MY dear Coleridge,—Things have gone on better with me since you left
me. I expect to have my old housekeeper home again in a week or two. She has
mended most rapidly. My health too has been better since you took away that
Montero cap. I have left off cayenned eggs and such bolsters to discomfort.
There was death in that cap. I mischievously wished that by some inauspicious
jolt the whole contents might be shaken, and the coach set on fire. For you
said they had that property. How the old Gentleman, who joined you at Grantham,
would have clappt his hands to his knees, and not knowing but it was an
immediate visitation of God that burnt him, how pious it would have made
| 1803 | SMOKING | 269 |
What do you think of smoking? I want your sober, average noon opinion of it. I generally am eating my dinner about the time I should determine it. [Another small erasure.]
Morning is a Girl, and can’t smoke—she’s no evidence one way or other; and Night is so evidently bought over, that he can’t be a very upright Judge. May be the truth is, that one pipe is wholesome, two pipes toothsome, three pipes noisome, four pipes fulsome, five pipes quarrelsome; and that’s the sum on’t. But that is deciding rather upon rhyme than reason. . . . After all, our instincts may be best. Wine, I am sure, good, mellow, generous Port, can hurt nobody, unless they take it to excess, which they may easily avoid if they observe the rules of temperance.
Bless you, old Sophist, who next to Human Nature taught me all the corruption I was capable of knowing—And bless your Montero Cap, and your trail (which shall come after you whenever you appoint), and your wife and children—Pi pos especially.
When shall we two smoke again? Last night I had been in a sad quandary of spirits, in what they call the evening; but a pipe and some generous Port, and King Lear (being alone), had its effects as a remonstrance. I went to bed pot-valiant. By the way, may not the Ogles of Somersetshire be remotely descended from King Lear?
Love to Sara, and ask her what gown she means that Mary has got of hers. I know of none but what went with Miss Wordsworth’s things to Wordsworth, and was paid for out of their money. I allude to a part which I may have read imperfectly in a letter of hers to you.
