Coleridge hung on in London till the first week in May, when he and Hartley saw Asra off on the stagecoach to the Clarksons’. There is no record of their parting. But the following day Coleridge nearly collapsed in a Bedford Street on the way to visit Sotheby, and fled back in a horse-cab to the Lambs. Mary Lamb, one of the shrewdest and kindest of Coleridge’s nurses, dosed him with brandy and strong broth, and stiffened his resolution for the next encounter with Mrs Coleridge.75 Father and son departed on the Bristol mail about 10 May 1807 – “No procrastination – no self-delusion”. Ahead of them lay an angry woman and an unpalatable letter, neither of which baleful objects should have been kept waiting in a well-ordered and rational universe.
Coleridge remained in the West Country for the next six months, and the Wordsworths did not hear from him again until November. But Asra secretly kept in touch from Bury St Edmund’s, though all her letters have been destroyed. The first indication of Coleridge’s arrival in Bristol – where he stayed with Josiah Wade in Queen’s Square, while Mrs Coleridge remained at her sister Martha’s – was the use of Greek cipher in his Notebooks.
An entry of 22 May, written in a curious pale red ink, which might be his “gout medicine” or even laudanum, suggests the marital rows over money and the children which now engulfed him. “As usual even the epoch of a pocket book must be marked with agitation…Mrs Coleridge this morning first planted in Hartley’s mind the pang of divided duty: & left me stormy & miserable – The same day received the second letter from Sara [Asra].”76
Other Greek entries mention anger and jealousy, the hope of “reconciliation”, and the continuing obsession of his unfulfilled love. “My love blazeth in presence: in absence it glows with a deep melancholy consuming flame. The walls, the window panes, the chair, the very air seems to sympathize with it!”77 These almost hallucinatory sensations would be later transmuted into a tender, Platonic poem, “Recollections of Love”.
But all the other work which he had so hopefully planned – the play, the collected poems, the Mediterranean travels – slid into oblivion. Even the letter from George remained unopened. As he wrote to another old Bristol friend, the publisher Joseph Cottle: “I will certainly give you the right hand of old-fellowship: but, alas! You will find me, rolling rudderless…Pain I have enough of, but that is indeed to me, a mere trifle, but the almost unceasing, overpowering sensations of wretchedness: aching in my limbs, with an indescribable restlessness, that makes action to any available purpose, almost impossible…”78 But this was surely the effect of opium, as much as Mrs Coleridge.
It was Tom Poole, still a great favourite of both husband and wife, who now came to Coleridge’s aid, inviting the whole family down to stay at Nether Stowey for the summer. They moved in early June. The children had the run of the large garden, the fun of haymaking, and the pungent fascination of the tanning yard. Mrs Coleridge had many old friends in the village, and Coleridge the hallowed retreat of Poole’s now famous bookroom (it had been used by Wordsworth, Davy, Hazlitt, and Lamb), with its discreet external staircase providing an escape into the orchard. Poole’s avuncular kindness and methodical efficiency were now directed briskly at Coleridge’s ill-health, taking him out on long walks, encouraging him to write to friends, and helping him analyse his own feelings.
