BIB_ID
415346
Accession number
MA 1848.39
Creator
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.
Display Date
Durham, England, 1801 July 25.
Credit line
Purchased from Joanna Langlais, 1957.
Description
1 item (3 pages, with address) ; 23.3 x 19 cm
Notes
Coleridge gives the place and date of writing at the end of the letter.
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: "Mrs Danvers / Kingsdown / Bristol / for Mr Southey."
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: "Mrs Danvers / Kingsdown / Bristol / for Mr Southey."
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
Beginning "I do loathe cities -- that's certain"; saying that he is staying at an inn in Durham and has just dined with a group of priests ("thoroughly ignorant & hard-hearted") connected to the cathedral; adding that he has had a very hard time getting permission to have books sent to him from the library; saying that he asked the librarian if they had any Leibnitz and the librarian thought he was asking about "live Nits"; mentioning that he returns to Middleham the next day, "to a quiet good family, that love me dearly" (the Hutchinsons); describing George Hutchinson as a farmer who "makes very droll verses in the northern dialect & in the metre of Burns" and Sara Hutchinson as "so very good a woman, that I have seldom indeed seen the like of her"; wishing that the good people in the world had more power (specifically, to "edit a crepitus strong enough to whirl away the rest to Hell--!"); telling Southey that he does not approve the idea of him going to Palermo and Constantinople "to be a secretary to a fellow, that would poison you for being a poet while he is only a lame Verse-maker!"; adding that he doesn't think any position that constrains Southey or puts him under someone else's control would suit him; proposing a scheme of his own; saying that one "Pinny" (John Frederick Pinney of Bristol) has an estate on Saint Nevis with a large house, that he believes that they could have the house, live cheaply and perhaps get jobs from Pinney as slave-drivers or "some other snug & reputable office"; suggesting that his family, the Southeys and the Wordsworths all move there, and "make the Island more illustrious than Cos or Lesbos"; describing the beauties of Saint Nevis; asking Southey to consider this idea but to say nothing about it; adding that he thinks the area around Keswick is just as dry as Bristol and discussing the amount of rainfall and standard temperatures there: "But I feel, that there is no relief for me in any part of England. -- Very hot weather brings me about in an instant -- & I relapse as soon as it coldens"; saying that he looks forward to hearing all about Southey's return journey from him in person; sending love to Edith, other members of the Fricker family, Charles and Mrs. Danvers and Humphry Davy; ending the letter "God bless you! Write."
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