Coleridge- Darker Reflections

by Richard Holmes

  It was a turbulent time to be writing for any English newspaper. The war had produced deepening divisions in British society, without any notable statesmen (since the death of Pitt and Fox) to lead either government or opposition. With the appointment of a despised, extravagant and unpopular Prince Regent in February 1811 (in recognition of King George Ill’s insanity), there was widespread suspicion of corruption and nepotism throughout the court, parliament and the armed forces. The humiliating fiasco of the Walcheren expedition, planned by the incompetent Duke of York against French forces in Holland, seemed to symbolize the bankruptcy of national institutions. (This was the Regent’s brother and none other than “The Grand Old Duke of York” who in the nursery rhyme “had ten thousand men, marched them up to the top of the hill, and marched them down again.”)

  The Prime Minister Spencer Perceval’s conduct of the war against Napoleon was widely regarded as weak and vacillating. There was growing poverty and discontent in the working population, and more troops were stationed in the North of England and the Midlands than the Duke of Wellington (who would emerge as one of the few respected national figures) commanded in the Spanish Peninsula. Journalists and cartoonists were increasingly outspoken and scabrous in their criticisms, and many were prepared to go to prison for their cause (like Burdett in 1810, Cobbett in 1811 and Hunt in 1812). In the universities, many young men like Percy Bysshe Shelley (the son of a Whig MP and baronet) were utterly disaffected, and looked back to the revolutionary ideals of the 1790s for inspiration.41

  Coleridge did not respond to this new wave of popular radicalism. He saw himself as an independent commentator, who was known to have challenged both government and opposition in The Friend. To set out his position, he submitted to Street a long, 6,000-word article on “The Regent and Mr Perceval” in which he acknowledged the need for political reforms, but questioned the popular cry of universal government corruption. As in The Friend, he argued for a measured and non-partisan approach in a time of national peril, and called for a spirit of national consensus.

  “Nothing human can remain stationary. If we are not progressive, we must be retrograde. But the feeling, with which we enter on the work of reform and improvement, this is indeed of great moment; and to render it what it ought to be, no more effectual discipline can be recommended, than honestly to compare our own state (all grievances included) with that of former times at home, and of other countries at the present day…” He concluded by retelling a story about Sir Alexander Ball in Malta (from his unfinished biography). When approached by a Maltese nobleman for political favours at Valletta, Ball had calmly observed that he “would most certainly kick him down stairs” for making such an attempt.42

  The whole article could be read as both an attack on corruption, and simultaneously an endorsement of the natural probity of British statesmen. Street was delighted with the piece, though twice as long as his normal leaders, and printed it over Coleridge’s initials STC on 19 April. By 3 May, against all expectation, Coleridge was in daily harness at the newspaper office in the Strand.

  Over the next five months, Coleridge produced ninety-one articles for the Courier, his pieces appearing virtually without a break every second or third day. His favoured topics were foreign policy, taxation, the heroic conduct of the war, the tyrannies of Napoleon, and the pandering to the “mob” by popular radicals such as William Cobbett and Sir Francis Burdett. Much of it was frankly little more than wartime propaganda, if not specifically pro-government, then solidly conservative and patriotic to the point of jingoism.

  Probably his most successful series was a sequence of satirical articles, in which he gravely canvassed the idea of whether it was politically, morally, philosophically, ethically, or metaphysically justified to assassinate Napoleon. In these he paradoxically mocked the British sense of fair play. “This free people are fighting against the greatest tyranny that ever scourged mankind, and yet we ought not to speak of it but with coolness and moderation! We are fighting against the man who respects no treaties, who employs treachery and fraud, midnight assassinations, tortures, and every other cruelty as his engines, and yet we must not mark him as a murderer and villain!…”43

  There were a few exceptional pieces. He mounted a passionate attack on a shameful case of judicial cruelty at a County Sessions, in which a young woman was sentenced to be whipped for stealing six loaves of bread. He was amazed that the legal punishment of “scourging females” was not obsolete, and urged that it should be struck from the penal code, on the grounds of humanity alone. But he also argued that it debased those who inflicted the “unmanly” punishment, and created such intense shame in the victim that it destroyed her sense of moral identity.

