8
Now Coleridge could not even finish his Lay Sermon, let alone “Christabel”. The Gillmans watched anxiously as he worked from nine till five and then began to sit up all night, “writing & erasing”. He demanded more opium and made scenes. Finally, he dictated a chaotic text to Morgan, “not able even to look over the copy” before he sent it off.45
Coleridge had originally intended to address the political divisions of English society, not with a party tract about social legislation, but with an inspirational call to a return to spiritual values. “At the annunciation of principles, of ideas, the soul of man awakes, and starts up, as an exile in a far distant land at the unexpected sounds of his native language, when after long years of absence, and almost of oblivion, he is suddenly addressed in his own mother-tongue. He weeps for joy, and embraces the speaker as his brother.”46
Yet The Statesman’s Manual (as he now nervously renamed it), emerged as the most obscure and disorganized short work that Coleridge ever published. Even the rambling subtitle suggested that Hazlitt’s attack had become a self-fulfilling prophesy. “The Bible The Best Guide To Political Skill And Foresight. A Lay Sermon Addressed To the Higher Classes of Society. With an Appendix Containing Comments And Essays Connected With The Study Of The Inspired Writings.” Its mixture of metaphysics and sentimental pieties, of conservative politics and calls to visionary brotherhood, suggest confusion and self-contradiction. At Grasmere, Dorothy observed grimly that it was “ten times more obscure than the darkest parts of The Friend”.47
Yet The Statesman’s Manual puts forward two ideas of great social and cultural significance. The first was his old idea, originally broached in his Royal Institution lectures, of the need for a public policy on “national education”. This was by no means fulfilled when “the People at large” had merely been “taught to read and write”. Education, “which consists in educing the faculties, and forming the habits” of the whole man, was the primary foundation of a liberal society. The privileged classes would have to undergo a revolution in their own ideas of power and status, if this was to be achieved.
“I am greatly deceived, if one preliminary to an efficient education of the labouring classes be not…a thorough recasting of the moulds in which the minds of our Gentry, the characters of our future Landowners, Magistrates and Senators, are to receive their shape and fashion.”48
The second idea was a development of the religious theme of the Biographia. In a secular age, the language and philosophy of science, and its extension into utilitarian politics, was putting a new and unparalleled pressure on the notion of the sacred. But without some concept of the sacred (enshrined for most Englishmen, “directly or indirectly”, in the Bible), men in society would be reduced to mechanical objects, material statistics. Far worse than this, they would begin to think of themselves as such, having lost a traditional and literal-minded faith, and having no new language of spiritual assertion or value.
A hunger-bitten and idea-less philosophy naturally produces a starveling and comfortless religion. It is among the miseries of the present age that it recognizes no medium between Literal and Metaphorical. Faith is either to be buried in the dead letter, or its names and honours usurped by a counterfeit product of the mechanical understanding, which in the blindness of self-complacency confounds SYMBOLS with ALLEGORIES.49
This distinction is not merely a linguistic one, but represents two radically opposed visions of reality. The one is, in effect, materialist; the other in some sense transcendental. Coleridge championed the symbolic interpretation of religious faith, in terms shorn of all Christian vocabulary, using a bardic language which is a curious anticipation of William Blake. “A Symbol is characterized by a translucence of the Eternal through and in the Temporal. It always partakes of the Reality which it renders intelligible; and while it enunciates the whole, abides itself as a living part in that Unity, of which it is the representative.” In a long Appendix C, he also explored these ideas in psychological terms, looking at the way dreams and the unconscious also give hints of such a sacred realm of the human spirit, suggesting hidden truths and even “divinations” about our nature.50
Hazlitt returned to the attack in the Edinburgh Review for December and again in the Examiner. In column after column he tore into the political apostasy of “the mob-hating Mr Coleridge”, and ridiculed his attempts to draw metaphysical meanings from the Bible. “So that after all the Bible is not the immediate word of God, except according to the German philosophy, and in ‘something between a literal and a metaphorical sense’. Of all the cants that ever were canting in this canting world, this is the worst!”51 He dwelt with lively sarcasm on Coleridge’s suggestion that the French Revolution was prophesied in the Book of Isaiah, or that “popular philosophy” had been corrupted by “the circulating libraries and the periodical press”.52
