“Note.—From September 8 to April 8 I shall have spent £90, of which £15 was in Books; and Cloathes, mending and making, £10.
“May 10. We have 17 Louis d’or, of which, as far as I can at present calculate, 10 belong to Chester.”
The most probable conclusion is that both Coleridge and Chester were fairly well supplied with money when they left England, and that the £178 10s. which Coleridge received from the Von Axens covered some portion of Chester’s expenses in addition to his own. I may add that a recent collation of the autograph letter of Coleridge to Josiah Wedgwood dated May 21, 1799, Göttingen, with the published version in Cottle’s Reminiscences, pp. 425-429, fully bears out Mr. Campbell’s contention, that though Coleridge anticipated his annuity, he was not the recipient of large sums over and above what was guaranteed to him.
[194] A portion of this description of Ratzeburg is included in No. III. of Satyrane’s Letters, originally published in No. 10 of The Friend, December 21, 1809.
[195] The following description of the frozen lake was thrown into a literary shape and published in No. 19 of The Friend, December 28, 1809, as “Christmas Indoors in North Germany.”
[196] A letter from Mrs. Coleridge to her husband, dated March 25, 1799, followed Poole’s letter of March 15. (Thomas Poole and his Friends, i. 290.) She writes:—
“My dearest Love,—I hope you will not attribute my long silence to want of affection. If you have received Mr. Poole’s letter you will know the reason and acquit me. My darling infant left his wretched mother on the 10th of February, and though the leisure that followed was intolerable to me, yet I could not employ myself in reading or writing, or in any way that prevented my thoughts from resting on him. This parting was the severest trial that I have ever yet undergone, and I pray to God that I may never live to behold the death of another child. For, O my dear Samuel, it is a suffering beyond your conception! You will feel and lament the death of your child, but you will only recollect him a baby of fourteen weeks, but I am his mother and have carried him in my arms and have fed him at my bosom, and have watched over him by day and by night for nine months. I have seen him twice at the brink of the grave, but he has returned and recovered and smiled upon me like an angel,—and now I am lamenting that he is gone!”
In her old age, when her daughter was collecting materials for a life of her father, Mrs. Coleridge wrote on the back of the letter:—
“No secrets herein. I will not burn it for the sake of my sweet Berkeley.”
[197] From “Osorio,” Act V. Sc. 1. Poetical Works, p. 506.