BIB_ID
417291
Accession number
MA 77.7
Creator
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.
Display Date
Nether Stowey, England, 1797 February 6.
Credit line
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1904.
Description
1 item (4 pages, with address) ; 39.3 x 24.8 cm
Notes
This collection, MA 77, is comprised of fifteen letters from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to John Thelwall, one letter from Coleridge to Susannah (called "Stella") Thelwall, two letters from John Thelwall to Susannah Thelwall, one letter from Peter Crompton to John Thelwall, and one incomplete draft of an article on the death of Queen Charlotte. The letters were written from 1796 to 1803, and the draft may have been written in 1818.
Address panel with postmarks: "Mr. Thelwall / Mr. Hardy's / Tavistock Street / Covent Garden." Another address has been heavily inked out.
Address panel with postmarks: "Mr. Thelwall / Mr. Hardy's / Tavistock Street / Covent Garden." Another address has been heavily inked out.
Provenance
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan from the London dealer J. Pearson & Co., 1904. Removed from a bound volume in June 1967.
Summary
Thanking Thelwall for a parcel and his letters; encouraging him strongly to pursue his idea for a school; adding "For your comfort, for your progressiveness in literary excellence, in the name of every thing that is happy, and in the name of every thing that is miserable I would have you do any thing honest, rather than lean with the whole weight of your necessities on the Press. Get bread, & cheese, cloathing & housing independently of it ; & you may then safely trust to it for beef and strong beer;" discussing all the advantages of a life in the country including how much more cheaply Thelwall and his family might live; suggesting that he could support himself through farming, occasional writing for magazines, and publishing his own work; remarking on the fact that Thelwall is going to Derby and saying "Dr [Erasmus] Darwin will no doubt excite your respectful curiosity. On the whole, I think, he is the first literary character in Europe, and the most original-minded Man;" praising various individuals, including Dr. Peter Crompton and his wife, William Strutt, Joseph Strutt and his wife Isabella, and Mrs. Elizabeth Evans (daughter of Jedediah Strutt); saying that the five weeks he and Sara spent at Mrs. Evans's house were "a sunny spot in our Life!" and that they both feel very affectionate towards her: "Indeed, indeed, Thelwall! she is without exception the greatest WOMAN, I have been fortunate enough to meet with in my brief pilgrimage thro' Life;" saying that he thinks Thelwall is more likely to get good-sized audiences in Nottingham than in Derby and that he himself was hospitably received there; sending detailed criticisms of Thelwall's pamphlet and focusing particularly on marriage, chastity and the role of women as mothers and wives; praising the pamphlet highly overall and writing about its public reception: "I account for it's slow sale partly from your having compared yourself to Christ in the first (which gave great offence to my knowledge, altho' very foolishly, I confess) & partly from the sore & fatigued state of men's minds which disqualifies them for works of principle that exert the intellect without agitating the passions;" praising Thelwall's Poems written in Close Confinement and comparing them to Mark Akenside's odes; saying that he appreciates Thelwall's criticisms of his poems ("your nerves are exquisite electrometers of Taste") and will take his suggestions; commenting on the guillotining of Louis XVI and the French Revolution: "Speaking of Lewis's death, surely, you forget that the Legislature of France were to act by Laws and not by general morals - ; & that they violated the Law which they themselves had made;" referring to a pamphlet ("De la force du gouvernement actuel...") by Benjamin Constant on the subject, recently translated by James Losh; describing in detail his daily schedule at Nether Stowey: "So jogs the day ; & I am happy. I have society - my friend, T. Poole and as many acquaintances as I can dispense with - there are a number of very pretty young women in Stowey, all musical - & I am an immense favorite : for I pun, conundrumize, listen, & dance. The last is a recent acquirement;" writing of how healthy and happy his son Hartley is; saying "You would smile to see my eye rolling up to the ceiling in a Lyric fury, and on my knee a Diaper pinned, to warm;" describing the garden, orchard, and farm animals; conveying his and Sara's love to Thelwall and his wife.
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