BIB_ID
415530
Accession number
MA 1852.11
Creator
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.
Display Date
London, England, 1811 October 12.
Credit line
Purchased from Joanna Langlais, 1957.
Description
1 item (4 pages, with address) ; 23.9 x 19.4 cm
Notes
This collection, MA 1852, is comprised of 40 autograph letters signed from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to Mr. and Mrs. John James Morgan, written from November 1807 through October 1826. Coleridge lived with the Morgans from 1810-1816.
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.
Address panel to "J. J. Morgan Esq're / 7 Portland Place / Hammersmith" and marked "Private."
Parts of several lines and two complete lines of this letter have been heavily crossed through with a dark ink.
Place of writing derived from contents of the letter. Date of writing from published letter cited below. A footnote to his letter indicates that this letter was included in the following letter dated, from its postmark, October 15, 1811 (see MA 1852.12).
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.
Address panel to "J. J. Morgan Esq're / 7 Portland Place / Hammersmith" and marked "Private."
Parts of several lines and two complete lines of this letter have been heavily crossed through with a dark ink.
Place of writing derived from contents of the letter. Date of writing from published letter cited below. A footnote to his letter indicates that this letter was included in the following letter dated, from its postmark, October 15, 1811 (see MA 1852.12).
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
Concerning his disappearance, his inability to be honest with them and his continuing bad behavior towards Mrs. Morgan and her sister despite his deep affection for them; saying "I dare affirm, that few men have ever felt or regretted their own infirmities, more deeply than myself - they have in truth preyed too deeply on my mind, & the hauntings of Regret have injured me more than the things to be regretted...Our feelings govern our notions. Love a man, & his Talking shall be Eloquence - dislike him, & the same thing becomes Preaching. His quickness of Feeling & the starting Tear, shall be at one time natural sensibility - for the Tears swelled into his eye not for his own pains, or misfortunes, but either for others' or for some wound from unkindness - the same at another time shall be loathsome maudlin unmanliness. Activity of Thought scattering itself in jests, puns, & sportive nonsense, shall in the bud & blossom of acquaintanceship be amiable playfulness, & met or anticipated by a Laugh or a correspondent Jest...Such, however, is Life. Some few may find their happiness out of themselves in the regard & sympathy of others; but most are driven back by repeated disappointments into themselves, there to find tranquillity, or (too often) sottish Despondency. There are not those Beings on earth, who can truly say that having professed affection for them, I ever either did or spoke unkindly or unjustly of them...My present distracting difficulties, which have disenabled me from doing what might have alleviated them, I must either get thro', or sink under, as it may happen;" complaining that his problems stem from a dishonest business relationship, the demands of Mrs. Coleridge, "...the never-closing, festering Wound of Wordsworth & his Family, & other aggravations...;" asking that he send him his books "...& other paucities;" adding "Therefore think of me as one deceased who had been your sincere Friend;" adding, in a postscript at the top of the first page, "Burn this after you have read it. / Private. - If I get thro' these difficulties - (& that done, I doubt not, that tranquillity of mind will enable me to mend all the rest) it will be my first Desire to meet you. Till then what is the use of it?...I have tried in vain to compose any thing anew. To transcribe is the utmost in my power."
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