This collection, MA 1850, is comprised of five autograph letters signed and one autograph letter from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to James Gillman, written from November 10, 1816 through January 10, 1832.
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.
The identity of the recipient and the date of writing from published letter cited below.
Comparing, at length and in detail, their upbringing and their respective relationships to servants; saying "...it is cruel to be angry with each other, because we are a hair-breadth above or below the exact line. Sometimes, a few general and preparatory remarks are of use in tranquillizing the mind, and thus fitting it for the examination of the particular object, as you wipe your eye-glass before you use it. It seldom happens, that difference in opinion between two friends may arise from innocent differences in their several natures : and often from the difference of their education, past circumstances, and the incidents and accidents of their Life. Now to apply this to judgements respecting Servants and our inferior Dependents generally. I reflect, that formerly and in places remote from the Metropolis even in my childhood, the distinction of ranks was so felt as in a much less degree than at present to require a distance of manner for it's preservation. Servants were more in awe and yet more familiar. In old times Familiars meant Servants. In Scotland still the children of the best families companion with the servants from childhood upwards - However, at 8 years old I was taken away, to be for eleven years together a poor, friendless Blue-coat Boy - and many a meal, and delightful Bason of hot Tea and Bread and Butter have I been thankful for by a Kitchen-fire with a Schoolfellow, whose Father or mother or Aunt were in service...During the latter years I was now with rich, and now with poor - conversing as an equal with all ranks indiscriminately - Then came the Glow and Blaze of Democratic Notions - then the critical eruption of my six months' Light Dragoonery - and last, Pantisocracy, and perfect Equality on the banks of the Susquianna! - And to all this add a certain laxness and facility of natural temper. - On the other hand, independent of Circumstance and education you, my hear friend! had a peculiar fineness of nature - and this by a gracious adjustment of events was matured into a genuine refinement in sentiment, manners, and address;" discussing the manner in which she grew and saying "...nay, where as in your own case a more than ordinary tenderness and scrupulous considerateness & gentleness towards Servants were prominent & characteristic - still the tone and habit of feeling could not be altogether uninfluenced. You looked on them, as a Christian, and with Christian Benevolence; but at the same time looked down on them, with the alien-like feeling of a Gentle-woman, added to the inevitable inward with-drawing from the mere sense of diversity between them and your own born and innate character, all that which makes a Lady more than a Gentle-woman. Now when you compare your Life &c with mine, can you wonder that there should be some difference both in our notions and our feelings?...Now I have more than once known, and often and often heard of, a young man severely and justly reproached and reprimanded for haunting the Kitchen, of talking over his own affairs & those of others with a Servant, but I never knew of the blame being layed chiefly or equally on the latter. It has been made part of the reproach - 'I don't wonder, that she should be mightily flattered by a young gentleman's opening out his mind to her as if she were his equal - and having to sympathize with him and to pity him - especially when he took no improper liberties...' This is the sort of language which it has been common to use -. The fault was charged on the superior in rank for holding out a temptation which - as the inferior could not be expected to regard the talking with her as any thing in itself wicked; for no one, however humble her station, will think so meanly of herself as to believe that - an ignorant and vain Girl was not likely to persist in discouraging. In short, the sum and substance of my judgement is that it may become your duty to remove Maria;" expressing his admiration for her fortitude "...and of that genial strength which the mere sense of Duty could not have supplied, had it not been fed by natural goodness;" expressing his concern for her health.