"Keswick, January 9, 1803.
My dear Wedgewood,
I send you two letters, one from your dear sister, the second from Sharp,
by which you will see at what short notice I must be off, if I go to the
_Canaries_. If your last plan continue in full force, I have not even the
phantom of a wish thitherward struggling, but if aught have happened to
you, in the things without, or in the world within, to induce you to
change the place, or the plan, relatively to me, I think I could raise
the money. But I would a thousand-fold rather go with you whithersoever
you go. I shall be anxious to hear how you have gone on since I left you.
You should decide in favour of a better climate somewhere or other. The
best scheme I can think of, is to go to some part of Italy or Sicily,
which we both liked. I would look out for two houses. Wordsworth and his
family would take the one, and I the other, and then you might have a
home either with me, or if you thought of Mr. and Mrs. Luff, under this
modification, one of your own; and in either case you would have
neighbours, and so return to England when the home sickness pressed heavy
upon you, and back to Italy when it was abated, and the climate of
England began to poison your comforts. So you would have abroad in a
genial climate, certain comforts of society among simple and enlightened
men and women; and I should be an alleviation of the pang which you will
necessarily feel, as often as you quit your own family.
I know no better plan: for travelling in search of objects is at best a
dreary business, and whatever excitement it might have had, you must have
exhausted it. God bless you, my dear friend. I write with dim eyes, for
indeed, indeed, my heart is very full of affectionate sorrowful thoughts
toward you.
I write with difficulty, with all the fingers but one of my right hand
very much swollen. Before I was half up the _Kirkstone_ mountain, the
storm had wetted me through and through, and before I reached the top it
was so wild and outrageous, that it would have been unmanly to have
suffered the poor woman (guide) to continue pushing on, up against such a
torrent of wind and rain: so I dismounted and sent her home with the
storm in her back. I am no novice in mountain mischiefs, but such a storm
as this was, I never witnessed, combining the intensity of the cold, with
the violence of the wind and rain. The rain drops were pelted or slung
against my face by the gusts, just like splinters of flint, and I felt as
if every drop cut my flesh. My hands were all shrivelled up like a
washerwoman's, and so benumbed that I was obliged to carry my stick under
my arm. O, it was a wild business! Such hurry skurry of clouds, such
volleys of sound! In spite of the wet and the cold, I should have had
some pleasure in it, but for two vexations; first, an almost intolerable
pain came into my right eye, a smarting and burning pain; and secondly,
in consequence of riding with such cold water under my seat, extremely
uneasy and burthensome feelings attacked my groin, so that, what with the
pain from the one, and the alarm from the other, I had _no enjoyment at
all!_
Just at the brow of the hill I met a man dismounted, who could not sit on
horse-back. He seemed quite scared by the uproar, and said to me, with
much feeling, 'O sir, it is a perilous buffeting, but it is worse for you
than for me, for I have it at my back.' However I got safely over, and
immediately all was calm and breathless, as if it was some mighty
fountain put on the summit of Kirkstone, that shot forth its volcano of
air, and precipitated huge streams of invisible lava down the road to
Patterdale.
I went on to Grasmere.[107] I was not at all unwell, when I arrived
there, though wet of course to the skin. My right eye had nothing the
matter with it, either to the sight of others, or to my own feelings, but
I had a bad night, with distressful dreams, chiefly about my eye; and
waking often in the dark I thought it was the effect of mere
recollection, but it appeared in the morning that my right eye was
blood-shot, and the lid swollen. That morning however I walked home, and
before I reached Keswick, my eye was quite well, but _I felt unwell all
over_. Yesterday I continued unusually unwell all over me till eight
o'clock in the evening. I took no _laudanum or opium_, but at eight
o'clock, unable to bear the stomach uneasiness, and achings of my limbs,
I took two large tea-spoons full of Ether in a wine-glass of camphorated
gum-water, and a third tea-spoon full at ten o'clock, and I received
complete relief; my body calmed; my sleep placid; but when I awoke in the
morning, my right hand, with three of the fingers was swollen and
inflamed. The swelling in the hand is gone down, and of two of the
fingers somewhat abated, but the middle finger is still twice its natural
size, so that I write with difficulty. This has been a very rough attack,
but though I am much weakened by it, and look sickly and haggard, yet I
am not out of heart. Such a _bout_; such a 'periless buffetting' was
enough to have hurt the health of a strong man. Few constitutions can
bear to be long wet through in intense cold I fear it will tire you to
death to read this prolix scrawled story.
Affectionately dear friend, Yours ever,