Letter from Dorothy Wordsworth, Grasmere, to Lady Beaumont, 1807 December 6 : autograph manuscript signed with initials.

Hoping that Lady Beaumont arrived safely in Dunmow and found the Dowager Lady Beaumont "...not in worse health and spirits than when you left her...;" mentioning that Coleridge's lectures have begun and Mr. De Quincey has promised to take notes and will send them a copy; commenting on DeQuincey's slight and shy appearance but adding "I think of this young man with extraordinary pleasure, as he is a remarkable instance of the power of my Brother's poems, over a lonely and contemplative mind, unwarped by any established laws of taste... - - a pure and innocent mind!;" quoting, at length, from William's account of his travels to Stockton, relating the specifics of the weather and saying that if they knew how bad the weather was going to be, her sister never would have gone to Stockton; saying "...but when she left home the weather was very pleasant, and such a storm at this season of the year is not remembered by any person living in this country; and it is, indeed, forty years since there has been such a fall of snow at any season. Forty years ago the roads were blocked up for three weeks; and it is still remembered by numbers, and goes by the name of the 'great snow';" thanking Lady Beaumont for the "hamper of Game" which she will share with a neighbor as William and Mary are not with her; adding that she has heard from Coleridge about Davy's "...illness, and his great discoveries. I am very anxious to hear that he is restored to health. - Poor Wilkie! I am very sorry too, to hear of his illness. I fear that by too much application, though in very different ways, they may have both irreparably injured their constitutions;" apologizing, in a postscript, "...for this letter so crammed - I will guard against it in future by using larger paper."