Coleridge- Darker Reflections

by Richard Holmes

  Bend and in yon streamlet – lave thee

  Why stays my Love?

  Oft have I at evening straying,

  Stood, thy Branches long surveying

  Graceful in the light Breeze playing, –

  Why stays my Love?31

  The one thing Coleridge definitely did do was severely practical: he sent an urgent note to Mrs Coleridge, begging her to send a banker’s draft for £50 to Morgan, so the house-purchase would be safe if he did not reach London in time. But that note, too, was lost in the bad weather.32 Whether he finally escaped from Penrith on the mail, or was forced to take a chaise to Kendal first, is not recorded. But if he used the latter method, as is probable, Coleridge would have driven alone through the snow along the old road of his happiness under Helvellyn, over Dunmail Raise, by the boundary stone carved with their initials and passed within sight of Wordsworth’s house at the crossroads to Ambleside. It was the last time he ever visited the Lake District, a bitter farewell.

  4

  The return to London, which he reached at 5 a.m. on 14 April, was like a return to life. He slept for ten hours at the Bull and Mouth Inn in the City, and then rushed over to the Morgans at Berners Street. The news that the £50 had miscarried was “a thunderbolt”, but Morgan had found temporary funds, the house was safe, and all “uneasiness” dispelled by the traveller’s return, though Morgan admitted he had suffered much “distress of Mind” on Coleridge’s account.33 Gale and Curtis advanced £50 on the unbound copies of The Friend he had managed to retrieve, and Coleridge handed this over to Morgan so the house was now secure.

  The publishers were in “high Spirits” with their new author, and thought a second edition would soon be in demand. There was talk of his editing an encyclopaedia and rewriting his play Osorio for Drury Lane. His lectures were scheduled to begin on 12 May, and socially he was much in demand.

  He dined with Sir George Beaumont and Lady Beaumont announced that she had booked 30 guineas’ worth of lecture-tickets to distribute to their friends. He met up again with the painter Washington Allston, who had returned from Italy, and was now flourishing at the Royal Academy, where Dawe’s bust of Coleridge was on prominent display. Coleridge felt his “Star” was at last firmly in the ascendant, and promised to set him “even with the World”.34

  A parcel of school-books was sent off to Hartley, Derwent and Sariola, and a cheerful letter to Mrs Coleridge saying he was “an altered man” and took no stimulants “of any kind” except for an after-dinner glass of something bravely described as “British White Wine”, together, of course, with three or four glasses of port to mitigate its effects.35

  Yet much of the social interest surrounding Coleridge this spring really concerned his relations with Wordsworth. There had been a good deal of gossiping, and the quarrel had suddenly become the talk of literary London. Coleridge was free with his confidences, and sometimes spoke as if his departure from the Lakes had liberated him from an entire cycle of addiction and dependency. Writing to the MP Richard Sharp (one of The Friend’s original subscribers) on 24 April, and confident of obtaining further patronage for the lectures, Coleridge unwisely entered into details of the quarrel, assuming Sharp’s sympathy in the matter.

  He described Wordsworth as his “bitterest Calumniator” whom he had previously cherished in his “Heart’s Heart”. He went on: “I gradually obtained conquest over my own Feelings and now dare call myself a freeman, which I did not dare do till I had been at Keswick, & satisfied myself that no possibility remained of my being deluded.” He added that his health and activity had since been transformed, and that the Morgans declared that until the break “they had never seen me as myself”.36

  Such confidences might well have been understood in the Lambs’ circle, but they were hostages to fortune in a wider world. Sharp was outraged. He refused to have anything to do with the lectures, talked abroad of Coleridge’s accusations, and with inexplicable malice actually passed the letter on to Grasmere. It was a situation that could not endure. Indeed Wordsworth had already decided to act. Having failed to confront Coleridge privately at Keswick or Penrith, he at last determined on the much more dramatic and public step of pursuing him openly to London to seek a formal explanation. Three weeks before the lectures were due to begin, he arrived at Sir George Beaumont’s in Grosvenor Square. On 27 April he was consulting with Charles Lamb, determined to have “the business sifted to the bottom” immediately.37

