But something else emerges with far more power and psychological conviction, in the most striking of his anecdotes. This is Ball’s courage, both physical and moral, in moments of action and crisis; and more than this, Ball’s intuitive ability to inspire courage in others and earn their undying loyalty. It was this quality that Coleridge really idealized and indeed idolized in Ball, and several of his stories have an allegorical element as well as a dramatic one. It is as if they were shadowy versions of the crisis of courage in his own life. His “Sketches” become not so much a study of duty in the abstract, but of the courage needed to carry out one’s duty in extreme and particular circumstances.
Two of the stories concern Ball’s cool behaviour in action, one under fire, and the other during a storm at sea. They have a subtly different emphasis. The first is directed towards a junior midshipman, the second towards a senior officer; but both are presented as acts of supreme friendship.
The first was told to Coleridge by a young naval officer, who had caught his attention during a large reception in the Governor’s Palace. The young man continually gazed on Ball with a “mixed expression of awe and affection”, though very rarely speaking. Coleridge later talked to this officer in confidence, and was given a memorable account of his first open-boat expedition under fire when he was only fourteen. Ball – then a lieutenant – was his new commander. Coleridge gives the story in the officer’s own words, but skilfully drawing out the dramatic effect.
As we were rowing up to the Vessel which we were to attack, amid a discharge of musketry, I was overpowered by fear, my knees trembled under me, and I seemed on the point of fainting away. Lieutenant Ball, who saw the condition I was in, placed himself close beside me, and still keeping his countenance directed towards the enemy, took hold of my hand, and pressing it in the most friendly manner, said in a low voice, “Courage, my dear Boy! don’t be afraid of yourself! you will recover in a minute or so – I was just the same, when I first went out in this way.” Sir, added the officer to me, it was as if an Angel had put a new Soul into me. With the feeling, that I was not yet dishonoured, the whole burthen of agony was removed; and from that moment I was as fearless and forward as the oldest of the boat crew, and on our return the Lieutenant spoke highly of me to our Captain.122
Much of the power and psychological acuity of this incident lies in its unexpectedness. Advancing under sustained fire is widely acknowledged as one of the most demanding of all battle experiences.123 In the midst of action, both the boy and the man are required to be passive in the fearful moments before boarding and fighting. Coleridge perceives the peculiar terror in this, and shows how Ball is still capable of acting with fatherly tenderness under conditions of extreme violence, and the prospect of imminent death.
Moreover, Ball empathizes imaginatively with the boy – “I was just the same” – and pays him the sustaining compliment of assuming his fear is not of the enemy, but only of his own barely controllable reactions: “don’t be afraid of yourself!” A more conventional officer, observes Coleridge, might have “scoffed, threatened, or reviled”. Instead, the bond of courage formed between the young midshipman and the experienced officer becomes an example of Ball’s capacity for bravery and humane leadership.
The second story concerns Ball, now promoted to the captaincy of a ship of the line, and his fleet commander Nelson. Here Ball’s action is directed towards a senior officer, and is again highly unexpected and unconventional. Coleridge emphasizes that Ball and Nelson had previously met only on leave, that Ball had taken a dislike to Nelson’s flamboyant manners and that there was “a coldness” between the two men, “in consequence of some punctilio”. But this mutual antipathy was to be transformed in action.
Some years later Ball joined up with Nelson’s fleet in the Mediterranean off Menorca, and during a violent storm Nelson’s flagship was dismasted and driven towards a lee-shore near Port Mahon. Night fell and the storm intensified. While the rest of the fleet made for safety, Ball came alongside the flagship and took it in tow, but conditions worsened and shipwreck seemed inevitable. In the ensuing crisis both men displayed the courage that was peculiar to their characters.
“The difficulties and the dangers increased. Nelson considered the case of his own Ship as desperate, and that unless she was immediately left to her own fate, both Vessels would inevitably be lost. He, therefore, with the generosity natural to him, repeatedly requested Captain Ball to let him loose; and on Captain Ball’s refusal, he became impetuous, and enforced his demands with passionate threats.” It has to be understood at this juncture that Ball was refusing a direct command from his senior officer, and displaying the gravest form of insubordination – precisely the sort of insubordination for which Nelson had himself become famous in action.
