Coleridge- Darker Reflections

by Richard Holmes

  Coleridge lost the manuscript in his subsequent journeyings, but years later was able to reconstruct a rough version of the third and fourth stanzas. The first of these was a projection of his ideal poetic self, dedicated to the highest view of his life’s vocation and gratefully conscious of Nature’s gifts to him in Italy:

  Imagination; honourable aims;

  Free commune with the choir that cannot die;

  Science and song; delight in little things,

  The buoyant child surviving in the man;

  Fields, forests, ancient mountains, ocean, sky,

  With all their voices – O dare I accuse

  My earthly lot as guilty of my spleen,

  Or call my destiny niggard! O no! no!

  It is her largeness, and her overflow,

  Which being incomplete, disquieteth me so!

  The second, by contrast, was a vision of his solitary wandering self, rootless and exiled, adrift from Asra’s love and hallucinating her voice:

  For never touch of gladness stirs my heart,

  But tim’rously beginning to rejoice

  Like a blind Arab, that from sleep doth start

  In lonesome tent, I listen for thy voice.

  Belovéd! ‘tis not thine; thou art not there!

  Then melts the bubble into idle air.

  And wishing without hope I restlessly despair.143

  The poem continues with a counter-image of satisfied love, a child basking in its mother’s gaze, which has an almost Italianate, Madonna-like intensity. But it ends with Coleridge’s poignant question, to be repeated again and again in the coming years, “Why was I made for Love and Love denied to me?”144

  These moments of dreamy pleasure and sudden despondency seemed to alternate at San Antonio as Coleridge hovered in a kind of weightless trance in his Maltese exile, frantically busy and yet curiously passive, floating and yet marooned. There are no true rivers anywhere on the island, only wells and thin water-courses, but the image of a dried-up stream – perhaps inspired by the hesitant plashing of the Eagle Fountain (1623) in the gardens – produced one of Coleridge’s most memorable images of that summer. He is no longer a bird, but a fish. “STC – The Fish gasps on the glittering mud, the mud of this once full stream, now only moist enough to be glittering mud. The tide will flow back, time enough to lift me up with straws & withered sticks and bear me down into the ocean. O me! that being what I have been I should be what I am!”145

  The heat began to increase in July, and at 4 a.m. one morning there was an earthquake, which seemed to him like the premonition of some great battle. Typically, Coleridge was awake, and saw his old friend the moon above the Garrison Battery, almost at the full, but very strange with a “reddish smoke-colour” like a god of war.146 With the heat came increasing noise, or at least sensitivity to it and Coleridge was regularly woken in the Treasury by trumpets of the “accursed Reveille” in the square below and the “malignant torture” of the parade drums, which attacked his head “like a party of yelling drinking North American Indians attacking a Crazy Fort with a tired Garrison”.147

  The Public Secretary’s temper frayed even with the ordinary Maltese, whose carts thundered down the steps of Valletta, whose children screamed (“horrid fiendliness – for fun!”), and whose boatmen howled. “But it goes through everything – their Street-Cries, their Priests, their Advocates: their very Pigs yell rather than squeak.” The dogs howled all night, and the “Cats in their amours” were like imps in hell. “He who has only heard caterwauling on English Roofs can have no idea of a cat-serenade in Malta.”

  This note of comic exasperation suggests perhaps the real, underlying stresses of Coleridge’s daily work, and the typically drawn state of bureaucratic nerves in wartime. It led to various frictions in the Treasury. Mr Underwood, in particular, was irritated beyond measure by Coleridge’s ceaseless literary talk and maddening tendency to produce exquisite Italian sonnets from his pile of official paper, innocently repeating the same translation to every visitor, as something “he had just thrown off”.148

  The heat also produced lugubrious stories, such as the one about the consul’s clerk in Tripoli, who got out of bed in the middle of the night to drink water, remembered with horror the danger of scorpions when walking in the dark with bare feet, “went back & slipped his feet into his Shoes, in one of which a Scorpion was, & bit him mortally”. Coleridge thought this narrative so neat, that it was actually an “invention”.149

