BIB_ID
417366
Accession number
MA 77.14
Creator
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.
Display Date
Keswick, England, 1801 April 23.
Credit line
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1904.
Description
1 item (4 pages, with address) ; 24 x 19.6 cm
Notes
Place of writing taken from the postmark.
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 / Hereford / Single."
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 / Hereford / Single."
Provenance
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan from the London dealer J. Pearson & Co., 1904. Removed from a bound volume in June 1967.
Summary
Wishing Thelwall "all joy & comfort on the Safety of your Wife - & [I] congratulate you both for the Mother and the Child;" saying that Thelwall's last letter was enigmatic and he is not sure that he understands the references to a "secret expedition" and "the Lady of the Lake;" adding that he was also not aware that Thelwall had considered translating Jacques Delille's translations of Virgil's Georgics ("but you cannot have intended to translate a translation"); refusing to offer any advice or opinions about Thelwall's publication plans; writing that he and Thelwall are "so utterly unlike each other in our habits of Thinking, and we have adopted such irreconcileably different opinions in Politics, Religion, & Metaphysics, (& probably in Taste too) that, I fear - I fear - I do not know how to express myself - - but such, I fear, is the chasm between us, that so far from being able to shake hands across it, we cannot even make our Words intelligible to each other;" giving his opinion after all and saying that he approves of the fact that Thelwall has chosen to publish by subscription for various reasons; adding that he thinks "The Lady of the Lake" is an "unlucky title ; as since the time of Don Quixote the phrase has become a cant word in almost all European Languages for a Woman of Pleasure;" critiquing other phrases Thelwall has used and the publication plans in detail ("First of all, you mean to publish the whole - & then your Subscribers are to buy these two Books over again / but waiving this, it will appear a childish impatience if you have not finished the Poem..."); adding "You say no part of the contents of this Volume are to be political? - How is this possible if you give your Memoirs?"; saying that his health is very bad and he fears that if he remains in the English climate, he will go "down to the Grave;" writing that in this event, he expects that his brothers will take care of his wife and children, "and from this Cause I am sure I need not request you not to mention my name in your memoirs - . - I say this, not thinking it at all probable that you would do so ; but because the thing may be of some importance to my poor Wife & children."
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