BIB_ID
415521
Accession number
MA 1848.59
Creator
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.
Display Date
Keswick, England, 1803 August 14.
Credit line
Purchased from Joanna Langlais, 1957.
Description
1 item (4 pages, with address) ; 24.8 x 20.3 cm
Notes
Coleridge does not list a place of writing, but based on references in the letter, it was clearly written at Keswick. See the published edition of the correspondence, cited below, for additional information.
Signed with initials.
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 postmark: "Mr Southey / St James's Parade / Kingsdown / Bristol."
Signed with initials.
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 postmark: "Mr Southey / St James's Parade / Kingsdown / Bristol."
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 he has been very ill and diagnosing himself with "a compleat & almost heartless Case of Atonic Gout"; describing a certain insight he has had about illness and why it produces "frightful Dreams, & Hypochondriacal Delusions"; referring to his fears: "As to the apprehension of Danger -- it would belong to my Disease, if it could belong to me. But Sloth, Carelessness, Resignation -- in all that have reference to mortal Life -- is not merely in me; it is me"; saying that he has consulted with a Mr. Edmondson about the wisdom of a trip to Scotland in his condition and Edmondson has recommended the trip for "the Exercise & the Excitement," along with "Carminative Bitters"; adding "I will therefore go; tho' I never yet commenced a Journey with such inauspicious Heaviness of Heart before"; saying that he and William and Dorothy Wordsworth will leave Keswick the following day; describing the "Jaunting Car" they have bought for the journey; describing short trips to and from Grasmere that his family and the Wordsworths have made in it so far; saying that it would be nice if Southey and his wife Edith rented half of Greta Hall, and if his health permitted him to stay in England, "[b]ut I swear by my Maker, that I will no longer trifle. I will try this Tour / if I cannot bear it -- I shall return from Glasgow / -- I will try the new Gout Medicine"; asking Southey to call on Dr. Beddoes and express his interest in and admiration for Beddoes' Hygeia and a new pamphlet; saying that he understands the new gout medicine is expensive and difficult to procure, but he is determined to try it; describing his symptoms ("distortion of Body from agony, profuse & streaming Sweats, & fainting") and saying that his bowel movements resemble labor pains; describing terrible nightmares, indigestion, inflammation in his limbs and "asthmatic Stuffing"; mentioning his temperate diet; saying that he is convinced that if Beddoes knew more about his case, he would change his opinion about the unimportance of climate in regards to gout; asking Southey to read parts of this letter to Beddoes; writing of his gratitude for "the many letters of Medical advice" that Beddoes had sent him, and his ambiguous feelings about his past behavior towards Beddoes; asking that a quantity of the gout medicine be sent to Greta Hall, instructing Southey to pay for it and promising to reimburse him; saying that if this fails, he will go to Madeira or Malta; sending news of his family and describing his daughter Sara as "quietness itself -- very lively, & joyous; but all in a quiet way of her own / She feeds on her Quietness, & 'has the most truly celestial expression of countenance, I ever beheld in a human Face'"; saying that the words he had quoted were Wordsworth's, not his own, "& Wordsworth's words always mean the whole of their possible Meaning."
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