On one evening Coleridge noted with simple pleasure: “Blue Sky through the glimmering interspaces of the dark Elms at Twilight rendered a lovely deep yellow green.”79 On another he recorded Poole’s characteristic and “affecting” remark, “How much the feelings of happy Childhood, when summer days appeared 20 times as long as now, may be produced by effective Industry – monuments of Time well spent.”80 Coleridge read agricultural textbooks, studies of astronomy (he had a brief fantasy of setting up his own observatory), and the poetry of the seventeenth-century religious mystic Richard Crashaw, whose Edenic images he compressed into tiny mottoes of hope: “Sunrise – As all the Trees of Paradise reblossoming in the East.”81
Poole also began the painful task, pursued throughout the summer, of substituting country ale for brandy, and trying to wean Coleridge off his high level of opium intake. Coleridge’s Notebooks become more and more explicit about actual physiological addiction – “all my Vitals are possessed by an unremitting Poison” – and now for the first time contain medically accurate descriptions of withdrawal symptoms. They produced pain in all his joints, especially the thighs and knees. But “the evil seems rather in the exceeding Unquiet, than in the pain – a cruel sweat on the brow, & on the chest – windy sickness at the Stomach – and in the mind a strong Temptation to…a reprobate Despair, that snatches at the known Poison…” He described the moment before succumbing to the next dose unforgettably, as “like the pause in the balancing of the Javelin”.82
Even the act of analytical introspection itself became destructive. “Meanwhile the habit of inward Brooding daily makes it harder to confess the Thing, I am, to any one – least of all to those, whom I most love & who most love me – & thereby introduces and fosters a habit of negative falsehood, & multiplies the Temptations to positive Insincerity.” Again for the first time, he acknowledged the need for professional help and made the first of innumerable resolutions to seek a medical cure, in this instance from his old friend Dr Beddoes of the Bristol Pneumatic Institute: “O God! let me bare my whole Heart to Dr B. or some other Medical Philosopher – if I could know there was no Relief; I might then resolve on something.”83
While Coleridge battled these mental coils, Poole brought him round to face other, practical duties. Coleridge’s patron Tom Wedgwood, upon whom half his annuity depended, had died during Coleridge’s absence in Malta. Tom’s brother, Josiah, had written asking for a memorial essay but Coleridge had simply failed to reply, leaving this letter too not merely unanswered but unopened for many weeks. Poole forced Coleridge to write a long, explanatory letter to Josiah from Stowey on 25 June, first smoothing the way with his own tactful missive.
“I admire and pity him more than ever,” he wrote to Josiah. “His information is much extended, the great qualities of his mind heightened and better disciplined; but alas: his health is weaker, and his great failing, procrastination, or the incapability of acting agreeably to his wish and will, much increased.”84 This was the nearest that the loyal Poole would get to opium.
Coleridge’s own explanation to Josiah mentioned “Ill-health, Despondency, domestic Distractions”, adding that he had indeed previously written a paper on Tom Wedgwood’s system of philosophy and “opinions in psychology” and had drawn at full “a portrait of my friend’s mind & character”, but this manuscript had been lost with his other Malta papers.85
As Sir James Mackintosh – now Josiah’s son-in-law – was editing Tom Wedgwood’s unpublished work, Coleridge did not offer to resurrect this paper from memory: “too great pain has baffled my attempts in going over again the detail of past times”. In the event Mackintosh did not fulfil his promise either, and it was left to Coleridge to insert a short but beautiful tribute to Tom in a footnote to The Friend in 1809. “He is gone, my Friend! my munificent Co-patron, and not less the Benefactor of my Intellect! – He who beyond all other men known to me, added a fine and ever-wakeful sense of Beauty to the most patient Accuracy in experimental Philosophy…”86
Coleridge particularly credited Tom with a “Theory of Perception” based on self-analytic notes of his own abnormal mental states and hallucinations, calmly and empirically pursued, “even during the wretched nights of sickness, in watching and instantly recording these experiences of the world within us…” Tom’s theory emphasized, in a new way, the subjective influence of memory and imagination on apparently inexplicable phenomena like ghosts and hallucinations. It was evidently of great importance to Coleridge, and his awkward protestations to Josiah – “O Sir! if you knew, what I suffer, and am this moment suffering, in thinking of him” – were heartfelt. Yet there was also a degree of calculation, since Coleridge “suspected & feared” his annuity
would be discontinued.87
But Josiah Wedgwood, a large-minded man who had much experience of literary “hypochondria” was prepared to be mollified. “I was truly glad to hear from him,” he confided to Poole. “His letter removed all those feelings of anger which occasionally, but not permanently, existed in my mind towards him. I am very sorry for him.”88 It might also have calmed Coleridge to know that half the annuity was actually secured by the terms of Tom Wedgwood’s will, and in practice Josiah could not touch it; but this only became clear later.
