BIB_ID
415113
Accession number
MA 1849.31
Creator
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.
Display Date
London, England, 1806 October 3.
Credit line
Purchased from Joanna Langlais, 1957.
Description
1 item (3 pages, with address) ; 23.7 x 18.9 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 to "Mrs. Coleridge / Keswick / Cumberland."
Date of writing from published letter cited below. Place of writing inferred from contents of the letter.
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 to "Mrs. Coleridge / Keswick / Cumberland."
Date of writing from published letter cited below. Place of writing inferred from contents of the 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
Relating the details of his travel plans which continue to delay his return to Keswick; saying "Davy had been for many days urging me, with an eagerness and importunity not common to him, to go with him to Mr. Bernard's at Roehampton, as to day. This I had as firmly refused, stating the impropriety of so frequently vexing & disappointing you - & my own eagerness to be with you, & my Children. Since however I have been absolutely prevented from going off at the time proposed, as the business is really important - no less indeed than that of laying a plan of my giving Lectures every winter both at the Royal and London Institutions, & mainly assisting in a work to be published at the latter, from all which it seems probably that I make a respectable annuity of perhaps 400£ a year, I at length consented - shall return on Sunday Morning - on Monday shall go certainly (if I can move at all) to Parndon, where I have left almost all my cloathes / & having in respect to common politeness stayed one day, shall go to Cambridge & from thence make the best of my way to Keswick. Of course, it is impossible to state the day or hour of my arrival; and I do trust, that it is not necessary for me to add, that I will not make a minute's unnecessary Delay;" saying he had heard that Southey disapproved of his plan to lecture in London; saying "I wish, he had written to me, & let me know his reasons. Something (he knows) I must do, & that immediately, to get money - & this seems both the most respectable, & the least unconnected with my more serious literary plans of - which I should be glad to be less sceptical concerning - Providence enable me to live long enough. And if I should die, as soon as I feel probable, it seems the most likely mode of distinguishing myself so as to leave Patrons for you & my Children. But when I arrive, we can talk this over. A single course can do me no great harm."
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