Coleridge- Darker Reflections

by Richard Holmes

  Crabb Robinson was to be the first to observe this problem, being a German specialist in his own right, and the man who supplied Coleridge with several of his German authors initially. Significantly he did not in fact consider it plagiarism, being fully aware of Coleridge’s vast background reading in German and British philosophy and criticism, and the originality of his particular interpretations. Moreover Coleridge was almost never dominated by his sources. Except in the particular case of Schelling, he never stole slavishly. His disagreements with German thought – most notably with Schlegel in the lectures – produced his great originality of emphasis, those sudden developments of psychological insight, and vivid metaphorical explanation. He was always inspired to outdo his originals, to speculate further, to enquire more closely. But the charge of plagiarism would eventually become a pressing and highly damaging one. It already shadows the lectures he began in the winter of 1811. Four years later, when Coleridge came to write the Biographia, using entire passages of Schelling rendered word for word and without anything like a proper acknowledgement, it would become inescapable.

  It cannot be a coincidence that this period corresponds to the worst time of his opium addiction, the extreme sense of his loss of Wordsworth, and the severest lack of professional self-confidence and feelings of almost paralysing failure. At one level, then, plagiarism was a response to profound, almost disabling anxiety and intellectual self-doubt. His German authors gave him support and comfort: in a metaphor he often used himself, he twined round them like ivy round an oak.

  But the early example of Jean-Paul Richter shows how subtle and perplexing this process was, at its roots. It involved a genuine act of intellectual discovery, of tracking down the new movements in European writing and thought. The very condition of Coleridge’s desperation and self-doubt kept him intellectually receptive, raw and curiously youthful, in a way that many of his contemporaries had lost. He responded to new ideas because they still challenged him, still hurt him almost. His expansions of Jean-Paul express excitement, self-recognition, and spiritual pain.

  The chaotic and spontaneous appearance of his Notebooks at this period do give a striking impression of some living and consoling dialogue between two brother authors actually taking place. They start at nightfall and break off at dawn. Sandwiched between dreams, domestic bills, fragments of poetry, addresses, journalistic notes, and prayers, the communings with Jean-Paul are like a continuous background murmur of conversation which suddenly rises into perfect audibility. In their loops and digressions, their journeys out and back, they have some distant correspondence with the earlier form of the Conversation Poems. They display, above all perhaps, Coleridge’s haunted solitariness in London, and the desperate need for company. One might say that his plagiarisms began that summer in the sense of lost friendships, of loneliness, of intellectual isolation.

  9

  All sorts of strange shapes entered Coleridge’s night-time world at Hammersmith, and not all of them were human. One of the oddest was a spider. Coleridge had been talking with Lamb about a set of Hogarth prints of “The Rake’s Progress”, which Lamb had hung in his new lodgings at the Middle Temple, to celebrate Mary Lamb’s return from the asylum. Such topics were inclined to produce elaborate, and frequently drunken fantasies (which Hazlitt later said were liable to over-excite and “injure” the Lambs, though they themselves seemed to relish them).87 They had alighted on one tiny detail from “The Rake’s Marriage”, which showed the poor-box in the church covered with a spider’s web. It was one of Hogarth’s inspired pieces of realistic observation, an emblem of poverty and callousness, expressing the entire theme of the picture in a single image. It delighted them with its sinister economy, Lamb observing that such graphic images had “the teeming, fruitful, suggestive meaning of words”.88

  Coleridge expanded the same idea: “everything in Hogarth is to be translated into Language – words – & to act as words, not as Images”. So the spider could be understood as part of a larger, ever-expanding system of symbolic representation. Back in his study at Hammersmith, Coleridge’s mind turned to the symbolism of the poor-box, and the way the spider’s presence made its emptiness not merely palpable but repulsive. The spider seemed to gloat over an accumulation of human meanness.

