BIB_ID
417383
Accession number
MA 77.16
Creator
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.
Display Date
Keswick, England, 1803 November 25.
Credit line
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1904.
Description
1 item (3 pages, with address) ; 23.2 x 19.6 cm
Notes
Coleridge gives the date of writing as "Nov. 26th, 1803. Friday Night." However, in that year, month, and week, Friday fell on the 25th. See the published edition of the correspondence, cited below, for additional information.
Written on blue paper.
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 John Thelwall / Kendal."
Written on blue paper.
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 John Thelwall / Kendal."
Provenance
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan from the London dealer J. Pearson & Co., 1904. Removed from a bound volume in June 1967.
Summary
Saying that he received his wife Susannah's letter, but he was too ill to answer it by return of post; writing that it would be dangerous for him to attempt to reach Kendal and suggesting that he meet the Thelwalls at Grasmere; adding that he plans to leave the country very soon for Malta or Madeira, "for I dare stay no longer in this climate;" assuring them that he will not leave before seeing Mrs. Thelwall and "her friend - whose attachment to one unknown or at least unseen, affected & pleased me - not for myself - Heaven knows! she might easily have found a less unworthy object of her favorable opinion - but because such feelings of Esteem & Affection for persons, who are known to us only in spirit, are the exclusive property of minds at once fervent & pure & formative;" describing his ill health and frequent "Bowel & Stomach attacks;" saying that he bears the Pain with "a woman's Fortitude / it is constitutional with me to look quietly and steadily in it's face, as it were, & to ask it - What & whence it is?"; asking if Thelwall could purchase from the best druggist in Kendal "an Ounce of crude opium, & 9 ounces of Laudanum, the Latter put in a stout bottle & so packed up as that it may travel a few hundred miles with safety. - The whole will cost, I believe, half a guinea - & you will bring them with you in your gig;" mentioning that Southey is with him and praising Southey highly; adding "Wordsworth is likewise here / he came in last night to see me, I being very ill - but to day I am a good deal better;" saying that he hopes a visit from Thelwall would restore him sufficiently to "make your all too short Sojourn with us pleasant to you & representative of old Times;" asking in a postscript if Thelwall could get, through "G. Braithwaite, Junr," a copy of "Scotus in Sententias" (probably Duns Scotus's Sentences) from the Sandes Library: "You will laugh heartily at travelling in a Gig with old Duns Scotus for your Companion / - God bless the old Schoolmen! they have been my best comforts, & most instructive Companions for the last 2 years. - - Could you have believed, that I could have come to this?"
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