  All their friends were now forced to take sides as if it were a marital divorce. Wordsworth was evidently very angry with the tales of Coleridge’s “plentiful abuse”, and was indignant when Lamb tried to defend his old friend with tactful explanations. “I do not know that I was ever more roused in my Life”, he wrote to Mary Wordsworth, “and I feel the effects in my stomache at this moment.”38 When urged that he would upset Coleridge’s lectures, he remarked bitterly: “One guinea the course upon the Drama. This is a most odious way of picking up money, and scattering about his own and his friend’s thoughts.”39 Coleridge in turn was angry and dismayed when he heard the news. “Mr Wordsworth is in town; & at a time when I require the most perfect tranquillity of mind, I am plunged into the hot water of that bedeviled Cauldron, Explanation with alienated Friendship.”40

  5

  Both men revealed a good deal of themselves in the series of confrontations and manoeuvres that followed. Wordsworth was restrained, self-confident and relentless in the pursuit of justice to his reputation. Coleridge was wildly emotional, self-dramatizing and desperate for some show of tender-heartedness. Ultimately Wordsworth believed the “business” could be settled; while Coleridge feared that the “magic” of friendship had been lost forever.

  Wordsworth conducted the affair something like a military campaign, keeping well clear of the actual battleground. His first salvo from Grosvenor Square arrived at Berners Street in the shape of Charles Lamb, deputed as his emissary, on 1 May. Wordsworth would not meet privately with Coleridge, the most obvious thing to do in the circumstances. Instead, he proposed a formal confrontation between Basil Montagu and Coleridge in his presence, with Josiah Wedgwood as judicial arbiter. Wordsworth would then listen to both sides, and decide who was telling the truth.

  Not unnaturally, Coleridge refused to attend such a court-martial. It was wholly unsuitable that Wedgwood, as his patron, should be involved. And besides, if Montagu declared to his face “that he did not say what I solemnly aver that he did”, then Coleridge would be forced to challenge him to a duel.41 Moreover there was the sensitive subject of Asra, which could only be discussed in private. Prior to any meeting, Coleridge wished “to transmit to Wordsworth a statement which I long ago began with the intention of sending it to Mrs Wordsworth’s Sister – but desisted in consequence of understanding that she has already decided the matter against me.” Would Wordsworth now read this letter, and then meet in private?

  Lamb took back these remarks, which Coleridge clarified in a letter to Lamb on 2 May. The substance was passed on to Wordsworth as intended. It contained notable concessions. “I never felt as matter of serious Complaint, what was stated to have been said – (for this, tho’ painfully aggravated, was yet substantially true) – but by WHOM it was said, and to whom, & how & when.” It also urged the untimeliness of the whole affair, “when every Thought should be given to my Lectures”. He did feel “cruelly & unkindly treated”.42

  Wordsworth immediately sensed dangerous waters. He withdrew the proposed confrontation with Montagu, but refused absolutely to read any document involving Sara Hutchinson, which would “degrade him” and which was an “unmanly” suggestion “to say the least of it”.43

  Coleridge then wrote a long letter directly to Wordsworth on 4 May, describing in detail the events of October 1811 when he first came to London with the Montagus, but making no reference to Asra. He denied that he had gossiped unnecessarily to Southey, or Sir George Beaumont about the quarrel (though he did not mention Sharp), and suggested that Mrs Clarkson
was responsible for much of the public scandal. As to the famous powder in his hair, he pointed out rather pathetically that he was growing increasingly grey. He ended “whatever be the result of this long delayed explanation, I have loved you & your’s too long & too deeply to have it in my own power to cease to do so.”44

  However, Wordsworth simply refused to open this letter either. First Coleridge must send assurance that it contained “nothing but a naked statement of what he believes Montagu said to him”, which he would only then read and pass on to Montagu “to see how their reports accord”.45 This arctic response seems to have hurt Coleridge very deeply, for it was, as he told Crabb Robinson, plainly “insulting or unfriendly”. Lamb too was astonished by Wordsworth’s coldness, and knowing how deeply Coleridge’s feelings ran, he sorrowfully withdrew from all further negotiations. There matters rested for four days, with Coleridge’s lectures now less than a week away. It was, he told Lamb, “grievously unseasonable…just as I had begun to feel the firm Ground under my feet”.46

