CXLIII. TO MATTHEW COATES.[289]
Greta Hall, Keswick, December 5, 1803.
Dear Sir,—After a time of sufferings, great as mere bodily sufferings can well be conceived to be, and which the horrors of my sleep and night screams (so loud and so frequent as to make me almost a nuisance in my own house) seemed to carry beyond mere body, counterfeiting as it were the tortures of guilt, and what we are told of the punishment of a spiritual world, I am at length a convalescent, but dreading such another bout as much as I dare dread a thing which has no immediate connection with my conscience. My left hand is swollen and inflamed, and the least attempt to bend the fingers very painful, though not half as much so as I could wish; for if I could but fix this Jack-o’-lanthorn of a disease in my hand or foot, I should expect complete recovery in a year or two! But though I have no hope of this, I have a persuasion strong as fate, that from twelve to eighteen months’ residence in a genial climate would send me back to dear old England a sample of the first resurrection. Mr. Wordsworth, who has seen me in all my illnesses for nearly four years, and noticed this strange dependence on the state of my moral feelings and the state of the atmosphere conjointly, is decidedly of the same opinion. Accordingly, after many sore struggles of mind from reluctance to quit my children for so long a time, I have arranged my affairs fully and finally, and hope to set sail for Madeira in the first vessel that clears out from Liverpool for that place. Robert Southey, who lives with us, informed me that Mrs. Matthew Coates had a near relative (a brother, I believe) in that island, the Dr. Adams[290] who wrote a very nice little pamphlet on Madeira, relative to the different sorts of consumption, and which I have now on my desk. I need not say that it would be a great comfort to me to be introduced to him by a letter from you or Mrs. Coates, entreating him to put me in a way of living as cheaply as possible. I have no appetites, passions, or vanities which lead to expense; it is now absolute habit to me, indeed, to consider my eating and drinking as a course of medicine. In books only am I intemperate—they have been both bane and blessing to me. For the last three years I have not read less than eight hours a day whenever I have been well enough to be out of bed, or even to sit up in it. Quiet, therefore, a comfortable bed and bedroom, and still better than that, the comfort of kind faces, English tongues, and English hearts now and then,—this is the sum total of my wants, as it is a thing which I need. I am far too contented with solitude. The same fullness of mind, the same crowding of thoughts and constitutional vivacity of feeling which makes me sometimes the first fiddle, and too often a watchman’s rattle in society, renders me likewise independent of its excitements. However, I am wondrously calmed down since you saw me—perhaps through this unremitting disease, affliction, and self-discipline.
Mrs. Coleridge desires me to remember her with respectful regards to Mrs. Coates, and to enquire into the history of your little family. I have three children, Hartley, seven years old, Derwent, three years, and Sara, one year on the 23d of this month. Hartley is considered a genius by Wordsworth and Southey; indeed by every one who has seen much of him. But what is of much more consequence and much less doubtful, he has the sweetest temper and most awakened moral feelings of any child I ever saw. He is very backward in his book-learning, cannot write at all, and a very lame reader. We have never been anxious about it, taking it for granted that loving me, and seeing how I love books, he would come to it of his own accord, and so it has proved, for in the last month he has made more progress than in all his former life. Having learnt everything almost from the mouths of people whom he loves, he has connected with his words and notions a passion and a feeling which would appear strange to those who had seen no children but such as had been taught almost everything in books. Derwent is a large, fat, beautiful child, quite the pride of the village, as Hartley is the darling. Southey says wickedly that “all Hartley’s guts are in his brains, and all Derwent’s brains are in his guts.” Verily the constitutional differences in the children are great indeed. From earliest infancy Hartley was absent, a mere dreamer at his meals, put the food into his mouth by one effort, and made a second effort to remember it was there and swallow it. With little Derwent it is a time of rapture and jubilee, and any story that has not pie or cake in it comes very flat to him. Yet he is but a baby. Our girl is a darling little thing, with large blue eyes, a quiet creature that, as I have often said, seems to bask in a sunshine as mild as moonlight, of her own happiness. Oh! bless them! Next to the Bible, Shakespeare, and Milton, they are the three books from which I have learned the most, and the most important and with the greatest delight.
I have been thus prolix about me and mine purposely, to induce you to tell me something of yourself and yours.
Believe me, I have never ceased to think of you with respect and a sort of yearning. You were the first man from whom I heard that article of my faith enunciated which is the nearest to my heart,—the pure fountain of all my moral and religious feelings and comforts,—I mean the absolute Impersonality of the Deity.
I remain, my dear sir, with unfeigned esteem and with good wishes, ever yours,
S. T. Coleridge.