BIB_ID
414910
Accession number
MA 1849.6
Creator
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.
Display Date
St. Clears, Wales, 1802 November 22.
Credit line
Purchased from Joanna Langlais, 1957.
Description
1 item (4 pages, with address) ; 22.6 x 18.5 cm
Notes
This collection, MA 1849, is comprised of forty-six autograph letters signed from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to his wife, Sara Coleridge, written between 1802 and 1824.
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.
Address panel with postmark and fragments of a seal to "Mrs. Coleridge / Greta Hall / Keswick / Cumberland."
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.
Address panel with postmark and fragments of a seal to "Mrs. Coleridge / Greta Hall / Keswick / Cumberland."
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 his concern for her fainting and encouraging her to immediately get a nurse; explaining, at length and in detail, "...the many causes, which render the marriage of unequal & unlike Understandings & Dispositions so exceedingly miserable...Be assured, my dear Love! that I shall never write otherwise than most kindly to you, except after great Aggressions on your part : & not then, unless my reason convinces me, that some good end will be answered by my Reprehensions. - My dear Love! let me in the spirit of love say two things / 1. I owe duties, & solemn ones, to you as my wife; but I owe equally solemn ones to Myself, to my Children, to my Friends, and to Society. Where Duties are at variance, dreadful as the case may be, there must be a Choice. I can neither retain my Happiness nor my Faculties, unless I move, live, & love, in perfect Freedom, limited only by my own purity & self-respect, & by my incapability of loving any person, man or woman, unless I at the same time honor & esteem them...That we can love but one person, is a miserable mistake, & the cause of abundant unhappiness. I can & do love many people, dearly - so dearly, that I really scarcely know, which I love the best...Permit me, my dear Sara! without offence to you, as Heaven knows! it is without any feeling of Pride in myself, to say - that in sex, acquirements, and in the quantity and quality of natural endowments whether of Feeling or Intellect, you are the Inferior. Therefore it would be preposterous to expect that I should see with your eyes, & dismiss my Friends from my heart, only because you have not chosen to give them any Share of your Heart; but it is not preposterous, in me, on the contrary I have a right to expect & demand, that you should to a certain degree love, & act kindly to, those whom I deem worthy of my Love;" relating news of his travels, his diet, his health and the people he has seen; informing her that he will likely be setting off again with Tom Wedgwood; saying "today we leave this place for Narbarth, 12 miles from hence - shall probably return to Crescelly - & then - God knows, where! Cornwall perhaps - Ireland perhaps - perhaps, Cumberland - possibly Naples, or Madeira, or Teneriffe. I don't see any likelihood of our going to the Moon, or to either of the Planets, or fixed Stars - & that is all, I can say;" asking her to write to him immediately and direct the letter to the post office in Carmarthen.
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