COLERIDGE, Samuel Taylor (1772–1834), British poet, critic, and philosopher.
1 In 1796 Coleridge launched a periodical called The Watchman, a collection of prose and verse with the motto: “That all might know the truth, and that the truth might make us free.” The enterprise was a total failure; it was discontinued after the ninth issue and a large number of unsold copies lay around Coleridge’s house. One morning the poet saw his servant-girl laying a fire and it seemed to him that she was being unnecessarily prodigal with the amount of paper she was using. “Don’t worry, sir,” she reassured him, “it’s only Watchmen.”
2 (Coleridge tells the story of the genesis of “Kubla Khan.”)
“In the summer of 1797, the author, then in ill health, had retired to a lonely farmhouse between Porlock and Linton, on the Exmoor confines of Somerset and Devonshire. In consequence of a slight indisposition, an anodyne had been prescribed, from the effects of which he fell asleep in his chair at the moment of reading the following sentence, or words of the same substance, in Purchas’ Pilgrimage: ‘Here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built, and a stately garden thereunto. And thus ten miles of fertile ground were inclosed with a wall.’ The author continued for about three hours in a profound sleep, at least of the external senses, during which time he has the most vivid confidence that he could not have composed less than from two to three hundred lines; if that indeed can be called composition in which all the images rose up before him as things, with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions, without any sensation or consciousness of effort. On awaking he appeared to himself to have a distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen, ink, and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here preserved. At this moment he was unfortunately called out by a person on business from Porlock, and detained by him above an hour, and on his return to his room, found, to his no small surprise and mortification, that though he still retained some vague and dim recollection of the general purport of the vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed away like the images on the surface of a stream into which a stone has been cast, but, alas! without the restoration of the latter.”
3 (Charles Lamb recalls an encounter with Coleridge in London.)
“Brimful of some new idea, and in spite of my assuring him that time was precious, he drew me within the door of an unoccupied garden by the road-side, and there, sheltered from observation by a hedge of evergreens, he took me by the button of my coat, and closing his eyes commenced an eloquent discourse, waving his right hand gently, as the musical words flowed in an unbroken stream from his lips. I listened entranced; but the striking of a church clock recalled me to a sense of duty. I saw it was of no use to attempt to break away, so taking advantage of his absorption in his subject, I, with my penknife, quietly severed the button from my coat, and decamped. Five hours afterwards, in passing the same garden on my way home, I heard Coleridge’s voice, and on looking in, there he was, with closed eyes — the button in his fingers — and his right hand gracefully waving, just as when I left him. He had never missed me!”
4 Coleridge was once involved in discussion with a man who firmly believed that children should not be given formal religious instructtion of any kind. They would then be free to choose their own religious faith, he reasoned, when they reached the age of discretion. Coleridge did not disagree, but later invited the man into his somewhat neglected garden.
“Do you call this a garden?” exclaimed the visitor. “There are nothing but weeds here!”
“Well, you see,” explained Coleridge, “I did not wish to infringe upon the liberty of the garden in any way. I was just giving the garden a chance to express itself and to choose its own production.”
5 Shortly after Coleridge’s tragedy Remorse appeared, he was sitting in a public room of a hotel when he heard his name being read out by a gentleman who was studying a newspaper report of a coroner’s inquest. Coleridge asked if he might see the paper, and the stranger handed it over to him. “Extraordinary that Coleridge should have hanged himself just after the success of his play, but he always was a strange mad fellow,” he remarked. “Indeed, it is the most extraordinary thing,” said Coleridge, “that he should have hanged himself, be the subject of an inquest, and yet should be here at this moment speaking to you.” Greatly disconcerted, the other man began to apologize, but Coleridge had taken no offense and was scanning the coroner’s report. It seemed that the body of a man had been cut down from a tree in Hyde Park, and no papers had been found in his pockets to identify him, but inside his shirt was a label reading “S. T. COLERIDGE.” Coleridge could readily explain that; in his travels he very frequently mislaid or otherwise lost shirts.
6 Coleridge was out riding with a friend near his home in the Lake District, wearing his customary shabby clothes. Seeing some people approaching, Coleridge suggested that he pass himself off as his friend’s servant. “No,” said his companion. “I am proud of you as a friend, but would be ashamed of you as a servant.”
7 “Did you ever hear me preach?” Coleridge asked Lamb. Replied Lamb, “I have never heard you do anything else.”
COLETTE [Sidonie Gabrielle Claudine Colette] (1873–1954), French writer.
1 In a memoir written in her forties, Colette said that she owed all her success as a writer to the appeal that her mother made to her constantly in her childhood, as she did her farm chores, to “Look, look!” Colette died in Paris in 1954, during the worst thunderstorm to visit Paris in sixty-seven years. She was eighty-one then, but her passion for observation was undiminished. Her last conscious act was to gesture toward the flashing lightning and exclaim, “Look, look!”
Samuel Butler told this story about the poet Herbert Clarke’s little boy aged ten: “His mother had put him to bed and, as he was supposed to have a cold, he was to say his prayers in bed. He said them, yawned and said, ‘The real question is whether there is a God or no,’ on which he instantly fell into a sweet and profound sleep which forbade all further discussion.”
