CCXXXI. TO JAMES GILLMAN.
October 28, 1822.
Dear Friend,—Words, I know, are not wanted between you and me. But there are occasions so awful, there may be instances and manifestations so affecting, and drawing up with them so long a train from behind, so many folds of recollection, as they come onward on one’s mind, that it seems but a mere act of justice to one’s self, a debt we owe to the dignity of our moral nature, to give them some record—a relief, which the spirit of man asks and demands to contemplate in some outward symbol of what it is inwardly solemnizing. I am still too much under the cloud of past misgivings;[187] too much of the stun and stupor from the recent peals and thunder-crash still remains to permit me to anticipate other than by wishes and prayers what the effect of your unweariable kindness may be on poor Hartley’s mind and conduct. I pray fervently, and I feel a cheerful trust that I do not pray in vain, that on my own mind and spring of action it will be proved not to have been wasted. I do inwardly believe that I shall yet do something to thank you, my dear Gillman, in the way in which you would wish to be thanked, by doing myself honour.
Mrs. Gillman has been determined by your letter, and the heavenly weather, and moral certainty of the continuance of bathing-weather at least, to accept her sister’s offer of coming into Ramsgate and to take a house, for a fortnight certain, at a guinea a week, in the buildings next to Wellington Crescent, and having a certain modicum and segment of sea-peep. You remember the house (the end one) with a balcony at the window, almost in a line with the Duke of W. ... in wood, lignum vitæ, like as life. I had thought of keeping my present bedroom at 10s. 6d. a week, but on consulting Mrs. Rogers, she did not think that this would satisfy the etiquette of the world, though the two houses are on different cliffs; and I felt so confident of the effect of the bathing and Ramsgate transparent water, the sands, the pier, etc., that as there was no alternative but of giving up the bathing (for Mrs. G. would not stay by herself, partly, if not chiefly, because she feared I might add more to your anxiety than your comfort in your bachelor state and with only Bessy of Beccles) or having Jane, I voted for the latter, and will do my very best to keep her in good humour and good spirits.
Dear Friend, and Brother of my Soul, God only knows how truly and in the depth you are loved and prized by your affectionate friend,
S. T. Coleridge.
CCXXXII. TO MISS BRENT.[188]
July 7, 1823.
My dear Charlotte,—I have been many times in town within the last three or four weeks; but with one exception, when I was driven in and back by Mr. Gillman to hear the present idol of the world of fashion, the Revd. Mr. Irving, the super-Ciceronian, ultra-Demosthenic pulpiteer of the Scotch Chapel in Cross Street, Hatton Garden, I have been always at the West End of the town, and mostly dancing attendance on a proud bookseller, and I fear to little purpose—weary enough of my existence, God knows! and yet not a tittle the more disposed to better it at the price of apostacy or suppression of the truth. If I could but once get off the two works, on which I rely for the proof that I have not lived in vain, and had those off my mind, I could then maintain myself well enough by writing for the purpose of what I got by it; but it is an anguish I cannot look in the face, to abandon just as it is completed the work of such intense and long-continued labour; and if I cannot make an agreement with Murray, I must try Colbourn, and if with neither, owing to the loud calumny of the “Edinburgh,” and the silent but more injurious detraction of the “Quarterly Review,” I must try to get them published by subscription. But of this when we meet. I write at present and to you as the less busy sister, to beg you will be so good as to send me the volume of Southey’s “Brazil,” which I am now in particular want of, by the Highgate Stage that sets off just before Middle Row. “Mr. Coleridge, or J. Gillman, Esq. (either will do), Highgate.”
My kind love to Mary. I have little doubt that I shall see you in the course of next week.
Do you think of taking rooms out of the smoke during this summer for any time?
God bless you, my dear Charlotte, and your affectionate
S. T. Coleridge.
CCXXXIII. TO THE REV. EDWARD COLERIDGE.[189]
Highgate, July 23, 1823.
My dear Edward,—From Carlisle to Keswick there are several routes possible, and neither of these without some attraction. The choice, however, lies between two; which to prefer, I find it hard to decide, and if, as on the whole I am disposed to do, I advise the former, it is not from thinking the other of inferior interest. On the contrary, if your laking were comprised between Carlisle and Keswick, I should not hesitate to recommend the latter in preference, but because the first will bring you soonest to Keswick, where Mr. Southey still is, having, as your cousin Sara writes me, deferred his journey to town, on account of his book on “The Church,” which has outgrown its intended dimensions; and because the sort of “scenery” (to use that slang word best confined to the creeking Daubenies of the Theatre) on the latter route, is what you will have abundant opportunities of seeing with the one leg of your compass fixed at Keswick.
First then, you may go from Carlisle to Rose Castle, and spend an hour in seeing that and its circumferency; and from thence to Caldbeck, its waterfalls and faery caldrons, with the Pulpit and Clerk’s Desk Rocks, over which the Cata-, or rather Kitten-ract, flings itself, and the cavern to the right of the fall, as you front it; and from Caldbeck to the foot of Bassenthwaite, when you are in the vale of Keswick and not many miles from Greta Hall. The second route is from Carlisle to Penrith (a road of little or no interest), but from Carlisle you would go to Lowther (Earl of Lonsdale’s seat and magnificent grounds), the village of Lowther, Hawes Water, and from Hawes Water you might pass over the mountains into Ulleswater, and when there, you might go round the head of the lake (that is, Patterdale), and, if on foot and strong enough and the weather is fine, pass over Helvellyn, and so get into the high road between Grasmere and Keswick, or, passing lower down on the lake, cross over by Graystock, or with a guide or manual instructions, over the fells so as to come out at or not far from Threlkeld, which is but three or four miles from Keswick. At least in good weather there is, I believe, a tolerably equitible (that is, horse or pony-tolerating) track. But at Patterdale you would receive the best direction. There is an inn at Patterdale where you might sleep, so as to make one day of it from Penrith to the Lake Head, viâ Lowther and Hawes Water; and thence to Keswick would take good part of a second. There is one consideration in favour of this plan, that from Carlisle to Penrith, or even to Lowther, you might go by the coach, and I question whether you could reach Greta Hall by the Caldbeck Route in one day when at Keswick. When at Keswick, I would advise you to go to Wastdale through Borrowdale, and if you could return by Crummock and through the vale of Newlands, the inverted arch of which (on the A͜B (A B) of which I once saw the two legs of a rich rainbow so as to form with the arch a perfect circle) faces Greta Hall, you will have seen the very pith and marrow of the Lakes, especially as your route to Chester or Liverpool will take you that heavenly road through Thirlmere, Grasmere, Rydal (where you will, of course, pay your respects to Mr. Wordsworth), Ambleside, and the striking half of Windermere.
God bless you! Pray take care of yourself, were it only that you know how fearful and anxious your father and Fanny[190] are respecting your chest and lungs, in case of cold or over-exertion.
I have heard from Sara and from Mr. Watson (a friend of mine who has just come from the North) a very comfortable account of Hartley.
Believe me, dear Edward, with every kind wish, your affectionate uncle and sincere friend,
[S. T. Coleridge.]
P. S. Your query respecting the poem I can only answer by a Nescio. Irving (the Scotch preacher, so blackguarded in the “John Bull” of last Sunday), certainly the greatest orator I ever heard (N. B. I make and mean the same distinction between oratory and eloquence as between the mouth + the windpipe and the brain + heart), is, however, a man of great simplicity, of overflowing affections, and enthusiastically in earnest; and I have reason to believe, deeply regrets his conjunction of Southey with Byron, as far as the men (and not the poems) are in question.