MY dearest friend, I grieve from my very soul to
observe you in your plans of life veering about from this hope to the other,
and settling no where. Is it an untoward fatality (speaking humanly) that does
this for you, a stubborn irresistible concurrence of events? or lies the fault,
as I fear it does, in your own mind? You seem to be taking up splendid schemes
of fortune only to lay them down again, and your fortunes are an ignis fatuus
that has been conducting you, in thought, from Lancaster Court, Strand, to
somewhere near Matlock, then jumping across to Dr. Somebody’s whose
son’s tutor you were likely to be, and would to God the dancing demon may conduct you at last in peace and comfort to the
“life and labors of a cottager.” You see from the above
awkward playfulness of fancy, that my spirits are not quite depressed; I should
ill deserve God’s blessings, which since the late terrible event have
come down in mercy upon us, if I indulged regret or querulousness,—Mary continues serene and chearful,—I have not
by me a little letter she wrote to me, for, tho’ I see her almost every
day yet we delight to write to one another (for we can scarce see each other
but in company with some of the people of the house), I have not the letter by
me but will quote from memory what she wrote in it. “I have no bad
terrifying dreams. At midnight when I happen to awake, the nurse sleeping by
the side of me, with the noise of the poor mad people around me, I have no
fear. The spirit of my mother seems to descend, and smile upon me, and bid me
live to enjoy the life and reason which the Almighty has given me—I shall see
her again in heaven; she will then understand me better; my Grandmother too
will understand me better, and will then say no more, as she used to do,
‘Polly, what are those poor crazy moyther’d brains of yours
thinking of always?’”—Poor Mary, my Mother indeed never understood her right. She
loved her, as she loved us all, with a Mother’s love; but in opinion, in
feeling, and sentiment, and disposition, bore so distant a resemblance to her
daughter, that she never understood her right. Never could believe how much she
loved her—but met her caresses, her protestations of filial affection, too
frequently with coldness and repulse.—Still she was a good mother, God forbid I
should think of her but most respectfully, most affectionately. Yet she would always love my
brother above Mary, who was not
| 1796 | COLERIDGE’S PLANS | 49 |
