THE GILLMANS
Friendship is a Sheltering Tree.--_Youth and Age_, 1822-3.
* * * * *
[The Gillmans necessarily come much into notice in Coleridge's later
letters. The following to Allsop have some references to his kind hosts,
besides other friends and acquaintances of Coleridge. The Mr. Dawes
referred to was the Rev. John Dawes, who kept a day school at Ambleside,
and taught Hartley and Derwent classics and mathematics (_Letters_,
576).
LETTER 203. TO ALLSOP
May 30th, 1822.
My very dear Friend,
On my arrival at Highgate after our last parting, I ought to have
written, if it were only that I had fully resolved to do so, and when I
feel that I have not done what I ought, and what you would (have) done
in my place, I will, as indeed too safely to make a merit of it I may
do, leave the palliative and extenuating circumstance to your kindness
to think of. This only let me say, that mournful as my experience of
Messrs. ---- and ----[126] in my own immediate concerns had been, of the
latter especially, I was not prepared for their late behaviour, or, to
use Anster's words on the occasion, for "so piteous a lowering of human
nature," as the contents of Mr. W.'s letters were calculated to produce.
I have at _length_--for I really tore it out of my brain, as it were
piecemeal, a bit one day and a bit the day after--finished and sent off
a letter of two folio _large_ and close-written sheets--nine sides equal
to twelve of this size paper--to Mr. Dawes, of Ambleside, the rough copy
of which I will show you when we meet.
The exceeding kindness and uncalculating instantaneous and decisive
generous friendship of the Gillmans, and the presence of _you_ to my
Thoughts, prevent all approach to misanthropy in my Feelings, but _for
that reason_ render those feelings more _acutely_ painful. If I did not
know that Genius, like Reason, though not perhaps so entirely, is rather
a presence vouchsafed, like a guardian spirit, to an Individual, which
departs whenever the Evil Self becomes decisively predominant, and not
like Talents or the Powers of the Understanding, a personal
property--the contemplation of ....'s[127] late and present state of
Head and Heart would overwhelm me. But I must not represent my neglect
as worse than I myself hold it to be; for I feel that I could not have
omitted it had I not known that you were so busily engaged.
Charles and Mary Lamb and Mr. Green dine with us on Sunday next, when we
are to see Mathews' Picture Gallery. Can you and Mrs. Allsop join the
party? or, if Mrs. Allsop's health should make this hazardous or too
great an exertion, can you come yourself? I am sure she will forgive me
for putting the question.
God bless you and your affectionate
S. T. COLERIDGE.
LETTER 204. TO ALLSOP
June 29th, 1822.
My dear Friend,
As fervent a prayer, as glow-trembling a joy, thanksgiving that seeks to
steady itself by prayer, and prayer that dissolves itself into thanks
and gladness, as ever eddied in or streamed onward from love and
friendship, for pain and dread, for travail of body and spirit passed
over, and a mother smiling over the firstborn at her bosom, have sped
toward you from the moment I opened your Letter. For as if there had
been a light suffused along the paper at that part, "birth of a Daughter
after a very short illness," were the first words I saw. "Well pleased!"
To be sure you are. It was scarcely a week ago that--during the only
hour free from visits, visitors, and visitations that we have had to
ourselves for I do not know how long--Mrs. Gillman and I had settled the
point; and, after a strict, patient, and impartial poll of the _pro's_
and _con's_ on both sides, a Girl it was to be, and a Girl was returned
by a very large majority of wishes. But as wishes, like strawberries, do
not bear carriage well, or at least require to be poised on the _head_,
I will send a scanty specimen of the Reasons by way of _Hansel_.
_Imprimis_, A Girl takes five times as much spoiling to spoil her.
