288. To Richard Wordsworth Address: Mr Wordsworth | attorney at Law | Staple's Inn | Holborn I London Post payed MS. Dove Cottage. Pub. Chambers, Life, 335. Postmark: 12 September 1799. Stamped: Exeter. Tuesday, Sept. 10, 1799 Exeter. Dear Wordsworth The letter by which I received the lottery Tickets gave me information that you had not received the Shirt &c / & this morning I received your letter to the express Purpose of the Same -- / I am vexed, as you will easily suppose when I tell you that within a week of my arrival at Stowey I sent them directed to you, by Mr Stutfield, 1 a Wine & Brandy Merchant, who happened then to be at Stowey & offered to take the said parcel for me -- promising me (with his own Mouth) to deliver the same ----/ -- This Evening I will write to my Friend Poole who knows Stutfield's Address, requesting him immediately on receipt of mine to write to Stutfield -- if I do not hear from Stutfield in the course of a decent time certifying that he has performed the promise, the performance of which he has so long & so unjustifiably neglected, Mrs Coleridge ____________________ 1 The father of Coleridge's later amanuensis, Charles Stutfield. -525- will not delay to do (what she now wishes) -- i.e. -- transmit a shirt & cravat, trusting to your goodness for the acceptance of = for =, it not being in my power to preserve absolute Identity ---- I received this morning a letter from William & was agitated to find that his Health is in a State which I should deem alarming ---- Your's sincerely S. T. Coleridge P.S. Till I hear from Stutfield the very idea of your Shirt will stick more burningly to my Memory than Deianira's Shirt did to Hercules's Skin -- altho' I entreat you to look into the Article of domestic News in the London Papers to see whether or no a Mr Stutfield was found on Hounslow Heath or elsewhere with his throat cut from Ear to Ear -- for he ought to be dead, as a Moral Being / having promised me that if alive he would not delay to deliver the parcel, the great importance of which I happened by a sort of prophetic Presentiment to impress upon him with almost a deathbed Energy & Solemnity. ----