  As Coleridge played with this idea, a grotesque new image floated into his mind, recalling another spider he had seen spinning its web over the garden privy at Allan Bank. He rendered it with a surreal touch of comic disgust in his Notebook. “For so in a small House of frequent Resort I have seen in an autumn morning the circular means to an end completely covered by a Web, and the fat dumpy Spinster in the centre, like a Heathen Paged snuffing up the Incense.”89 He made no further comment, but his night thoughts had translated a church poor-box into a privy, a spider into a “dumpy” spinster, and a spinster into a pagan idol. Years later he would return to the spider in a poem about loss of feeling and the encroachments of old age, “The World that Spidery Witch”.90

  10

  As the autumn arrived, Coleridge felt increasingly restless about his paragraph-writing for the Courier, which seemed to be leading nowhere. Southey visited London, still urging him to return to the Lakes, and haranguing Crabb Robinson about his fecklessness. “Of Coleridge, Southey spoke as I expected he would,” Robinson noted evenly. “‘With a strong sense of duty,’ he said, ‘he has neglected it in every relation of his life.’” Southey’s recommendation was that Coleridge should give up opium and journalism, and write a Greek Grammar.91

  At the end of September, there was a new crisis in connection with the newspaper. Coleridge abruptly left the Morgans after some painful scenes, and lodged alone again at No. 6 Southampton Buildings. He spent his mornings at a desk in the Westminster Library, trying to write a special series of articles for Street. In a desperate effort to escape the hackwork of topical journalism, and increase his salary, he had promised a substantial set of political essays on Pitt, Fox, Napoleon, Wellington, Ball and several other leading statesmen. These were based on his old idea of historical “Character Sketches”, years ago promised to Stuart and also trailed in The Friend.92 But everything depended on meeting the Courier’s deadlines in the second week of October.

  On Friday, 5 October he announced categorically to Street that the first “Characters” were ready, and that they would open with a grand historical essay on Biography, “on the nature and uses of character-writing, relatively to the Lives of Plutarch”. This he would write over the weekend. “I will give it to you on Monday Morning by a quarter after nine, together with Pitt’s & Fox’s – and you may rely on having the whole set given in so as never to delay the publication…” Street duly announced the series in a front-page banner-headline in the Friday evening edition, with the general essay for the Monday following, and “The Character of Bonaparte on Tuesday”.93

  Coleridge took a deep breath, opened his laudanum decanter, and collapsed. None of the essays was ever delivered. Stuart proved philosophical, and no doubt Walter at The Times was amused. But Street was understandably furious, terminated his contract, and ever afterwards spoke disparagingly of his vaunted contributor. Yet for Coleridge the disaster, as so often, was eventually liberating. Out of it emerged his idea for the first of his great series of Shakespeare lectures, and also an important new understanding with the Morgans.

  In fact it seems likely that he was already disillusioned with the Courier. One of the last pieces he published there, on 21 September, seemed to prophesy his departure, by sending an ironic greeting to his journalistic arch-rival, William Cobbett. Describing one of his daily journeys over to the Courier office (he seems to have hired, or perhaps conveniently invented, a horse for the occasion), he recounts an exchange which would have delighted the editor of the radical Weekly Register:

  It has often struck me, as a peculiarity of this enlightened age, that in all classes we meet with critics and disputants; from Parliament to the Common Council, from the Crown and Anchor to the Chequers in St
Giles’s, nothing but discussion! A fellow in rags, who held my horse for the few moments that I had occasion to dismount, expressed his thanks for a shilling in these words: – Bless your honour! I have not had a pint of beer, or seen the Register, for a week past. The Register? quoth I. – Aye, replies he, with a grin, Cobbett’s the man, Sir! He has Ideas – A man’s nothing without Ideas.94

  Coleridge remained at No. 6 Southampton Buildings for the rest of the month. He was often prostrate with opium and frequently very drunk, but his London friends rallied round. On 12 October he first spoke to Lamb of his idea for the lectures, and on 17 October John Payne Collier records him with “spreading canvas”, sailing away majestically on the subject of Shakespeare’s dramatic powers.95