_Item._--It is a great advantage both in respect of Temper, Manners, and
the Quickening of the Faculties, for a Boy to have a Sister or Sisters a
year or two older than himself.--But I devote this brief scroll to
Feeling: so no more of disquisition, except it be to declare the entire
coincidence of my experience with yours as to the very rare occurrence
of strong and deep Feeling in conjunction with free power and vivacity
in the expression of it. The most eminent Tragedians, Garrick for
instance, are known to have had their emotions as much at command, and
almost as much on the surface, as the muscles of their countenances;
and the French, who are all Actors, are proverbially heartless. Is it
that it is a false and feverous state for the Centre to live in the
Circumference? The vital warmth seldom rises to the surface in the form
of sensible Heat, without becoming hectic and inimical to the Life
within, the only source of real sensibility. Eloquence itself--I speak
of it as habitual and at call--too often is, and is always like to
engender, a species of histrionism.
In one of my juvenile poems (on a Friend who died in a Frenzy Fever),
you will find[128] that I was jealous of this in myself; and that it is
(as I trust it is), otherwise, I attribute mainly to the following
causes:--A naturally, at once searching and communicative disposition,
the necessity of reconciling the restlessness of an ever-working Fancy
with an intense craving after a resting-place for my Thoughts in some
_principle_ that was derived from experience, but of which all other
knowledge should be but so many repetitions under various limitations,
even as circles, squares, triangles, etc., etc., are but so many
positions of space. And, lastly, that my eloquence was most commonly
excited by the desire of running away and hiding myself from my personal
and inward feelings, _and not for the expression of them_, while
doubtless this very effort of feeling gave a passion and glow to my
thoughts and language on subjects of a general nature, that they
otherwise would not have had. I fled in a Circle, still overtaken by the
Feelings, from which I was ever more fleeing, with my back turned
towards them; but above all, my growing deepening conviction of the
_transcendancy of the moral to the intellectual_, and the inexpressible
comfort and inward strength which I experience myself to derive as often
as I contemplate truth realised into Being by a human Will; so that, _as
I cannot love without esteem, neither can I esteem without loving_.
Hence I _love_ but few, but those I love as my own Soul; for I feel that
without them I should--not indeed cease to be kind and effluent, but by
little and little become a soul-less fixed Star, receiving no rays nor
influences into my Being, _a Solitude which I so tremble at, that I
cannot attribute it even to the Divine Nature_.
_God_father or not (have not Girls Godfathers?), the little lady shall
be to me a dear Daughter, and I will make her love me by loving her own
Papa and Mamma. God bless you.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
T. Allsop, Esq.
* * * * *
The last letter refers to the birth of "Titania Puckinella," as
Coleridge loved to call Allsop's girl. The next letter refers to
Coleridge's four "griping and grasping sorrows." The third sorrow was
the break with Sarah Hutchinson, who, as we have seen, had been one of
Coleridge's good angels, the "Lady" of _Dejection; an Ode_.
LETTER 205. TO ALLSOP
Ramsgate, Oct. 8th, 1822.
My dearest Friend,
In the course of my past life I count four griping and grasping sorrows,
each of which seemed to have my very heart in its hands, compressing or
wringing. The first, when the Vision of a Happy Home sunk for ever, and
it became impossible for me any longer even to hope for domestic
happiness under the name of Husband, when I was doomed to know
That names but seldom meet with Love,
And Love wants courage without a name!
The second commenced on the night of my arrival (from Grasmere) in town
with Mr. and Mrs. Montagu, when all the superstructure raised by my
idolatrous Fancy during an enthusiastic and self-sacrificing Friendship
of fifteen years--the fifteen bright and ripe years, the strong summer
of my Life--burst like a Bubble! But the Grief did not vanish with it,
nor the love which was the stuff and vitality of the grief, though they
pined away up to the moment of ...'s last total Transfiguration into
Baseness; when, with £1,200 a year, and just at the moment that the
_extraordinary_ Bankruptcy of Fenner and Curtis had robbed me of every
penny I had been so many years working for, every penny I possessed in
the world, and involved me in a debt of £150 to boot, he _first_
regretted that he was not able to pay a certain bill of mine to his
...'s wife's brother, himself, "never wanted money so much in his
life," etc. etc.; and an hour after attempted to extort from me a
transfer to himself of all that I could call my own in the world--my
books--as the condition of his paying a debt which in _equity_ was as
much, but in honour and gratitude was far more, _his_ debt than mine!
