Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

Complaining of his ill health ("O this unrelenting vicious Sciatica!...The compulsory egotism of Pain is for me the Venom in its fang!") and, on the behest of Gillman's mother, chiding him in friendly terms about "the Tone of your outward bearing" ("the occasion of your Mother's asking it, determined me to do what I had often thought of doing but so ill liked to do that but for this impact ab extrem I should probably have put off indefinitely") and discussing social relations more generally ("...the considerate Old man and the respectful Youth, are moral equals, and no grosser mistake is there, that that Equality consists in sameness..."), 3 pages, 4to (8  7/8  x 7¼ in.; 227 x 186 mm), integral address panel, no place, undated; signature removed from lower third of final page, split at fold, creases in line with previous folding. Green morocco-backed folder.

Swann Auction Galleries, 14 November 2002, lot 247. acquisition: Purchased at the foregoing sale through James Cummins, 2002

A lengthy and interesting letter, running to three pages of closely written script, in which Coleridge admonishes his "dear James" for "Misrelativity, or in observance of relations of the many and various chords of social life and human character."

In April 1816, Coleridge presented himself to James Gillman, a Highgate surgeon, requesting that he take lodging in the Gillmans' house and, under his supervision, attempt to wean himself from laudanum. Although intended as a temporary arrangement, Coleridge, never quite managing to shake off his addiction, remained a resident of their Highgate home until his death eighteen years later.

Although kindly, Coleridge's instruction to his doctor on the nature of his ill manners is quite precise: "Free and easy — with a dash of Slang — making one's self quite at home — stirring a neighbour's fire with feet on the fender, on the strength of a month's acquaintance..." 

This letter possibly dates from the period 1829–1833, when Coleridge's suffering from sciatica was particularly acute.