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- 37. To Mary Anne Dyson
- 38. To Mary Anne Dyson
36. To Mary Anne DysonMS location unknown. This fragment printed in Coleridge, Life, 175-6 Otterbourne May 24, 1850 [no salutation] I have taken a sheet of paper and turned my dramatis personæ loose upon it to see how they will behave; at present the part of Hamlet is left out, that is to say, they have only got a letter from Guy announcing his grandfather's death. I find that Philip is greatly inclined to be sententious and that Charles likes to tease him by laughing at him, and mimicking his way of saying 'It is the correct thing,' Charles doing so like an idle boy, taking Philip all as goodness, but not liking that sort, and Amabel not able to help laughing at his ways of teasing Philip, though thinking it wrong all the time, which will suit her present merriment, and capacity of being moulded by Guy. To be bright and buoyant with depth within should be her nature; a gay temper would be best for Guy in his lady. I like the cheating steward very much. I don't think Charles was in earnest enough before Guy came to take Philip as his Bild2; it was Guy who made him in earnest, and by respecting Philip himself almost taught him to do so. I meant it to be a device of Amabel's to put Philip in good-humour to write to him to take their rooms, at which she laughs and makes her husband do so too. On reading my first chapter I doubt whether Philip will not strike those who do not know him as intended for the perfect hero; I rather hope he will, and as one of those perfect heroes whom nobody likes. I have been reading Mr. Hurrell Froude over again; I am sure he is wrong when in that essay on fiction he says the author has no pleasure in it, and feels the events and people are under his own control.3 I am sure I don't, and what Guy and Philip may choose to turn out I cannot tell, and they seem just like real acquaintances. I think Guy wrote to Charles about the cottages, Charles never having given up his correspondence. An idea has struck me about the flare-up with Amabel. You hold that there is such a thing as innocent and proper flirtation; now I think, without understanding their own feelings, Guy and Amabel had very simply got into a very exclusive way with each other, which Mrs. E., afraid of the accusation of manœvring the young baronet, thinks best to check, and so just before some great out-of-doors party - a school-children's feast perhaps- she gives Amy a hint that it is more than is quite proper, which so frightens the poor girl that she shuns Guy as much as possible, will not walk with him, and by sticking fast to Laura somehow gets bestowed by Philip on his friend whom he has brought here, and thereupon Guy flashes at her. She goes on for two or three days thinking it a duty not to walk in the garden with him or stay alone in the room with him, till the last day he is at home he catches her, tells her she is unlike herself, and demands an explanation; it ends in rather a confused way, but Amy has no doubt of his love for her, though don't you think he might almost tell her so? He wants to feel himself a more settled self-depending character before engaging her or asking her of her father, and this confession had broken from him unawares. She says she shall tell her mother after he is gone the next morning, and so she does, and Mrs. Edmonstone thinks it best to leave it alone, as Guy is still not twenty, and not do anything either to lead to or break it off. Do you think she would be justified in this? Then come all the troubles which certainly prevent true love from running too smooth! 37. To Mary Anne DysonMS location unknown. Printed in Coleridge, Life 161. [1850] I was thinking of the Southey and Scott controversy1, and wondering if the self-consciousness of the men had anything to do with the personality of their heroes, whether Sir Walter went any deeper into himself than into the rest of mankind, and whether Southey from looking at the outside of himself con amore did not get inside of other humans too. I always do think it a strange thing how one can care so much personally for that Ladurlad in Kehama in the midst of the impossibilities and verses I don't like at all. As to Thalaba I do like it almost every way; the opening scene dwells on one with a sort of horror that shows its power, and the Angel of Death, how very fine that is. But I think Southey treated the Catholic faith, just as he did the idol mythology, as a framework, and not in the allegorical way in which Fouqué makes the mythology serve to shadow truth, and therefore it does not satisfy me, there is a falseness about it all, he was not in earnest. Yes, prejudices are very precious things, in Church matters especially I suppose, but I think history of England takes care of them because the R[oman]. C[atholic].'s are always the enemy, and the burnings and Gunpowder Plot will keep an English mind well prejudiced, so that I think you might afford to soften a little. 38. To Mary Anne DysonMS location unknown. Extract printed in Coleridge, Life 176-7 [1850] Sir Guy Morville has just arrived at Hollywell, and Charles does not know whether to like him or not. I have got hard into the beginning now, but I believe some work at the Landmarks will be very wholesome for him. You know his first confession of love was made at a time when all was going smoothly, and I should think the consciousness of the doom was not at all strong upon him then, though it revived in the days of his troubles and solitude. I am really getting fond of Philip, and mamma says people will think he is the good one to be rewarded, and Guy the bad one punished. I say if stupid people really think so, it will be just what I should like, for it would be very like the different morals caught by different people from real life. Have you had the third volume of Southey yet?1 there is a most curious thing in it at the end about Thalaba, by which it appears that some one actually published a sketch tracing out the whole allegory of faith all through it. Southey is pleased, but in a strange manner shows that he did not mean it, or even understand it when it was shown him! I am sure this seems as if poets themselves were not the composers of their works, and how strikingly it joins with the grand right parts of the old Greeks.2 And then in one of his letters about Roderick, he says he means to make Florinda kill Sisabert! Good-bye to the calves for the present, and tell them they have my good wishes for happy holidays. Your most affectionate C. M. 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