“Captain Ball then himself took the speaking Trumpet, which the fury of the wind and waves rendered necessary, and with great solemnity and without the least disturbance of temper, called out in reply: ‘I feel confident that I can bring you in safe; I therefore must not, and by the help of Almighty God! will not leave you.’ What he promised he performed; and after they were safety anchored, Nelson came on board of Ball’s ship, and embracing him with all the ardour of acknowledgement, exclaimed – ‘A Friend in need is a Friend indeed.’”124 From this time Ball was accepted as one of Nelson’s famous “Band of Brothers”, and referred to (with Admiral Troubridge) as one of Nelson’s “three right arms” (the actual arm, of course, having been lost in battle). An indissoluble bond of friendship had again been formed through shared courage in action.
Ball’s bravery is again shown by Coleridge to be unexpected: his loyalty is shown precisely in disobedience, and in standing up not merely to the fury of the storm, but even more perhaps to the fury, the “passionate threats”, of his superior officer. Ball’s outstanding calm in the midst of this double onslaught, “without the least disturbance of temper”, is presented as the epitome of both physical and moral courage, the heart of Coleridge’s biographic portrait. This incident indeed became famous in Nelson’s own biography, and was eventually enshrined in the Dictionary of National Biography in Coleridge’s own words.125 (The exact location and circumstances have been questioned, and it may have occurred off the Atlantic coast of Spain.)
Coleridge was undoubtedly drawn to these stories, in a way frequently characteristic of biographic narration, by some degree of self-identification with the participants. Having used the images of storm, shipwreck, the dismasted ship, so often in his Notebooks to describe his own state, his battles with depression and opium, his terror of passivity and uncontrolled emotion, they came to him with all the force and conviction of his own psychic dramas. The trembling midshipman who finds a fatherly hand behind his back, the storm-tossed, disabled commander who finds a “Friend in Need” to tow him away from the lethal rocks: these were undoubtedly aspects of his own situation at Allan Bank in the spring of 1810.
The “Sketches” of Ball’s life produced some of the most compelling and effective writing in the entire Friend series. By recounting matters so close to his own heart, Coleridge seemed to have recovered something of his stride and confidence by the end of January 1810. In the following three issues (Nos 22–4) he wrote stirring, patriotic pieces about Malta’s role in the Mediterranean, and about the “Law of Nations” which governed Britain’s wartime naval strategy of blockade in the Baltic and the Atlantic.
Refuting Dr Johnson’s famous dismissal of an earlier naval campaign to defend the Falkland Islands, Coleridge insisted on the duty or “positive Right” of a sovereign power to defend its offshore possessions, however distant, small or insignificant they might seem. “To surrender, in our national character, the merest trifle, that is strictly our Right, the merest Rock on which the waves will scarcely permit the Sea-fowl to lay its Eggs, at the demand of an insolent and powerful Rival, on a shop-keeper’s calculation of Loss and Gain, is in its final and assuredly not very distant consequences, a Loss of everything – of nat
ional Spirit, of national Independence, and with these of the very wealth, for which the low calculation was made.”126
Here Coleridge was beginning to mount a powerful case against the growing tendency in Whig and radical circles towards a policy of appeasement, in the face of Napoleon’s daunting military successes on land. (He had captured Vienna in May 1809, and would annex Holland in July 1810; and these advances would continue unchecked until the fateful Russian campaign of 1812.) The ironic mask of Satyrane was cast aside for a new voice in The Friend: the valiant rhetoric of the heroes Ball and Nelson. He told Poole that he knew it would lose him his Quaker subscribers, but he no longer cared.127 “Above all, do not forget, that these are AWFUL TIMES!”128
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Then suddenly in mid-February he faltered. The promised continuation of the “Sketches” was delayed, and instead Wordsworth’s “Essay on Epitaphs” was thrown in to fill No. 25, “sadly misprinted”, and with absolutely no logical connection with the new patriotic theme.
