BIB_ID
416254
Accession number
MA 1856.38
Creator
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.
Display Date
London, England, 1832 May 17.
Credit line
Purchased from Joanna Langlais, 1957.
Description
1 item (4 pages, with address) ; 18.4 x 11.4 cm
Notes
Coleridge does not list a date of writing. The letter is postmarked "May 18, 1832" and Griggs surmises that it was written on the previous day, May 17, 1832. See the published edition of the correspondence, cited below, for additional information.
Place of writing taken from the postmark.
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 / 46 Lincoln's Inn Fields."
Place of writing taken from the postmark.
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 / 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
Saying that he hopes that work has kept Green from Highgate, not "illness nor vexation ab extra"; adding that he can "offer no rational motive for your coming here next Sunday"; describing receiving visitors last Sunday: "I drest at 12 o'clock -- crawled down into the drawing-room & received the gratulations of successive visitors on my bright eyes & clear complexion -- A large number of incendiary 1/2d & penny flying-sheets recalling and repeating the guilt & frenzy of the Septembrizers in 93 were sucessively brought in -- Mr Steele, an old School-fellow, was eulogizing Lord [Charles] Grey -- & I two-thirds laughing & one third in earnest was hyper-bolizing on the other side -- in short, in apparent high spirits -- But I was not myself deceived. The painful Yawning with the suffusion of the Eyes with water gave too convincing proof of the want of balance & harmony between the respiratory & the circulatory systems"; saying that soon afterwards he ate a mutton chop and it brought on a severe attack: "All my limbs became torpid, with aching & a sense of weight -- I lay, quite unable to undress myself, in a distressful Torpor, a rapid succession of startful dozings, & the never remitting sensation of Heat & Uneasiness in the old place -- from the pit of the Stomach to the Navel, till Monday Noon -- when Mr Gillman found time to look in on me"; listing the medicines Gillman gave him and saying that they eased the symptoms, but that they were followed by swelling, salivation and other reactions: "I have very nearly lost the voluntary power of ejecting the mucus from my Throat -- & as to eating, it is impracticable. -- The result is -- that I shall distress you, when you see me -- & you can do me no good. -- I do not feel the slightest wish or craving for the Laudanum; nor do I believe, that it would even alleviate my sufferin[g]s. But yet I grieve for the too apparent failure of the experiment--".
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