BIB_ID
211846
Accession number
MA 1855.2
Creator
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.
Display Date
Place not specified, 1798 May.
Credit line
Purchased from Joanna Langlais, 1957.
Description
1 item (2 pages) ; 40.6 x 24.8 cm
Notes
In the hand of Dorothy Wordsworth with four minor autograph additions by Coleridge.
This collection, MA 1855, is comprised of thirteen autograph letters signed from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to various recipients, written from August 5, 1794 through March 1, 1832. The recipients include Derwent and Hartley Coleridge, William Hart Coleridge, Henry Nelson Coleridge, Charles Lamb, Thomas Poole and Dorothy Wordsworth.
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.
The published letter cited below dates the letter to "Early May 1798."
An introductory note to the published letter cited below indicates "The transcript contains four slight additions in Coleridge's handwriting. Because there had been so much misunderstanding through Lloyd's tattling and Southey's animosity, Coleridge took the precaution of preserving a copy of this letter.
This collection, MA 1855, is comprised of thirteen autograph letters signed from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to various recipients, written from August 5, 1794 through March 1, 1832. The recipients include Derwent and Hartley Coleridge, William Hart Coleridge, Henry Nelson Coleridge, Charles Lamb, Thomas Poole and Dorothy Wordsworth.
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.
The published letter cited below dates the letter to "Early May 1798."
An introductory note to the published letter cited below indicates "The transcript contains four slight additions in Coleridge's handwriting. Because there had been so much misunderstanding through Lloyd's tattling and Southey's animosity, Coleridge took the precaution of preserving a copy of this letter.
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
Concerning the feud between Coleridge, Lamb and Lloyd; saying "Lloyd has informed me through Miss Wordsworth that you intend no longer to correspond with me. This has given me little pain; not that I do not love and esteem you, but on the contrary because I am confident that your intentions are pure...Painful, for you could not without some struggles abandon me in behalf of a man who wholly ignorant of all but your name became attached to you in consequence of my attachment, caught his from my enthusiasm, & learnt to love you at my fire-side, when often while I have been sitting & talking of your sorrows and affections, I have stopped my conversations & lifted up wet eyes & prayed for you. No! I am confident, that although you do not think as a wise man, you feel as a good man...When I wrote to you that my sonnet to simplicity was not composed with reference to Southey you answered me (I believe these were the words) 'It was a lie too gross for the grossest ignorance to believe,' & I was not angry with you, because the assertion, which the grossest Ignorance would believe a lie the Omniscient knew to be truth - This however makes me cautious not too hastily to affirm the falsehood of an assertion of Lloyd's, that in Edmund Oliver's love-fit, debaucheries, leaving college & going into the army he had no sort of allusion to, or recollection of, my love-fit, debaucheries, leaving college, & going into the army & that he never thought of my person in the description of Edmund Oliver's person in the first letter of the second volume. This cannot appear stranger to me than my assertion did to you; & therefore I will suspend my absolute faith - I write to you not that I wish to hear from you, but that I wish you to write to Lloyd & press upon him the propriety, may, the necessity of his giving me a meeting either tête à tête or in the presence of all whose esteem I value...He assigned as reasons for his rupture, my vices, and he is either right or wrong; if right it is fit that others should know it & follow his example - if wrong he has acted very wrong...I have been unfortunate in my connections. Both you & Lloyd became acquainted with me at a season when your minds were far from being in a composed or natural state & you clothed my image with a suit of notions & feelings which could belong to nothing human. You are restored to comparative saneness, & are merely wondering what is become of the Coleridge with whom you were so passionately in love. Charles Lloyd's mind has only changed its disease, & he is now arraying his ci-devant angel in a flaming Sanbenito - the whole ground of the garment a dark brimstone & plenty of little Devils flourished out in black. O me! Lamb, 'even in laughter the heart is sad' - My kindness, my affectionateness he deems wheedling, but if after reading all my letters to yourself & to him you can suppose him wise in this treatment & correct in his accusations of me, you think worse of human nature than poor human nature, bad as it is, deserves to be thought of."
Catalog link
Department