Coleridge, Sara (1802-1852). - Letter, from 10 Chester Place, to Edward Quillinan (1791-1851), at Loughrigg Holme, dated 31 March 1849. WLMS A / Coleridge, Sara / 47.

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10 Chester Place

March 31- 1849

My dear Mr Quillinan,

Will you tell dear Mrs: Wordsworth with my love, that the Mrs: Richard E.A. Townsend, (not C.H. Townshend,) who sends the collection of sacred poetry to her, is the wife of a Proctor in Doctor's Commons, a pleasing & amiable man, who writes & prints elegant but obscure verses, which I cannot like as well as I do himself & his wife. He took an active part against Hampden, in the last opposition to that, in my view, most unworthy representative of a not unworthy cause. But I try to skip over that part of his Mr T's history, when I think of him,

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and to forget that he made up his mind first & read Hampden's book afterwards, to qualify him, as it were formally, to have and to hold the already-made mind - and only to remember how kindly, at my dear husband's request, he did legal work for my Aunt Lovell - of a slight kind but still very useful - and would not hear of payment. He is Evangelical - his wife prefers the popular High Church way, admires the writings & espouses the opinions of Dr Chris Wordsworth, and those Anglican Doctors, who stand upon the old ways of the Church of England, do not want to be wiser than Hooker & Taylor, or more consistent, and fight against "Newmanism" & "Germanism" with equal

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zeal & pertinacity. This is an individual preference & private judgement in my friend, for she is one of the Shepherds of Frome, and I believe they are considered by some of the Clergy there as "Low Church" people. I rather think that you once met Mr & Mrs Townsend of Norwood at this house - But perhaps you hardly recollect them.

Yesterday I was delighted to hear from dear Miss Fenwick that there is a fair prospect of my seeing something of her in the course of this next summer. She tells you all her plans - I need not therefore repeat them, but must rejoice with you in her evidently increased vigour & improved health. She tells me that dear Miss Tudor's eyes are a shade better, but

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fears they will relapse, when the bella donna, applied by Dr Beton, is withdrawn, I am deeply interested about her [Miss T.] and pray for her at this time - that, if it please God, her eyesight may be strengthened or not further weakened, - with special fervour. I cannot bear to think of her becoming totally blind; and yet, even if this most severe calamity should come upon her, I feel assured that she will be supported under it, and probably have a brightness of inward light vouchsafed to her, known only to the patient & pious Blind.

I am at this time recovering from an epidemic malady, which for some

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days plunged me into a slough of despond from prostration of strength & spirits.

I was frightened by the loss of appetite - [thought] that my stomach had been injured seriously by the long use of morphine & had begun to give way, & tried to leave the stimulant off all at once. The consequence was that I sunk into, not the very lowest - but a miserably low state of languor - insomuch that I could not even read. In the evening I took a small dose and resumed power, & since then I have been content with a considerable reduction of the quantity of opium which I have of late been using. I have no doubt whatever that I could discard the drug altogether, by gradual diminishments - But

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this I do not think at present necessary or desirable; because I certainly have not only more, but better & sounder sleep, with a moderate quantity than I could have without it. My fears of a total decay & destruction of the stomach are entirely removed. I can now eat meat twice a day, which is what all the medical men, that have given me advice, have been unanimous in prescribing for me.

I hope that your dear Daughters are keeping their youthful bloom quite unimpaired. Jemima's health is, I suppose, almost faultless. I was rejoiced to hear, some time ago, that Rotha's face malady was quite gone, & that her patience on that trying point, which I often admired, had

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at last been rewarded. I suppose from what I hear that you have no ailments of any importance at present; but I should be glad of a note from Yourself by & by, telling both of that and of aught else that concerns and interests you - literary undertakings, poetry and so forth.

