LVII.  Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 26 September, 1840

My Dear Emerson,—­Two Letters of yours are here, the latest of them for above a week:  I am a great sinner not to have answered sooner.  My way of life has been a thing of petty confusions, uncertainties; I did not till a short while ago see any definite highway, through the multitude of byelanes that opened out on me, even for the next few months.  Partly I was busy; partly too, as my wont is, I was half asleep:—­perhaps you do not know the combination of these two predicables in one and the same unfortunate human subject!  Seeing my course now for a little, I must speak.

According to your prognosis, it becomes at length manifest that I do not go to America for the present.  Alas, no!  It was but a dream of the fancy; projected, like the French shoemaker’s fairy shoes, “in a moment of enthusiasm.”  The nervous flutter of May Lecturing has subsided into stagnancy; into the feeling that, of all things in the world, public speaking is the hatefulest for me; that I ought devoutly to thank Heaven there is no absolute compulsion laid on me at present to speak!  My notion in general was but an absurd one:  I fancied I might go across the sea, open my lips wide; go raging and lecturing over the Union like a very lion (too like a frothy mountebank) for several months;—­till I had gained, say a thousand pounds; therewith to retire to some small, quiet cottage by the shore of the sea, at least three hundred miles from this, and sit silent there for ten years to come, or forever and a day perhaps!  That was my poor little day dream;—­incapable of being realized.  It appears, I have to stay here, in this brick Babylon; tugging at my chains, which will not break for me:  the less I tug, the better.  Ah me!  On the whole, I have written down my last course of lectures, and shall probably print them; and you, with the aid of proof-sheets, may again print them; that will be the easiest way of lecturing to America!  It is truly very weak to speak about that matter so often and long, that matter of coming to you; and never to come. Frey ist das Herz, as Goethe says, doch ist der Fuss gebunden. After innumerable projects, and invitations towards all the four winds, for this summer, I have ended about a week ago by—­simply going nowhither, not even to see my dear aged Mother, but sitting still here under the Autumn sky such as I have it; in these vacant streets I am lonelier than elsewhere, have more chance for composure than elsewhere!  With Sterne’s starling I repeat to myself, “I can’t get out.”—­Well, hang it, stay in then; and let people alone of it!