Will you, finally, thank Friend Ripley in my name, till I have time to write to him and thank him. Your little azure-colored Nature gave me true satisfaction. I read it, and then lent it about to all my acquaintance that had a sense for such things; from whom a similar verdict always came back. You say it is the first chapter of something greater. I call it rather the Foundation and Ground-plan on which you may build whatsoever of great and true has been given you to build. It is the true Apocalypse, this when the “Open Secret” becomes revealed to a man. I rejoice much in the glad serenity of soul with which you look out on this wondrous Dwelling-place of yours and mine, — with an ear for the Ewigen Melodien⁴Ewigen Melodien, German for ‘Eternal Melodies’, which pipe in the winds round us, and utter themselves forth in all sounds and sights and things: not to be written down by gamut-machinery; but which all right writing is a kind of attempt to write down. You will see what the years will bring you. It is not one of your smallest qualities in my mind, that you can wait so quietly and let the years do their hest. He that cannot keep himself quiet is of a morbid nature; and the thing he yields us will be like him in that, whatever else it be.

Miss Martineau⁵Harriet Martineau, See the Anthology excerpts of Martineau’s Society of America. A British sociologist, author, and illustrator who spent a career analyzing American culture. (for I have seen her since I wrote) tells me you “are the only man in America” who has quietly set himself down on a competency to follow his own path, and do the work his own will prescribes for him. Pity that you were the only one! But be one, nevertheless; be the first, and there will come a second and a third. It is a poor country where all men are sold to Mammon⁶Mammon, a Biblical term to describe ‘wealth’ or ‘money’ (OED), and can make nothing but Railways and Bursts of Parliamentary Eloquence! And yet your New England here too has the upper hand of our Old England, of our Old Europe: we too are sold to Mammon, soul, body, and spirit; but (mark that, I pray you, with double pity) Mammon will not pay us, — we are “Two Million three hundred thousand in Ireland that have not potatoes enough”! I declare, in History I find nothing more tragical. I find also that it will alter; that for me as one it has altered. Me Mammon will pay or not as he finds convenient; but me he will not. — In fine, I say, sit still at Concord, with such spirit as you are of; under the blessed skyey influences, with an open sense, with the great Book of Existence open round you: we shall see whether you too get not something blessed to read us from it.

The Paper is declining fast, and all is yet speculation. Along with these two “Articles” (to be sent by Liverpool; there are two of them, Diamond Necklace and Mirabeau), you will very probably get some stray Proofsheet — of the unutterable French Revolution! It is actually at Press; two Printers working at separate Volumes of it, – though still too slow. In not many weeks, my hands will be washed of it! You, I hope, can have little conception of the feeling with which I wrote the last word of it, one night in early January, when the clock was striking ten, and our frugal Scotch supper coming in! I did not cry; nor I did not pray: but could have done both. No such spell shall get itself fixed on me for some while to come! A beggarly Distortion; that will please no mortal, not even myself; of which I know not whether the fire were not after all the due place! And yet I ought not to say so: there is a great blessing in a man’s doing what he utterly can, in the case he is in. Perhaps great quantities of dross are burnt out of me by the calcination I have had; perhaps I shall be far quieter and healthier of mind and body than I have ever been since boyhood. The world, though no man had ever less empire in it, seems to me a thing lying under my feet; a mean imbroglio, which I never more shall fear, or court, or disturb myself with: welcome and welcome to go wholly its own way; I wholly clear for going mine. — Through the summer months I am, somewhere or other, to rest myself, in the deepest possible sleep. The residue is vague as the wind, — unheeded as the wind. Some way it will turn out that a poor, well-meaning Son of Adam has bread growing for him too, better or worse: any way, — or even no way, if that be it, — I shall be content. There is a scheme here among Friends for my Lecturing in a thing they call Royal Institution; but it will not do there, I think. The instant two or three are gathered together under any terms, who want to learn something I can teach them, — then we will, most readily, as Burns⁷Robert Burns, a Scottish poet says, “loose our tinkler jaw”; but not I think till then; were the Institution even Imperial.

America has faded considerably into the background of late: indeed, to say truth, whenever I think of myself in America, it is as in the Backwoods, with a rifle in my hand, God’s sky over my head, and this accursed Lazar-house of quack and blockheads, and sin and misery (now near a head) lying all behind me forevermore. A thing, you see, which is and can be at bottom but a daydream! To rest through the summer: that is my only fixed wisdom; a resolution taken; only the place where uncertain. — What a pity this poor sheet is done! I had innumerable things to tell you about people whom I have seen, about books, — Miss Harriet Martineau, Mrs. Butler⁸Mrs. Butler, a reference to English actress Fanny Kemble, Southey⁹Robert Southey, an English Poet, Influenza, Parliament, Literature and the Life of Man, — the whole of which must lie over till next time. Write to me; do not forget me. My Wife, who is sitting by me, in very poor health (this long while), sends “kindest remembrances,” — “compliments” she expressly does not send. Good be with you always, my dear Friend!

T. Carlyle

We send our felicitation to the Mother and little Boy; which latter you had better tell us the name of.

 

 

Source Text:

Carlyle, Thomas, et. al. The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872. London: Chatto & Windus, 1883. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/correspondencet04nortgoog/page/n133/mode/2up

References:

“Robert Southey”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 8 Aug. 2022, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Robert-Southey. Accessed 15 November 2022.

Daiches, David. ‘Robert Burns’. Encyclopedia Britannica, 28 Oct. 2022, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Robert-Burns. Accessed 15 November 2022.

‘Kemble [married name Butler], Frances Anne [Fanny] (1809–1893), actress and author | Oxford Dictionary of National Biography’. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. 2004.

‘Mammon, n.’ OED Online. Oxford University Press, June 2016. Web. 3 September 2016.

https://en.langenscheidt.com/german-english/search?term=Ewigen+Melodien&q_cat=%2Fgerman-english%2F

Martineau, Harriet. ‘From Society in America’. Teaching Trans-Atlanticism, Found in SC. https://teachingtransatlanticism.tcu.edu/sample-page/books/digital-anthology/suffrage-and-citizenship/harriet-martineau-1802-76-from-society-in-america-1837/

Robinson, David. ‘George Ripley.’ Dictionary of Unitarian & Universalist Biography, 2001, https://uudb.org/articles/georgeripley.html.

Sommer, Tim. Carlyle, Emerson, and the Transatlantic Uses of Authority (Edinburgh University Press, 2021).

Image References:

The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Print Collection, The New York Public Library. “Thomas Carlyle” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47de-4ff3-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

‘Emerson reading newspaper.’ Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Emerson_reading_newspaper.jpg