The one book that Coleridge never set out to write, strangely enough, was a Confession. His ambition is closer to a prose version of Wordsworth’s Prelude (“the Growth of a Poet’s Mind”), than to De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium Eater. The fact that Coleridge had already disburdened himself of his most humiliating guilts in his Bristol letters may well have given him the initial confidence to create the public persona of the Biographia. He writes almost nothing of his addiction (“bodily pain and mismanaged sensibility”); little of his marriage (except in one painfully defensive footnote); and nothing at all of course of Asra. There is no mention even of his composition of “Kubla Khan”.
Yet the appeal to his readers is still intimate. The Biographia opens with an epigraph from Goethe, which comes to haunt the whole text. “He wishes to knit anew his connections with his oldest friends, to continue those recently formed, and to win other friends among the rising generation for the remaining course of his life. He wishes to spare the young those circuitous paths, on which he himself had lost his way.”77 The idea of his book as a difficult journey, reflecting the chaos and disorientation of his own life, but from which “the rising generation” might learn the true path of the Imagination, is a dramatically effective key. It suggests Coleridge’s dual role as narrator, both hapless victim and philosophic guide, both absurd and wise, which – with many ironies and self-mockeries – developed quite naturally as he dictated to Morgan.
He also repeats early in the first chapter the familiar idea of literary friendship. Remembering the impact of his first reading of Bowles’s sonnet at the age of seventeen, he observed: “The great works of past ages seem to a young man things of another race, in respect to which his faculties must remain passive and submiss, even as to the stars and mountains. But the writings of a contemporary, perhaps not many years older than himself, surrounded by the same circumstances, and disciplined by the same manners, possess a reality for him, and inspire an actual friendship as of a man for a man.”78
The first three chapters, written in April and early May, have a loose, apologetic, preliminary feel. “It has been my lot to have had my name introduced in conversation, and in print, more frequently than I find it easy to explain…”79 They still read like the Preface to his Poems, as first conceived. They recount the various influences on his youthful work: of his headmaster Bowyer, of Bowles, and of Southey, and give a highly critical description of his own first publications. But with Chapter 4 and the arrival of Wordsworth, the Biographia bursts into life. Coleridge’s language takes on a confident stride and a vivid metaphorical life which is as good as any prose he ever wrote.
During the last year of my residence at Cambridge, I became acquainted with Mr Wordsworth’s first publication entitled “Descriptive Sketches”; and seldom, if ever, was the emergence of an original poetic genius above the literary horizon more evidently announced. In the form, style, and manner of the whole poem, and in the structure of the particular lines and periods, there is a harshness and acerbity connected and combined with words and images all a-glow, which might recall those products of the vegetable world, where gorgeous blossoms rise out of the hard and thorny rind and shell, within which the rich fruit was elaborating. The language was not only peculiar and strong, but at times knotty and contorted, as by its own impatient strength…80
9
In fact Wordsworth had burst in upon Coleridge’s tranquillity at Calne in May, just as he had burst into Chapter 4, and the two events were intimately related. Hitherto the greatest excitement had been a smallpox scare, when an infected traveller on the coach from Newbury (banished to a cowshed) had inadvertently had contact with Charlotte Brent. Coleridge wrote urgently to Dr Brabant at Devizes, asking for “any vaccine virus” and remembering his own vaccination in childhood at Ottery. He could not love her any more than a “younger Sister”, and they were both “greatly alarmed” and anxious for her to be inoculated.
He rode over himself to Devizes to collect the vaccine, and on his return on 30 May found another unexpected messenger from the outside world awaiting him. Wordsworth had written a polite but somewhat peremptory letter, the first for many months. He had heard from Lady Beaumont that Coleridge intended to publish the “poem addressed to me after hearing mine to you” (“To William Wordsworth”) in his forthcoming collection; and also that Coleridge had some “comparative censure” of supposedly “commonplace truths” in The Excursion. Would Coleridge do him the “kindness” of omitting the former, and explaining the latter. “Pray point out to me the most striking instances where I have failed, in producing poetic effect by an overfondness for this practice, or through inability to realize my wishes.”81 He signed off: “believe me my dear Coleridge in spite of your silence, Most affectionately yours W. Wordsworth.”
