BIB_ID
415581
Accession number
MA 1852.18
Creator
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.
Display Date
Keswick, England, 1812 March 1.
Credit line
Purchased from Joanna Langlais, 1957.
Description
1 item (2 pages, with address) ; 25.2 x 20.1 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 with postmark to "J. J. Morgan, Esq're / 7. Portland Place / Hammersmith / London."
Coleridge dates the letter "2 March, 1812" at the top of page 1, but adds "Sunday Night / Keswick" after his signature. Sunday night was March 1st. The letter is postmarked March 5, 1812 and stamped Keswick.
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 with postmark to "J. J. Morgan, Esq're / 7. Portland Place / Hammersmith / London."
Coleridge dates the letter "2 March, 1812" at the top of page 1, but adds "Sunday Night / Keswick" after his signature. Sunday night was March 1st. The letter is postmarked March 5, 1812 and stamped Keswick.
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
Explaining that he has been detained in Keswick due to the illness of Charles Lloyd "...who is in such a state of mind as is little short of Derangement - no Sleep, eternal Restlessness of body & mind (the other day he ran up & down & round & round his Bed room as hard as he could gallop from 12 at night till 4 in the morning) - in short, it is, in my opinion, his old constitutional Disease which I can invent no better name for, than a diffused Epilepsy, an Epilepsy that does not concenter itself in the crisis of a full Fit...Last year he was in the same way, & neither suffered poor Mrs. Lloyd either to leave him for a moment or even to sleep while with him - When Nature overpowered her, he would let her remain two or three minutes, and then run to her and awaken her - with - O God! don't go to sleep! Can you conceive any thing more dreadful - and she is now on the very Eve and Edge of Parturition!...In short, his Parents should contrive to have him placed under Dr. Willis or some other Physician of that sort. - He 'would see Southey' - his 'mind was made up' - Mrs. Lloyd mentioned me, and Wordsworth - No! it must be Southey. And so poor Southey who could not find in his heart to return a denial, was forced away from his Study, at a time, when the Loss of Time will be a Loss of at lest 30£ to him, to a man to whom he can be of no service, whose manners and conversation annoy & disquiet him even when he is at the sanest;" discussing financial matters; relating details of the logistics of his travel and saying that Southey will leave the Carriage so that it may continue with Hartley and will walk the 18 miles home "...tho- he scoffs at the Idea of 18 miles being too long a walk for him, since he walked from Grasmere to Kendal & back again to Ambleside in the same day in order to be confirmed. For he is very religious, and quite orthodox - he says, his Creed and his Father's are the same. He fully believes the Christian Revelation, and more than believes the Christian Religion; but the former for the sake of the latter, not the latter for the former;" adding that Mrs. Coleridge sends her love to Mary & Charlotte.
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