BIB_ID
415061
Accession number
MA 1848.9
Creator
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.
Display Date
Cambridge, England, 1794 November 3-4.
Credit line
Purchased from Joanna Langlais, 1957.
Description
1 item (3 pages, with address) ; 45.6 x 29.2 cm
Notes
Coleridge does not give a date of writing at the start of the letter and marks the second half of it as being written on "Tuesday Morning." However, the address panel is postmarked November 6, 1794, a Thursday. In the Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Griggs argues that this letter was begun on Monday, November 3, and completed the next day. See the published edition of the correspondence, cited below, for additional information.
Place of writing taken from the postmark.
This collection, MA 1848, is comprised of 92 letters from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to Robert Southey, written between 1794 and 1819. See the collection-level record for more information (MA 1848.1-92).
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 as MA 1848-1857.
Address panel with postmarks: "Robert Southey / No 8 / West gate Buildings / Bath / Single."
Place of writing taken from the postmark.
This collection, MA 1848, is comprised of 92 letters from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to Robert Southey, written between 1794 and 1819. See the collection-level record for more information (MA 1848.1-92).
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 as MA 1848-1857.
Address panel with postmarks: "Robert Southey / No 8 / West gate Buildings / Bath / Single."
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
Arguing with Southey about whether there should be servants in Pantisocracy: "My feeble and exhausted Heart regards with a criminal indifference the Introduction of Servitude into our Society --; but my Judgement is not asleep: nor can I suffer your Reason, Southey! to be entangled in the web, which your feelings have woven"; making the case that because animals do not have "intellectual Appetites" it is acceptable to use their labor for human benefit, but this cannot apply to other humans: "To be employed in the Toil of the Field while We are pursuing philosophical Studies -- can Earldoms or Emperorships boast so huge an Inequality?"; adding that he does not think the assistance of servants (referring particularly to Shadrach Weekes and his wife Sally) is even necessary; saying that the unlikelihood that a Mr. and Mrs. Roberts will have children makes them even more suitable for the scheme; writing that he fears a prediction made by Mr. Lushington (see MA 1848.8) and quoting it: "'Your System, Coleridge! appears strong to the head and lovely to the Heart -- but depend upon it you will never give your women sufficient strength of mind, liberality of heart, or vigilance of attention -- They will spoil it!'"; telling Southey that he is very unwell, having "run a nail into my Heel," and he is about to take a medicine labeled "Embrocation for the throbbing of the Head"; stopping the letter to go to supper and recommencing at one o'clock in the morning; saying that he began to read Schiller's play The Robbers at midnight and was powerfully affected by it: "My God! Southey! Who is this Schiller? This Convulser of the Heart? Did he write his Tragedy amid the yelling of Fiends? [...] Why have we ever called Milton sublime?"; beginning the letter again on Tuesday morning and telling Southey that Potter ("a 'Son of Soul' -- a Poet -- of liberal sentiments in politics") will be driving him up to town in a week; thanking Southey for his sympathy and describing a "feverish distemperature of Brain" and the effects of "the Joy of Grief" on his will; writing, probably about Mary Evans: "She was very lovely, Southey! We formed each other's minds -- our ideas were blended -- Heaven bless her! I cannot forget her -- every day her Memory sinks deeper into my heart"; including three lines of Latin verse; returning to the subject of Pantisocracy and saying that he wishes the mothers and children who have decided to participate would not go: "That Mrs Fricker -- we shall have her teaching the Infants Christianity, -- I mean -- that mongrel whelp that goes under it's name -- teaching them by stealth in some ague-fit of Superstition!"; commenting on relations with his family; writing in a postscript that a friend of his (identifed by Griggs as Reverend Fulwood Smerdon) "hath lately departed this Life in a frenzy fever induced by Anxiety! poor fellow -- a child of frailty like me: yet he was amiable"; including the poem "Lines on a Friend," which he describes as "incondite Lines [written] in a moment of melancholy dissatisfaction"; following this immediately with a "Song," beginning "When Youth his faery reign began"; signing off (a second time) "God love you."
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