Not even Tom Poole’s diplomacy could resolve the misunderstanding with George Coleridge. His letter of 6 April was still unopened at the end of June, when Coleridge was intending to go down to Ottery in less than a week, “from a sense of Duty as it affects myself, & from a promise made to Mrs Coleridge, as far as it affects her”.89 His folly in leaving it so long would be incredible if he had not openly admitted such procrastination to Josiah Wedgwood: “I have sunk under such a strange cowardice of Pain, that I have not unfrequently kept Letters from persons dear to me for weeks together unopened.”90 Southey would later observe that, in practical terms, this was perhaps the most damaging of all the symptoms of Coleridge’s opium addiction, leading to endless business confusions, personal affronts and family chaos for over a decade. But it is also a revealing one, for it suggests that Coleridge knew instinctively where “Pain” and censure would come from, and unconsciously sought to protect himself by refusing to conform to civilized norms of behaviour. If the real world promised to be too harsh, he simply ignored it as long as possible, and tried to live in the breathing space. One is tempted to believe that he knew very well that George’s letter would bring bad news. If so, Coleridge was not disappointed when he finally opened it in July.
George was overwhelmed with his own family difficulties – illness at the school, the frailty of their “poor aged mother”, the “hereditary” despondency of Mrs James Coleridge – and could not possibly receive them. “To come to Ottery for such a purpose would be to create a fresh expense for yourself and to load my feelings with what they could not bear without endangering my life – I pray you therefore do not do so.” He could not take on the children at the school, though he might be able to help financially. He thought Mrs Coleridge’s friends might make “a settlement”, but he strongly disapproved of the separation. (Later he would say it was “an irreligious act…which the New Testament forbids”.) He upbraided Coleridge in the old paternal tones of his Cambridge days: “For God’s sake strive to put on some fortitude and do nothing rashly.”91 The whole Ottery plan thus collapsed in a storm of mutual reproaches. Mrs Coleridge not unnaturally blamed her husband. Coleridge with far less reason blamed not only George but all his Ottery brothers. Coleridge’s anger was surprising and curiously refreshing to him. Though so largely unjustified, it left him free to dramatize himself as an outcast in a cruel world. Paradoxically, it made him feel better about himself, by embracing the worst that the respectable world could do to him. He wrote to Josiah Wade in a kind of satisfied fury at the ruin of his reputation and prospects. George had betrayed him.
His pride & notion of character took alarm and he made public to all my Brothers, & even to their Children, [my] most confidential Letter, & so cruelly that while I was ignorant of all this Brewing, Colonel Coleridge’s eldest son (a mere youth) had informed Mr King that he should not call on me (his Uncle) for that “The Family” had resolved not to receive me. These people are rioting in Wealth & without the least feeling add another £100 to my already most embarrassed circumstance…So that at the age of 35 I am to be penniless, resourceless, in heavy debt – my health & spirits absolutely broken down – & with scarce a friend in the world.92
Coleridge’s sustaining anger against George would rumble on for another two years, when after a further outburst (which George described as “your downright red hot letter”), it was abruptly dispelled. But from July 1807 he began to feel steadily stronger, to write and plan, and cultivate his circle of friends, both old and new. Mrs Coleridge had announced that she would return to Bristol, much to Coleridge’s relief, but first some social visits were to be paid in Bridgwater. Coleridge meekly accompanied her, noting laconically: “All the Linen at the Bridgwater Arms mark’d ‘Stolen from the Bridgwater Arms.’”93
12
While staying at Thomas Chubb’s house, Coleridge was taking the afternoon air at the gate, when he was approached by a diminutive figure leading a large horse. The shy, elfin young man introduced himself as an unknown admirer who had pursued him from London, to Bristol, to Stowey, and thence to Bridgwater. This pilgrim was the 22-year-old Thomas De Quincey. He later claimed to have recognized Coleridge by the “peculiar haze or dreaminess” in his large, softly gazing eyes. “He was in a deep reverie; for I had dismounted, made two or three trifling arrangements at an inn door, and advanced close to him, before he had apparently become conscious of my presence.”94
After some difficulty in “recovering his position amongst daylight realities”, Coleridge turned all his “gracious” attentions on the young traveller, invited him in for drinks, sat him down, urged him to stay for dinner, and began talking about the difference between the philosophies of David Hartley and Immanuel Kant, and continued easily for three hours. De Quincey was simply dazzled, just as young Hazlitt had been ten years before on hearing him preach. His description, elaborated like Hazlitt’s many years after, shows Coleridge overwhelming the young Oxford student (De Quincey was in his third year at Worcester College) like an irresistible force of nature. The dinner arrangement being settled, “Coleridge, like some great river, the Oreallana or the St Lawrence, that, having been checked and fretted by rocks or thwarting islands, suddenly recovers its volume of waters and its mighty music swept at once, as if returning to his natural business, into a continuous strain of eloquent dissertation, certainly the most novel, the most finely illustrated, and traversing the most spacious fields of thought by transitions the most just and logical, that it was possible to conceive.”