My third sorrow was in some sort included in the second; what the former
was to friendship, the latter was to a yet more inward bond. The former
spread a wider gloom over the world around me, the latter left a
darkness deeper within myself; the former is more akin to indignation,
and moody scorn at my own folly in my weaker moments, and to
contemplative melancholy and alienation from the Past in my ordinary
state; the latter had more of self in its character, but of a Self,
emptied--a gourd of Jonas: and is _this_ it under which I hoped to have
prophesied?
My fourth commenced with the tidings of the charge against
J...--remitted with the belief and confidence of the Falsehood of the
charge--relapsed again--and again--and again--blended with the sad
convictions, that neither E. nor I. thought of or felt towards me as
they ought, or attributed any thing done for them to me; and lastly,
reached its height on the nineteenth day of E.'s fever by J.'s desertion
of him, when it trembled in the scales whether he should live or die,
and the cause of this desertion first awakening the suspicion that I had
been deliberately deceived and made an accomplice in deceiving
others.[129]
And yet, in all these four griefs, my recollection, as often as they
were recalled to my mind, turned not to _what_ I suffered, but on what
_account_--at worst, I never thought of the sufferings apart from the
causes and occasions of them; but the latter were ever uppermost. It was
reserved for the interval between six o'clock and twelve on _that
Saturday_ evening to bring a suffering which, do what I will, I cannot
help thinking of and being _affrighted_ by, as a terror of itself--a
self-subsisting, separate something, detached from the cause. I cannot
help hearing the sound of my voice at the moment when I... took me by
surprise, and asked me for the money to pay a debt to, and take leave
of, Mr. Williams, promising to overtake me if possible before I had
reached his aunt Martha's, but at latest before five. "Nay, say _six_.
Be, if you can, by five, but _say_ six." Then, when he had passed a few
steps--"J... six; O my God! think of the _agony_, the _sore agony_, of
every moment after six!" And though he was not three yards from me, I
only saw the colour of his Face through my Tears!--No more of this! I
will finish this scrawl after my return from the Beach.
When I had left behind me what I had no power to make better or worse,
and arrived at the sea side, I had soon reason to remember that I was
not at _home_, or at Muddiford, _or_ at Little Hampton, or at Ramsgate,
but under the conjunct signs of Virgo and the Crab; the one in the wane,
the other in advance, yet in excellent agreement with the former, by
virtue of its rare privilege of advancing backward. In sober prose, I
verily believe we should have found as genial a birth in a nest hillock
of Termites or Bugaboos as with this single Ant-consanguineous. As soon
therefore as dear Mr. Gillman returned to us, you will not hold it
either strange or unwise that, in agreeing to accompany him to Dover,
the kingdom of France west of Paris, Ramsgate, Sandwich, and foreign
parts in general, I determined to give myself up to each moment as it
came, with no anticipations and with no recollections, save as far as is
involved in the wish every now and then, that you had been with me; and
in this resolve it was that I destroyed the kit-cat or bust at least of
the letter I had meant to have sent you. But oh! how often have I
wished, and do I wish, that you and Mrs. Allsop could form a household
in common at Ramsgate with us next year.
And now for your second Letter. What shall I say? When our Griefs and
Fears and agitations are strongly roused towards one object, we almost
want some fresh memento to remind us that we have other Loves, other
Interests. Forgive me if I tell you that your last letter did, in
something of this way, make me feel afresh, that there was that in my
very heart that called you Son as well as Friend, and reminded me that a
Father's affection could not exist exempt from a Father's anxiety. I am
fully aware that every syllable in the latter half of your letter
proceeded from the strong two-fold desire at once to comfort and
conciliate, and that I ought to regard your remarks as the mere
straining of the Soul towards an End felt and known to be pure and
lovely; and even so I do regard them, yet I cannot read them without
anxiety: not indeed anxious Thoughts, but anxious Feeling. Sane or
insane, fearful thing it is, when I can be comforted by an assurance of
the latter; but I neither know nor _dare_ hear of any mid state, of no
vague necessities dare I hear. Our own wandering thoughts may be
suffered to become Tyrants over the mind, of which they are the
Offspring and the most effective Viceroys, or substitutes of that dark
and dim spiritual Personëity, whose whispers and fiery darts holy men
have supposed them to be, and that these may end in the loss, or rather
Forfeiture of Free agency, I doubt not. But, my dearest friend, I have
both the _Faith of Reason_ and the Voice of Conscience and the assurance
of Scripture, that, "resist the evil one, and he will flee from you."