Dorothy explained to Lady Beaumont on 24 February: “The Essay of this week is by my Brother. He did not intend to publish it now; but Coleridge was in such bad spirits that when the time came he was utterly unprovided, and besides, had been put out of his regular course by waiting for books to consult respecting Duty…” Dorothy never wrote facetiously about Coleridge, but that last phrase may well have echoed her brother. She added, “I fear that people would be disappointed, having framed their expectations for the conclusions of Sir Alexander’s history; and here I must observe that we have often cautioned Coleridge against making promises…”129
What had happened was simple and devastating. Asra had decided that she would leave Allan Bank, and go to live on her brother Tom’s new farm in Wales. When Tom Hutchinson’s partner, John Monkhouse, rode over to Grasmere (on the way, noted Coleridge feelingly, sustaining a fractured jaw from his horse’s hoof), Asra announced that she would accompany him on his return to Radnorshire, in the first week of March.
Coleridge recorded a sinister dream. “I ate a red Herring for Supper, & had a dreadful night in consequence. Before I fell asleep, I had a spectrum of the fish’s back-bone which immediately & perceptibly formed itself by lengthening & curving the cross bone threads into a sort of Scorpion.”130 Dorothy was aware of the blow that had befallen Coleridge, but she received it with resignation. “We shall find a great loss in her, as she has been with us more than four years; but Coleridge most of all will miss her…”
But Coleridge felt he had been stung to death. He finished just two more issues of The Friend, on 1 and 15 March (having broken off for one week). The last issue, No. 27, described, in one of his most moving passages, how he had heard of the death of Nelson while at Naples in 1805. “Numbers stopped and shook hands with me, because they had seen the tears on my cheeks, and conjectured, that I was an Englishman; and several, as they held my hand, burst into tears.”131 This issue ended in a bracket: “(To be concluded in the next Number.)” But it never appeared, though Coleridge pretended for weeks that he was writing it, and No. 27 was still lying on his desk two months later in May. He could not write it without Asra.
On the eve of Asra’s departure on 5 March 1810, Coleridge sat up all night writing a long, philosophic entry in his Notebook. The subject was the psychological “Law of Association”, by which memories are held together and produce the notion of identity. “I began strictly and as a matter of fact to examine that subtle Vulcanian Spider-web Net of Steel – strong as Steel yet subtle as Ether, in which my soul flutters inclosed with the Idea of yours.”
He passed “rapidly as in a catalogue” the thousand images with which he associated his life with Asra: the farm at Gallow Hill, the ride to Scarborough, the walks on the fells, the study at Keswick – the meals, the books, the letters, the fireside talks, the nights under the stars. Gradually this careful list of precious associations turned into a terrible lament, grief-stricken and self-lacerating. It was like the April night at Greta Hall in 1802 on which he had written the first, great version of the ode “Dejection” (as “A Letter to Sara Hutchinson”), but now there was no storm to relieve his feelings or poetry to order them by. The “catalogue” was merely a litany of pain and regret.
A candle in its socket, with its alternate fits & dying flashes of lingering Light – O God! O God! – Books of abstruse Knowledge – the Thomas Aquinas & Suarez from the Durham Library – a peony-faced cottage Girl (little Jane) – all articles of female dress – music – the opening of a Street door when you first came to Keswick – of a Bed room door – with what thoughts you would nightly open your own, when I was far away – & that sweet blessed Letter – Letters, yea, the very paper on which one might be written – or from the habit of half unconsciously writing your name or its Symbol invented by me to express it [ASRA] – all Travels – my yearning Absence – All books of natural History – O if I had been blest & had lived with you in the country, the continual food of conversation by watching & explaining the Heavens – your name in those bright Stars, or an M or W recalling those Stars – Aurora borealis – at Keswick by the corner parlour window – Waterfalls – that at Scale Force when Dorothy laughed at me & at you thro me, as the Lovers…any eye fixed kindly on me when I am talking – my own face in the…132
Here the entry breaks off, exactly as if Coleridge had raised his head to look at his own solitary reflection in the window of his study, and thrown down his pen in despair.
