BIB_ID
415183
Accession number
MA 1848.25
Creator
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.
Display Date
Nether Stowey, England, 1799 September 25.
Credit line
Purchased from Joanna Langlais, 1957.
Description
1 item (2 pages, with address) ; 25.3 x 20.2 cm
Notes
Coleridge gives only "Wednesday Morning" for the date of writing. In the Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Griggs surmises that this letter was written on September 25, 1799. See the published edition of the correspondence, cited below, for additional information.
Coleridge does not give a place of writing, but the letter is stamped "Bridgewater" and from internal evidence it is clear that it was written at Nether Stowey.
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: "Mr Southey / Mr Tucker's / Forestreet Hill / Exeter / Single."
Coleridge does not give a place of writing, but the letter is stamped "Bridgewater" and from internal evidence it is clear that it was written at Nether Stowey.
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: "Mr Southey / Mr Tucker's / Forestreet Hill / Exeter / 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
Saying that they arrived at Stowey last evening and that "this morning poor Fanny left us"; writing that neither he nor his wife Sara have any symptoms of infection yet, but they are concerned for Southey, his wife Edith and her sister Elizabeth ("Eliza"); describing Sara's "hypersuperlative Grief"; saying that Hartley (who he calls "Moses") "received the Catholic Sacrament of Unction for the first time last night," that he was "very merry, during the performance, singing or chanting -- I be a funny Fellow, And my name is Brimstonello," and that he has slept well and "never once scratched himself since his Embrimstonement"; asking whether Southey has read Isaac Weld's Travels through the States of North America: "I found them interesting -- / he makes the American appear a most degraded & vile nation"; recounting an anecdote about an oak planted by Abraham at Mamre, suggesting that this would make "a delightful subject [...] for an eclogue, or pastoral, or philosophical poem" and saying that William Taylor is the person to write it: "his knowledge, his style, his all-half believing Doubtingness of it all, his -- in short, I wish, that you would hint it to him"; asking Southey to pay his respects to the bookseller Gilbert Dyer and placing various book orders ("I beg to know the lowest price at which he will let me have Bacon's Works, & Milton's Prose Works"); saying also that if Dyer is ever anywhere in the neighborhood of Nether Stowey, "I hope he will not forget my invitation, or consider it as a commonplace Compliment"; adding that though his brother has called Dyer "a dark-hearted Jacobin," he disagrees: "l like him. The respect to men of Genius which he payed in letting you have the Mambrinos at your own price, pleased me"; sending Sara's love and her hopes that Edith will alert Eliza about the danger posed by the illness; discussing a poem underway: "I shall go on with the Mohammed / tho' something I must do for pecuniary emolument / -- I think of writing a School book."
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