  It was not easy for even the sharpest observers to assess Coleridge’s physical or mental state. Crabb Robinson had been taught a lesson by Lamb, when shaking his head over Coleridge’s difficulties he had inadvertently let fall the phrase “poor Coleridge”. The ever-faithful Lamb rounded on him. “He corrected me not angrily, but as if really pained by the expression…‘He is a fine fellow, in spite of all his faults and weaknesses. Call him Coleridge – I hate “poor Coleridge”. I can’t bear to hear pity applied to such a one.’”96

  On the day after the Courier débâcle, 9 October, Robinson took evening tea with Catherine Clarkson to discuss what might be done. Much was said about the problem of Coleridge’s work finding an appropriate form and audience. They thought he had neither the popular appeal of Walter Scott nor the journalistic vulgarity of Cobbett. How would he ever find a readership, or make a living? Mrs Clarkson then produced a manuscript of the unpublished “Christabel”, which Robinson had never heard, and read it through to him in the candlelight. Robinson was astonished and delighted. “It has great beauties and interests me more than any so small a fragment I ever met with, and that purely by the force of poetic painting…the verse is very fine…”97

  This led Robinson on to compare the reception of his work with Wordsworth’s. Wordsworth’s poetry, “inspired by the true spirit of contemplation”, and directly combining “the great elements of natural scenery…with the noblest and best feelings of the heart”, was now being read increasingly by his contemporaries. But this was not true for Coleridge. It was only the serious young of the next generation who would discover his powers and value his intellectual subtleties. “The mystical sentimentality of Coleridge, however adorned by original imagery, can never interest the gay and frivolous…and for the same reason, the deep glances into the innermost nature of man and the original views of the relations of things which Coleridge’s works are fraught with, are a stumbling block and offence to the millions, not a charm.”98

  When Robinson next saw Coleridge himself at Lamb’s, he was prevailed upon towards midnight to recite “Christabel” himself. The company fell silent, and Coleridge launched out in his chanting voice. Then he faltered and stopped: he was too drunk to remember his own masterpiece. Robinson recorded the humiliation in his diary, tactfully in German. But he did not write, poor Coleridge. Instead, they all began to talk about the new series of lectures.99

  11

  Once again, it was the Morgans who rescued Coleridge from Southampton Buildings and supported him in this new venture. Morgan had been horrified by his “disappearance” in early October, and had written persistently, gently asking for a meeting to put matters right. Coleridge at first refused, writing on 12 October that he must “either get thro, or sink under” on his own.100

  The exchange that ensued was revealing. Initially Coleridge dramatized his situation for Morgan’s benefit, much as he used to do in his letters to his brother George. He was abandoned, he was penniless, he was dying. He had been treated dishonestly by Street, disgracefully by Stuart (“a Meacenas worth £50,000”), and was tortured by “clamorous Letters [from Mrs Coleridge]”.101

  He suspected his behaviour over “the last 8 months” at Hammersmith had alienated Mary and Charlotte – though “Heaven knows how!” Few men had ever regretted their “own infirmities” more deeply than he had. He could not return to them telling “falsehoods” about his opium and drinking. He had never been guilty of “extravagance, or self-indulgence”. He was suffering from the “never-closing, festering Wound of Wordsworth and his Family”. Morgan must leave him to his fate: send round his “Books & other paucities” to No. 6 Southampton Buildings, and think of him “as one deceased who had been your sincere Friend”. He concluded dramatically: “Burn this after you have read it.”102

  But having finished this pyrrhic missive, with all its satisfactory and poignant self-justifications, Coleridge did something new and highly complimentary to the Morgans. He did not send it. He waited for three days, and then wrote again in chastened mood. “I entreat (and beg you to entreat for me) Mrs Morgan’s and Charlotte’s Forgiveness for the gross disrespect, which my absence & silence render me guilty of. I am truly and to my very heart sensible, that it has been such behaviour, as they & you had little merited from me – and that the rudeness is a trifle compared with the apparent Ingratitude.”