But for self-condemnation, J... would never have tampered with Fatalism;
and but for Fatalism, he would never have had such cause to condemn
himself. With truest love,
Yours,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
T. Allsop, Esq.
P.S. Affectionate remembrances to Mrs. Allsop, in short, to you and
_yours_. While I write the two last words, my lips felt an appetite to
kiss the baby.
LETTER 206. TO GILLMAN
Ramsgate, 28th Oct., 1822.
Dear Friend,
Words I know are not wanted between you and me. But there are occasions
so awful, there may be instances and manifestations of friendship so
affecting, and drawing up with them so long a train from behind, so
many folds of recollection as they come onward on one's mind, that it
seems but a mere act of justice to oneself, a debt we owe to the dignity
of our moral nature to give them some record; a relief which the spirit
of man asks and demands to contemplate in some outward symbol, what it
is inwardly solemnizing. I am still too much under the cloud of past
misgivings, too much of the stun and stupor from the recent peals and
thunder-crush still remains, to permit me to anticipate others than by
wishes and prayers. What the effect of your unwearied kindness may be on
poor M.'s mind and conduct, I pray fervently, and I feel a cheerful
trust that I do not pray in vain, that on my own mind and spring of
action, it will be proved not to have been wasted. I do inwardly
believe, that I shall yet do something to thank you, my dear--in the way
in which you would wish to be thanked--by doing myself honour.--Dear
friend and brother of my soul, God only knows how truly, and in the
depth, you are loved and prized by your affectionate friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.[130]
LETTER 207. TO ALLSOP
Dec. 26th, 1822.
My very dear Friend,
I might with strict truth assign the not only day after day, but hour
after hour employment, if not through the whole period of my waking
time, yet through the whole of my writing power, as the cause of my not
having written to you with my own hand; but then I ought to add that it
was enforced and kept up by the expectation of seeing you. There are two
ways of giving you pleasure and comfort; would to God I could have made
the one _compossible_ with the other and done both! The first, the
having finished the Logic in its three main divisions,--as the Canon, or
that which prescribes the rule and form of all _conclusion_ or
conclusive reasoning; second, as the Criterion, or that which teaches to
distinguish truth from falsehood, containing all the sorts, forms, and
sources of error, and means of deceiving or being deceived; third, as
the Organ, or positive instrument for discovering truth, together with
the general introduction to the whole.
The second was to come to town, and pass a week with you and Mrs.
Allsop. The latter I could not have done, and yet have been able to send
you the present good tidings that with regard to the former we are in
sight of land; that Mr. Stutfield will give three days in the week for
the next fortnight; and that I have no doubt, notwithstanding Mrs.
Coleridge and my little Sara's expected arrival on Friday next, that by
the end of January the whole book will not only have been finished, for
_that_ I expect will be the case next Sunday fortnight, but ready for
the press. In reality, I have _now_ little else but to transcribe, and
even this would in part only be necessary, but that I must of course
dictate the sentences to Mr. Stutfield and Mr. Watson, and shall
therefore avail myself of the opportunity for occasional correction and
improvement. When this is done, and can be offered as _a whole_ to
Murray or other Publisher, I shall have the Logical Exercises, or the
Logic exemplified and applied in a critique on--1. Condillac; 2. Paley;
3. The French Chemistry and Philosophy, with other miscellaneous matters
from the present Fashions of the age, moral and political, ready to go
to the press with by the time the other is printed off; and this without
interrupting the greater work on Religion, of which the first Half,
containing the Philosophy or ideal Truth, possibility, and _a priori_
probability of the articles of Christian Faith, was completed on Sunday
last.
