no doubt you are fatigued with nursing, but I could not help writing to day, to tell you how what I said yesterday has vext and worried me. Burn both these foolish letters and do not name the subject of them, because Charles will either blame me for having written something improper or he will laugh at me for my foolish fears about nothing. Though I wish you not to take notice of what I have said, yet I shall rejoice to see a letter from you, and I hope, when you have half an hour's leisure, to see a line from you. We have not heard from Coleridge since he went out of town, but I dare say you have heard either from him or Mrs. Clarkson. I remain my dear friend Friday [August 29]. Yours most affectionately M. LAMB. NOTE [For the full understanding of Mary Lamb's letter it is necessary to read Coleridge's Life and his Letters. Coleridge on his return from abroad reached London August 17, 1806, and took up his quarters with the Lambs on the following day. He once more joined Stuart, then editing the Courier, but much of his old enthusiasm had gone. In Mr. Dykes Campbell's words: Almost his first words to Stuart were: "I am literally afraid, even to cowardice, to ask for any person, or of any person." Spite of the friendliest and most unquestioning welcome from all most dear to him, it was the saddest of home-comings, for the very sympathy held out with both hands induced only a bitter, hopeless feeling of remorse-a "Sense of past youth, and manhood come in vain ;- of broken promises,-promises to friends and promises to himself; and above all, sense of a will paralysed-dead perhaps, killed by his own hand. Coleridge remained at Lamb's at any rate until August 29, afterwards taking rooms in the Courier office at 348 Strand. Meanwhile his reluctance to meet or communicate with his wife was causing his friends much concern, none more so than Mary Lamb, who wrote at least two letters filled with anxious sympathy to Dorothy Wordsworth on the subject, asking for the mediation of Wordsworth or Southey. Her earlier letter is missing. To quote Mr. Dykes Campbell again: : On September 16—just a month after his landing-he wrote his first letter to his wife, to say that he might be expected at Greta Hall on the 29th. Before this, Wordsworth had informed Sir George Beaumont that Coleridge "dare not go home, he recoils so much from the thought of domesticating with Mrs. Coleridge, with whom, though on many accounts he much respects her, he is so miserable that he dare not encounter it. What a deplorable thing! I have written to him to say that if he does not come down immediately I must insist upon seeing him some-where. If he appoints London I shall go. 1806 COLERIDGE AND HIS WIFE 361 I believe if anything good is to be done for him it must be done by me." It was this letter of Wordsworth, doubtless, which drew Coleridge to the North. Dorothy's letter to Lady Beaumont, written on receipt of the announcement of Coleridge's home-coming, goes copiously and minutely into the reasons for the estrangement between the poet and his wife. Miss Wordsworth still had hopes of an improvement. "Poor soul!" she writes, "he had a struggle of many years, striving to bring Mrs. C. to a change of temper, and something like communion with him in his enjoyments. He is now, I trust, effectually convinced that he has no power of that sort," and may, she thinks, if he will be "reconciled to that one great want, want of sympathy," live at home in peace and quiet. "Mrs. C. has many excellent properties, as you observe; she is unremitting in her attention as a nurse to her children, and, indeed, I believe she would have made an excellent wife to many persons. Coleridge is as little fitted for her as she for him, and I am truly sorry for her." It might perhaps be stated here that the separation was agreed upon in December. At the end of that month Coleridge visited the Wordsworths at Coleorton with Hartley, and in a few days began to be "more like his old self "-in Dorothy Wordsworth's phrase. I append an undated letter, preserved in the Morrison Collection, which may belong to this period:-] LETTER 155 MARY LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE De aver EAR Coleridge-I have read your silly, very silly, letter, and between laughing and crying I hardly know how to answer it. You are too serious and too kind a vast deal, for we are not much used to either seriousness or kindness from our present friends, and therefore your letter has put me into a greater hurry of spirits that [? than] your pleasant segar did last night, for believe me your two odd faces amused me much more than the mighty transgression vexed me. If Charles had not smoked last night his virtue would not have lasted longer than tonight, and now perhaps with a little of your good counsel he will refrain. Be not too serious if he smokes all the time you are with us-a few chearful evenings spent with you serves to bear up our spirits many a long and weary year -and the very being led into the crime by your segar that you thought so harmless, will serve for our amusement many a dreary time when we can get no letter nor hear no tidings of you. You must positively must write to Mrs. Coleridge this day, and you must write here, that I may know you write, or you must come and dictate a letter for me to write to her. I know all that you would say in defence of not writing and I allow in full force everything that [you] can say or think, but yet a letter from me or you shall go today. I wanted to tell you, but feared to begin the subject, how well your children are, how Pypos thrives and what a nice child Sara is, and above all I hear such favorable accounts from Southey, from Wordsworth and Hazlitt, of Hartley. I have got Wordsworth's letters out for you to look at, but you shall not see them or talk of them without you like-Only come here as soon as you receive this, and I will not teize you about writing, but will manage a few lines, Charles and I between us. something like a letter shall go today. But Come directly Yours affectionately, M. LAMB. My LETTER 156 MARY LAMB TO SARAH STODDART [P.M. October 23, 1806.] Y dear Sarah-I thank you a thousand times for