  Relations nevertheless remained generally good. Vittori Barzoni discussed each edition of the Malta Gazette with the Public Secretary, and later described Coleridge as an outstanding personality with whom he had “the closest intimacy”.150 Captain Decatur of the US navy relished his company, and when he was about to sail to a new Mediterranean station, sent from his ship outside Valletta harbour a warm note of farewell which also captures the urgency of these months: “I am extremely near the shore, & have not time to be lengthy, & have only to beg you will believe me since whom [sic] I assure there is no man’s good opinion whom I would set a higher value on. PS. Should you come out, make a sign & I shall heave to immediately.”151

  By the end of July 1805, Coleridge was able to send his wife a draft for £110 from his accumulated salary, which with the Wedgwood annuity put Sara in the best financial position she had been in for some time. The threatened loss of the family home at Greta Hall had also dissolved, since the prospective buyer had withdrawn.

  Coleridge’s actual return to England remained as problematic as ever, though he tried to appear more decisive than he felt. “I have been hoping and expecting to get away from England for 5 months past, and Mr Chapman not arriving, Sir Alexander’s Importunities have always overpowered me, tho my gloom has increased at each disappointment. I am determined however to go in less than a month.”152 By contrast he emphasized the importance of his work in the wartime administration. “My office, as Public Secretary, the next civil dignity to the Governor, is at times a very busy one…I often subscribe my name 150 times a day…& administer half as many Oaths, besides which I have the public memorials to write, & worse than all constant matters of Arbitration.” Sir Alexander, despite his importunities, is still described as “indeed exceedingly kind to me”. From his point of view, of course, Coleridge was sticking honourably to his post.

  In August the heat went up to 88° in the shade and 140° in full sunlight. The buildings were full of sweating men and splitting furniture, with cracking boards and exploding tea-chests. “Captain Lamb’s tea chest went off, as loud as a Pistol…the Cooper’s shop (where there is at present a large quantity of Mahogany & English oak) presents to the Ear a successive Let-off of Fireworks.” Up at San Antonio all the floorboards in Sir Alexander’s beautiful new dining-room split, one by one, with startling cracks, as they sat at dinner.

  Curiously the heat suited Coleridge, and once again he found himself wishing that Asra, and all the Wordsworths and his children, were with him. “I have the prickly Heat on my Body, but without…annoying me, & I am better than I have been in a long time. In short, if my mind & heart were at ease, if my children + SH + WDMW were with me, & they were well, I should be more than well. I should luxuriate, like a Negro, in the Oven of the Shade and the Blaze of the Sunshine.”153

  Assuming that Coleridge had already left Malta, Wordsworth in fact was expecting Coleridge to appear at any moment in London, probably at Daniel Stuart’s Courier offices. He scotched a “rumour” that the appointment as Public Secretary was permanent, and was making a first tentative plan for them all to reunite at Sir George Beaumont’s new estate in Leicestershire. He had finished the Prelude and was anxious for Coleridge’s opinion.154

  But as August progressed a new mood of despondency descended on Coleridge. He walked at 5 a.m. on the roof of San Antonio, “deeply depressed”, and gazed out at the pitiless beauty of the sea, “the Horizon dusky crimson” and the many boats swaying at anchor. He watched the wild dogs “reviving in the moonlight, & pla
ying & gamboling in flocks”. Boils returned on his arm, and he drank “Castor oil in Gin & Water”, and had an “epileptic” return of his sexual dreams – “alas! alas! the consequences – stimulos”.155

  On 21 August he wrote to Mrs Coleridge, and this time the tone of exhaustion and disenchantment is unmistakable. “Malta, alas! it is a barren Rock: the Sky, the Sea, the Bays, the buildings are all beautiful. But no rivers, no brooks, no hedges, no green fields, almost no trees, & the few that are unlovely.” He now felt it would have been better if he had remained “independent”, and continued with his own writing. His position seemed ridiculous rather than important: “for the living in a huge palace all to myself, like a mouse in a Cathedral on a Fair on Market day, and the being hailed ‘Most Illustrious Lord, the Public Secretary’ are no pleasures to me who have no ambition.”

