Coleridge- Darker Reflections

by Richard Holmes

  Later he went back and annotated this “wife to be” entry with a sober Greek couplet: “Persons living in the same house/ Persons living in the same grave”. Walking out in the snow below Allan Bank, he thought of his enforced silence like a river in winter:

  Mountain snow whose hanging weight

  Archeth some sullen river, that for fear

  Steals underneath unmurmuring.97

  The Wordsworths were aware of the tension in the household, but treated it rather like the smoking chimneys, as an unavoidable domestic nuisance, which might improve in the spring. Grudgingly impressed by the progress of The Friend, Wordsworth allowed more of his poetry to appear in its pages, and arranged for an exchange of essays on childhood education with John Wilson, to appear in the December issues (Nos 17–20), which were well received.

  Coleridge was grateful, but felt more than ever the oppression of Wordsworth’s patriarchal presence at Allan Bank. All the women, he thought, showed “too exclusive admiration” for his talents; and no other writer was “either thought or spoken of but with cold indifference”. The old freedom of discussion was sadly curtailed compared to the early Grasmere days. “No literature at all is talked of with love, no books read – & William himself at length listened to as a duty with manifest distraction – only compare Dorothy with Dorothy of ten years ago – and just the same process has taken place with Mary and Sara.”98

  Perhaps as some remedy to this stultifying atmosphere, Coleridge concocted a scheme with his printer John Brown to publish cheap new “Lake” editions of Wordsworth’s, Southey’s and his own poetry, and tried to interest them in the plan. He wrote cheerfully to Brown in early December that they had “no passion for bookfinery”, and would be “far more flattered by seeing our poems in a shilling Edition on the same paper etc. as ‘Reading Made Easy’, in the Shelves of Country Booksellers and Stationers, than arrayed in all the Silks and Satins of Mr Ballantyne’s Wardrobe, with engravings to boot.” As to his own poems, he would “neither need nor shall ask the opinions of any”.99 In fact he had been considering publishing all his new poems since the first issue of The Friend. But in the event Wordsworth was not enthusiastic, and the scheme gradually faded from view.

  Yet Coleridge never considered escape from Allan Bank, even for the most justifiable reasons. Shortly before Christmas he received news from his brother George that their old mother was terminally ill at Ottery, and dying of cancer in great pain. She wanted to see all her sons, but Coleridge was the only one who refused to go. It was clear that he still felt rejected and humiliated by the Ottery Coleridges, but he rationalized his refusal on the grounds of expense. That at any rate is what he wrote to Southey, in a transparently guilty letter.

  “My poor Mother is near her end, and dying in great torture, death eating her piecemeal, her vital stamen is so very vigorous – & she wishes to see me before her death – But tho’ my Brother knows I am penniless, not an offer of a Bank note to en[able] me to set off. In truth, I know not what to do – for [there] is not a shilling in our whole House.”100 He then changed the subject abruptly to the success of his German travel-letters in recent issues of The Friend. “You will grin at my modest account of Satyrane, the Idoloclast…but what can I do? – I must wear a mask.”

  17

  It was news of a quite different death that now occupied him. On 20 October 1809, his old friend and mentor Sir Alexander Ball had suddenly died in Malta at the age of fifty-two. The reports reached Allan Bank in mid-December, and Coleridge immediately wrote an account of their memorable conversation on riding to San Antonio in 1804, “Does Fortune favour Fools?”, which he rushed into issue No. 19 of The Friend on 28 December.

  He now decided to embark on a full-length memoir, “Fragments and Sketches of the Life of the Late Admiral Sir Alexander Ball”, which would mark the third distinctive stage of his paper into the spring of 1810. Ball would be presented as “the abstract Idea of a wise & good Governor”, and thus draw together many of the political themes of The Friend.101 “He was a Man above his Age: but for that very reason the Age has the more need to have the master features of his character portrayed and preserved…For he was indeed a living confutation of the assertion attributed to the Prince of Condé, that no Man appeared great to his Valet de Chambre.”102 Coleridge said – what he so signally did not say of his own mother – that he wept at the news of Ball’s death.103

  As Christmas celebrations filled the house at Allan Bank, and De Quincey masterminded a spectacular fireworks display for the children of Grasmere, Coleridge plunged back into his memories of Malta.104 His thoughts filled the next four issues of The Friend, describing a distant world of sunlight and action, of patriotism and good fellowship, of courage and endurance, as far removed from his wintry existence on the edge of Grasmere lake as it was possible for him to imagine.