  The way he framed this last argument was characteristic of Coleridge’s use of his own private sufferings as a measure of common experience. As an opium addict he could empathize with the “fallen” woman. “O never let it be forgotten either by the framers or dispensers of criminal law, that the stimulus of shame, like other powerful medicines, if administered in too large a dose, becomes a deadly narcotic poison to the moral patient!”

  He ended this unusually effective piece with an appeal to Shakespeare, “who alone of all Dramatic Poets possessed the power of combining the profoundest general morality with the wildest states of passion, and the truest workings of individual character under specific sufferings…” Shakespeare had damned such a “debasement of our common nature” in King Lear: “Thou rascal Beadle, hold thy bloody hand!/ Why dost thou whip that woman?”44 Coleridge was to develop this empathetic approach with great brilliance in his lectures.

  Yet Coleridge’s resort to patriotic journalism in 1811, though it lasted less than a year, probably did more damage to his contemporary reputation than anything else he ever wrote. Some, like Crabb Robinson, thought it a tragic waste of his “powers of mind”.45 Mrs Clarkson thought it “a humiliation”.46 Others like Hazlitt, a lifelong admirer of Napoleon, considered it a profound and unforgivable betrayal of the radical cause, which he had once represented. He would later write: “Alas! ‘Frailty, thy name is Genius!’ – What is become of all this mighty heap of hope, of thought, of learning and humanity? It has ended in swallowing doses of oblivion and in writing paragraphs in the Courier. Such and so little is the mind of man!”47

  At Grasmere, Dorothy dismissed it as “servile”, and there was blank incomprehension as to why Coleridge should have returned to journalism at all. “I only grieve at the waste and prostitution of his fine genius,” she wrote painfully, “at the sullying and perverting of what is lovely and tender in human sympathies, and noble and generous; and I do grieve whenever I think of him. His resentment to my Brother hardly ever comes into my thoughts. I feel perfectly indifferent about it.”48

  Coleridge felt far from indifferent. His determination to reestablish his professional independence in London, toiling in Fleet Street, was almost defined by his painful sense of the loss of the Grasmere circle. To combat his grief, to control his opium-induced sloth and horrors, he chose deliberately to tie himself to deadlines, to commute to an office. Otherwise he felt that the quarrel with Wordsworth would destroy him, and to crawl back to the Lakes (as Southey never ceased to urge) would be the real intellectual humiliation.

  He had put this with great emotion to his old confidant Stuart in a letter of April:

  So deep and so rankling is the wound, which Wordsworth has wantonly and without the slightest provocation inflicted in return for a 15 years’ most enthusiastic, self-despising & alas! self-injuring Friendship…that I cannot return to Grasmere or its vicinity – where I must often see & always be reminded of him. Every man must take the measure of his own strength. I may, I do, regret my want of fortitude; but so it is, that incurable depression of Spirits, Brooding, Indolence, Despondence, thence Pains & nightly Horrors, & thence the Devil & all his Imps to get rid of them or rather to keep them just at arm’s length, would be infallibly the result. Even to have thought of Wordsworth, while wr
iting these Lines, has, I feel fluttered & disordered my whole Inside…49

  In such a maelstrom of feeling, to live by himself in London would be “almost equally dangerous”. The “alternative” still in his power, was to pursue “any regular situation” with the newspaper and make a new home at Hammersmith “with perfect propriety, as a member of Morgan’s Family”.

  This is exactly what Coleridge did. From early May he was rising at 6.30 a.m. each morning, and catching the 8 o’clock public coach from Hammersmith to the Strand. Later in the summer he even tried to cut down on his travel expenses (which the Courier paid) by returning on foot in the afternoon, “which will reduce my Coachhire for the week from 18s to 9”. He only begged not to be required to walk in as well, a distance of three miles, as it would “take all the blossom & fresh fruits of my Spirits”.50 Coleridge was hardly a natural commuter, and sometimes he did not appear before midday. But Street seems to have been satisfied with his time-keeping for most of the summer, and when friction did arise it was from other causes.

