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 Parade / Bristol / For Mr Southey."
Writing that he foolishly walked back from Durham and was taken ill, with considerable swelling in his left knee, and has been advised to try "Horse-exercise & warm Sea-bathing," which has brought him to Scarborough; saying that he rode with Sara Hutchinson to the house of her brother, Thomas Hutchinson, who lives near Scarborough, and that it is proving a convenient place to stay; describing the fits that come upon him, when they start and how long they last: "I am often literally sick with pain"; discussing his and Southey's travel plans and when they might meet up in the Lake District; assuring him "O how much you will love Grasmere!"; discussing the climate of Keswick, the possibility of Southey's wintering there and how it might affect Southey's health; telling an anecdote about a little Quaker girl (during which he describes her as the daughter of John Slee, a friend of Thomas Clarkson's) who belched at dinner with the Wordsworths and the amusing thing she said about it; mentioning that Francis Wrangham, "one of your Anthology Friends," lives near Scarborough and has married a woman worth £700 a year; discussing Wrangham's tendency to marry sickly women, who leave him their fortunes when they die, and musing on this as the subject for a farce; discussing the effects of wealth: "O dear Southey! what incalculable Blessings, worthy of Thanksgiving in Heaven, do we not owe to our being & having been, Poor! No man's Heart can wholly stand up against Property"; sending his love to Edith; giving in a postscript the address to which letters can be sent (the Hutchinsons' house in Durham), describing where he plans to be over the course of the next few weeks and sending "Kind Remembrances" to Charles Danvers.