Your sonnet to Miss Sellon has been sent to me from two different quarters. Some persons are hard to persuade that it is not Mr Wordsworth's production. The flowers forlorn reminds one of the Triad certainly. I do not perceive any unpleasant deficiency in regard to rhyme - hood & mood are surely allowable diversities of sound and sufficient matches, where all

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the other rhymes are more perfect. The two froms in line ten brushed against my ear a little - It is a controversial line both in sound & sense - and some of the "no-nos," with which the Bishop of Exeter's eulogy was greeted, would be raised, in some quarters, against this poetical Philippic. The behaviour of Hatchard's party, whatever their theology may be, seems to be of the lowest description of party hostility. But party religionists will ever be full of base ways - Perhaps the most painful part of the whole affair is the conduct of those false, ungrateful girls, who suffered themselves to be made the tools of Miss Sellon's opponents. Substantially her cause

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(3 seems to me as excellent as it does to you and to Miss Fenwick. But I cannot help going further than you do against the defence - I regret it not merely as illogical, but as in some degree derogating from the lady's character in point of earnestness or at least purity and depth of feeling. It added not one little to the substance of the vindication - I am sure my heart & mind were even more with her before, than after, the perusal - and to my sense it brushed off some [little] of the fresh dew and fine bloom of the moral effect, by giving the speak[er] rather an air of desiring to represent herself as a sort of martyr, and a claimant of public gratitude and admiration. Had St Lawrence on the Gridiron said - "Lo! what a sufferer I am in the Lord's cause & how senseless & cruel are my enemies!" should we not have fancied that the leaves of his palm began to wither? There

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is no character in the world that requires such delicate handling as a character for pure disinterested self-devotion.

It is not as if there had been intellectual and speculative misunderstandings to clear away, there were only matters which appealed straight to the heart & moral sense, & which the evidence had made clear as noon-day; while the defence directed attention to dubious points and used, I think, some dubious arguments. This may be thought hypercritical - but the fact is that the defence has detracted a little from her with some here, who, I am sure, have no sympathies with Hatchard & his party - nay are strongly opposed to all of his side & set. People suspect too that the defence was suggested, if not penned, by Dr Pusey, and this, whether true or not, joined with the other manifestations of attachment to the Pusey school in outward signs & symbols, injures the effect of the vindication by de

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taching it, to a certain extent, from Christianity at large & connecting it with a party procedure which to a large body among us appears to be of questionable propriety & utility. The Bishop's management of the cause was admirable in bringing out the true state of the case; but a few emphatic sentences would have been better, I think, both for Miss S. & himself more dignified & delicately complementary than his rather high-flown harangue. He is looked upon as a persecutor of the "Low Church party," and thus his praise is set down to enmity & party spirit more than to genuine love of goodness. However, I hope that Miss Sellon's light will continue to burn and shine steadily, when these angry torch-glases have passed away.

Herbert is at home now for his Easter Vacation, & deserves, as much as he did when a babe at Hampstead the title of the Rose - tho' when he would be scornful enough, I suppose, if he

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saw that I had given it him. After all his hard work in the Hertford & Ireland Examinations he came home without a shade on his brow, or a touch of paleness on his cheek. I was much pleased by the easy gracious way in which he bore being outdone by his old rival, [Fremantle], in the Hertford, which being entirely for Latin, was adverse to him, so that his coming second was to his credit. And yet I was not sorry that he got a head again in the Ireland, which enabled him to display his knowledge of Greek & general scholarship. I had promised him some gaiety in this Vacation, to make up a little for the gloominess of the last - & now I am little able to fulfil my promise - for want of strength & want of money. He spends some of his exuberant spirits in rallying and romping with his sister. Their present contest is about the drawings she has in hand. He likes to adorn his walls at oxford (such space as is left clear from books) with fair lady faces by her pencil. She will finish a St Agnes, to which she has taken an affection, before she begins a Julie for him, and from the shrieks and stampings that resound from below you would fancy

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4) that some dreadful piece of oppression & cruelty was going forward. Indeed he has been known to snap one of her chalks in two, & to put a pipe into the mouth of one of her heroes. If he repeats these enormities his own head must be broken - though it is so high above mine now, that I must avail myself of the library steps to come at the hard scull of the youth. You would have been amused to hear the critical dispute at tea yesterday, just after Mrs Wedgwood had left us, with a parting word about Matt. Arnold's poetic volume, which Herbert greatly admires. Edith, who really has what I consider an excellent and perfectly genuine self formed

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taste in modern poetry, began to extol "The Kitten & The Falling Leaves," & then went into a sort of rapture about the Platonic [[-?-]] Ode, Herbert interrupted her recitation of one of the sublimest passages with "What's that compared to these exquisite lines of Byron - "Away with your fictions of flimsy romance, Those tissues which Folly has wove;- Give me the mild beam of the soul-breathing glance, Or the rapture which dwells on the first Kiss of love!!!" He knows better than this however - But he was rather successful yesterday in quizzing Keats by hitting upon

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that line in the "Endymion" "when [Ionian] shoals Of dolphins bob their noses through the brine -" and that stanza about the ["unimaginable lodge For solitary thinkings, such as dodge Conception to the farthest bourne of [Heaven]"]- These things do not well bear to be taken out of their poetic places, and exhibited through a framework of broad grins. Shelley's Ode to Liberty is greatly admired by Herbert & at Oxford now among his compeers, What think you of M. Arnold's volume? I have not read it yet.