Let but these works be once done, and the responsibility off my
conscience, and I have no doubt or dread of afterwards obtaining an
honourable sufficiency, were it only by school books, and compilations
from my own memorandum volumes. The publication of my Shakspeare and
other similar lectures, sheet per sheet, in _Blackwood_, with the aid of
Mr. Frere's short-hand copies, and those on the History of Philosophy in
one volume, would nearly suffice.
I was unspeakably delighted to see Mrs. Allsop look so _charmingly_
well. My affectionate regards to her, and a heart-uttered Happy, Happy,
Happy Christmas to you both, one for each, and the third for the little
girl, who (Mr. Watson assures me) has now the ground work and necessary
pre-condition of thriving, though it may be some time before a notable
change in the appearances may take place for the general eye.
God bless you, and your friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.[131]
T. Allsop, Esq.
The Shakespeare Lectures as arranged for _Blackwood_ were probably
written out by one of Coleridge's friends. The History of Philosophy
consisted of the Lectures commenced 14th December 1818. The Logic is
still in MS. (Dykes Campbell, _Life_, 251, note).
Mrs. Coleridge and Sara came to Highgate and remained till the end of
February (_Ainger_, ii, 65, 71). Mrs. Coleridge wrote that "our visits
to Highgate have been productive of the greatest satisfaction to all
parties." It was at this time that Sara and her cousin, Henry Nelson
Coleridge, first met.
LETTER 208. TO ALLSOP
Grove, Highgate, Dec. 10th, 1823.
My dear Allsop,
I shall be alone on Sunday, and shall be happy to spend it with you.
Ever since the disappearance of a most unsightly eruption on my Face I
have been, with but short intermission, annoyed with the noise as of a
distant Forge hammer incessantly sounding, so that for some time I
actually supposed it to be an outward sound. To me, who never before
_knew_ by any sensation that I had a head upon my shoulders, this you
may suppose is extremely harassing to the spirits and distractive of my
attention. Mrs. Gillman, on stepping from my attic, slipt on the first
step of a steep flight of nine high stairs, precipitated herself and
fell head foremost on the fifth stair; and when at the piercing scream I
rushed out, I found her lying on the landing place, her head at the
wall. Even now the Image, and the Terror of the Image, blends with the
recollection of the Past a strange expectancy, a fearful sense of a
something still to come; and breaks in, and makes stoppages, as it were,
in my Thanks to God for her providential escape. For an escape we all
must think it, though the small bone of her left arm was broken, and her
wrist sprained. She went without a light, though (Oh! the vanity of
Prophecies, the truth of which can be established only by the proof of
their uselessness) two nights before I had expostulated with her on this
account with some warmth, having previously more than once remonstrated
against it, on stairs not familiar and without carpeting.
As I shall _rely_ on your spending Sunday here, and with me alone, I
shall defer to that time all but my tenderest regards to Mrs. Allsop,
and the superfluous assurance that I am evermore, my dearest Allsop,
Your most cordial, attached, and
Affectionate friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
T. Allsop, Esq.
P.S.--You will be delighted with my new room.
LETTER 209. TO ALLSOP
Dec. 24th, 1823.
My dearest Allsop,
I forgot to ask you, and so did Mr. and Mrs. G. ... whether you could
dine with us on Christmas-day--or on New Year's-day--or on both! If you
can, need I say that I shall be glad.
My noisy forge-hammer is still busy; quick, thick, and fervent.
With kindest regards to Mrs. Allsop,
Your ever faithful and affectionate,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
T. Allsop, Esq.
LETTER 210. TO MRS. ALLSOP
(-- 1823).
