Coleridge, Sara (1802-1852). - Letter, from 10 Chester Place, to Edward Quillinan (1791-1851), at an unstated address, dated 27 March 1850. WLMS A / Coleridge, Sara / 51.

10 Chester Place

March 27 1850

My dear Friend

Many thanks for your most interesting and welcome letter - I have been detained from my pen and cannot answer it by return of post - but in a hasty way - would that the hand would follow the pace of thought or that there were any steam machinery for the rapid transference of the contents of one mind into those of another!

Yet it would require great - nay super human judgement to regulate

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such a power - so all is best as it is.

I am thankful for the last report of dearest Mr Wordsworth - I shall not feel easy of course till he is further advanced in recovery than now - and must beg a line every other day from Jemima or Rotha, till he is quite out of the wood - and one after receipt of this by return of post - I will do as much for them in like circumstances or even in any which approximate to such circumstances.

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You are considerate and kind on the point of appearances toward me. I have felt glad to know why your letter was delayed, dear friend, and to mention your present communication & this notice to Miss Hoare, A shade of feeling on this point was in my mind, & amid all my anxiety - but in a sotto voce way. I had kindly given it distant utterance to my own mind till your letter enabled me to explain it to myself satisfactorily.

I was going to ask how I might send the collection of my father's newspaper writings when this

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trouble came. Mr Robinson can take the book - It should be on the Rydal Mount shelves - & you will look through it and read parts - The letters to Judge Fletcher contain a portrait of Jacobinism strongly coloured - It is very eloquent writing of the higher declamatory sort.

The Vindication of my Uncle Southey too on the Wat Tyler affair will interest you. The Character of Pitt and the Conciones ad Populum you perhaps already know.

You are most kind about Edith's visit. Let me tell you our present plan & prospect

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2) and you will tell me if it suits you or not. Herbert returns to Balliol on the 13th - I hope to go to the Sea in a week or two after that time - when Edith's sittings to Richmond will be over, & I hope to possess an image of her girlish seventeenish face, such as no artist perhaps - when we were girl & boy, could have given of ours. Dear amiable Mr Nash had taste and delicacy of feeling - but he had not Richmond's power - He could not put mind and life on paper as Richmond can. Alas! that genius should always over-excite and exhaust

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itself! He has overstrained his nervous system & the youth of his physique, - the elasticity and easy vigour - is, I fear, gone for ever, His works will be better than before, & [new] for added practice & experience but he will work in pain & with continual interruption.

Our promised visit to Staffordshire is fixed for the commencement of Herbert's Summer Vacation - I scheme that Herbert and Edith from Eccleshill or Tettenhall Wood may proceed Northward to the Lakes and Edith be deposited with you according to your

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very friendly & hospitable proposal - which she dwells on with delight. I dare say she will have a Keswick invitation from my dear old friend Mrs Stanger ere her return.

Now you must tell me frankly if this plan falls in with your summer prospect conveniently. I wish to have Edith at the sea with me (which (sea) is very necessary for my health,) for her own sake and for mine - But would it suit you to have her more toward the beginning of Autumn? And when can you visit us? The Autumn after her return would be a dull time for London - And next year is so long and far away. Can you not come up some time this summer - On our return from the Sea? Do think of this and tell me a little of your plans as I have so frankly told you of mine - in a sketchy - not absolutely determined way.

Thank you, dear Friend, for sending me the Chambers' notices - and do not think me stiff & stuck up for saying that I should opine we had best keep aloof from them [[???]] and let them "waffle and tattle" as they like. There is not a grain of ill nature in the composer or

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3) patcher. Persons have served my father far worse who had ten times as much reason to serve him well from ability, knowledge nearness to him, obligations of a certain sort to his mind &c&c

It is not on account of any [disparagement], too low estimate, liberty of[ criticism] or so forth, that I wish to have nought to do with the publication, I do not wish to correct its blunders because this would seem to be a sort of sanction to the undertaking in itself a tacit approval of the rest & it is this, and not merely the way in which it is executed that seems to me so unapprovable. Mr C. cannot be expected to know clearly and

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fully his incompetence as [a critic] & biographer - but he must & if he has common sense, be aware that he has not the means of correct information upon subjects on which he has undertaken to instruct the public - he must know, or ought to know, that he could not honestly engage in such a task. What should we think of any grocer or [draper] who set up in trade without some surer and more special means and opportunities of supplying the commodities he professes to deal

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in to his customers genuine than this Mr C. has to supply readers with true accounts of C. S. & W.? - and then to palm upon the public such abominable libels of the faces of the three poets under the name and pretence of portraits! It is really too bad.

A man ought to have some special claim - some very particular qualifications for writing the life of another who takes upon him this most difficult and delicate task - He ought to have been appointed to it by the subject himself - or to have some close connection with him of blood or friendship

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or intimate knowledge from long & deep study and special sympathy. It is true these lives are but the stringing together of a few outstanding facts - But it is a fallacy to imagine that any sketch of a man's life, however meagre, can be given correctly without intimate knowledge. It is like - what Sir Charles Bell so condemns - the attempt to draw outlines of the human figure without knowledge of anatomy and of inward structure. Besides ought such meagre [coarse] lives to be executed at all?

William was justly displeased with Mrs Erkine for trying to help one Mr Scott (Don't confound him with John Alexander Scott, our admirable & high minded neighbour here) to write a life of Mr Wordsworth somewhat

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4) more correctly & in better style, She acted in a way that shewed want of reflection and knowledge of the world - But her aim was to have the thing done well & to assist a young man of conduct, industry, & talent struggling hard with the world & the difficulty of living in it. Now the same unauthorized work is done by Mr C. and more clumsily done, I should think, than young Scott would have done it.

To talk of my father's disagreeing with the Governor of Malta - A man whom he worshipped! Truly Mr Carruthers knows little of Esteesian anatomy.

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he can never had read "the Friend" to talk thus - yet he pronounces judgement upon it with a grand air of superior understanding - not love but toleration - like Adam smiting on Eve.

As for Cuppon - I certainly think he shewed want of judgment in cutting away his father's Jacobinism, a part of his youthful life and character indispensable to the true understanding of it. I agree with Mr Jardine, Mrs Davy and others - that if he had retained his [abstract] politics, & put

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aside some of his personal remarks what he has printed, it would have been wiser. The letter in which my father's character is analysed to Mr Richman, who would have [[-?-]] much better employed in correcting his own very faulty temper, what was [[?]] made up, as Cuthbert, who knew him not, except on one side - of the milk of human kindness - but had no small portion of vinegar in it - not without a [[?]] of gall, thus in talking in a severe way about the faults of my poor father,

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whose genius & character he could not in the least understand & sympathize with, - ought in delicacy to me to have been suppressed. I should so have acted toward him, & always have acted in this spirit. But I would not have suppressed the letter myself had it fallen into my hands. That is another affair. It was a fact that my Uncle did deliberately think thus of my father - it is an illustration of his character and explains their relations in later life to each other - and I never wish to suppress facts which tend to make any [character] in which the public is interested, and of which we undertake to exhibit a portrait, truly known. You will perhaps disagree with me here - but if I try to explain, defend, soften & modify I shall be too late for the post so in haste I am dear friend, gratefully yours Sara Coleridge.

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Object summary: WLMS A / Coleridge, Sara / 51