This afternoon I have read with

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great pleasure Trench's Story of [Justin] Martyr, which I see the merit of much more than when I first read it years ago. The vol. Has been lent me by Lady Monteagle. Trench's poetry had become a mere name to me, & I recollected it more by negatives than by positives.

I am awaiting with some curiosity the arrival of the Quarterly, in which Mr Lockhart has dealt with Maccauley.

I wonder whether he will prove him wrong in any of his points with respect to the career of James II. Since finishing Maccauley's highly attractive volumes, the second of which has an enchaining

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interest, I have penned Miss Strickland's Memoirs of James II's wife, Mary d'Este of Modena. The book seems to me childishly perverted & partial in much that relates to James II, but the account of his wife gains upon one. Proud & impetuous she must have been, but certainly she must have had a heart. The history of her feelings in the first days of widowhood & in her husband's last illness was to me like[[-?-]] on reading, a mere repetition of that which is written in my own memory of my own experience, Maccauley's cool way of speaking of her person, which must have been one of the finest in Europe, is one of the greatest signs of party spirit in his book - unless it is - not party warmth - but mere temperamental coldness & apathy on the subject of female charms. Yet that it

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cannot be, since he can use strong words enough about some of Charles II's good for nothing Beauties.

You asked me once anent a review of Dyce's B. & F. That art. I was specially requested to write by Mr Lockhart. He said he wished to serve Moxon by giving a lift to Mr Dyce's meritorious, but little bought XI vol. publication. The subject was large - what with the biography - the plays, & the editor's readings - I made my review twice too long (it would have taken up 90 pages, if published at length) Thus after it was all in type it was cut like the little old woman, [all]

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round about. I never had a revise of it - there were mis-prints & altogether - However it was my own fault for writing so much. Mr L. was extremely courteous & praise-ful, and said that what was cut out ought to be preserved. But such overflows seldom turn to any account afterwards.

I should like to write reviews sometimes, for the sake of the money - but the difficulties in my way are great. I am shut out from several of the leading periodicals by their past conduct to my father - and there is scarcely a subject on which my notions would suit any journal which is to speak the opinions of a party.

Miss Rigby's article on "Vanity Fair," was brilliant, as all her productions

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are (you know she is to marry - perhaps is married to - Charles Eastlake the Painter) But I could not agree to the concluding remarks about governesses. How could it benefit that uneasy class to reduce the number of their employers, which, if high salaries were considered, in all cases indispensable must necessarily be the result of such a state of opinion? Many governesses, as it is, receive £80 and £100 a year. Where the butler has 40 & Lady's maid 20 - or Housekeeper 30 this is [surely] the average. Besides, hard & unsentimental as it may seem, I must think that the services of the ordinary tradesman's governess

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6) are not worth more than £30 a year. After all, let the governess's discomforts be what they may, is not the situation in all respects far more tolerable for a lady, or semi-lady, than that of lady's maid or upper house maid, or the health destroying slavery of the milliner's or dress maker's business; or the undignifying, if not positively degrading, place behind the counter, - which really in London partakes of some of the disadvantages of the stage, so obviously are the young women dressed up, & selected perhaps, to attract the eyes of customers & their lounging companions. But to some one of these situations must many a destitute young woman descend, if that

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of governess in some family of limited means was not to be procured.

