Читать книгу The Letters Volume 2 - Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Страница 17

Malta, July 21, 1805.

Dear Sara,—The Niger is ordered off for Gibraltar at a moment’s warning, and the Hall is crowded with officers and merchants whose oaths I am to take, and accompts to sign. I will not, however, suffer it to go without a line, and including a draft for £110—another opportunity will offer in a week or ten days, and I will enclose a duplicate in a letter at large. Now for the most important articles. My health had greatly improved; but latterly it has been very, very bad, in great measure owing to dejection of spirits, my letters having failed, the greater part of those to me, and almost all mine homeward.... My letters and the duplicates of them, written with so much care and minuteness to Sir George Beaumont—those to Wedgwood, to the Wordsworths, to Southey, Major Adye’s sudden death, and then the loss of the two frigates, the capture of a merchant’s privateer, all have seemed to spite. No one not absent on a dreary island, so many leagues of sea from England, can conceive the effect of these accidents on the spirit and inmost soul. So help me Heaven! they have nearly broken my heart. And, added to this, I have been hoping and expecting to get away for England for five months past, and Mr. Chapman not arriving, Sir Alexander’s importunities have always overpowered me, though my gloom has increased at each disappointment. I am determined, however, to go in less than a month. My office, as Public Secretary, the next civil dignitary to the Governor, is a very, very busy one, and not to involve myself in the responsibility of the Treasurer I have but half the salary. I oftentimes subscribe my name 150 times a day, S. T. Coleridge, Pub. Sec. to H. M. Civ. Commiss^r, or (if in Italian) Seg. Pub. del Commiss’ Regio, and administer half as many oaths—besides which I have the public memorials to write, and, worse than all, constant matters of arbitration. Sir A. Ball is indeed exceedingly kind to me. The officers will be impatient. I would I could write a more cheerful account of my health; all I can say is that I am better than I have been, and that I was very much better before so many circumstances of dejection happened. I should overset myself completely, if I ventured to mention a single name. How deeply I love, O God! it is agony at morning and evening.

S. T. Coleridge.

P. S. On being abruptly told by Lady Ball of John Wordsworth’s fate, I attempted to stagger out of the room (the great saloon of the Palace with fifty people present), and before I could reach the door fell down on the ground in a convulsive hysteric fit. I was confined to my room for a fortnight after; and now I am afraid to open a letter, and I never dare ask a question of any new-comer. The night before last I was much affected by the sudden entrance of poor Reynell (our inmate at Stowey);^[30] more of him in my next. May God Almighty bless you and—

(Signed with seal, ΕΣΤΗΣΕ.)

For England.

Mrs. Coleridge, Keswick, Cumberland.

Postmark, Sept. 8, 1805.