Coleridge was pained by the thin tone of the letter, but touched by the reproach. Wordsworth was anxious about his literary reputation – The Excursion had received an infamous mauling by Jeffrey in the Edinburgh Review, beginning “This will never do” – and Coleridge’s old instinct to defend his friend now began to shape the emerging Biographia. But first he immediately sent back a long reply, affirming his love and admiration for “an absent friend, to whom for the more substantial Third of a Life we have been habituated to look up”. He did have criticisms, but also a “dread of giving pain, or exciting suspicions of alteration and Dyspathy”. He copied out a long passage in praise of Wordsworth’s Prelude from “To William Wordsworth” (though promising not to publish it), and then rose to a superb description of the sort of epic he had expected from Wordsworth. This touches on many points of the arguments of the Biographia, and is itself a sort of prose poem.
In the very Pride of Confident Hope I looked forward to the Recluse, as the first and only true Philosophical Poem in existence…I supposed you first to have mediated the faculties of Man in the abstract…to have laid a solid and immovable foundation for the Edifice by removing the sandy Sophisms of Locke, and the Mechanic Dogmatists, and demonstrating that the Senses were living growths and developments of the Mind & Spirit…to have affirmed a Fall in some sense, as a fact, the possibility of which cannot be understood from the Nature of the Will, but the reality of which is attested by Experience & Conscience – Fallen men contemplated in the different ages of the World, and in the different states – Savage – Barbarous – Civilized – the lonely Cot, or Borderer’s Wigwam – the Village – the Manufacturing Town – Sea-port – City – Universities – and not disguising the sore evils, under which the whole creation groans, to point out however a manifest Scheme of Redemption from this Slavery, of Reconciliation from this Enmity with Nature.
Above all, he had hoped that Wordsworth would promulgate a philosophy of “Life, and Intelligence” in place of that “philosophy of mechanism which in everything that is most worthy of the human Intellect strikes Death.”82
Coleridge kept all personal bitterness out of this letter, as he would faithfully do in the Biographia. He invited Wordsworth to Calne, and signed off: “God bless you! – I am & never have been other than your affectionate S. T. Coleridge.”
Yet in his Notebooks he confided his horror of what he saw as Wordsworth’s growing professional self-obsession, his anxiety for reputation, and what he called in a lethally vivid phrase “the force of self-vorticity”. “Were intellect only in question, STC would rather groan under his manifold sins & sorrows, all either contained in or symbolized by OPIUM, than cherish that self-concentration [of W.] which renders the dearest beings means to him, never really ends.” He added miserably (but in the event quite wrongly): “I would almost wager my life, that if [W.] published [The Prelude], he would cancel all the passages relating to STC.” But Coleridge would never live to know this.83
Until this time at the end of May, Coleridge was still referring to the Biographia as a “Preface” which would be finished, as planned with Gutch, in early June.84 It was a single essay, with no chapter divisions, and ran to less than six
ty pages. But now he was grappling directly once more with Wordsworth: the disappointment of The Excursion, the memories of the Lyrical Ballads, the challenge of Wordsworth’s new Poems of 1815. So he launched into the materials that became Chapters 4 (and eventually 14 onwards), and began one of the most intensive periods of composition of his life.
