BIB_ID
416437
Accession number
MA 2204.5
Creator
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.
Display Date
Keswick, England, 1800 September 16.
Credit line
Purchased from James Richard Scarlett, 8th Baron Abinger, 1962.
Description
1 item (1 page, with address) ; 33.3 x 20.8 cm
Notes
Coleridge gives the date of writing as "Tuesday, September 16." The year of writing has been taken from the postmark. See the published edition of the correspondence, cited below, for additional information.
Place of writing taken from the postmark.
This collection, MA 2204, is comprised of 41 letters from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to William Godwin, written between 1800 and 1823. See the collection-level record for more information (MA 2204.1-41).
Address panel with postmarks: "Mr Godwin / Polygon / Sommers Town / London."
Place of writing taken from the postmark.
This collection, MA 2204, is comprised of 41 letters from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to William Godwin, written between 1800 and 1823. See the collection-level record for more information (MA 2204.1-41).
Address panel with postmarks: "Mr Godwin / Polygon / Sommers Town / London."
Provenance
Purchased, via the London dealer Constance A. Kyrle Fletcher, from James Richard Scarlett, 8th Baron Abinger, in 1962 as a gift of the Fellows.
Summary
Asking for a loan of £10 and promising to pay it back next month; explaining that by the first of October "I shall have claim to as much money as I shall want - & the persons, to whom I could with more propriety have addressed myself in the mean time, than to you, opposed my settling in the North so strongly, that I feel a great disinclination to write to them on any pecuniary Embarrassment, which they will attribute to my journey hither - & the consequent expenses;" saying that the move is a remote cause of his need for money, but "the immediate cause was the unexpected necessity of paying an old Cambridge Debt, which had pressed very little on my Conscience, and intruded very rarely into my memory. However I was forced to part with eight pound at a very unseasonable time : / for, the day after, my wife presented Hartley with a little Brother [Derwent Coleridge];" writing of Sara that she is "as well as any woman in her situation, & in this climate, ever was or can be - the child is a very large one. She was brought to bed on Sunday Night 1/2 past 10;" asking Godwin if he would be the godfather; adding "If it be out of your power, I pray you, give yourself no concern about it - somehow or other I shall rub thro' the ensuing fortnight - and regard this letter only as a proof that I esteem you so much as not to be ashamed of suffering you to know any thing that befalls me -."
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