— Samuel Butler’s Notebooks: Selections, ed. Geoffrey Keynes and Brian Hill
COLLINS, Joan (1933–), British-born actress and popular novelist known especially for her television appearances.
1 Miss Collins had been friendly with the director George Englund. When his wife, Cloris Leachman, revealed symptoms of pregnancy, Miss Collins understandably lost her temper. “That’s my baby she’s having!” she screamed at Englund.
COLLINS, Michael (1890–1922), Irish nationalist leader.
1 One of the leading figures on the British side during the 1921 negotiations over the Irish treaty was F. E. Smith, who supported a compromise on the basis of a division that allowed Ulster to remain under British control. This encountered opposition in Britain, and after signing the treaty Smith observed as he laid down his pen, “I may have signed my political death warrant tonight.”
“I may have signed my actual death warrant,” said Collins.
Eight months later Collins was gunned down by republican extremists opposed to the compromise with Britain.
COLUMBUS, Christopher (1451–1506), Italian-born navigator who was a discoverer of America (1492).
1 On Columbus’s first voyage west, in 1492, his crew was understandably uneasy about the trip through unknown waters, to an unknown destination, and for an unknown period of time. To reassure the sailors and disguise the true length of the journey, Columbus kept two logs: one the real distances traveled as he reckoned them, and the other giving shorter ones so that the crew would think they were closer to home than they actually were. The irony is that it turned out the falsified figures were more accurate than the ones Columbus kept in the “true” log.
2 At a banquet given by the grand cardinal of Spain, Columbus was seated at the most honored place at table and served with great deference and ceremony. A courtier, jealous of the foreigner’s success, asked him rudely whether he thought that if h
e had not discovered the New World somebody else would have done so. Columbus did not reply at once, but, taking an egg in his hand, invited the guest to make it stand on one end. All tried and failed, whereupon Columbus cracked the egg against the table in such a way as to flatten one end. Then he set it standing on the crushed part. The moral was plain to the company: once he had shown the way, anyone could follow it.
3 At his anchorage off Jamaica in 1504 Columbus faced a dangerous situation with supplies of food running low and the Jamaican Indians refusing to sell him any more. Consulting his almanac, he noticed that a lunar eclipse was due a few days later. On the day predicted he summoned the leaders of the Jamaicans, telling them that that night he would blot out the moon unless they resumed food trading. The Jamaicans laughed at him, but that night, when the lunar eclipse began, they came hurrying back in a state of great terror. Columbus said he would restore the moon if they would bring him food, an offer that they gladly accepted. The moon was duly restored and the Jamaicans hurried to bring food supplies they had withheld.
COMTE, Auguste (1798–1857), French philosopher.
1 Knowing that he was about to die, Comte murmured, “What an irreparable loss!”
CONDORCET, Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis de (1743–94), French writer, mathematician, and philosopher.
1 After the Jacobins came to power, Condorcet was sheltered by a widow who bravely insisted that the outlaw remain with her despite the knowledge that she would certainly be killed if he were discovered. Concerned for her safety, Condorcet slipped away and went into hiding for three days in a stone quarry until hunger forced him out to a tavern in the village of Clamart. Here he ordered an omelet. The cook asked how many eggs he wanted. With an aristocrat’s ignorance of the usual number of eggs for such a dish, Condorcet ordered a dozen. Suspicions aroused, the taverner demanded his trade. “Carpenter,” lied Condorcet. The man snatched the fugitive’s hands and studied them. “You’re no carpenter,” he declared, and Condorcet was dragged off to prison. The next day he was found dead on the floor of his cell.
CONFUCIUS (c. 551–479 BC), Chinese philosopher and political administrator.
1 Ejected from yet another state, Confucius and his disciples were passing through a remote and deserted region when they came upon an old woman weeping beside a grave. The master asked her why. A tiger had killed her husband, she explained, and her husband’s father; now it had recently slain her only son. “Why then do you live in this savage place?” asked Confucius. “Because there is no oppressive government here,” was the reply. “My children,” said Confucius to his followers, “remember that oppressive government is worse than a tiger.”
2 Confucius and his disciples, traveling through dry country, were all suffering from thirst. One disciple, however, managed to discover a hidden rain puddle, filled his rice bowl, and offered it to the Master. Confucius was about to raise it to his lips when he observed the faces of his disciples. At once he emptied the bowl on the ground, saying, “It would be too much for one, too little for all of us. Let us continue our walk.”
CONGREVE, William (1670–1729), British dramatist.
1 After 1700 Congreve wrote little, preferring to lead the life of a gentleman supported by various pensions and sinecures obtained for him by his friends. Voltaire had the highest admiration for Congreve’s comedies and on his visit to England sought out the elderly ex-dramatist. Much to Voltaire’s disgust, Congreve spoke slightingly of the profession of author, although he owed to it his lasting fame and worldly fortunes, telling Voltaire that he wished to be thought of merely as an ordinary gentleman. Voltaire told Congreve sharply that if he had been so unfortunate as to have been only “a mere gentleman,” he would never have come to visit him.
