BIB_ID
106510
Accession number
MA 1857.9
Creator
Coleridge, Sara Fricker, -1845.
Display Date
Keswick, England, 1803 August 25.
Credit line
Purchased from Joanna Langlais, 1957.
Description
1 item (3 pages, with address) ; 25.0 x 20.2 cm
Notes
This collection, MA 1857, includes seventeen autograph letters signed from various correspondents to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, three autograph letters signed to Robert Southey, one each from Edward Coleridge, John Taylor Coleridge and Sara Fricker Coleridge and two autograph letters signed from William Wordsworth, one to Robert Southey and one to Joseph Henry Green. This collection of letters dates from 1794-1834.
This letter is from the Joanna Langlais Collection, a large collection of letters written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge to various recipients. The collection has been divided into subsets, based primarily on Coleridge's addressees, and these sub-collections have been cataloged individually as MA 1848- MA 1857.
Date and place of writing from postmarks.
Address panel with postmarks to "Mr. Southey / St. James's Place / Kingsdown / Bristol."
Excerpts from this letter are quoted in a footnote to the published letter of S.T. Coleridge to Robert Southey dated August 14, 1803 (see MA 1848.59 and citation below).
Margaret Southey was the first child born to Robert and Edith Southey. She was born in September 1802 and died in late August 1803.
This letter is from the Joanna Langlais Collection, a large collection of letters written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge to various recipients. The collection has been divided into subsets, based primarily on Coleridge's addressees, and these sub-collections have been cataloged individually as MA 1848- MA 1857.
Date and place of writing from postmarks.
Address panel with postmarks to "Mr. Southey / St. James's Place / Kingsdown / Bristol."
Excerpts from this letter are quoted in a footnote to the published letter of S.T. Coleridge to Robert Southey dated August 14, 1803 (see MA 1848.59 and citation below).
Margaret Southey was the first child born to Robert and Edith Southey. She was born in September 1802 and died in late August 1803.
Provenance
Purchased from Joanna Langlais in 1957 as a gift of the Fellows with the special assistance of Mrs. W. Murray Crane, Mr. Homer D. Crotty, Mr. and Mrs. Donald F. Hyde, Mr. Robert H. Taylor and Mrs. Landon K. Thorne. Formerly in the possession of Ernest Hartley Coleridge and Thomas Burdett Money-Coutts, Baron Latymer.
Summary
Expressing her deep anxiety over the illness of Margaret Southey; saying "If the worst has happened you will come to Keswick, Dear Southey, both you and Edith know exactly our feelings on this subject : and how ardently we have both wished to have you here...I have spoken to Mr. Jackson, and the little that remains undone of the house, he says, shall be finished instantly - in the meantime we can do very well as we are, you well know how many our house can contain on an occasion. Last Monday my husband, W. Wordsworth and D.W. set off for Scotland in the Irish-Car and one horse - W. is to drive all the way for poor Samuel is too weak to undertake the fatigue of driving - he was very unwell when he went off, and was to return in the Mail if he grew worse : he wrote to me from Carlisle, that he was rather better and should proceed; - I hope he will be able to go for if the weather be tolerable it will do him much good...It will be no consolation to you my dear sister to hear that my poor little Sara is at this moment in a very poor way, with her Teeth. - she has a violent Pax upon her, and before that came on she was in a high fever, she is just the age that Robert Lovell was, but she is not as yet I thank God! any thing like so had as he was...she is 8 months old to morrow, but has no sign of Teeth: - I am frighten'd to death if any thing ails the children in their fathers absence. I shall hope for another letter to morrow from you. I wrote to Glasgow yesterday, and I shall send this sad epistle of yours as soon as I know where to direct...I shall await your coming with fear and trembling. Every thing that I can do for your comfort and for the consolation of you both - and for the happiness of us all, I will do - depend on it - my husband is a good man - his prejudices - and his prepossession sometimes give me pain, but we have all a somewhat to encounter in this life - I should be a very very happy Woman if it were not for a few things - and my husband's ill health stands at the head of these evils!"
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