  Financial dependence weighed on him. The Wedgwood annuity was still being paid faithfully to Mrs Coleridge, though now reduced by property tax to £135 per annum.51 His newspaper salary – not recorded, but probably in the region of £4 or £5 per week – largely went to the Morgans, though no doubt reduced by opium expenses. His debts to Stuart were beyond his means to repay, though he hoped a republication of The Friend in augmented volume form might eventually produce a capital sum to draw on.52

  There was the annual panic over his life assurance premium in May (with Mrs Coleridge continuing as the sole beneficiary in the event of his death), which he solved by offering the entire copyright in all his poems to Thomas Longman, as he had done in 1808. This time he promised a 360-page manuscript to be delivered in “a fortnight”, for which Longman proposed the same shameful figure of £100. Coleridge accepted an advance of £22, which went immediately to pay the premium. But he was so angry with the terms that he called it, quite uncharacteristically, “a Jew Bargain”, and never supplied the promised manuscript. He seemed quite cheerful about breaking this contract.53 Seven years later he denied that he had “cheated” Longman, and calmly announced that in all the circumstances he considered it “my own money”.54

  The problems that emerged with Street concerned editorial compromises at the Courier. Coleridge was content to defend the government’s wartime policy abroad, and he did it with genuine conviction. With Wellington pinned down against huge odds in the Spanish Peninsula, and Marshal Soult menacing the allied forces besieging Badajoz and Cuidad Rodrigo, the military situation was indeed critical and would remain so until 1812. Coleridge wrote rallying pieces entitled “Light in the Political Sky” and “The Spirit Unbroken”.55 But at home, with Perceval’s administration refusing all liberal measures (a Reform Bill had been defeated the previous year), discontent with the government had reached a violent pitch, which would soon flare up in the Luddite riots of November 1811. The Courier was regarded increasingly as a government mouthpiece, and several times “hissing” mobs gathered outside its offices.56

  Coleridge could not ignore the fact that his “independent” position looked increasingly compromised and isolated. For some time he tried to maintain his honour, at least in his own eyes, by refusing to write for Street on subjects which he privately condemned. As he told Stuart, with rather forced bravado: “while Cabbage-stalks rot on Dunghills, I will never write what, or for what, I do not think right – all that Prudence can Justify, is not to write what at certain times one may yet think.”57 But he knew that this came lamely from the author of The Friend, who had insisted precisely on the need for principle over prudence in public matters; let alone from the once daring young radical author of the Watchman who had declared that “the Truth shall make us Free”. Many of his shorter articles were unsigned.

  Yet Coleridge did try to challenge Street. In mid-June he drafted a long, critical article attacking the re-appointment of the Duke of York – the Prince Regent’s brother – as Supreme Commander of the British Armed Forces. The appointment had been ratified by a parliamentary majority of over 200 votes, but was clearly the result of nepotism.58 Coleridge seized this opportunity to go on the offensive, and his article was announced on Saturday, 9 June to run as the leader the following Monday.

  Street read it over the weekend and, evidently alarmed, postponed its appearance. On 11 June Coleridge read his copy to Crabb Robinson, who described it as “very beautiful” in construction, and Coleridge as restless and “dissatisfied with his situation”.59 Street prevaricated and postponed for a month. Finally he appeared to yield to Coleridge, and set up the piece in type for the edition of Friday, 14 July. Coleridge left the office that afternoon assuming he had gained his point.

