BIB_ID
416222
Accession number
MA 1856.35
Creator
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.
Display Date
London, England, 1832 March 23.
Credit line
Purchased from Joanna Langlais, 1957.
Description
1 item (3 pages, with address) ; 20.3 x 12.9 cm
Notes
Date and place of writing taken from the postmark. See the published edition of the correspondence, cited below, for additional information.
This collection, MA 1856, is comprised of 48 letters from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to Joseph Henry Green and 2 autograph manuscripts, written between 1817 and 1834. See the collection-level record for more information (MA 1856.1-50).
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 seal and postmarks: "J.H. Green, Esqre / &c &c / 36 or 46. Lincoln's Inn Fields."
This collection, MA 1856, is comprised of 48 letters from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to Joseph Henry Green and 2 autograph manuscripts, written between 1817 and 1834. See the collection-level record for more information (MA 1856.1-50).
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 seal and postmarks: "J.H. Green, Esqre / &c &c / 36 or 46. Lincoln's Inn Fields."
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
Writing of his addiction and illness: "By the mercy of God I remain quiet; and so far from any craving for the poison that has been the curse of my existence, my shame and my negro-slave inward humiliation and debasement, I feel an aversion, a horror at the imagining: so that I doubt, whether I could swallow a dose without a resiliency, amounting almost to a convulsion. For this Quiet, I am most grateful, whether I sink or rise. -- But on the other hand, I have & have had, no sensation of convalescence, no genial feeling, no remission of the weakness in the voluntary Muscles, symptomatic of a paralysis -- and still in the region between the pit of the Stomach & the Navel there is constantly that which makes it difficult for me to believe that it is a mere functional derangement. The grasp of Mortality seems too tight, too constant"; saying that James Gillman says he looks much better, but "during and after shaving when I look at myself in the Glass, I see almost the contrary"; quoting Harriet Macklin as saying that his face looks less worn by pain and anxiety, but "yellower, or brown and yellow, m[ore] than I have ever seen it"; writing that he fears he will be less than capable of "evolving my inward mind next Sunday" and that perhaps Green should not come to visit; adding "Still, to be quiet tho' very weak and as far as this Life is concerned, hopeless -- for remember, I am past threescore -- is a great blessing, and I trust, I lift up my heart in unfeigned thankfulness to Him, in whose will are the Issues of Life & Death."
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