CXXI. TO THE SAME.
Scarborough, August 1, 1801.
My dear Southey,—On my return from Durham (I foolishly walked back), I was taken ill, and my left knee swelled “pregnant with agony,” as Mr. Dodsley says in one of his poems. Dr. Fenwick[248] has earnestly persuaded me to try horse-exercise and warm sea-bathing, and I took the opportunity of riding with Sara Hutchinson to her brother Tom, who lives near the place, where I can ride to and fro, and bathe with no other expense there than that of the bath. The fit comes on me either at nine at night, or two in the morning. In the former case it continues nine hours, in the latter five. I am often literally sick with pain. In the daytime, however, I am well, surprisingly so indeed, considering how very little sleep I am able to snatch. Your letter was sent after me, and arrived here this morning, and but that my letter can reach you on the 5th of this month, I would immediately set off again, though I arrived here only last night. But I am unwilling not to try the baths for one week. If, therefore, you have not made the immediate preparation you may stay one week longer at Bristol. But if you have, you must look at the lake, and play with my babies three or four days, though this grieves me. I do not like it. I want to be with you, and to meet you even to the very verge of the Lake Country. I would far rather that you would stay a week at Grasmere (which is on the road, fourteen miles from Keswick), with Wordsworth, than go on to Keswick, and I not there. Oh, how you will love Grasmere!
All I ever wish of you with regard to wintering at Keswick is to stay with me till you find the climate injurious. When I read that cheerful sentence, “We will climb Skiddaw this year and scale Etna the next,” with a right piteous and humorous smile did I ogle my poor knee, which at this present moment is larger than the thickest part of my thigh.
A little Quaker girl (the daughter of the great Quaker mathematician Slee, a friend of anti-negro-trade Clarkson, who has a house at the foot of Ulleswater, which Slee Wordsworth dined with, a pretty parenthesis!), this little girl, four years old, happened after a very hearty meal to eructate, while Wordsworth was there. Her mother looked at her, and the little creature immediately and formally observed: “Yan belks when yan’s fu, and when yan’s empty.” That is, “One belches when one’s full and when one’s empty.” Since that time this is a favourite piece of slang at Grasmere and Greta Hall, whenever we talk of poor Joey, George Dyer, and other perseverants in the noble trade of scribbleism.
Wrangham,[249] who lives near here, one of your anthology friends, has married again, a lady of a neat £700 a year. His living by the Inclosure [Act] will be something better than £600, besides what little fortune he had with his last wife, who died in the first year. His present wife’s cousin observed, “Mr. W. is a lucky man: his present lady is very weakly and delicate.” I like the idea of a man’s speculating in sickly wives. It would be no bad character for a farce.
That letter £ was a kind-hearted, honest, well-spoken citizen. The three strokes which did for him were, as I take it, (1), the Ictus Cardiacus, which devitalized his moral heart; (2ondly) the stroke of the apoplexy in his head; and (thirdly) a stroke of the palsy in his right hand, which produces a terrible shaking and impotence in the very attempt to reach his breeches pocket. O dear Southey! what incalculable blessings, worthy of thanksgiving in Heaven, do we not owe to our being and having been poor! No man’s heart can wholly stand up against property. My love to Edith.
S. T. Coleridge.