  He did indeed want to return to Hammersmith, but had felt that it was intolerable “to bring back to your Home of Peace & Love a spirit so disquieted”. He had “solemnly vowed” never to be ill from opium “24 hours together in your House”, and to demonstrate how bad his “state of mind” had been in this respect, he humbly enclosed the original letter which had “a great deal of peevish feeling in it”. He begged their forgiveness, again urged Morgan to burn it, and signed himself their “affectionate & grateful” friend.103 Ten days later he had returned to Hammersmith, full of his new lecture scheme. By 30 October, he had issued one of his famous prospectuses.

  This important reconciliation marked a new degree of emotional commitment and frankness on both sides. Knowing very well how deeply Coleridge felt about his loss of the Wordsworths, the Morgans had determined that he should not suffer such a loss again, and that they would patiently weather all his storms as he struggled to make a new career. They had already endured for a year what the Montagus could not endure for a week. They assumed it was Coleridge at his worst (though it was not), and they concluded that they could cope.

  On his side, Coleridge recognized them as his saviours. He could never love them like the Wordsworths (though he would try to recover Asra in Charlotte) or find the old intellectual companionship of Grasmere. But he found loyalty, affection and a kind of easy playfulness that was immensely reassuring. While John Morgan was practical, kindly and endlessly forgiving, his wife Mary was teasing and often outspoken. She was the force in the household, with Charlotte as her faithful satellite: pretty, shy and enigmatic, and perhaps rather dominated by her older sister. When Coleridge had occasion to apologize, which he did very often, it was always in the first place to the two women, with Charlotte as his intercessor.

  Living with the Morgans through the summer of 1811 had made Coleridge aware of his domestic shortcomings, in a way never evident at Grasmere. In his “peevish” letter of 12 October, he had enumerated his own faults as a house-companion with considerable accuracy. He had always been good at self-portraits, and this one of a clever, voluble, over-emotional and frequently exhausting man, is alarmingly acute. There were, he said, two views of his character, which the Morgans could choose to read either way, depending on whether they were pleased or aggravated with him:

  Love a man, & his Talking shall be Eloquence – dislike him, & the same thing becomes Preaching. His quickness of Feeling & the starting Tear, shall be at one time natural sensibility –…the same at another time shall be loathsome maudlin unmanliness. Activity of Thought scattering itself as jests, puns, & sportive nonsense, shall in the bud & blossom of acquaintanceship be amiable playfulness, & met or anticipated by a Laugh or a correspondent Jest –: in the wane of Friendship, an object of Disgust, and a ground of warning to those better beloved, not to get into that way.104

  Both these aspects of Coleridge’s character h
ad clearly become evident to the Morgans at Hammersmith, and this was Coleridge’s way of acknowledging it. He was asking them to bear with his excesses, and never to “wane” in his support. If it seemed like a reproach, it was really intended as a plea. The Morgans would go on responding to it, gallantly and to some degree inexplicably, for the next five years.

  Quite why they put up with Coleridge – if not out of pure affection – was always puzzling, not least to his family at Keswick, where Mrs Coleridge in particular always expressed astonished approval at their heroic endurance. “Mrs Coleridge seems quite satisfied with my plans,” Coleridge later wrote to Morgan, “& abundantly convinced of my obligations to your & Mary’s kindness to me. Nothing (she said) but the circumstances of my residing with you could reconcile her to my living in London. Southey is the semper idem.”105

  It was certainly not for financial reasons – though Coleridge would one day, against all expectation, prove to be their cavalry in this respect. It was not for literary ones either, like Wordsworth, for Morgan had no such ambitions beyond a vague fascination with the stage. If they intended to bask in his intellectual glory, like the Montagus, the glow was very fitful in these years and would hardly have compensated for the terrible trials (for them as much as for him) of his opium addiction and drinking. The curiously elaborate and humorously ritualized courting of Charlotte – whose main accomplishments, apart from her beauty and similarity to Asra, were (according to Coleridge) silent blushing and abominable spelling – may have enlivened the household. But it also caused tears and embarrassments.