CONNELLY, Marc (1890–1980), US dramatist.
1 Connelly was almost totally bald. One afternoon at the Round Table in the Algonquin dining room a man ran his hand over the dramatist’s bare head and observed, “That feels just like my wife’s behind.” Connelly stroked his head thoughtfully. “So it does,” he replied.
2 Connelly was traveling in Portugal with a group of US pressmen, although his own credentials for joining the party were nonexistent. At a formal dinner all the members were invited by their Portuguese hosts to say a few words about the publications they represented. Some of the touring Americans wondered how Connelly would get out of what was potentially an embarrassing situation. When his turn came, Connelly got to his feet with perfect dignity, announced his name, and said, “I am editor of Popular Wading, the magazine of shallow water sports.” He then went on to deliver a fifteen-minute oration on the imaginary publication, praising its editorial policy and excoriating the rival magazine True Wading, which catered only to “those sports reaching the ankle.” When he sat down, the touring press group gave him an enthusiastic ovation. The Portuguese maintained a bemused silence.
“Primo Carnera was the hulking giant who captured the boxing world’s imagination during the 1930’s. Not much on defensive skills, he seemed willing to absorb a hundred punches if he could get off one good one himself. It was during his fight with Max Baer, with Baer giving Primo a thorough boxing lesson, that Grantland Rice remarked, ‘The big fellow sure can take it.’ ‘Yes,’ said another writer, Heywood Broun, ‘but he doesn’t seem to know what to do with it.’ ”
— R. L. CROUSER, It’s Unlucky to Be Behind at the End of the Game
CONNOLLY, Cyril (1903–74), British writer and critic.
1 (Connolly was easily moved to tears, sometimes for the most trivial reasons. Stephen Spender recalls such an occasion.)
“At a restaurant dinner given on some fairly grim PEN Club Conference occasion, he [Connolly] was sitting opposite me and I noticed the tears start in his eyes and then trickle down each cheek. Suddenly he got up from the table, came over to me, and insisted on changing places. Intense boredom with the conversation of the lady journalist on his left had driven him to this extreme course of action.”
CONSTABLE, John (1776–1837), British artist.
1 Before the opening of the Royal Academy’s annual exhibition, Constable and the other artists were there doing the final touching-up to their work. Constable paused to look at a landscape by Clarkson Stanfield and particularly singled out the sky for praise. A little while later he met his friend Ramsay Reinagle and told him to look at Stanfield’s work. “Take particular note of the sky; it looks just like putty,” he added. Reinagle went to look. “But I like the sky!” he exclaimed, half to himself, after studying the picture. Stanfield overheard him and demanded to know what he meant. “Well, Constable told me the sky was like putty,” Reinagle said. Incensed, Stanfield sought out Constable and accused him of being a humbug. “You singled out the sky for particular praise, and then you tell Reinagle it looks like putty!”
“So what?” said Constable. “I happen to like putty.”
2 It is said that Constable and William Blake met on only one occasion. Constable showed the older artist some of his drawings, and Blake exclaimed enthusiastically, “Why, this is not drawing, but inspiration!”
“I never knew it before,” replied the prosaic Constable. “I meant it for drawing.”
3 While Constable was painting The Cenotaph, he was asked whether he would have trouble deciding on how to represent a certain brown tree. “Not in the least,” replied Constable, “for I never put such a thing into a picture.”
CONSTANTINE [Constantine the Great] (c. 285-337), Roman emperor in the West (312-24) and sole emperor at Byzantium (312-37). He was the first emperor to be converted to Christianity.
1 In the first decade of the fourth century AD six men claimed the leadership of Rome. Chief among them were Maxentius, proclaimed emperor by the Roman Praetorian Guard, and Constantine. In 312 Constantine advanced across the Alps toward the forces of Maxentius and challenged him at the Mul-vian bridge over the Tiber. On the afternoon before the battle Constantine saw a flaming cross outlined against the sun; on it were th
e Greek words “En toutoi nika” (In this sign you shall conquer). The next morning Constantine heard a voice in a dream commanding him to have his soldiers mark upon their shields the chi rho — the monogram for Christ. Constantine obeyed, fought Maxentius, and won.
CONTI, Prince Louis-Armand II de (1695–1727), a member of one of the most influential French families, who was often called a monster of vice.
1 The prince was as ugly as his wife was witty. One day, about to depart on a journey, he said to her in jest, “Madame, I would advise you above all things not to make me a cuckold during my absence.” Her reply: “Monsieur, you may leave without any anxiety, for it is only when I look at you that I have any wish to deceive you.”
COOK, Thomas (1808–92), British tour operator.
1 Cook himself was a zealous supporter of temperance, but his non-teetotal clients on continental tours took a different view. At an Italian railroad station his flock surged toward the buffet in search of cheap local wine. He tried to halt them with the cry: “Gentlemen, don’t invest your money in diarrhea!”
COOLIDGE, [John] Calvin (1872–1933), 30th President of the United States (1923–29).
1 On returning from church one day, Coolidge was asked on what topic the minister had preached. After a moment’s thought he replied, “Sin.”
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