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 postmarks: "R. Southey, Esqre / Greta Hall / Keswick / Cumberland."
Saying that he arrived in Portsmouth that morning and his ship is expected in the course of the day, with the convoy to set sail tomorrow; telling Southey that when he comes to London he should call on Sir George Beaumont and that Beaumont expressed the desire to meet him; describing the paintings in Beaumont's possession, among them works by Rubens, Claude, Richard Wilson and Gaspard Dughet; adding that Beaumont will take him to see various famous collections, such as those of Lords Ashburnham and Angerstein; urging him to call on Northcote and "beg to see the portrait of Lorenzo de Medici's, imagined to be by Bronzino / & on Commyns, the Picture Cleaner in Pall Mall [...] to see the Landscape by Salvator Rosa, if he still have it in his keeping, and above all the picture of St Helena dreaming the vision of the Cross, designed by Raphael & painted by Paul Veronese. That is a Poem indeed!"; saying he is somewhat better but in need of a few hours' sleep; mentioning that a bookseller named Mottley took him to the dockyards, where he saw the welding of an anchor for a man-of-war; describing the sight in great detail and sympathizing with the laborers; writing sympathetically also about the plight of the rope-makers and discussing the use of new machines; describing his diet: "I have never once since I left Keswick broke thro' my Rule of eating only of one thing that has had Life. If I eat Fish, I eat neither fowl nor flesh -- & so on"; praising Mottley; saying that when he was returning from the banker's yesterday with Daniel Stuart, they encountered Sheridan: "his very first words were a Compliment -- his next a Promise / his last united both. I could take that man in; but, I'll be damn'd, if he could take me in. -- Inter nos, Stuart, who knows him well, says, that he really did intend to take & introduce me to Addington"; describing with what care and affection Sir George Beaumont saw him off, providing him with wine, medicine, travel accessories and money; saying that Stuart has been equally kind; adding "It may seem madness in me to wish more Friends: yet who can know Rickman, that sterling Man, & not desire to be something more than an acquaintance?"; meditating on his feelings for Rickman and vice versa; remembering the beginnings of his friendship with Southey and their different paths in the ensuing years; promising to write Sara from Gibraltar, "if I reach it"; referring to Edith and saying his feelings reflect Southey's: "that which you let no one know of in the bottom of your Heart, that same anxiety & hope & fear flutters at the bottom of mine."