Coleridge- Darker Reflections

by Richard Holmes

  The journalist Edward Jerningham was rather harder to please. Nonetheless he recorded grudging praise in a letter to his niece, Lady Bedingfield. Jerningham’s evident disapproval of Coleridge’s highly personal style makes his witness account particularly intriguing. “My opinion as to the Lecturer is that he possesses a great reach of mind; that he is a wild Enthusiast respecting the objects of his elogium; that he is sometimes very eloquent, sometimes paradoxical, sometimes absurd. His voice has something in it particularly plaintive and interesting. His person is short, thick, his countenance not inspirited with any animation. He spoke without assistance from a manuscript, and therefore said several things suddenly, struck off from the Anvil, some of which were entitled to high Applause and others incurred mental disapprobation. He too often interwove Himself into the texture of his Lecture.”

  The last trait was exactly what appealed to other listeners. Even Jerningham, seeing Coleridge’s wild and dishevelled figure among so many judges, bishops, and “ladies of the first fashion”, was prompted to compare him to the great medieval lecturer Peter Abelard, in the fashionable Schools of Paris.63

  Coleridge found ways of charming and engaging his audience, even in the midst of his most obscure flights. Crabb Robinson recalled: “I came in late one day and found him in the midst of a deduction of the origin of the fine arts from the necessities of our being, which a friend who accompanied me could make neither head nor tail of, because he had not studied German metaphysics. The first ‘free art’ of man (architecture) arose from the impulse to make his habitation beautiful; 2nd arose from the instinct to provide himself food; the 3rd the love of dress. Here C. atoned for his metaphysics by his gallantry: he declared that the passion for dress in females has been the cause of the civilization of mankind. ‘When I behold the ornaments which adorn a beautiful woman, I see that instinct which leads man not to be content with what is necessary or useful, but impels him to the beautiful.’”64

  Again and again in the lectures he returned to the psychology of the Imagination, often finding both original and homely analogies. In one he examined the accounts of ghosts and apparitions, comparing them with the effects of stage illusion. A “trick” ghost was quite different from an internalized hallucination, which worked by a process of imaginative association very similar to poetry. The one merely stunned with painful shock, while the other gradually took over the mind like a dream or a fairytale, holding rational laws at bay. He had often experienced the latter himself in Malta.65

  In another lecture, one attended by Sir George Beaumont, he developed the same central idea of the imaginative power suspending rational law, by analogy with children’s modes of thinking. Here he “interwove” not himself, but his son Hartley. Taking the example of stage illusion, he used child psychology to explore a new Romantic doctrine of perception. The eighteenth-century French critics had claimed that theatre produced “actual Delusion” in an adult audience; while Dr Johnson had championed the English empiricist or common-sense tradition by denying “altogether” that any real delusion took place. Coleridge disagreed with both positions, and argued for a more subtle, dynamic account of what actually occurs. The mind does not stand passively outside its experience, registering and recording. It is more like an electrical current, pulsing between objective and subjective polarities.

  This example was calculated to appeal to his audience:

  As Sir George Beaumont was showing me a very fine engraving from Rubens, representing a storm at sea (without a Vessel or Boat introduced), my little Boy (then about 5 years old) came dancing & singing into the room, and all at once (if I may dare use so low a phrase) tumbled in upon the print. He instantly started, stood silent and motionless, with the strongest expression first of wonder & then of Grief in his eyes and countenance, and at length said “And where is the Ship? But that is sunk! – and the men all drowned!” – still keeping his eye fixed upon the Print. Now what Pictures are to little Children, Stage-Illusion is to Men, provided they retain any part of the Child’s sensibility: except that in the latter instance, this suspension of the Act of Comparison, which permits this sort of Negative Belief, is somewhat more assisted by the Will, than in that of the Child respecting a picture.66

