Letter from John Thelwall, Penrith and other locations, to Susannah Thelwall, 1803 November 29-30 : autograph manuscript.

[Written at Penrith]: Saying that he is "perfectly sound in every thing but resolution" and explaining that he stayed a day longer in Keswick than intended because of the "scenery of the Lakes - the Cataract of Lodóre, the presence of Southey, & the conversation of Coleridge;" adding that he dined with Mary and Dorothy Wordsworth in Grasmere and was just about to depart when William arrived from Keswick; referring to Susannah's letter to Coleridge and a miscommunication about when and where Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Thelwall intended to meet; [written at Carlisle]: saying that Hazlitt accompanied him on the road from Keswick to Penrith; describing the weather and the scenery: "a glorious day for the Picturesque [...] An artist was therefore the very companion in the world most acceptable to one of my taste. We could sympathize in every thing : & our duetto was sometimes in a tolerably high key - crescendo con expressivo;" describing the Lake District as "grandly varied - majestic - awful - luxuriantly sublime;" mentioning that he was delayed at Penrith while trying to dispose of his horse, on the advice of "G. Braithwaite;" saying that Braithwaite, who was writing to his family, asked them to pass on to Susannah the news that he was well: "Coleridge had also promised to write but, upon him I should not have relied;" [written at Longtown]: describing himself as full of "deep cogitations ; expatiating & expanding my philosophical principle of pulsation ; & brooding with encreasing confidence and satisfaction on the ready assent which every literary & scientific character I meet with (you know the isolated exception) gives to the truth & to the value of this my fundamental axiom! - Coleridge & Southey, & even the disputatious metaphysical Hazlet are already among the number of my desciples [sic];" saying that Hazlitt has greatly improved and become "less disputatious & more conversable;" writing at length about the three Fricker sisters and Southey: "Sara seems only improved by becoming less talkative - (i.e. less obvious) - Mrs Southey & Mrs Lovell are both her superior in person &c - but they are neither of them interesting. - Mrs. S, tho handsomest, least so - Her only expression is vanity - & she seems a mere mute in the drama. Even S. himself towers above his fellow beings more by his vanity than his genius. - he looks like a man who has read more than he has thought - & who has fancy without energ[y?] & when he speaks, you perceive even in the very tuning of his most execrable voice, which is half way between a croak & a scream, rather the formality of the reader than the ear of the conversationalist;" [written from Langholm]: saying that he has arrived in Scotland and describing the scenery along the last stage of the journey; writing that from Carlisle to the border of England, the land is "flat, barren & furze-grown - a wretched common - as if Desolation sat brooding in silent triumph over the gilty [sic] tract polluted with the blood of reiterated contention - the scene of Scottish & of english massacres" and that it is only when you reach Scotland that cultivated land begins to appear; describing the rest of his route, which ends at Edinburgh, and asking her to write as soon as possible; urging her, if "Molly" is not better, to "buy a bed, & have her removed" and saying that he will send money immediately if this expense exhausts her finances.