  Sir Alexander had always “contrived, in one way or another” to prevent his return, but now it was assured for September. He had the Governor’s “solemn promise” that as soon as he had completed a series of public Letters “& examined into the Law-forms of the Island”, he would be sent home on a convoy via Naples. Sir Alexander would also use his best interest with Hugh Elliott, the British Ambassador in Naples, to send him back officially with dispatches, which would “frank him home” free of charge. Nevertheless he would retain a further £120 of his salary in case he had to travel overland.

  Even so the dream of some permanent post in the Mediterranean was not entirely abandoned. Now the moment of departure really approached, Coleridge began wondering if he might not after all return and settle permanently. The possibilities held forth by the Governor still promised the enchantments of the South. “Sir Alexander Ball’s Kindness & Confidence in me is unlimited. He told a Gentleman a few days ago, that were he a man of Fortune he would gladly give me £500 a year to dine with him twice a week for the mere advantage which he received from my Conversation. And for a long time past he has been offering me different places to induce me to return. He would give me a handsome House, Garden, Country House, & a place of £600 a year certain. I thank him cordially – but neither accept nor refuse.” Even more galling for Mrs Coleridge, perhaps, was an airy mention of “a fine Opening in America” that he had lately received – probably through Captain Decatur. “I was much inclined to accept; but my knowledge of Wordsworth’s aversion to America stood in my way.”156

  It would be easy to dismiss much of this as Coleridge’s optimistic fantasy of some perfect state of exile, and perhaps even as a provocation or warning to his wife. But Sir Alexander did in fact recommend Coleridge to the War Office for just such a posting, which would have provided very much the situation and the salary he describes. In a letter dated 18 September 1805, he wrote to Granville Penn, chief assistant to the Secretary of State at Downing Street. In it he suggested that Coleridge combine the largely formal post of Superintendent of Quarantine (as applied to ships), with the much more interesting job of turning the Malta Gazette into an influential wartime newspaper to be distributed across the Mediterranean. The terms of this letter, despite its measured official tones, were a remarkable endorsement of Coleridge’s unlikely success as a wartime bureaucrat. It also suggests Coleridge’s continuing power to throw his spell over even the most rigorous executive mind.

  The Governor first mentioned Coleridge’s “literary Talents”, political principles and moral character, and confirmed that he had fulfilled the Public Secretaryship “seven months to my satisfaction”. He could also provide “the fullest information” on the Malta government to the Foreign Office. He then added: “As the climate agrees with Mr Coleridge he would accept Mr Eton’s situation [as Superintendent] and allow him three hundred Pound a year, and as the business of the office would occupy but little of his time he could assist Mr Barzoni in making the Malta Gazette a powerful political engine besides rendering other services to this Government.” He asked Penn to approach the head of department, persuaded “of deriving great public good from his appointment”.157 A similar note of private recommendation went to Ball’s brother back in England. As Coleridge already possessed the recommendation to Hugh Elliot of the previous autumn, praising his imagination, judgement, and goodness of heart, he could feel pleasingly well documented by officialdom, as he prepared to leave.

  When Mr Chapman finally arrived in Valletta on 9 September, Coleridge prepared to leave, depositing many of his books and papers with John Stoddart to be forwarded by convoy. None of these would he see again. There is no record of his farewells, though he noted “Tears & misery at the Thought of not returning” on one occasion after a talk with Captain Pasley. He prepared himself by reading Italian poets of the fifteenth century, and noted their “pleasing” confusion of heathen and Christian mythology. The layerings of classical myth, of Renaissance Latin upon Greek, as he hoped to study in Italy this autumn, also produced a characteristic word-coinage. It required “a strong imagination as well as an accurate psycho-analytical understanding” to conceive “the passion of those Times for Jupiter, Apollo etc.; & the nature of the Faith (for a Faith it was…)”.158 The bureaucrat was to become the independent, wandering scholar once more.

