Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Vol. 1 (of 2)

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

For not to think of what I needs must feel,
But to be still and patient, all I can;
And haply by abstruse Research to steal
From my own Nature all the Natural Man,
This was my sole Resource, my wisest Plan!
And that which suits a part, infects the whole,
And now is almost grown the Temper of my Soul.

Having written these lines, I rejoice for you as well as for myself, that I am able to inform you, that now for a long time there has been more love and concord in my house than I have known for years before. I had made up my mind to a very awful step, though the struggles of my mind were so violent, that my sleep became the valley of the shadows of Death and my health was in a state truly alarming. It did alarm Mrs. Coleridge. The thought of separation wounded her pride,—she was fully persuaded that deprived of the society of my children and living abroad without any friends I should pine away, and the fears of widowhood came upon her, and though these feelings were wholly selfish, yet they made her serious, and that was a great point gained. For Mrs. Coleridge’s mind has very little that is bad in it; it is an innocent mind; but it is light and unimpressible, warm in anger, cold in sympathy, and in all disputes uniformly projects itself forth to recriminate, instead of turning itself inward with a silent self-questioning. Our virtues and our vices are exact antitheses. I so attentively watch my own nature that my worst self-delusion is a complete self-knowledge so mixed with intellectual complacency, that my quickness to see and readiness to acknowledge my faults is too often frustrated by the small pain which the sight of them gives me, and the consequent slowness to amend them. Mrs. C. is so stung with the very first thought of being in the wrong, because she never endures to look at her own mind in all its faulty parts, but shelters herself from painful self-inquiry by angry recrimination. Never, I suppose, did the stern match-maker bring together two minds so utterly contrariant in their primary and organical constitution. Alas! I have suffered more, I think, from the amiable propensities of my nature than from my worst faults and most erroneous habits, and I have suffered much from both. But, as I said, Mrs. Coleridge was made serious, and for the first time since our marriage she felt and acted as beseemed a wife and a mother to a husband and the father of her children. She promised to set about an alteration in her external manners and looks and language, and to fight against her inveterate habits of puny thwarting and unintermitting dyspathy, this immediately, and to do her best endeavours to cherish other feelings. I, on my part, promised to be more attentive to all her feelings of pride, etc., etc., and to try to correct my habits of impetuous censure. We have both kept our promises, and she has found herself so much more happy than she had been for years before, that I have the most confident hopes that this happy revolution in our domestic affairs will be permanent, and that this external conformity will gradually generate a greater inward likeness of thoughts and attachments than has hitherto existed between us. Believe me, if you were here, it would give you a deep delight to observe the difference of our minutely conduct towards each other, from that which, I fear, could not but have disturbed your comfort when you were here last. Enough. But I am sure you have not felt it tedious.

So Corry[263] and you are off? I suspected it, but Edith never mentioned an iota of the business to her sister. It is well. It was not your destiny. Wherever you are, God bless you! My health is weak enough, but it is so far amended that it is far less dependent on the influences of the weather. The mountains are better friends in this respect. Would that I could flatter myself that the same would be the case with you. The only objection on my part is now,—God be praised!—done away. The services and benefits I should receive from your society and the spur of your example would be incalculable. The house consists—the first floor (or rather ground floor) of a kitchen and a back kitchen, a large parlour and two nice small parlours; the second floor of three bedrooms, one a large one, and one large drawing-room; the third floor or floors of three bedrooms—in all twelve rooms. Besides these, Mr. Jackson offers to make that nice outhouse or workshop either two rooms or one noble large one for a study if I wish it. If it suited you, you might have one kitchen, or (if Edith and Sara thought it would answer) we might have the two kitchens in common. You might have, I say, the whole ground floor, consisting of two sweet wing-rooms, commanding that loveliest view of Borrowdale, and the great parlour; and supposing we each were forced to have two servants, a nursemaid and a housemaid, the two housemaids would sleep together in one of the upper rooms, and the nursemaids have each a room to herself, and the long room on the ground floor must be yours and Edith’s room, and if Mary be with you, the other hers. We should have the whole second floor, consisting of the drawing-room, which would be Mrs. Coleridge’s parlour, two bedrooms, which (as I am so often ill, and when ill cannot rest at all, unless I have a bed to myself) is absolutely necessary for me, and one room for you if occasion should be, or any friend of yours or mine. The highest room in the house is a very large one intended for two, but suffered to remain one by my desire. It would be a capital healthy nursery. The outhouse would become my study, and I have a couch-bed on which I am now sitting (in bed) and writing to you. It is now in the study; of course it would be removed to the outhouse when that became my study, and would be a second spare bed. I have no doubt but that Mr. Jackson would willingly let us retain my present study, which might be your library and study room. My dear Southey, I merely state these things to you. All our lot on earth is compromise. Blessings obtained by blessings foregone, or by evils undergone. I should be glad, no doubt, if you thought that your health and happiness would find a home under the same roof with me; and I am sure you will not accuse me as indelicate or obtrusive in mentioning things as they are; but if you decline it altogether, I shall know that you have good reasons for doing so, and be perfectly satisfied, for if it detracted from your comfort it could, of course, be nothing but the contrary of all advantage to me. You would have access to four or five libraries: Sir W. Lawson’s, a most magnificent one, but chiefly in Natural History, Travels, etc.; Carlton House (I am a prodigious favourite of Mrs. Wallis, the owner and resident, mother of the Privy Counsellor Wallis); Carlisle, Dean and Chapter; the Library at Hawkshead School, and another (of what value I know not) at St. Bees, whither I mean to walk to-morrow to spend five or six days for bathing. It is four miles from Whitehaven by the seaside. Mrs. Coleridge is but poorly, children well. Love to Edith and May, and to whom I am at all interested. God love you. If you let me hear from you, it is among my firmest resolves—God ha’ mercy on ’em!—to be a regular correspondent of yours.

S. T. Coleridge.

P. S. Mrs. C. must have one room on the ground floor, but this is only putting one of your rooms on the second floor.

CXXVIII. TO THE SAME.

Monday night, August 9, 1802.

My dear Southey,—Derwent can say his letters, and if you could but see his darling mouth when he shouts out Q! This is a digression.

On Sunday, August 1st,[264] after morning church, I left Greta Hall, crossed the fields to Portinscale, went through Newlands, where “Great Robinson looks down upon Marden’s Bower,” and drank tea at Buttermere, crossed the mountains to Ennerdale, and slept at a farm-house a little below the foot of the lake, spent the greater part of the next day mountaineering, and went in the evening through Egremont to St. Bees, and slept there; returned next day to Egremont, and slept there; went by the sea-coast as far as Gosforth, then turned off and went up Wasdale, and slept at T. Tyson’s at the head of the vale. Thursday morning crossed the mountains and ascended Scafell, which is more than a hundred yards higher than either Helvellyn or Skiddaw; spent the whole day among clouds, and one of them a frightening thunder-cloud; slipped down into Eskdale, and there slept, and spent a good part of the next day; proceeded that evening to Devock Lake, and slept at Ulpha Kirk; on Saturday passed through the Dunnerdale Mountains to Broughton Vale, Tarver Vale, and in upon Coniston. On Sunday I surveyed the lake, etc., of Coniston, and proceeded to Bratha, and slept at Lloyd’s house; this morning walked from Bratha to Grasmere, and from Grasmere to Greta Hall, where I now am, quite sweet and ablute, and have not even now read through your letter, which I will answer by the night’s post, and therefore must defer all account of my very interesting tour, saying only that of all earthly things which I have beheld, the view of Scafell and from Scafell (both views from its own summit) is the most heart-exciting.