BIB_ID
417330
Accession number
MA 77.12
Creator
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.
Display Date
Keswick, England, 1800 December 17.
Credit line
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1904.
Description
1 item (3 pages, with address) ; 21.8 x 16.9 cm
Notes
Coleridge gives the date of writing at the end of the letter. The date has also been added at the start of the letter in red ink in an unknown hand.
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 / Llynswen / (by the three cocks) / near the / Hay / Brecknockshire." This address has been crossed out and the letter has been re-addressed to "Widemarsh Street / Hereford."
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 / Llynswen / (by the three cocks) / near the / Hay / Brecknockshire." This address has been crossed out and the letter has been re-addressed to "Widemarsh Street / Hereford."
Provenance
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan from the London dealer J. Pearson & Co., 1904. Removed from a bound volume in June 1967.
Summary
Apologizing for not having written, but saying that he has thought of Thelwall often: "in truth, my old aversion from letter-writing has become tenfold - I am hardened in the sin, and enjoy that deep calm of a seared Conscience, which precedes the Devil's Whirlwinds in Reprobate Spirits;" asking whether Thelwall is still at Lyswin Farm; explaining that a young man who admires Thelwall wished to send him £10, but he wanted Coleridge to send it under his own name: "this of course I would not do, both because it would give you a most inaccurate idea of the state of my pecuniary circumstances, & because it is right for you to know that you are honored where you have never been seen, and by others than of your own political sentiments;" saying that he will receive the money at the end of the week and send it along to Thelwall; asking Thelwall to write and tell him how he is, "& whether in the higher excitements of mind, ratiocinating or imaginative, you have been able to conjure up religious Faith in your Heart, and whether if only as a Ventriloquist unconscious of his own agency you have in any mood or moment thrown the voice of your human wishes into the space without you, & listened to it as to a Reality;" saying that he is comfortably settled in Keswick and Wordsworth lives thirteen miles from him; describing his current occupations: "My literary pursuits are, 1 the Northern Languages, the Sclavonic, Gothic, & Celtic, in their most ancient forms, as an amusing study, & 2. as a serious object, a metaphysical Investigation of the Laws, by which our Feelings form affinities with each other, with Ideas, & with words. As to Poetry, I have altogether abandoned it, being convinced that I never had the essentials of poetic Genius, & that I mistook a strong desire for original power;" mentioning that Sara and Hartley are well and that his son Berkeley died, "but we have another little one, christen'd Derwent [...] I would you had sympathy enough with my Christian Hope to receive comfort from my Wish, that our little ones have met & talk'd of their Fathers in a happier place;" sending his love to Mrs. Thelwall; concluding "If you are writing any poems, & want a lively Idea of Murder personified, it is a pity you can not see me - : for I have two blood-red Eyes that would do credit to Massacre itself!"
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