My dear Mrs. Allsop,
Indeed, indeed you have sadly misunderstood my last hurried note. So
over and over again has Mr. Allsop been assured that every invitation to
him included you, so often has he been asked to consider one meant for
both, that in a few lines scrawled in the dark, with a distracting,
quick, thick, and noisy beating as of a distant forge-hammer in my head,
and, lastly, written, not so much under any expectation of seeing him
(in fact for _Christmas_-day I had none), as from a nervous jealousy of
any customary mark of respect and affection being omitted, the ceremony
of EXPRESSING your name did not occur to me. But the blame, whatever it
be, lies with me, wholly, exclusively on me; for on asking _Mr._ Gillman
whether an invitation had been sent to you, he replied by asking me if I
had not spoken, and on my saying it was now too late, he still desired
me to write, his words being,--"For though Allsop must know how glad we
always are to see him, yet still, as far as it is a mark of respect, it
is his due." Accordingly I wrote. But after the letter had been sent to
the post, on going to Mrs. Gillman to learn how she was, and saying that
I had just scrawled a note in the dark in order not to miss the post,
_she_ expressed her disapprobation as nearly as I can remember in these
words:--"I do not think a mere ceremony any mark of respect to intimate
friends. How, in such weather as this, and short days, can it be
supposed that Mrs. Allsop could either leave the children or take them?
But to expect Mr. Allsop to dine away from his family at this time is
what I would not even appear to do, for I should think it very wrong if
he did." I was vexed, and could only reply,--"This comes of doing things
of a hurry. However, Allsop knows me too well to attribute to me any
other feeling or purpose than the real ones." I give you my word and
honour, my dear madame, that these were, to the best of my recollection,
the very words; but I am quite CERTAIN that they contain the same
substance. And for this reason, knowing how it would vex and fret on her
spirits that you had been offended, and (if the letter of itself without
any interpretation derived from the character or known sentiments of the
writer were to decide it), justly offended, I have not shown her your
note, nor mentioned the circumstance to her; for this sad accident has
pulled her down sadly, coming too in conjunction with the distressful
state of my health and spirits; for such is my state at present, that
though I would myself have run any hazard to have spent to-morrow with
Miss Southey, my own Sara's friend and twin-sister, and with Miss
Wordsworth at Monkhouse's, in Gloster-place; yet Mr. Gillman has both
dissuaded and forbidden me as my medical adviser. I trust, therefore,
that finding Mrs. Gillman _more_ than _blameless_, and that in me the
blame was in the judgment and not in the _intention_, you will think no
more of it, but do me the _justice_ to believe that any intentions or
feelings of which I have been conscious have ever been of a kind most
contrary to any form of disrespect, omissive or commissive; to which,
let me add, that _I should_ be doing what Mr. Allsop (I am sure) would
_not_ do, _if having_ shown you _consciously_ any _dis_respect I
continued to subscribe myself _his_ friend, not to speak of any
profession of being what in very truth I am, my dear Mrs. Allsop,
Sincerely and affectionately _yours_,
S. T. COLERIDGE.[132]
Thomas Monkhouse referred to in the above letter was a cousin of Mrs.
Wordsworth, with whom Lamb on 4th March 1823 "dined in Parnassus with
Wordsworth, Coleridge, Rogers, and Tom Moore, half the poetry of England
clustered and constellated in Gloucester Place" (_Ainger_, ii, 69).
LETTER 211. TO MR. AND MRS. ALLSOP
Grove, Highgate, April 8th, 1824.
Dear Mrs. Allsop,
There are three rolls of paper, Mr. Wordsworth's translation of the
first, second, and third books, two in letter-paper, one in a little
writing-book, in the drawer under the side-board in your dining-room. Be
so good as to put them up and give them to the bearer should Mr. Allsop
not be at home.
My dear Allsop,
You I know will have approved of my instant compliance with Mr.
Gillman's request of returning with him; and I know, too, that both Mrs.
Allsop and yourself will think it superfluous in me to tell you what you
must be sure I cannot but feel. I trust that when I next return from
you, I shall have--not to thank you less--but with less painful
recollections of the trouble and anxiety I have occasioned you.