  However, by stonewalling Wordsworth had manoeuvred himself into a corner. He had come to London specifically to settle “this vile business…the Coleridge matter”, but he had made no progress, and he had glimpsed the troubled waters of Asra beginning to stir once again. The public gossip continued to mount.47 Dorothy had written with further tales from Mrs Clarkson, and concluded that Coleridge was now incapable of telling the truth about anything and was determined to make a scandal. She now thought, rather bitterly, that Coleridge was “glad of a pretext to break with us, and to furnish himself with a ready excuse for all his failures in duty to himself and others”.48

  She had been shaken to receive instructions from Mrs Coleridge at Keswick to pack up three chests of Coleridge’s books from their library at Grasmere (most of them German books for his lectures), and a formal request for permission to reprint Wordsworth’s conclusion to the “Essay on Epitaphs” in the new edition of The Friend. Wordsworth did not grant this permission, but he saw that he had done nothing either to silence Coleridge or to appease him.

  The possibilities of the whole affair now escalating further under its own momentum were not attractive. Wordsworth had recently applied to the Lord Lieutenant of Cumberland, asking to be considered for any convenient minor public office that lay at his Lordship’s disposal, as a way of augmenting his literary income which was no longer enough to support his growing family.49 As a candidate for such an appointment, he simply could not afford a scandal. His friendship with Coleridge, for so many years the great support and sustenance of his literary career, now looked more and more like a dangerous professional liability.

  On 8 May, with Coleridge’s lectures only four days away, Wordsworth renewed his campaign. He took the unexpected and perhaps slightly risky step of consulting Coleridge’s friend Henry Crabb Robinson, a man whom he only knew through the Clarksons. Crabb Robinson proved a far shrewder plenipotentiary than Lamb. Flattered to be confided in by Wordsworth, and genuinely keen to effect a reconciliation, he revealed great talents as a diplomat, while secretly noting down every stage of the manoeuvres in his diary. He was fascinated to be so closely involved with “two such men as W. & C.…One I believe the greatest man now living in this Country. And the other a man of astonishing genius & talents, though not harmoniously blended as in his happier friend to form a great & good man.”50

  After talking for some time of poetry and politics (especially the war in Spain) to sound Robinson out, Wordsworth then spoke with great frankness about Coleridge. The one thing he denied was actually having “commissioned” Basil Montagu to pass on his views. For the rest he did not deny “having said he had no hopes of Coleridge”; or having conveyed the opinion that Coleridge was “rotting out his entrails by intemperance”, though he doubted if he had used that exact expression. He did not object to meeting Coleridge, but would rather not see him alone. “He was fearful of those bursts of passion – or rather weakness – of which Coleridge is capable”; and hated it when Coleridge burst into tears “instead of defending himself”. He detested Coleridge’s drunkenness and opium-taking, yet still had the highest opinion of his gifts. “Coleridge’s habits had, in fact, been of a kind which he, Wordsworth, could not have endured but for the high estimation he had formed of Coleridge.” Wordsworth thought his powers of mind “to be greater than those of any man he ever knew. From such a man, under favourable influences everything might be looked for. His genius he thought to be great, but his talents greater still, and it is in the union of so much genius with so much talent, that Coleridge surpasses all the men Wordsworth ever knew.”51

  When Robinson asked tentatively if Wordsworth thought Coleridge might be jealous of him, Wordsworth “totally rejected the supposition”, adding that “envy & jealousy of that kind were faults of which Coleridge was utterly free”.52 On the other hand, nothing was said of Asra.

  Robinson was much struck by the decided and sensible way in which Wordsworth spoke, and by his extraordinary praise of Coleridge. Yet like Lamb he was surprised by Wordsworth’s evident coolness. However, he agreed to walk round immediately to Berners Street, and to give Coleridge a carefully edited version of what Wordsworth had said, to ask for a written statement of what Coleridge had heard from Montagu, and to press for a reconciliation.