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There is no other record of their parting. Sara Hutchinson did not write for five weeks, and then it was only an open letter to the household, in which she said she was “very comfortable” in Radnorshire, had given up “animal foods”, and was a little bored in the evenings by the fireside as Tom and John were “sleepy before supper time” and only talked about “farming concerns”.133
Coleridge would later write of Asra’s “cruel neglect & contemptuous silence ever since”, but at the time he said almost nothing. He laboured “under a depression of spirits, little less than absolute Despondency”, refused to go out with the Wordsworths on early spring walks, and spent more and more time sleeping and reading.134 Mrs Coleridge was surprised to receive a series of affectionate notes about the children, and the mild remark that he required “a change of scene” and would soon “unrust my toes and perform a walk to Greta Hall”.135 But he did not go until May.
News of Sara Hutchinson’s departure did, however, spread quickly to Coleridge’s friends in London, and of course they linked it to the abrupt silencing of The Friend. At the end of March Catherine Clarkson wrote breathlessly to Dorothy, asking how they were managing without her. Dorothy wrote back after some delay on 12 April. It was a long letter which gathered force as she gradually unburdened herself. She began with family news – Mary was expecting another baby, little Catherine Wordsworth had been ill, Wordsworth was talking of going to Coleorton in the summer, and Coleridge was talking of Keswick. “I hope he will choose the time of Mary’s confinement for his journey, as though he does not require near so much waiting upon as formerly, he makes a great difference.”
After these preliminaries, she began to write with greater candour and urgency.
I need not tell you how sadly we miss Sara – but I must add the truth that we are all glad that she is gone. True it is she was the cause of the continuance of The Friend so long; but I am far from believing that it would have gone on if she had stayed. He was tired, and she had at last no power to drive him on; and now I really believe that he also is glad that she is not here, because he has nobody to tease him. His spirits have certainly been more equable, and much better. Our gladness proceeds from a different cause. He harassed and agitated her mind continually, and we saw that he was doing her health perpetual injury. I tell you this, that you may no longer lament her departure.
It was a severe judgement, even an impatient one, and suggests that the Wordsworths had had to cope with many emotional scenes between the two in the various parlours of
Allan Bank. But it is also convincingly objective: Coleridge was “teased”, Asra was “harassed”.
But now Dorothy found she had much more to say, and she broke out to her confidante in her old, impetuous style. At last she could speak out, and she did so with an astonishing mixture of anger, disappointment and disillusion. It is one of the fiercest letters of her whole life, and it clearly echoes her brother’s feelings about Coleridge too. It is a revelation of passionate disenchantment with their old friend.
As to Coleridge, if I thought I should distress you, I would say nothing about him; but I hope that you are sufficiently prepared for the worst. We have no hope of him – none that he will ever do anything more than he has already done. If he were not under our Roof, he would be just as much the slave of stimulants as ever; and his whole time and thoughts, (except when he is reading, and he reads a great deal), are employed in deceiving himself, and seeking to deceive others. He will tell me that he has been writing, that he has written half a Friend; when I know he has not written a single line. This Habit pervades all his words and actions, and you feel perpetually new hollowness and emptiness. I am loath to say this, and burn this letter, I entreat you. I am loath to say it, but it is the truth. He lies in bed, always till after 12 o’clock, sometimes much later; and never walks out. Even the finest spring day does not tempt him to seek the fresh air; and this beautiful valley seems a blank to him. He never leaves his own parlour except at dinner and tea, and sometimes supper, and then he always seems impatient to get back to his solitude – he goes the moment his food is swallowed. Sometimes he does not speak a word, and when he does talk it is always very much and upon subjects as far aloof from himself and his friends as possible.136
Coleridge- Darker Reflections Page 23
