BIB_ID
403744
Accession number
MA 1581.247
Creator
Wordsworth, Dorothy, 1771-1855.
Display Date
Coleorton, England, 1806 December 7.
Credit line
Purchased from Benjamin Ifor Evans, 1954.
Description
1 item (4 pages, with address) ; 22.5 x 18.1 cm
Notes
This letter was formerly identified as MA 1581 (Wordsworth) 17.
This letter is from a large collection of letters written to Sir George Howland Beaumont (1753-1827) and Lady Margaret Willes Beaumont (1758-1829) of Coleorton Hall and to other members of the Beaumont family. See collection-level record for more information (MA 1581.1-297).
Address panel with postmarks to "Lady Beaumont / Dunmow / Essex."
Dorothy Wordsworth dates this letter "8 o'clock Sunday Evening / 7th November." The month of writing, from the published letter cited below, is December, not November.
The place of writing is inferred from the postmark "Ashby de la Zouch."
This letter is from a large collection of letters written to Sir George Howland Beaumont (1753-1827) and Lady Margaret Willes Beaumont (1758-1829) of Coleorton Hall and to other members of the Beaumont family. See collection-level record for more information (MA 1581.1-297).
Address panel with postmarks to "Lady Beaumont / Dunmow / Essex."
Dorothy Wordsworth dates this letter "8 o'clock Sunday Evening / 7th November." The month of writing, from the published letter cited below, is December, not November.
The place of writing is inferred from the postmark "Ashby de la Zouch."
Provenance
Purchased as a gift of the Fellows from Benjamin Ifor Evans, 1954.
Summary
Relating, at length, details of the progress of Thomas and John and Dora at home and at school; reporting how pleased she is with the servants and with the fact that they have resolved the issues surrounding the laundry; discussing Coleridge and his separation from his wife; saying, "We have had four letters from him, and in all he speaks with the same steadiness of his resolution to separate from Mrs. C; and she has fully agreed to it, and consented that he should take Hartley and Derwent, and superintend their education, she being allowed to have them at the holidays. I say she has agreed to the separation; but in a letter which we have received to-night he tells us that she breaks out into outrageous passions, and urges continually that one argument (in fact the only one which has the least effect upon her mind), that this person, and that person, and everybody will talk;" adding that Coleridge and his sons would have been at Coleorton before now, except for his fear of the boys catching whooping cough, however he also has no where else he can go with his sons; quoting from Coleridge's letters saying 'As he says himself 'If I go away without them I am a Bird who has struggled himself from off a Bird-lime twig, and then finds a string round his leg pulling him back...I cannot, therefore, deny that I both have suffered, and am suffering hourly, to the great injury of my health, which at times alarms me as dropsical.' [end of quote]. This confirms what we had observed in his appearance; but I trust these bad symptoms will wear away when he is restored to quiet, and settled in some employment;" hoping that William's letter will convince Coleridge to come to Coleorton with his sons; discussing William's plans for the garden; admiring Lady Beaumont's transcription of the passage from Pascal and comparing the richness of the English language to that of French; saying that William has written two more poems and adding "He composes frequently in the grove, and Mr. Craig is going to put him up a Bench under the hollies;" apologizing for writing at such length about the children and promising "...to govern my pen better in the future."
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