  It was perhaps now, with his mind running on the Mediterranean, the ships and islands, the talk of sailors and the tales of heroism and disaster, that he wrote in his Notebook a magnificent extended entry comparing the whole of life to the experience of shipwreck.105

  What is striking about this shipwreck is that it is not a disaster. It is presented far more as an existential adventure, a challenge to find one’s significance and location in a world without maps or bearings, without certainties or sure information. All noble minds, wrote Coleridge, must eventually ask themselves the “great questions” – Where am I? What am I for? What are my duties? What are my relations with “futurity” and the present world? The answer came in an extended simile, drawn from his own voyages on the high seas, and as if the Ancient Mariner had suddenly begun a new tale, and momentarily found his voice again in prose.

  I would compare the human Soul to a Ship’s Crew cast on an unknown Island (a fair simile: for these questions could not suggest themselves unless the mind had previously felt convictions, that the present World was not its whole destiny and abiding Country). What would be their first business? surely, to enquire what the Island was? in what Latitude? what ships visited the Island? when? and whither they went?…to think, how they should maintain and employ themselves during their stay – & how best stock themselves for the expected voyage, & procure the means of inducing the Captain to take them to the Harbour, which they wished to go to? The moment, when the Soul begins to be sufficiently self-conscious, to ask concerning itself, & its relations, is the first moment of its intellectual arrival in the World. Its Being – enigmatic as it must seem – is posterior to its Existence. Suppose the shipwrecked man stunned, & for many weeks in a state of Idiocy or utter loss of Thought and Memory. And then gradually awakened.106

  What this memorable entry seemed to insist on, in the very midst of Coleridge’s own shipwreck at Allan Bank, was that the state of struggle and self-enquiry, of “awakening”, was the essential quality of being human. What kept his soul alive was the very act of self-consciousness, of continuous questioning of purpose and destiny.*

  18

  On 4 January 1810 The Friend reached its twentieth issue, when the 600 or so £1 subscriptions were due to be remitted. The minimum target was about £400. Because of the chaos of the collection system, some relying on local agents like the London bookseller George Ward, others on district postmasters, and many more on direct remittance to Coleridge himself at Kendal, it was not immediately clear what money had come in or how many readers Coleridge had retained. At all events, the subscriptions arrived slowly and piecemeal. Ward’s accounts, for example, showed £9.15s.4d. on 3 January; a further £9.10s.0d. on 10 January; and a rather more promising but very late addition of £102.6s.0d. by 5 March. Mrs Coleridge also forwarded £10 that had somehow arrived at Greta Hall.107 It seems very unlikely that the final subscription raised reached more than £300, or that Coleridge retained more than half his readership. This disappointing result – though by no means a catastrophe – did not emerge for several weeks.

  In the meantime Coleridge issued a free, “Supernumerary” issue, in which he p
romised to continue the life of Ball, embark on a psychological analysis of the “Character of Bonaparte” (somewhat delayed, as he had originally promised it in the Morning Post in 1800, as he mildly pointed out), and launch into “a philosophical examination of the British Constitution in all its branches separately and collectively”.108 He felt this “first Series” of The Friend would now run to twenty-eight or thirty issues, when he would then consider starting a “second”.

  Publicly he took the high ground, admitting the difficulty of his style and subject-matter, but challenging his readers to stay the course. “For a living Writer is yet sub judice: and if we cannot follow his conceptions or enter into his feelings, it is more consoling to our Pride, as well as agreeable to our ignorance, to consider him as lost beneath, than as soaring out of our sight above us.”109

  Privately, Coleridge was bitterly disappointed, but far from ready to abandon his great venture. He now owed a total of over £200 to Stuart, Hutchinson, Poole and his other backers; and feared that he would lose “three in four” of his subscribers in the coming month. But he felt he might battle on if he could sustain a core of faithful readers. He postponed the next issue while he took stock, writing to Tom Poole on 12 January with a realistic assessment of his debts and prospects.