  This argument proclaims the enduring, childlike part of the creative sensibility. But it also first uses the striking idea of “Negative Belief” (the metaphor drawn from positive and negative electrical polarities). He would later apply this doctrine of the “suspended state” of Imagination to poetry as a whole, in the Biographia Literaria, to produce one of the most influential of all his critical formulations, the “willing suspension of disbelief”. In other lectures he drew similar analogies with dream states and nightmares.*

  The most talked-about lecture of the whole series took place on 3 May 1808, and was a single digression from beginning to end. Still anxious to make good the casual impression of his postponements, Coleridge volunteered to give a free “supernumerary” double lecture on a subject of topical debate. His lecture was scheduled to last over two hours. The theatre and even the gallery were packed out with fashionable figures, and among his supporters were Davy, William Sotheby, Godwin, Basil Montagu, William Rogers, and Crabb Robinson (still busily taking notes).67

  The subject he chose was intensely controversial, and bound to be popular. Two educationalists, Dr Andrew Bell and Mr Joseph Lancaster, had recently published rival schemes to expand national schools by using a “monitor” system, in which older pupils were trained to teach younger ones. (By 1815 over 500 schools were using their methods.) Bell was an Anglican and saw his schools as state foundations, while Lancaster was a Quaker and saw them as independent institutions. Coleridge believed passionately that education, especially in poorer areas, should be the responsibility of the state, and supported Bell’s “Madras System” (so-called because it had been pioneered in India). But what most engaged his attention was Lancaster’s enforcement of rote-learning by an elaborate system of punishment and penalties. These particularly outraged Coleridge, who was otherwise a great admirer of the Quaker philosophy. They included an astonishing panoply of cruelties and humiliations: makeshift pillories, shackling of the leg with wooden logs, trussing up in a sack, walking backwards through the corridors, and being suspended in a “punishment basket” from the classroom ceiling.68

  Southey later reported an eyewitness account of how Coleridge had riveted his audience by “throwing down” Lancaster’s book with “contempt and indignation”, and exclaiming: “No boy who has been subject to punishments like these will stand in fear of Newgate, or feel any horror at the thought of a slave ship!”69 Coleridge bitterly attacked these practices, not merely as inhumane, but as an essential perversion of the educational principle, which was to “lead forth” by love and imagination, not to instil by rivalry and terror. Instead he proposed three cardinal rules for early education. “These are 1. to work by love and so generate love; 2. to habituate the mind to intellectual accuracy or truth; 3. to excite power.”70

  “He enforced a great truth strikingly,” noted Robinson, taking down his words verbatim. “My experience tells me that little is taught or communicated by contest or dispute, but everything by sympathy and love. Collision elicits truth only from the hardest heads.” He said that the text, “he that spareth the rod, spoileth the child”, was the “source of much evil”. He was against cramming, severe religious observance, or an atmosphere of “quiet and gloom” in the classroom. Everything should be done to draw out each child, most especially those from poor and deprived backgrounds.

  What really moved his audience was, once again, Coleridge’s “inter-weaving” of his own experiences. He retold the story of John Thelwall in the weed-covered garden at Stowey: “‘What is this?…Only a garden educated according to Rousseau’s principles.’” And according to Robinson, he deeply moved his audience with recollections of his sufferings at Christ’s Hospital, leaving an image which remained with them long after. “On disgraceful punishment
s…he spoke with great indignation and declared that even now his life is embittered by the recollection of ignominious punishment he suffered when a child. It comes to him in disease and when his mind is dejected. – This part was delivered with fervour. Could all the pedagogues of the United Kingdom have been before him!”71

  Crabb Robinson summarized the impact of this remarkable performance in a letter to Mrs Clarkson. “The extraordinary lecture on Education was most excellent, delivered with great animation and extorting praise from those whose prejudices he was mercilessly attacking. And he kept his audience on the rack of pleasure and offence two whole hours and 10 minutes, and few went away during the lecture…”

  But the lecture also caused a scandal. Supporters of Lancaster threatened Coleridge, and talked of a prosecution for libel. The management of the Royal Institution complained that he had exceeded his functions as a literary lecturer, and eventually passed a motion of censure.72 When accounts reached the Lake District, Wordsworth was troubled and Southey astounded. No one had expected such an explosive return of Coleridge’s energy and daring.

