CCXLV. TO THE REV. GEORGE MAY COLERIDGE.
Monday, January 14, 1828.
My dear Nephew,—An interview with your cousin Henry on Saturday and a note received from him last night had enabled me in some measure to prepare my mind for the awful and humanly afflicting contents of your letter, and I rose to the receiving of it from earnest suplication to “the Father of Mercies and God of all Comfort”—that He would be strong in the weakness of His faithful servant, and his effectual helper in the last conflict. My first impulse on reading your letter was to set off immediately, but on a re-perusal, I doubt whether I shall not better comply with your suggestion by waiting for your next. Assuredly, if God permit I will not forego the claim, which my heart and conscience justify me in making, to be one among the mourners who ever truly loved and honoured your father. Allow me, my dear nephew, in the swelling grief of my heart to say, that if ever man morning and evening and in the watches of the night had earnestly intreated through his Lord and Mediator, that God would shew him his sins and their sinfulness, I, for the last ten years at least of my life, have done so! But, in vain, have I tried to recall any one moment since my quitting the University, or any one occasion, in which I have either thought, felt, spoken, or intentionally acted of or in relation to my brother, otherwise than as one who loved in him father and brother in one, and who independent of the fraternal relation and the remembrance of his manifold goodness and kindness to me from boyhood to early manhood should have chosen him above all I had known as the friend of my inmost soul. Never have man’s feeling and character been more cruelly misrepresented than mine. Before God have I sinned, and I have not hidden my offences before him; but He too knows that the belief of my brother’s alienation and the grief that I was a stranger in the house of my second father has been the secret wound that to this hour never closed or healed up. Yes, my dear nephew! I do grieve, and at this moment I have to struggle hard in order to keep my spirit in tranquillity, as one who has long since referred his cause to God, through the grief at my little communication with my family. Had it been otherwise, I might have been able to shew myself, my whole self, for evil and for good to my brother, and often have said to myself, “How fearful an attribute to sinful man is Omniscience!” and yet have I earnestly wished, oh, how many times! that my brother could have seen my inmost heart, with every thought and every frailty. But his reward is nigh: in the light and love of his Lord and Saviour he will soon be all light and love, and I too shall have his prayers before the throne. May the Almighty and the Spirit the Comforter dwell in your and your mother’s spirit. I must conclude. Only, if I come and it should please God that your dear father shall be still awaiting his Redeemer’s final call, I shall be perfectly satisfied in all things to be directed by you and your mother, who will judge best whether the knowledge of my arrival though without seeing him would or would not be a satisfaction, would or would not be a disturbance to him.
Your affectionate uncle,
S. T. Coleridge.
Grove, Highgate.
Rev. George May Coleridge,
Warden House, Ottery St. Mary, Devon.
CCXLVI. TO GEORGE DYER.[204]
June 6, 1828.
My dear long known, and long loved friend,—Be assured that neither Mr. Irving nor any other person, high or low, gentle or simple, stands higher in my esteem or bears a name endeared to me by more interesting recollections and associations than yourself; and if gentle man or gentle woman, taking too literally the partial portraiture of a friend, has a mind to see the old lion in his sealed cavern, no more potent “Open, Sesame, Open” will be found than an introduction from George Dyer, my elder brother under many titles—brother Blue, brother Grecian, brother Cantab, brother Poet, and last best form of fraternity, a man who has never in his long life, by tongue or pen, uttered what he did not believe to be the truth (from any motive) or concealed what he did conceive to be such from other motives than those of tenderness for the feelings of others, and a conscientious fear lest what was truly said might be falsely interpreted,—in all these points I dare claim brotherhood with my old friend (not omitting grey hairs, which are venerable), but in one point, the long toilsome life of inexhaustible, unsleeping benevolence and beneficence, that slept only when there was no form or semblance of sentient life to awaken it, George Dyer must stand alone! He may have a few second cousins, but no full brother.
Now, with regard to your friends, I shall be happy to see them on any day they may find to suit their or your convenience, from twelve (I am not ordinarily visible before, or if the outward man were forced to make his appearance, yet from sundry bodily infirmities, my soul would present herself with unwashed face) till four, that is, after Monday next,—we having at present a servant ill in bed, you must perforce be content with a sandwich lunch or a glass of wine.
But if you could make it suit you to take your tea, an early tea, at or before six o’clock, and spend the evening, a long evening, with us on Thursday next, Mr. and Mrs. Gillman will be most happy to see you and Mrs. Dyer, with your friends, and you will probably meet some old friend of yours. On Thursday evening, indeed, at any time, between half-past five and eleven, you may be sure of finding us at home, and with a very fair chance of Basil Montagu taking you and Mrs. Dyer back in his coach.
I have long owed you a letter, and should have long since honestly paid my debt; but we have had a house of sickness. My own health, too, has been very crazy and out of repair, and I have had so much work accumulated on me that I have been like an overtired man roused from insufficient sleep, who sits on his bedside with one stocking on and the other in his hand, doing nothing, and thinking what a deal he has to do.
But I am ever, sick or well, weary or lively, my dear Dyer, your sincere and affectionate friend,
S. T. Coleridge.
CCXLVII. TO GEORGE CATTERMOLE.[205]
Grove, Highgate, Thursday, August 14, 1828.
My dear Sir,—I have but this moment received yours of the 13th, and though there are but ten minutes in my power, if I am to avail myself of this day’s post, I will rather send you a very brief than not an immediate answer. I shall be much gratified by standing beside the baptismal font as one of the sponsors of the little pilgrim at his inauguration into the rights and duties of Immortality, and he shall not want my prayers, nor aught else that shall be within my power, to assist him in becoming that of which the Great Sponsor who brought light and immortality into the world has declared him an emblem.
There are one or two points of character belonging to me, so, at least, I believe and trust, which I would gladly communicate with the name,—earnest love of Truth for its own sake, and steadfast convictions grounded on faith, not fear, that the religion into which I was baptised is the Truth, without which all other knowledge ceases to merit the appellation. As to other things, which yet I most sincerely wish for him, a more promising augury might be derived from other individuals of the Coleridge race.
Any day, that you and your dear wife (to whom present my kindest remembrances and congratulations) shall find convenient, will suit me, if only you will be so good as to give me two or three days’ knowledge of it.
Believe me, my dear sir, with sincere respect and regard,
Your obliged
S. T. Coleridge.
P. S. I returned from my seven weeks’ Continental tour with Mr. Wordsworth and his daughter this day last week. We saw the Rhine as high up as Bingen, Holland, and the Netherlands.