  He told Poole that he felt angry and frustrated. He knew that The Friend was described everywhere as “an unreadable work, dry, obscure, fantastical, paradoxical, and God knows what else – according to each man’s taste, and as if they wished to revenge themselves on me for the loss of their Shillings”. On the other hand, many individual subscribers had written with “the warmest acknowledgments, and assurances that if The Friend were more generally known, its circulation would become considerable”.110

  His files bear him out, containing for example this typical note from one William Wray, an attorney at Maldon. “That such a work must eventually succeed with all serious and meditative Minds I think cannot be well doubted, but of this Class comparatively few I am afraid have hitherto become acquainted with its Merits: it has you know been little advertised and it would have many prejudices to encounter. The Extracts however from Time to Time given in the Courier – must have been of great service to its circulation.”111

  Poole himself had received an appreciative letter from John Rickman, the businesslike census-taker in London, who was usually most critical of Coleridge’s efforts. “Of Coleridge, however, I think the better for his Friendly productions; there is writing of a high order thickly interspersed…”112

  All in all, Coleridge felt honour-bound to go on, at least to the end of the first series. “My purpose is not to give up The Friend till it gives up itself – & I will go on tho’ it should only barely pay its expenses, till I have brought it to some kind of completeness – however short of my wishes – and enable myself to do it by working over hours for the Newspapers.”113

  If taking on extra journalism to support The Friend at this juncture seemed a piece of quixotism worthy of Satyrane, it was in fact exactly what Coleridge had just done in an effort to reduce his debts with Stuart. Between 7 December and 20 January he contributed eight long articles to the Courier on the Spanish Peninsular War. These “Letters on the Spaniards” make a densely argued and well-informed case for the support of Spain against Napoleon, and draw a picture in depth of Britain’s historic role in defending the cause of independent nation-states in Europe. The series was substantial, an off-shoot of the work he had put in on Wordsworth’s Cintra pamphlet, and ran to well over twenty thousand words. He dismissed it as mere topical journalism, but it was the equivalent of writing three or four extra issues of The Friend in a month.114 The series was unpaid, but set against his debts to the value of some £50. Coleridge was genuinely determined to battle on in this way.

  Wordsworth’s attitude to The Friend had gradually become more positive. It had, after all, become something of a showcase for his poetry. Coleridge had published two long extracts from The Prelude, including the famous skating episode which appeared to fine advantage in the Christmas issue (No. 19). He had also published about a dozen new sonnets, and Wordsworth’s own translations from Chiabrera’s Epitafi. Dorothy was particularly proud of these, and the fine “Essay on Epitaphs” (No. 25), in which Wordsworth for the first time wrote about his Pantheistic experiences as a child, as part of a prose autobiography. These publications brought back his confidence after the débâcle over the “White Doe”, and sometime in mid-February Wordsworth returned to his great poem “The Recluse”, cast aside in 1806, and began composing at the rate of fifty lines a day.115 Spring 1810 was to be one of his great periods of sustained poetry writing.

  At the same time, Coleridge’s increasingly moody presence at Allan Bank was becoming a great burden on the domestic household. His nocturnal hours, his financial worries, his demands on Asra, his fluctuations between supine despondency on his sofa and hectic activity at his desk, produced an atmosphere of brooding crisis. Even Dorothy found his demands irksome. “There is his parlour to clean, fire to light – sometimes gruel – toast and water – eggs – his bed always to be made at an unreasonable time…”116

  Hartley and Derwent came over from Greta Hall each weekend, filling the house with bustle and noise, while the two men shut themselves away in their ground-floor studies at either end of Allan Bank’s freezing corridor. Wordsworth actually had to abandon his for several weeks, while their landlord put in a new bow window and tried once more to cure the smoking chimney. Coleridge on the other hand retreated into his study for longer and longer hours, taking more opium again as the pressures on him increased, and trying to imagine himself in some remote paradise with Asra.

