S.T.C'S 'OCULAR SPECTRUM'

COLERIDGE (SAMUEL TAYLOR, 1772-1834, poet) EMOTIONAL AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED, to Charles Augustus Tulk, explaining that he had destroyed the first letter of consolation he had written on learning of the death of Mrs Tulk when he saw a vision of her, but had nonetheless suffered continuously ('...If I said, that not a day has past since the hour of the tidings of desolation, in which I have not thought of you, and often (O how often!) with intense sympathy...')

'...On the fourth day, as I was sitting alone at my breakfast, I felt a sudden sensation of heat and fullness about my eyes as I was bending to take up a paper knife that I had let fall and instantly I had the most distinct ocular spectrum of the now blessed One exactly as I once saw her in your Carriage in Pall Mall, when she raised her eyelid & streamed forth that soft yet rich light from her eyes as she returned my greeting - and of which I had so often spoken afterwards. - Instantly, a total change of my feelings took place - I became hysterically affected - and for days after I continued, sometimes involuntarily, at other times with a sort of wilful self-infliction, presenting you, and the dear Children in every affecting attitude to my imagination - and in this mood the Letter, I had written, appeared to me unnatural, a mixture of intellectual and spiritual Self-exultation, and an ante-dating of the calmness and resignation that should have followed the payment of the debt which the heart of flesh owes to the Sorrower in the freshness of his Anguish...'

in the remainder of the letter Coleridge tells Tulk about the illnesses and reverses experienced by the Gillman family, in whose house he was living, particularly Mrs Gillman ('a Being inexpressibly dear and valuable in my eyes...'), about whom he had feared the worst following a fall, and Mr Gillman whose spirits were laid very low after he had 'been cheated into a competition with a worthless Medical Man, his bitter enemy, by false promises'; he also states that his publishers have 'really half stupefied' him and 'solemnly' [he was reading the proofs of Aids to Reflection at that time] assures Tulk that he retains 'every emotion of regard and every Conviction' for his work and in everything that concerns him, 2 pages, quarto, slightly soiled and repaired down the fold and integral address leaf, small repair where opened, manuscript and stamped postal markings, Grove, Highgate, 15 March 1828

This emotional letter about a woman of whom he was particularly fond was apparently written nearly four years after her death, if the date of that event, October 1824, given in the DNB is accurate.

Tulk was a wealthy man with a taste for philosophical speculation and an eminent Swedenborgian. He had met Coleridge in Littlehampton in 1817, had introduced him to Blake and often attended Coleridge's Thursday evenings at Highgate. He and Coleridge conducted a correspondence on philosophical matters.

£2,000