This reminds me - that your former servant Caroline, after serving me during all my widowhood, - six years - is about to leave me. I have always been very slow to see faults either in her or in Martha, because they came to me from my dear old friend, your ever-lamented Dora, and were highly thought of, in the main, by her. When you were last here, I had seen much that I did not like in C. - but I still thought we should go on together perhaps for years to come - though I did wish that some body was "coming to marry

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her," and that I was left free to chuse again some one, whom I might keep in her true place from the first. But now she goes, of her own accord, because she will neither keep the area closed after dinner, nor bear to be reminded of her duty in that respect. An apology and a respectful promise for the future would have conciliated me. But for me it is best as it is. Martha, is, I think, of better or at least of finer [morals] than C. - but she has been a good deal hurt, I think, by C's companionship & unservantlike independent notions. However, M. has many good points & I shall not wish to part with her, if she will en-

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dure to be reminded of her duty when she neglects or forgets it. She is still very nice liking looking. But poor C. is looking the colour of one of her own [pans]. She has just lost her father - & I do not think she is very comfortable in her anticipations of a new place - for go where she may she cannot have an easier than this has been, & she may have a much harder. I am glad that I can give her a character quite sufficient to get her a good place - She is very quick & clever - an excellent cook as far as she goes (her pastry & puddings we shall perhaps long lament) and clean in her own domain - a good writer & reckoner - honest in the ordinary sense and sober.

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7) One topic more - before I close this long gossipy letter, which does not much seem to verify my frequent complaints of much pen-work. But I must add a few words about my dear, dear Hartley. You may have heard that Derwent thinks of prefacing a collection of his scattered pieces in verse, and in prose, with a brief memoir. Some of our friends seem to apprehend a difficulty in this undertaking on account of our dear brother's well known unhappy habits of intemperance. These, no doubt, will render it in some respects a painful task - but ought not, I think, to prevent the execution of it altogether - For if a sketch of Hartley's life is not

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put forth from the quarter most concerned there is little doubt that from some other quarter it will be, and I must ever think, that in spite of all drawbacks, relations & intimate friends are far more competent biographers than strangers. The materials at least must in one way or other be supplied by them - even if their commentary is in the end superseded, and their omissions filled up by other hands. Neither I nor Derwent have ever thought for a moment that a sketch of Hartley's life could be given without a full & fair acknowledgement of his characteristic frailties. But some have suggested

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that we do not perhaps know the extent of his excesses. Alas! who should know them better - or half as well as myself, who all my life long in one shape or another have been a sufferer by them? Hartley's infirmities, Hartley's failures & sorrows & misfortunes were the largest & blackest Cloud that hung over my prospect in early youth, and some times for a while, intercepted all its natural sunshine. During the first year of my marriage I had a season of deep despondency & keenest apprehension on account of his sad wanderings; and from time to time ever since I have felt sorrow & care & embarrassment on his account. He was never long out of my thoughts,

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and this is the reason why his death has shaken me far more than might have been thought possible after so long a separation.

But in regard to eulogy, the same regard to truth which would render it impossible to conceal his faults would prompt us to speak - not of course in terms of unqualified praise of him, but certainly of high praise of his virtues. For those, I do in my inmost heart, believe were as rare and as rich, as his infirmities were strange & deplorable. His unselfishness, his freedom from all those little debasing passions of vanity, ambition, pride, - as well as from deceit in all its various forms, was such as I have never known exceeded. To praises of him on this score I think that many hearts & minds would strongly respond. The Memoir will be for all who take or shall take an

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8) interest, now or hereafter, in the products of his mind, and such persons will not be indisposed to receive the genuine overflow of a brother's heart, as a truthful testimony in its way, and at least a proof of the impression which his character made on one who knew him long & late and early.

Pray give my kind regards to Jemima & Rotha -

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when are they to visit London again? I shall be truly glad to see them, whenever they do.

Believe me dear Mr Quillinan, Yours very sincerely Sara Coleridge.

If you want to see what I - S.C. - consider the ne plus ultra of polemical baseness, look at the English Review for

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last December in which Hare, Maurice & all disciples of Coleridge with Coleridge himself, are held forth as subverters of the Faith! It is not merely the positive falsities of the Article - which are numerous - but the mean method of crime [[?]] adopted which

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renders it a Chef dieonose of a Professor of the periodical Base Arts.

Hare & Maurice have answered the attack on them. The attack on the "Letters on Inspiration", which consists in the grossest misrepresentation of the spirit, drift & import of the work, will be best refuted by the new edition of it, now in the Press. A clergyman writes to me in high indignation at the "shameful untruthfulness" of the account of my father's doctrine in the article. I am told it

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is by Palmer, not Roundell - author of a High and Dry Book of the Church.

The Guardian seems to be a gentlemanly Paper. As for the English Review & the Record they are brothers in spirit, however opposite in doctrine.

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Object summary: WLMS A / Coleridge, Sara / 47