  This he did, with some success. Coleridge agreed to draw up the statement, but asked in turn for a written reply from Wordsworth. What struck Robinson was the emotional difference between the two men. “Coleridge manifested certainly much more feeling than Wordsworth. He was agitated and affected, even to tears…then burst into strong expressions of his love for Wordsworth.”53 Robinson did not stay long – “I was apprehensive of saying too much” – but went round to Lamb’s, continuing his shuttle diplomacy. Lamb still thought Wordsworth “cold”, but Robinson said he preferred “healthful coolness” in negotiations to Coleridge’s “heat of disease”. Both agreed that Coleridge was “disturbed” by Wordsworth’s presence in London, “and the effect on his lectures may be bad”. The reconciliation must be speedy.54

  Accordingly, on Sunday, 10 May, just two days before the lectures, Robinson called round “by appointment” at Berners Street, and collected Coleridge’s written statement. It was evident that Coleridge had been upset the entire weekend, and when he tried to read the statement he burst into tears again. But the statement impressed Robinson as containing “the most indubitable internal evidence of truth”. When he took it immediately back to Wordsworth it had its “due effect”.

  They had a further long conversation about Coleridge – “much was confidential” – and decided to draw up a written reply the following day, answering everything point by point. This document required all Crabb Robinson’s legal skills to draft and re-draft, and took all the morning of Monday, 11 May, the very day before the lectures were due to begin. Wordsworth had “great difficulty” with it, as he had “to reconcile things very difficult to unite – the most exact truth and sincerity with the giving his friend the least possible pain”.55

  They finally arrived at the following formula. Wordsworth “most solemnly denied” the general charge of having commissioned Montagu to say anything against Coleridge on his behalf, and one by one turned aside the offensive phrases as inaccurately reported to him. “I also affirm as sacredly that though in some of the particulars enumerated by C. as having wounded his feelings there is something of the form of truth there is absolutely nothing of the Spirit in any of them.” He freely acknowledged “an error in judgement” in having ever spoken to Montagu “upon so delicate a subject”. He accepted Coleridge’s version of events, not as necessarily true in itself, but “as an expression of his conviction” of what was said by Montagu (Robinson’s skilful touch was evident here). He reiterated the “love and affection” which he still entertained for Coleridge, and which he trusted Coleridge still “entertains for me”. Finally he hoped that no other “points” remained to be settled between them, but it there were, that “no farth
er steps may be taken till C. has closed the Lectures”.56

  It was an admirable document of its kind, and Crabb Robinson was convinced, correctly as it turned out, that Coleridge would accept it. It also made a convert of Crabb Robinson himself, who was deeply impressed by Wordsworth’s behaviour under circumstances that were not unlike a cross-examination at the bar. “The conversation that accompanied the writing it was highly interesting and exhibited Wordsworth in a most honourable light. His integrity, his purity, his delicacy are alike eminent. How preferable is the coolness of such a man to the heat of Coleridge.”57 The document was delivered to Berners Street that afternoon, and Coleridge later said it was “perfectly satisfactory to him”, though by then quite other and dramatic events had overtaken them all.

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  It was also, in the longer perspective, a deliberate evasion. There is a sense in which Coleridge was evidently seeking a far more fundamental confrontation with his old friend, and which Wordsworth was determined to avoid – and did so successfully. Crabb Robinson’s back-and-forth diplomacy reduced to almost legalistic quibbles and concessions a current of feeling between the two poets, in which artistic debts and emotional claims of the most profound kind were censored and suppressed. Ten years later Coleridge would still speak of this break with Wordsworth, and the loss of Asra which it involved, as two of the “griping and grasping Sorrows” that darkened his whole life: “the former spread a wider gloom over the world around me, the latter left a darkness deeper within myself.”58

  At the time, writing directly to Wordsworth on the afternoon of 11 May, he tried to reaffirm their ancient allegiance in a burst of feeling quite different from anything that Wordsworth’s careful sentences had expressed. “I declare before God Almighty that at no time even of my sorest affliction did even the possibility occur to me of ever doubting your word. I never ceased for a moment to have faith in you, to love & revere you: tho’ I was unable to explain an unkindness, which seemed anomalous in your character.”59