CLXXXIV. TO J. J. MORGAN.
Keswick,[78] Sunday, February 28, 1812.
My dear Morgan,—I stayed a day in Kendal in order to collect the reprint of “The Friend,” and reached Keswick on Tuesday last before dinner, having taken Hartley and Derwent with me from Ambleside. Of course the first evening was devoted Laribus domesticis, to Southey and his and my children. My own are all the fondest father could pray for; and little Sara does honour to her mother’s anxieties, reads French tolerably, and Italian fluently, and I was astonished at her acquaintance with her native language. The word “hostile” occurring in what she read to me, I asked her what “hostile” meant? and she answered at once, “Why! inimical; only that ‘inimical’ is more often used for things and measures and not, as ‘hostile’ is, to persons and nations.” If I had dared, I should have urged Mrs. C. to let me take her to London for four or five months, and return with Southey, but I feared it might be inconvenient to you, and I knew it would be presumptuous in me to bring her to you. But she is such a sweet-tempered, meek, blue-eyed fairy and so affectionate, trustworthy, and really serviceable! Derwent is the self-same, fond, small, Samuel Taylor Coleridge as ever. When I went for them from Mr. Dawes,[79] he came in dancing for joy, while Hartley turned pale[80] and trembled all over,—then after he had taken some cold water, instantly asked me some questions about the connection of the Greek with the Latin, which latter he has just begun to learn. Poor Derwent, who has by no means strong health (having inherited his poor father’s tenderness of bowels and stomach, and consequently capriciousness of animal spirits), has complained to me (having no other possible grievance) “that Mr. Dawes does not love him, because he can’t help crying when he is scolded, and because he ain’t such a genius as Hartley—and that though Hartley should have done the same thing, yet all the others are punished, and Mr. Dawes only looks at Hartley and never scolds him, and that all the boys think it very unfair—he is a genius.” This was uttered in low spirits and a tenderness brought on by my petting, for he adores his brother. Indeed, God be praised, they all love each other. I was delighted that Derwent, of his own accord, asked me about little Miss Brent that used to play with him at Mr. and Mrs. Morgan’s, adding that he had almost forgot what sort of a lady she was, “only she was littler,—less I mean—(this was said hastily and laughing at his blunder) than Mama.” A gentleman who took a third of the chaise with me from Ambleside, and whom I found a well-informed and thinking man, said after two hours’ knowledge of us, that the two boys united would be a perfect representation of myself.
I trust I need not say that I should have written on the second day if nothing had happened; but from the dreadful dampness of the house, worse than it was in the rudest state when I first lived in it, and the weather, too, all storm and rain, I caught a violent cold which almost blinded me by inflammation of both my eyes, and for three days bore all the symptoms of an ague or intermittent fever. Knowing I had no time to lose, I took the most Herculean remedies, among others a solution of arsenic, and am now as well as when I left you, and see no reason to fear a relapse. I passed through Grasmere; but did not call on Wordsworth. I hear from Mrs. C. that he treats the affair as a trifle, and only wonders at my resenting it, and that Dorothy Wordsworth before my arrival expressed her confident hope that I should come to them at once! I who “for years past had been an ABSOLUTE NUISANCE in the family.” This illness has thrown me behindhand; so that I cannot quit Keswick till the end of the week. On Friday I shall return by way of Ambleside, probably spend a day with Charles Lloyd.... It will not surprise you that the statements respecting me and Montagu and Wordsworth have been grossly perverted: and yet, spite of all this, there is not a friend of Wordsworth’s, I understand, who does not severely blame him, though they execrate the Montagus yet more heavily. But the tenth part of the truth is not known. Would you believe it possible that Wordsworth himself stated my wearing powder as a proof positive that I never could have suffered any pain of mind from the affair, and that it was all pretence!! God forgive him! At Liverpool I shall either give lectures, if I can secure a hundred pounds for them, or return immediately to you. At all events, I shall not remain there beyond a fortnight, so that I shall be with you before you have changed houses. Mrs. Coleridge seems quite satisfied with my plans, and abundantly convinced of my obligations to your and Mary’s kindness to me. Nothing (she said) but the circumstance of my residing with you could reconcile her to my living in London. Southey is the semper idem. It is impossible for a good heart not to esteem and to love him; but yet the love is one fourth, the esteem all the remainder. His children are, 1. Edith, seven years; 2. Herbert, five; 3. Bertha, four; 4. Catharine, a year and a half.
I had hoped to have heard from you by this time. I wrote from Slough, from Liverpool, and from Kendal. Why need I send my kindest love to Mary and Charlotte? I would not return if I had a doubt that they believed me to be in the very inmost of my being their and your affectionate and grateful and constant friend,
S. T. Coleridge.