CCXXXVI. TO JAMES GILLMAN.
Ramsgate, November 2, 1824.
My dear Friend,—That so much longer an interval has passed between this and my last letter you will not, I am sure, attribute to any correspondent interval of oblivion. I do not, indeed, think that any two hours of any one day, taken at sixteen, have elapsed in which you, past or future, or myself in connection with you, were not for a longer or shorter space my uppermost thought. But the two days following James’s safe arrival by the coach I was so depressively unwell, so unremittingly restless, etc., and so exhausted by a teasing cough, and by two of these bad nights that make me moan out, “O for a sleep for sleep itself to rest in!” that I was quite disqualified for writing. And since then, I have been waiting for the Murrays to take a parcel with them, who were to have gone on Monday morning. But again not hearing from them, and remembering your injunction not to mind postage, I have resolved that no more time shall pass on and should have written to-day, even though Mrs. Gillman had not been dreaming about you last night, and about some letter, etc. Upon my seriousness, I do declare that I cannot make out certain dream-devils or damned souls that play pranks with me, whenever by the operation of a cathartic pill or from the want of one, a ci-devant dinner in its metempsychosis is struggling in the lower intestines. I cannot comprehend how any thoughts, the offspring or product of my own reflection, conscience, or fancy, could be translated into such images, and agents and actions, and am half-tempted (N. B. between sleeping and waking) to regard with some favour Swedenborg’s assertion that certain foul spirits of the lowest order are attracted by the precious ex-viands, whose conversation the soul half appropriates to itself, and which they contrive to whisper into the sensorium. The Honourable Emanuel has repeatedly caught them in the fact, in that part of the spiritual world corresponding to the guts in the world of bodies, and driven them away. I do not pass this Gospel; but upon my honour it is no bad apocrypha. I am at present in my best sort and state of health, bathed yesterday, and again this morning in spite of the rain, and in so deep a bath, that having thrown myself forward from the first step of the machine ladder, and only taken two strokes after my re-immersion, I had at least ten strokes to take before I got into my depth again, so that it is no false alarm when those who cannot swim are warned that a person may be drowned a very few yards from the machine. I returned to fetch out our ladies to see the huge lengthy Columbus, with the two steam vessels,[191] before and behind, the former to tow, and the latter to, God knows what. By aid of a good glass, we saw it “quite stink,” as the poor woman said, the people on board, etc. It is 310 feet long, and 50 wide, and looks exactly like a Brobdingnag punt, and on our return we had (from Mrs. Jones) the “Morning Herald,” with Fauntleroy’s trial, which (if he be not a treble-damned liar) completely bears out my assertion that nothing short of a miracle could acquit the partners of virtual accompliceship; this on my old principle, that the absence of what ought to have been present is all but equivalent to the presence of what ought to have been absent. Qui non prohibet quod prohibere potest et debet, facit.
Sir Alexander Johnston[192] has payed me great attention. There is a Lady Johnston not unlike Miss Sara Hutchinson in face and mouth, only that she is taller. Sir A. himself is a fine gentlemanly man, young-looking for his age, and with exception of one not easily describable motion of his head that makes him look as if he had been accustomed to have a pen behind his ear, a sort of “Torney’s” clerk look, he might remind you of J. Hookham Frere. He is a sensible well-informed man, specious in no bad sense of the word, but (I guess) not much depth. In all probability, you will see him. We have talked a good deal together about you and me, and me and you, in consequence of occasion given. Sir A. is one of the leading men in our Royal Society of Literature, and beyond doubt, a man of influence in town. I am apt to forget superfluities, but a voice from above asks, “if I have said that we begin to be anxious to hear from you.” But probably before you can sit down to answer this, you will have received another, and, I flatter myself, more amusing, at least pleasure-giving Scripture from me. (N. B. “Coleridge’s Scriptures”—a new title.)
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