For eight weeks throughout June and July 1815 he dictated to Morgan in four- or five-hour stints, both morning and evening, breaking off for nothing but an early supper. He rarely left the house at Church Street, except to walk in the meadows, or to visit a company of itinerant players who were acting in the little theatre at the top of the town. When their producer, a Mr Falkner, announced that he would mount a production of Remorse, and take it on to Devizes and Bristol, Coleridge had the satisfaction of becoming a provincial celebrity. He was proud of their efforts: “On my conscience, they appear to me to act just as well as those on the London stage; indeed, far beyond my expectation.”85
In Chapter 4 a whole new structure to the Biographia begins to emerge. Coleridge announces that this is a study of the poetic revolution that Wordsworth and he created in the Lyrical Ballads in the Quantocks. He will show the literary tradition out of which they worked, and will demonstrate Wordsworth as the commanding poetic genius of the age, despite the weaknesses of his “critical remarks” (which Coleridge will correct).86 It will show that the power “in which all Mr Wordsworth’s writings is more or less predominant, and which constitutes the character of his mind”, was that of Imagination. And by philosophical analysis, it will argue that “fancy and imagination were two distinct and widely different faculties, instead of being, according to the general belief, either two names with one meaning, or at furthest, the lower and higher degree of one and the same power”.87 This theory “would in its immediate effects furnish a torch of guidance to the philosophical critic; and ultimately to the poet himself”.88
There are still apologetic asides – the book will be an “immethodical miscellany”, and “metaphysics and psychology have long been my hobby-horse” – but the thrust is now surprisingly direct.89 The subtitle to Chapter 4 clearly points the way ahead: “The Lyrical Ballads with the Preface – Mr Wordsworth’s earlier Poems – On Fancy and Imagination – The investigation of the distinction important to the fine arts.”90 This material runs straight forward to Chapter 14 (no middle chapters existing on this plan), and continues the argument with perfect continuity: “During the first year that Mr Wordsworth and I were neighbours, our conversation turned frequently on the two cardinal points of poetry, the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colours of imagination…”91 There follows his account of the origins of the Lyrical Ballads, which includes Coleridge’s most famous description of imagination at work on the reader’s mind: “that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment which constitutes poetic faith”.92
What is so striking about this new version of the Biographia is that it had changed from an autobiography to a book that is essentially a long dialogue with Wordsworth himself. Once more he had been magnetized or seduced by Wordsworth’s presence, even at the distance of 300 miles and across the no-man’s land of their quarrel. The Biographia had become passionate conversation, or collaboration, by other means. It can also be seen as one more re-enactment of the old power struggle between Coleridge and Wordsworth, the river breaking round the rock.
10
One other influence may have helped to inspire Coleridge’s efforts. In mid-June the eighteen-year-old Hartley came to Calne from Oxford, to spend the whole of his first ever summer vacation with his father. The Morgans had formally extended the invitation, knowing that Coleridge felt guilty about being unable to support his son financially. They saw that far from being a distraction, Hartley’s presence would reassure Coleridge and bring a sense of family unity to the household. While for Hartley, the example of his father so hard at work during the day, as well as providing “great service” with his undergraduate studies in the evenings, would bring a closer and more adult understanding.93
For the first time in his life, Hartley was a free agent to decide where he would go outside Greta Hall, and it is significant that he chose to stay with his father, especially as this was in direct opposition to his uncle Southey’s wishes. Southey thought Hartley would easily be led astray: “his greatest danger arises…from his father”.94 Lamb, by contrast, thoroughly approved of the visit; it would form “a quintuple alliance” as he put it, between the Coleridges and the Morgans.95
In fact the summer visit was a great success, and Hartley remained until October.96 Despite his odd manners and odder appearance (now sporting a scrawny black beard), Mary Morgan found him “extremely amiable”.97 No letters from Hartley survive, but years later he wrote a nostalgic essay on Calne – “a place I can never think of without a strong twitching of the eye” – recalling the jumbled and irregular houses, the chalky hills and streams, and “some wildish, half-common fields…with old remains of hawthorn bowers and clumps of shady trees, where I used to dream my mornings away right pleasantly.”98
Hartley became very much part of the household. In late June they joined in the Calne celebrations for Wellington’s final victory over Napoleon at Waterloo. He accompanied his father on several visits to Bremhill and Bowood House. Another highlight was the revival of Remorse at the Calne Assembly Rooms in mid-August. Hartley discovered a shared fascination with John Morgan. Both of them were entranced by theatricals and strolling players, and according to Mary they were “behind the scenes all the time and assisted in the music etc.”.
