Your obliged friend and servant,
S. T. Coleridge.
Saturday, 28th Octr. 1819. On the 20th of this month completed my 49th year.
CCXXVII. TO J. H. GREEN.
January 14, 1820.
My dear Green,—Charles Lamb has just written to inform me that he and his sister will pay me their New Year’s visit on Sunday next, and may perhaps bring a friend to see me, though certainly not to dine, and hopes I may not be engaged. I must therefore defer our philosophical intercommune till the Sunday after; but if you have no more pleasant way of passing the ante-prandial or, still better, the day including prandial and post-prandial, I trust that it will be no anti-philosophical expenditure of time, and I need not say an addition to the pleasure of all this household. I should like, too, to arrange some plan of going with you to Covent Garden Theatre, to see Miss Wensley, the new actress, whose father (a merchant of Bristol, at whose house I had once been, but whom the capricious Nymph of Trade has unhorsed from his seat) has called on me, a compound of the Oratorical, the Histrionic, and the Exquisite! All the dull colours in the colour-shop at the sign of the Bluecoat Boy would not suffice to neutralize the glare of his Colorit into any tolerably fair likeness that would not be scouted as Caricature! Gillman will give you a slight sketch of him. Since I saw you, we have dined and spent the night (for it was near one when we broke up) at Mathews’, and heard and saw his forthcoming “At Home.” There were present, besides G. and myself, Mrs. and young Mathews, and Mr. and Mrs. Chisholm, James Smith of Rej. Add. notoriety, and the author of (all the trash of) Mathews’ Entertainment, for the good parts are his own, (What a pity that you dare not offer a word of friendly sensible advice to such men as M., but you may be certain that it will be useless to them and attributed to envy or some vile selfish object in the adviser!) Mr. Dubois,[183] the author of “Vaurien,” “Old Nic,” “My Pocket Book,” and a notable share of the theatrical puffs and slanders of the periodical press; and, lastly, Mr. Thomas Hill,[184] quondam drysalter of Thames Street, whom I remember twenty-five years ago with exactly the same look, person, and manners as now. Mathews calls him the Immutable. He is a seemingly always good-natured fellow who knows nothing and about everything, no person, and about and all about everybody—a complete parasite, in the old sense of a dinner-hunter, at the tables of all who entertain public men, authors, players, fiddlers, booksellers, etc., for more than thirty years. It was a pleasant evening, however.
Be so good as to remember the drawing from the Alchemy Book.
Mrs. Gillman desires her love to Mrs. Green; and we hope that the twin obstacles, ague and the boreal weather, to our seeing her here, will vanish at the same time. Mrs. G. bids me tell her that she grumbles at the doctors, her husband included, and is confident that her husband would have made a cure long ago. A faithful wife is a common blessing, I trust: but what a treasure to have a wife full of faith! By the bye, I have lit on some (ὡς ἔμοιγε δοκεῖ analogous) cases in which the nauseating plan, even for a short time, appears to have had a wonderful effect in breaking the chain of a morbid tendency; and the almost infallible specific of seasickness in curing an old ague is surely a confirmation as far as it goes.
Yours most affectionately,
S. T. Coleridge.