BIB_ID
415524
Accession number
MA 1848.60
Creator
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.
Display Date
Perth and Edinburgh, Scotland, 1803 September 10-11.
Credit line
Purchased from Joanna Langlais, 1957.
Description
1 item (4 pages, with address) ; 31.3 x 25.5 cm
Notes
This single sheet contains two letters, one addressed to Southey and the other to Sara Coleridge. According to Griggs, Coleridge wrote both letters in Perth and then, on his arrival in Edinburgh the following day, added a postscript to his letter to Sara Coleridge and mailed off the sheet. See the published edition of the correspondence, cited below, for additional information. The letter to Sara is also referred to in the collection-level record for the Morgan's collection of Coleridge's letters to his wife, MA 1849.1-46.
The poem included in the letter contains autograph cancellations and additions.
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: "Single Sheet / Mrs Coleridge / Greta Hall / Keswick / Cumberland / S. Britain / For Mr Southey."
The poem included in the letter contains autograph cancellations and additions.
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: "Single Sheet / Mrs Coleridge / Greta Hall / Keswick / Cumberland / S. Britain / 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
Addressed to Robert Southey: Writing of his feelings on receiving Southey's letters, offering to be "[w]hatever Comfort I can be to you" and vowing "I will knit myself far closer to you than I have hitherto done -- & my children shall be your's till it please God to send you another"; saying that he has had a "wild journey" so far and describing being arrested at Fort Augustus as a suspected spy; mentioning that he has walked "263 miles in eight days -- so I must have strength somewhere / but my spirits are dreadful"; describing the ordeal of his nights: "I truly dread to sleep / it is no shadow with me, but substantial Misery foot-thick, that makes me sit by my bedside of a morning, & cry"; adding "I have abandoned all opiates except Ether be one; & that only in fits -- & that is a blessed medicine!"; saying that he can get no rest; including a fifty-six line poem beginning "When on my bed my limbs I lay" (this was later published and titled "The Pains of Sleep"); adding "I do not know how I came to scribble down these verses to you -- my heart was aching, my head all confused -- but they are, doggrels as they may be, a true portrait of my nights"; saying that they will meet soon and he will do all he can to console Edith; writing that Southey's letters have had "the effect of perfect intoxication on my head & eyes"; writing "Change! change! change! -- O God of Eternity! when shall we all be at rest in thee?"; Addressed to Sara Coleridge: describing his arrest at Fort Augustus while he was in the midst of writing her a letter; saying he had walked so far and on such rough terrain that his shoes fell apart, and he had to get new ones at Fort Augustus; describing what he has been eating and how far he has walked since then; saying that he has heard nothing from Wordsworth: "He will be wondering what can have become of me"; writing about the effect of Southey's letters on him; urging her "O Sara! dear Sara! -- try for all good Things in the spirit of unsuspecting Love / for miseries gather upon us"; wishing the children goodnight; adding a postscript on Monday morning and saying that he has arrived safely in Edinburgh, where he will seek news of Wordsworth and his clothes; adding that Southey's letter had the effect of "an overdose of some narcotic Drug -- weeping -- vomiting -- wakefulness the whole night, in a sort of stupid sensuality of Itching from my Head to my Toes, all night. -- I had drunken only one pint of weak Porter the whole Day. -- This morning I have felt the soberness of grief."
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