It is even possible that Hartley had some influence on the writing of the Biographia. It was always addressed to the younger generation, and some of the running chapter heads – “Advice to young authors respecting publication” – “An affectionate exhortation to those who in early life feel themselves disposed to become authors” – could have had Hartley in mind. It is also easy to see how Coleridge might have used his clever, Oxford undergraduate son as an appreciative audience for his anecdotes and a sounding-board for his philosophical ideas.
Indeed Hartley’s natural attraction to the labyrinth of Coleridge’s thought was one of the things that Southey had most feared. “Hartley is able to comprehend the powers of his father’s mind, and has for it all that veneration which is both natural and proper that he should feel…[But] Coleridge, totally regardless of all consequences, will lead him into all the depth and mazes of metaphysics…”99 It is interesting that later in the summer, Coleridge complained that Hartley was squirrelling away many of his philosophical books in his bedroom.100
Hartley also greatly took to the Morgans, finding them more easygoing than the Wordsworths. “They were good, comfortable, unintellectual people, in whose company I always thought STC more than usually pleasant. And there were for a time strolling players, for whom, and indeed for all itinerants, I have a great liking.” There is a hint of loneliness, of adolescent solitude and restlessness about these reminiscences; yet Hartley looked back on this long vacation as one of the “happiest of my life”.101
With the help of Charlotte and Mary, Coleridge’s study room became neat and highly organized. His German books were shelved, the manuscripts of his poems for Sibylline Leaves were disinterred and stacked ready for the printer, his Notebooks were sorted for reference and quotation. (It was probably at this time that the copy of “Kubla Khan” resurfaced, and the gloss to the “Ancient Mariner” was begun.) Contemplating the unaccustomed order of his surroundings, Coleridge wrote a miniature essay on the aesthetics and psychology of artists’ studios.
He thought there were fundamentally two kinds: those that appeared totally chaotic except for the small concentrated area in which a book or a painting was being worked on (typically male); and those which were completely ordered and arranged throughout (typically female). These expressed not only gender, but creative p
sychology, the one with an active “concentrated” sense of the Beautiful, the other with a broader, passive “pleasure in Beauty, modified by the sense of Propriety”.
On the one hand, “See an artist’s Room, see a littery literary Man’s Room! – all in disorder – much dirt, more Confusion – but here and there some exquisitely finished Form or combination of Forms.” The owner of such a studio “annihilates for himself all non-Pertinent Objects”. On the other hand, “a well-tuned and sensitive female mind must have the whole of the given Space in keeping”. Such a mind could hardly endure “the rags, brushes & broken gallipots of an Allston, or the scattered Books, fluttering Pamphlets, & dusty Paper-wilderness of a Wordsworth”.
This argument shadows forth the polar metaphysics of the Biographia, in which active and passive principles are “seminal” to the understanding of creativity. Coleridge, the great generator of domestic chaos, now modestly claimed that (with Southey) he embodied both. “I know but two individuals who combine both, viz. – the Lady-like Wholeness with creative delight in particular forms – & these are Mr Robert Southey, Poet Laureate etc. etc. etc. and Mr Sam. Tayl. Coleridge, whose whole Being has been unfortunately little more than a far-stretched Series of Et Ceteras. Calne, Wiltshire.”102
11
This touch of his old ebullience was a sort of foam leaping from the great flood of his renewed dictation, as it found its path. In recounting the literary story of the Lyrical Ballads, Coleridge found the way forward by attacking Wordsworth’s theories of poetry in order to praise the poetry itself. This method released many of his greatest formulations of the creative act, seen as a psychological process or unique functioning of mental and spiritual powers. In Chapter 14, drawing on the many earlier hints from his lectures and letters, he defined poetry in a vocabulary part metaphysical and part scientific. It was a complex act of energy and synthesis, unique to the human spirit. Coleridge’s prose had never been more confident, or more inclusive.
Coleridge- Darker Reflections Page 46