In the agitation of leaving Mrs. Allsop, I forgot to take with me the
translation of Virgil. Could I, that is, dared I, wait till Sunday, I
might make it one way of inducing you to spend the day with me. Upon the
whole, however, I had better send than increase my anxieties, so I will
send Riley with this note.
My Grandfatherly love and kisses to the Fairy Prattler and the meek boy.
I did heave a long-drawn wish this morning, as the sun and the air too
were so genial, that the latter had been in the good woman's house at
Highgate well wrapped up. A fortnight would do wonders for the dear
little fellow. You and Mrs. Allsop may rely on it that I would see him
every day during his stay here, if there were only one hour in which it
did not rain vehemently.
God bless you,
And your obliged and most
affectionately attached friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
T. Allsop, Esq.
Coleridge wrote about this time to Wordsworth regarding his translation
of part of Virgil (Knight's _Life of Wordsworth_, ii, 302), and threw
cold water on the project of Wordsworth's entering into rivalry with
Dryden.
LETTER 212. TO ALLSOP
April 14th, 1824.
My dearest Friend,
I am myself at my ordinary average of Health, and beat off the blue
Devils with the Ghosts of defunct hopes, chasing the Jack-o'-lanterns of
foolish expectation as well as I can, in the which, believe me, I derive
no small help from the Faith that in _your_ affection and sincerity I
have at least one entire counterpart of the Thoughts and Feelings with
which I am evermore and most sincerely
Your affectionate friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
T. Allsop, Esq.
My kindest love and remembrance to Mrs. Allsop, and assure her that I
called this morning at Mrs. Constable's, induced by the very fine though
unwarm day, to hope I might find the little boy there, and was rather
disappointed to see her return without him. But, doubtless, we are
entitled every day to expect a change of the present to a more genial
wind. If the meek little one does not crow and clap his wings in a week
or so from Thursday, it shall not be for want of being looked after.
LETTER 213. TO ALLSOP
April 27th, 1824.
My dearest Friend,
I direct this to your _house_, or _firm_ should I say? because I should
not think myself justified in exciting in Mrs. Allsop an alarm, for
which I have no more grounds than my own apprehensions and unlearned
conjectures. And yet having these bodings, I cannot feel quite easy in
withholding them from you. On Saturday, the morning Mrs. Allsop was
here, I was in high hope, the little boy looking so much clearer and
livelier than on the Thursday; but the weather since then being on the
whole genial, and the baby showing no mark of progress, but rather the
reverse, and it seeming to me each returning day to require a stronger
effort to rouse its attention, and the relapse to a dulness, which it is
evident the upright posture alone prevented from being a doze, becoming
more immediate, I cannot repel the boding that there is either some
mesenteric affection, which sometimes exists in infants without
betraying itself by any notable change in the ingestion or the egesta,
yet producing on the brain an effect similar to that which flatulence,
or confined gas pressing on the nerves of the stomach, will do; or else
that it is a case of chronic (slow) hydrocephalus. Against this fear I
have to say, first, that I have not been able to detect any
insensibility to light in the pupil of its eyes, and that the little
innocent has no convulsive twitches, and neither starts nor screams in
its sleep. For the first I have no opportunity (the sun being clouded)
of making a decisive experiment, and requested Mrs. Constable to try it
with a candle, as soon as it was taken up after dark; and though the
presence of this symptom is an infallible evidence of the presence of
effusion, or some equivalent cause of pressure, its absence is no sure
proof of the absence of the disease, though it is a presumption in
favour of the _degree_. The freedom from perturbation in sleep, however,
is altogether a favourable circumstance, and allows a hope that the
continued heaviness and immediate relapse into slumber on being placed
horizontally may be the effect of weakness. But then the poor little
fellow habitually keeps its hand to its head, and there is a sensible
heat and throbbing at the temples. On the whole, you should be prepared
for the possible event, and Mrs. Constable is naturally very anxious on
this point, not merely lest any neglect should be suspected on her part,
but likewise from an anticipation of the mother's agitation, should she
at any time come up just to witness the baby's last struggles, or to
find no more what she was expecting to see in incipient recovery.