This display continued until abruptly interrupted by a woman’s entrance. “Coleridge paused…in a frigid tone he said, while turning to me, ‘Mrs Coleridge’; in some slight way he then presented me to her: I bowed; and the lady almost immediately retired. I gathered, what I afterwards learned redundantly, that Coleridge’s marriage had not been a happy one.”95
Even more than Hazlitt, De Quincey was to find his whole literary life shaped and directed by the consequences of this memorable first encounter. It led to his introduction into the Lake District circle that autumn (he had previously corresponded with Wordsworth, but had never dared to meet him); it confirmed his lifelong fascination with German philosophy and psychological criticism; and it gave him courage to explore his great autobiographical theme – opium addiction. His Confessions of an English Opium Eater made his name as a writer when published in 1821, and all his subsequent journalism was signed “The English Opium Eater”. De Quincey made the subject fashionable, and his work was translated in France by Alfred de Musset. Thirty years of subsequent commentaries on and additions to the Confessions are inextricably involved with Coleridge’s private experiences and may be taken as a lengthy (and often barbed) tribute to the older man and pioneer addict. Coleridge continuously haunts De Quincey’s pages, as a sort of battered Virgilian guide to the opium Inferno.
At the time of meeting Coleridge in Chubb’s gateway, De Quincey was still an aimless, Romantic young gentleman-vagabond very typical of his post-revolutionary university generation. He had no ambitions in business, science, church or politics. Brought up and spoiled by a widowed mother, educated at Manchester Grammar School (from which he ran away), he had spent his summer vacations living rough in Wales and experimenting with opium in London. Here he had his famous encounter with the teenage prostitute, “Anne of Oxford Street”.
This formative affair, and his sexual fantasies of the embracing exotic woman “Levana” (one of the three “Our Ladies of Sor
rows” who dominate the Confessions’ great dream-sequences) he would later assign to the summers of 1802–4. Yet they suggest curious parallels with what De Quincey later learned of Coleridge’s Asra obsession, and they may have been retrospectively shaped and coloured.
That summer of 1807 he had abandoned university, like Coleridge before him, without taking his final degree, and had determined on introducing himself to the authors of the Lyrical Ballads. He regarded them as the intellectual and spiritual authorities of their age. Brilliantly clever, but emotionally damaged and dependent (not least by his tiny size, which painfully recalls Hartley Coleridge), De Quincey was like some darting, changeling child seeking giant parents to worship and quarrel with. Over the next ten years (when he would settle at Grasmere and play almost daily with the children) Wordsworth would be his father and mentor. But Coleridge, the great river-god of words and opium, would be something more dangerous and elemental, a demonic elder brother or doppelgänger, easier to understand and far easier to despise.
De Quincey would claim that at Bridgwater Coleridge almost immediately brought up the subject of addiction: “for already he was under the full dominion of opium, as he himself revealed to me, and with a deep expression of horror at the hideous bondage, in a private walk of some length which I took with him about sunset.”96
Coleridge- Darker Reflections Page 12