  15

  Coleridge finally left Valletta a little after midnight on 4 September 1805, making a night crossing to Sicily under a shower of shooting stars. He could not make up his mind to sleep and, in an expressive gesture, left it to the stars to decide. “I was standing gazing at the starry Heaven, and said, I will go to bed at the next star that shoots.” He knew that this tiny moment symbolized much about his long Mediterranean sojourn, and the self-knowledge that he had gained. “Observe this in counting fixed numbers previous to doing anything etc. etc. & deduce from man’s own unconscious acknowledgement man’s dependence on some thing out of him, on something apparently & believedly subject to regular and certain Laws other than his own Will & Reason.”159

  Coleridge’s wanderings now became so uncertain that they are barely traceable until he arrived unexpectedly in Rome on 31 December, some three months later. He wrote no letters, and kept the barest record of dates and places in his Notebooks. On 26 September he was at Syracuse with the Leckies, and he visited Cecilia Bertozzi for the last time. On 4 October he was at Messina, and made the “melancholy observation” that he was growing fat. Perhaps Cecilia had pointed it out to him as a gesture of farewell.

  Sometime after 15 October he abandoned the plan to sail to Trieste and return overland, perhaps on hearing news of the defeat, on 20 October, of the Austrian army at the Ulm. By mid-November he had sailed to Naples, probably on a troop ship belonging to General Craig’s convoy, and dined with Hugh Elliott at the British Embassy.

  All the news then was of the Battle of Trafalgar, which had been fought on 21 October (Coleridge’s 33rd birthday), achieving a great strategic victory. But when news of Nelson’s death reached Naples, Coleridge walked through the streets and found many Englishmen openly in tears, coming up to him to shake hands and completely overcome with an emotion which he instinctively shared.160 Ball had received a final dispatch from Nelson at Valletta four days before the engagement, describing his daring battle plan to cut through the centre of the huge French squadron in a double line astern. Nelson told Ball that his young officers had christened it “the Nelson touch”, and added with a characteristic insouciance, “I hope it is touch and taken!” The only record of this dispatch remained unpublished in Ball’s private papers, but similar stories circulated widely, the kind of thing that made all Nelson’s officers adore him and filled Coleridge with admiration.161

  There was now much confusion in Naples, and Coleridge was not after all “franked home” with official papers by Elliot. So instead he made a leisurely expedition into Calabria with Captain Pasley. He visited Virgil’s tomb and contemplated Vesuvius. In late December he was offered a carriage-trip to Rome, for a fortnight as he supposed, and leaving his boxes of books and papers with an embassy friend, set out on Christmas Day. Almost immediately on his arrival, h
e heard from Mr Jackson, the English consul, of the battle of Austerlitz and the French armies sweeping southwards into Italy. “To stay, or not to stay?” he noted calmly. He decided to stay, and once again found himself marooned by circumstances. He made no attempt to continue his journey until the spring, and still he wrote no letters home.

  The absence of news frightened the Wordsworths and infuriated Southey. Dorothy wrote to Lady Beaumont on Christmas Day: “Poor Coleridge was with us two years ago at this time…We hear no further tidings of him, and I cannot help being very uneasy and anxious: though without any evil, many causes might delay him; yet it is a long time since he left Malta. The weather is dreadful for a sea voyage. O my dear friend, what a fearful thing a windy night is now at our house! I am too often haunted with dreadful images of Shipwrecks and the Sea when I am in bed and hear a stormy wind, and now that we are thinking so much of Coleridge it is worse than ever.”162

  The truth seems to be that Coleridge, with plenty of money and several letters of recommendation and credit, was embarked on a leisurely tour of the Roman sites and galleries.* One long note on the Spanish Steps suggests that he was staying in the English quarter beneath the Trinita dei Monti (where Keats would die of tuberculosis sixteen years later). Rather than face the prospect of England, he had decided to risk capture by the French armies who were steadily descending through northern Italy. While most English visitors fled back to Naples, and General Craig’s expedition sailed ignominiously back to Sicily, Coleridge was quietly making notes on the Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel. “Ideal = the subtle hieroglyphical felt-by-all, though not without abstruse and difficult analysis detected & understood…Take as an instance of the true Ideal Michel Angelo’s despairing Woman at the bottom of the Last Judgement.”163