  But meanwhile Street had arranged for a senior Treasury official, Mr Arbuthnot, to call privately on Daniel Stuart at Brompton and ask for it to be withdrawn. “Stuart resisted a long time,” according to Crabb Robinson, “but at last yielded, and the greater number of the copies were cancelled.” Apparently about 2,000 copies – a quarter of the normal Courier print-run – reached the City distributors, but the article did not go into general circulation and had no effect.60 Coleridge now had irrefutable evidence that his position was compromised, and that Street was in regular contact with the Ministry, and would yield to its wishes. Moreover, Stuart was too “lazy” to back him against Street.61

  Coleridge knew he should resign on the spot. Instead he hesitated, and secretly applied for a position on The Times, now regarded as a liberal voice. Crabb Robinson took a detailed set of proposals to the great editor John Walter in July. Coleridge offered to work at the office “any six hours of the Day, from 8 of the morning to 8 o’clock of the evening”; to supply “any number required” of small news paragraphs and leading articles; and to produce two major three-column essays each week “on the great Interests of the Time”. His only stipulation was that the newspaper should be “truly independent, 1. of the Administration, & 2. of the populace.”62 There was no request about salary.

  Negotiations continued for some days, but it is significant that Walter had doubts about Coleridge’s compromised reputation, and besides already had a distinguished leader-writer, Fraser, under contract. There is also some evidence that Stuart heard of the discussions, and warned Walter off in a classic Fleet Street manoeuvre, by saying Coleridge was too unreliable to employ.63 By the end of July Coleridge was still at the Courier, writing long articles about the political situation in America and Ireland, and about the overweening power of the East India Company. These were relatively non-controversial topics (though Catholic Emancipation would soon become a fiery one), and Street contented himself with publishing occasional retractions and disclaimers after Coleridge’s articles.64

  The moment for a heroic gesture had slipped away. Coleridge sweated on through the summer on what was now generally regarded as “a hireling newspaper”. Even Stuart would later admit that by the end of 1811 the Courier under Street had become virtually an “official” organ of the Ministry.65 The young radicals – Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt – never forgot this piece of political “apostasy” and would take their revenge in due course.

  6

  Yet the Courier job, however demeaning, brought a vital new stability into Coleridge’s life at Hammersmith. He was happy with the Morgans, and sustained by a household atmosphere much easier and less demanding than Allan Bank. There were visits to new plays, art exhibitions, and frequent supper parties. Coleridge’s renewed flirtation with Charlotte Brent, and “sisterly” confidences with Mary Morgan, softened the pain of his loss of Asra. Several of Asra’s long, chatty letters to her cousin Mary Monkhouse written from Radnorshire have survived, and though full of talk of the Wordsworths and their children, it is rather chilling to observe that they make not a single mention of Coleridge, or enquiry about his health, until she returned to Grasmere in October.66

  Coleridge also found an opportunity to reopen
family communication with the Ottery Coleridges. Ever since the cancelled visit of summer 1807, relations had been strained, his brother George disapproving of the separation from Mrs Coleridge, and his military brother Colonel James making scathing observations about his journalism and his lectures. Coleridge had become, in effect, the black sheep of the family and a proverb among his brothers for profligacy and lack of discipline. But among the younger generation of Coleridges, perhaps for that very reason, he was a figure of fascination and worldly glamour. When two of Colonel James’s sons – Henry aged twelve, and John aged twenty – came up to London for the summer vacation to stay with family friends, the Mays, in Richmond, a weekend invitation was tentatively sent over to Hammersmith.

  Coleridge leaped at the chance of seeing his nephews, crossed the river, and tactfully took rooms at the local inn. For two days he breakfasted and dined in their company, and was the guest of honour at several large parties given by the Mays. Evidently he set out to win their hearts, and succeeded. Henry was entranced by his uncle, and John, who was in his third year at Oxford and had just won the Chancellor’s Prize for Latin verse, was intellectually dazzled. He had never met “so delightful and astonishing a man”.

  John reported back to his father, with a certain undisguised triumph, that the black sheep was very different from his family reputation. “He made a conquest of all the men and women at Richmond, gave us analyses of long works which are to come out, told stories of his youth and travels, never sparing himself at all, and altogether made the most powerful impression on my mind of any man I ever saw.” Though there were “some things” which John did not quite like – a certain extravagance and exhibitionism it would seem, and not least a promise to write to him about his prize poem, which was never fulfilled – he was largely won over.