the beautiful work you have sent me, I received the parcel from a strange gentleman yesterday. I like the patterns very much, you have quite set me up in finery, but you should have sent the silk handkerchief too. Will you make a parcel of that and send it by the Salisbury coach-I should like to have it in a few days because we have not yet been to Mr. Babbs and that handkerchief would suit this time of year nicely. I have received a long letter from your brother on the subject of your intended marriage. I have no doubt but you also have one on this business, therefore it is needless to repeat what he says. I am well pleased to find that upon the whole he does not seem to see it in an unfavorable light. He says that, if Mr. D. is a worthy man he shall have no objection to become the brother of a farmer, and he makes an odd request to me that I shall set out to Salisbury to look at and examine into the merits of the said Mr. D., and speaks very confidently as if you would abide by my determination. A pretty sort of an office truly.-Shall I come? The objections he starts are only such as you and I have already talked over, such as the difference in age, education, habits of life, &c. You have gone too far in this affair for any interference to be at all desirable, and if you had not, I really do not know what my wishes would be. When you bring Mr. Dowling at Christmas I suppose it will be quite time enough for me to sit in judgement upon him, but 1806 MARRIAGE SETTLEMENTS 363 my examination will not be a very severe one. If you fancy a very young man, and he likes an elderly gentlewoman; if he likes a learned and accomplished lady, and you like a not very learned youth, who may need a little polishing, which probably he will never acquire; it is all very well, and God bless you both together and may you be both very long in the same mind. I am to assist you too, your brother says, in drawing up the marriage settlements-another thankful office! I am not, it seems, to suffer you to keep too much money in your own power, and yet I am to take care of you in case of bankruptcy &c., and I am to recommend to you, for the better management of this point, the serious perusal of Jeremy Taylor his opinion on the marriage state, especially his advice against separate interests in that happy state, and I am also to tell you how desirable it is that the husband should have the intire direction of all money concerns, except, as your good brother adds, in the case of his own family, where the money, he observes, is very properly deposited in Mrs. Stoddart's hands, she being better suited to enjoy such a trust than any other woman, and therefore it is fit that the general rule should not be extended to her. We will talk over these things when you come to town, and as to settlements, which are matters of which, I never having had a penny in my own disposal, I never in my life thought of-and if I had been blessed with a good fortune, and that marvellous blessing to boot, a husband, I verily believe I should have crammed it all uncounted into his pocket-But thou hast a cooler head of thy own, and I dare say will do exactly what is expedient and proper, but your brother's opinion seems somewhat like Mr. Barwis's and I dare say you will take it into due consideration, yet perhaps an offer of your own money to take a farm may make uncle do less for his nephew, and in that case Mr. D. might be a loser by your generosity. Weigh all these things well, and if you can so contrive it, let your brother settle the settlements himself when he returns, which will most probably be long before you want them. You are settled, it seems, in the very house which your brother most dislikes. If you find this house very inconvenient, get out of it as fast as you can, for your brother says he sent you the fifty pound to make you comfortable, and by the general tone of his letter I am sure he wishes to make you easy in money matters: therefore why straiten yourself to pay the debt you owe him, which I am well assured he never means to take? Thank you for the letter and for the picture of pretty little chubby nephew John. I have been busy making waistcoats and plotting new work to succeed the Tales. As yet I have not hit upon any thing to my Charles took an emendated copy of his farce to Mr. Wroughton the Manager yesterday. Mr. Wroughton was very friendly to him, and expressed high approbation of the farce, but there are two, he tells him, to come out before it, yet he gave him hopes that it will come out this season, but I am afraid you will not see it by Christmas. It will do for another jaunt for you in the spring. We are pretty well and in fresh spirits about this farce. Charles has been very good lately in the matter of Smoking. When you come bring the gown you wish to sell. Mrs. Coleridge will be in town then, and if she happens not to fancy it, perhaps some other person may. Coleridge I believe is gone home; he left us with that design but we have not heard from him this fortnight. Louisa sends her love; she has been very unwell lately. My respects to Coridon, Mother, and Aunty. Thursday. Yours affectionately, M. LAMB. When I saw what a prodigious quantity of work you had put into the finery I was quite ashamed of my unreasonable request, I' will never serve you so again, but I do dearly love worked muslin. NOTE [Sarah Stoddart now has a new lover, Mr. Dowling, to whom she seems actually to have become engaged. Mr. Barwis, I presume, was Mr. Dowling's uncle. Coridon would, I imagine, be Mr. Dowling.] LETTER 157 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING 5th Dec., 1806. Tuthill is at Crabtree's who has married Tuthill's sister. M ANNING, your letter dated Hottentots, August the whatwas-it? came to hand. I can scarce hope that mine will have the same luck. China-Canton-bless us-how it strains the imagination and makes it ache! I write under another uncertainty, whether it can go to-morrow by a ship which I have just learned is going off direct to your part of the world, or whether the despatches may not be sealed up and this have to wait, for if it is detained here, it will grow staler in a fortnight than in a five |