Do not misunderstand me, my dearest friend, nor let this letter alarm
you beyond what the facts require. I have seen no decisive marks, no
positive change for the worse, no measurable _retro_-gression. I have of
course repeatedly spoken to Mr. Gillman, but he says it is impossible to
form any conclusive opinion. There is no proof that it may not be
weakness at present and hitherto, but neither dare he determine what the
continuance of the weakness may not produce. Nothing can warrantably be
attempted in this uncertainty but mild alteratives, watchful attention
to the infant's regularity, with as cordial nourishment as can be given
without endangering heat or inflammatory action.
I do not think that I have been able to remain undisturbed an hour
together for the last three days, such a tumble in of persons with
requests or claims on me has there been. House-hunting, etc., etc.
* * * * *
The genial glow of Friendship once deadened can never be rekindled.
Idly we supplicate the Powers above--
There is no Resurrection for a Love
That uneclipsed, unthwarted, wanes away
In the chilled heart by inward self-decay.
Poor mimic of the Past! the love is o'er,
That must _resolve_ to do what did itself of yore.
God bless you, and your ever affectionate
S. T. COLERIDGE.
T. Allsop, Esq.
P.S. To my great surprise and delight, Mr. Anster came in on us this
afternoon, and in perfect health and spirits.[133]
It was about this time that Coleridge wrote his beautiful _Youth and
Age_,[134] in which occurs the fine designation of Friendship as "a
Sheltering Tree."
* * * * *
The following opinion of Coleridge by Mrs. Gillman is taken from _The
Bright Side of Life_ by Dr. Prentiss, an American, who visited Mrs.
Gillman in 1842, and will fittingly close this chapter:
"In speaking of Coleridge personally and as a member of her family
Mrs. Gillman's testimony was to this effect:
"'I do assure you that through all the years he lived with us, I do
not remember once to have seen him fretful or out of humour; he was
the same kindly, affectionate being from morning till evening, and
from January till December. He delighted to reconcile little
differences, and to make all things go smoothly and happily. He was
always teaching the Beautiful and the Good, while his own daily life
was the best illustration of the good and beautiful which he taught.
You know how the world sometimes misrepresented and ill-treated him,
and he felt it now and then very keenly; but he bore it all with the
sweetest patience. As I have said, I never saw him in what could be
called an ill-temper during the nineteen years he was under our
roof,--never! The servants in the house idolized him; and when he died
it seemed as if their hearts would break. We all had one feeling
toward him: we all loved him alike, each in our own way; and we all
alike wept when he died. Love was the law of his nature. He clothed
his friends, to be sure, in the colours of his own fancy, and
sometimes, perhaps, the colours were too bright; but it was his
goodness of heart, quite as much as his imagination, that was at
fault.'"
FOOTNOTES:
[126] Great as was the shock my friend sustained from the
unkind conduct of the gentlemen here alluded to, it is to me
a great solace to be assured that he forgave them fully and
entirely. [Allsop.]
[127] [Perhaps Wordsworth.]
[128] To me hath Heaven with bounteous hand assigned
Energic Reason and a shaping mind,
The daring ken of Truth, the Patriot's part,
And Pity's sigh, that breathes the gentle heart.
Sloth jaundiced all! and from my graspless hand
Drop Friendship's precious pearls, like hour-glass sand.
I weep, yet stoop not! the faint anguish flows,
A dreamy pang in Morning's feverish dose.
_Is this piled earth our Being's passless mound?
Tell me, cold grave! is Death with poppies crowned?
Tired sentinel! 'mid fitful starts I nod,
And fain would sleep, though pillowed on a clod._
[129] [The initials are probably Allsop's.]
[130] [Letter CCXXXI is our 206.]
[131] [Letters CCXXXII-CCXXXIII follow 207.]
[132] [Letter CCXXXIV follows 210.]
[133] [Letters CCXXXV-CCXXXVIII follow 213.]
[134] [1822-23.]