  The lecture on education established the controversial reputation of the entire series. Coleridge was regarded as brilliant, unorthodox, uneven, and prone to plunge without warning between metaphysics and melodrama. No one could tell from one performance to the next if he would be inspired or obscure, rambling or provocative. But he tasted a new kind of fame, and even notoriety, in London. His rooms in the Strand were besieged by smart visitors (seven in one evening); he dined with the Bishop of Durham; went to fashionable routs in Portman Square; was insulted publicly by Sir Henry Englefield; was jostled in the streets by “Bullies of Lancaster’s Faction”; was praised by Sir George Beaumont; was invited to a celebration dinner by the Literary Fund and by “a very droll mistake” dined at the Whig Club instead.73

  He was asked to sit for his portrait by the society painter Matilda Betham, but, on the way to her studio across the Thames, fell out of the boat (“two mere children were my Charons”) and knocked himself out on the landing stage.74 His next lecture began with a vivid account of this accident, which rather characteristically no one believed. He was now at last able to write to Mrs Coleridge, with an account of his activities: “Now, my dear! I leave it to you to judge whether I can do more than I do – having besides all this to prepare William’s Poem for the Press.”75

  He had found time to conclude the negotiations with Longman for Wordsworth’s “White Doe”, to go over the text in detail, and write Wordsworth a long appreciation of the poem.76 But by contrast he spoke deprecatingly of his lectures, and the stir they had caused: “whole Hods full of plaister of Paris – flatteries about as pleasant to me as rancid large Spanish Olives – these on the one side – & permanent hatred, & the most cruel public Insults on the other”.77 He found it difficult to boast of any success to Wordsworth.

  His fame in London, besides helping to renew old friendships with Godwin, Sotheby, Montagu and others, brought him one unexpected and strangely upsetting encounter. At the end of one lecture, a plump, anxious, middle-aged woman appeared at his dais and introduced herself as Mrs Mary Todd. It took Coleridge several agonizing seconds to realize that he was talking to his old love from Cambridge days, Mary Evans – the woman whose rejection had led to his marriage to Sara Coleridge in 1795.78

  Mary Todd invited him to supper with her husband, and Coleridge spent an exquisitely embarrassing evening with them, soon realizing that the poor, worn-out-looking woman was deeply unhappy in her own marriage and regretted the past even more than he. He lay awake that night in his Strand rooms, weeping. Later he told Stuart that Mary had suffered “the very worst parts of my own Fate, in an exaggerated Form”. Mary Todd separated from her husband three years later.79

  Talking over these matters with Stuart in May, he felt a growing urge to reassert himself, and prevent life slipping through his fingers. It was now that he wrote his long entries on the mid-life crisis, and “for the first time suffered murmurs, & more than murmurs, articulate Complaints, to escape from me, relatively to Wordsworth’s conduct towards me…”80 At his Strand rooms, in the midst of his lectures and dinners, Coleridge felt the awful gap between his busy public existence and his private isolation. “Ah! dear Book!” he sighed, “Sole Confidant of a breaking Heart, whose social nature compels some Outlet. I write more unconscious that I am writing, than in my most earnest modes I talk.”81

  Somewhere across the street, when the rumble of carriages fell silent, he could hear a caged canary singing from a hidden attic window. “O that sweet Bird! Where is it – it is encaged somewhere out of sight – but from my bedroom at the Courier office, from the windows of which I look out on the walls of the Lyceum, I hear it, early Dawn – often alas! then lulling me to late Sleep – again when I awake – and all day long. It is in Prison – all its instincts ungratified – yet it feels the influence of Spring – & calls with unceasing Melody to the Loves, that dwell in Fields and Greenwood bowers –; unconscious perhaps that it calls in vain. – O are they the Songs of a happy enduring Day-dream? Has the Bird Hope? Or does it abandon itself to the Joy of its Frame – a living Harp of Eolus? – O that I could do so.”82 The very self-consciousness of the symbolism, so plangent and so beautiful, was its own reproach.