  In this fantasy, everything was perfect and love seemed to flow through his room like water, so their unspeaking silence was not tension but a rippling harmony. “So deeply do I now enjoy your presence, so totally possess you in myself, myself in you. The very sound would break the union, and separate you-me into you and me. We both, and this sweet Room, its books, its pictures & the shadows on the Wall slumbering with the how quiet Fire are all our Thought, a harmonious imagery of Forms distinct on the still substance of one deep Feeling, Love & Joy – a Lake – or if a stream, yet flowing so softly, so unwrinkled, that its flow is Life not Change.”117

  At these times, blissfully ignoring the anxiety and disruption he caused all around him, Coleridge imagined the Wordsworths would take him and Asra off to live in some bucolic retreat together, recreating the simple, tender life of the Dove Cottage years. He told Poole: “All, whom you know here, are pretty well. It is our intention, as soon as we must quit this House, i.e. before next Winter – to retire to some cheaper part of the Country…and live in the cottage style in good earnest – i.e. exactly as Cottagers live…with only one country Maid.” Their only luxury was tea, which for him at breakfast was “an absolute necessary, if not of Life, yet of literary exertion”. Otherwise none of them drank anything but water.118 There was no mention of laudanum.

  By contrast, Dorothy’s account, though diplomatically worded to Lady Beaumont, reveals the strain of Coleridge’s presence and profound anxieties about the future:

  I have daily put off writing till the next day in the hope of having more leisure and a quiet time for the free exercise of my thoughts…Coleridge’s spirits have been irregular of late. He was damped after the 20th Number by the slow arrival of payments, and half persuaded himself that he ought not to go on. We laboured hard against such a resolve, and he seems determined to fight onwards…You will hardly believe me when I tell you that there have been weeks and weeks when he has not composed a line. The fact is that he either does a great deal or nothing at all; and that he composes with a rapidity truly astonishing…He has written a whole Friend more than once in two days. They are never re-transcribed, and he generally has dictated to Miss Hutchinson, who takes the words down from his mouth.119

  19

  Coleridge now launched into his life of Sir Alexander Ball, which began in N
o. 21 on 25 January 1810, and continued for three more issues, despite increasing difficulties and discouragements. He opened with an attack on “Modern Biography” which had become, he thought, “a trade in the silliest anecdotes, in unprovoked abuse and senseless eulogy”.

  The rage for fame had attracted a negative form of “garrulous Biography” which did nothing but satisfy “worthless curiosity” in telling petty stories about great men. “In the present age (emphatically the age of personality!) there are more than ordinary motives for withholding all encouragement from this mania with busying ourselves with the names of others.” Sir Alexander’s own contempt of gossip would be his “Socratic Demon to warn and check” against such modish frivolity.

  Nonetheless the example of a truly great man, both in his struggles and his achievements, could be an invaluable revelation of some general truth about life. It was therefore “the duty of an honest Biographer, to portray the prominent imperfections as well as the excellencies of his Hero”; but he should never forget “how mean a thing a mere Fact is, except as seen in the light of some comprehensive Truth”.120

  Coleridge’s Life of Ball is indeed very sketchy with facts. It is said, for example, that Ball was attracted to the navy by “the deep impression and vivid images” left on his mind by reading Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe in boyhood. But almost nothing is recorded about the actual events of his early service.121 Instead, the biography is built up impressionistically, from a series of memorable anecdotes which Coleridge had himself heard in Malta. Many of them concern Ball’s reputation for justice and humanity as a civilian governor, and his shrewd appreciation of the tyranny inherent in Napoleon’s schemes for the Mediterranean. In this Ball is presented, with strong patriotic emphasis, as the beau ideal of the British colonial law-giver and wartime diplomat: shrewd, pragmatic, kindly, but with an inflexible sense of political principle and public duty. “Duty” – enshrined in Nelson’s last signal before Trafalgar – is intended as the central theme, the “comprehensive Truth” of Ball’s life, in Coleridge’s biographic scheme.