  But other symbols, uglier and more accusing, also haunted him and were strong enough to become verse. If he was a caged bird, Coleridge was also a caterpillar emerging in the spring, insatiable and devouring in the hunger of his heart. If his soul was the “Psyche” of Greek mythology, a butterfly free to take flight; his body was a more sinister and repulsive creature, perhaps even a monster of emotional greed:

  …For in this earthly frame

  Ours is the reptile’s lot, much toil, much blame,

  Manifold motions making little speed,

  And to deform and kill the things whereon we feed.83

  Yet he also wondered if the Greek doctrine of the separation of soul and body implied that his mind could never be truly corrupted, even by opium. Indeed, perhaps opium was the source of his inspiration, despite its terrible physical effects. “Need we wonder at Plato’s opinions concerning the Body; at least, need that man wonder whom a pernicious Drug shall make capable of conceiving & bringing forth Thoughts, hidden in him before, which shall call forth the deepest feelings of his best, greatest & sanest Contemporaries?…That the dire poison for a delusive time has made the body, the unknown somewhat, a fitter Instrument for the all-powerful Soul.”84

  His Notebooks (“alas, my only Confidants”)85 of May and June are full of such questioning, about the nature of love, genius, imaginative power and self-destruction. As he lay “musing” on his sofa, his literary speculations from the lectures feeding back into his private ruminations, he often felt overwhelmed by the sheer activity of his mind: “My Thoughts crowd each other to death”.86 He was never free of painful broodings on Wordsworth, shimmering memories of Asra, or “fantastic pangs of imagination” about Charlotte Brent, either.87

  7

  Meanwhile the Royal Institution lectures came to an end as dramatically as they had begun. Coleridge was due to close the series with a final five lectures in the first fortnight of June on “Contemporary Poets”, and most notably on Wordsworth. Whether he ever gave this one, or any of them, is wrapped in mystery. According to his own account, he became violently ill again at the beginning of June, and also suffered the loss of his crucial Notebook containing all his headings and quotations. He postponed, and then extemporized for at least one lecture, probably on 10 June, and then abruptly the whole series was terminated. What exactly occurred, and why, is problematic.

  Edward Jerningham gave one sufficiently theatrical explanation, though without revealing if Wordsworth was ever mentioned. “He looked sullen and told us that He previously had prepared and written down Quotations from different Authors to illustrate the present Lecture. These Quotations he had put among the leaves of his Pocket Book which was stolen as he was
coming to the Institution. This narrative was not indulgently received, and he went through his Lecture heavily and without advancing anything that was spirited or animated. The next day he received an Intimation from the Managers that his Lectures were no longer expected.”88

  The theft, though, really did occur. De Quincey, down from Oxford for the summer, told his sister shortly afterwards: “This day week he lectured at the Institution, and had his pocket picked as he walked from the Strand; but, having notes, he managed to get through it very well.”90 Moreover, the Institution was keen for him to continue. It was only when the Secretary received a desperate note from Coleridge on 13 June, that they regretfully accepted his demission on the grounds of ill-health.

  The Secretary took the highly unusual step of recording the letter in full in the Institution minutes. “I find my health in such a state as to make it almost death to me to give any further Lectures. I beg that you would acquaint the Managers that instead of expecting any remuneration, I shall, as soon as I can, repay the sum I have received. I am indeed more likely to repay it by my executors than myself. If I could quit my Bed-room, I would have hazarded everything rather than not have come, but I have such violent Fits of Sickness and Diarrhoea that it is literally impossible.”89