But what really infuriated Hazlitt was Coleridge’s apparent refusal to engage directly with the political realities of the day. This was a time when the unemployed weavers of Manchester were starting on their Blanket March to London; when the Green Bag Committee was investigating revolutionary sedition; and when Habeas Corpus was about to be suspended in March 1817. The true lay preachers were journalists like William Cobbett or William Hone, or cartoonists like Cruikshank, who risked imprisonment with every line or sketch they published. “Our Lay-preacher, in order to qualify himself for the office of a guide to the blind, has not, of course, once thought of looking about for matters of fact, but very wisely draws a metaphysical bandage over his eyes, sits quietly down where he was, takes his nap, and talks in his sleep…”53
9
At Highgate Coleridge felt reduced “into compleat outward nothingness” in September. He broke out into terrible sweating whenever he heard “the Post Man’s Knock”, bringing news of reviews, or debts, or dead lines.54 He told Brabant that he secretly “longed for Death with an intensity that I have never seen exprest but in the Book of Job”. It was as if the worst times at Bristol were about to return. But now James Gillman made another decisive intervention in Coleridge’s “case”. With inspired judgement, and the medical authority that only he exerted, he insisted that Coleridge should take a holiday. He should leave his desk immediately, and go off to contemplate the sea.
By 20 September Coleridge and the Gillman family were installed in a charming, rambling cottage backing on to Christchurch Bay in Hampshire. Here Coleridge remained – walking, boating, swimming and riding – until November, when he was greatly recovered with his opium doses back under control.
These long, annual autumn holidays were to become a new and permanent feature in Coleridge’s later life, always taken on the coast in Hampshire, Sussex or Kent. It is not too much to say that they transformed his physical condition, and they were one of Gillman’s most simple effective treatments for his addiction. They broke the cycles of stress and depression connected with his work, and rekindled some of the youthful energy and happiness he had known on his native shores of North Somerset and Devon. He made many new friends on these visits, and much of his later poetry was written or begun by the sea.
But more than this, they made Coleridge feel less like Gillman’s patient and more like a valued member of his family. They brought him very close to Ann Gillman over the years, and turned him into an unofficial uncle to her children, James and Henry. All this brought back the playful, affectionate, mischievous side of Coleridge’s personality, so much of which had been lost or hidden in the dark years after 1810.
This is apparent in the delighted letters he wrote from the little cottage at Mudeford. In one to Gillman’s young medical assistant John Williams (already designated as “Wiz”, the laboratory wizard), he exulted in his new seaside kingdom. The parlour glass door gave directly on to a beach garden, “abounding in Sea-rushes, with some potatoes that make most virtuous efforts to lift their dwarf heads above the ground”. There was a fine old mulberry tree with a seat, and then a kind of lapping, inland sea where th
ey besported themselves alternately as botanists, paddlers, and sailors. “Up to this Garden comes a sort of sea-Lake, which at High-Tide is (to my eyes) very interesting – with a Sea-Ditch, 2 or 3 yards wide, which is filled every Tide, and a Boat in which Mr Gillman and I can row & paddle.”
The bathing machines were three-quarters of a mile away along the beach at Christchurch, but Coleridge was already plunging in with the children “from under a rock”. He was attempting to conquer Mrs Gillman’s “Thalosso-phobia” – sea-terror – in this respect. (“NB This is to remind you of your Greek.”) Best of all was little Henry Gillman’s excitement, which Coleridge touchingly shared in a way that reminded him of baby Hartley. He was “the dancing sunspot of the Family”, and was crowned with many extravagant nicknames: “Hen-Pen, alias, learned Pundit, alias, infant Conchologist, alias, Child of the Sun…alias, mischievous Doggie, alias, Fish of all Waters…” Like Hartley, he slept in Coleridge’s room, protected from all night terrors (and perhaps, in his own way, protecting Coleridge). He was a “kissable Vagabond, and Comfort of his Mother’s Heart”, and sent his love to “dear Wiz”. When he was bathed for the first time, he “called the Froth of the Sea, Beer”.55
The childlike pleasures of Mudeford did Coleridge much good, and steadied his thoughts. “As to Hazlitt,” he announced, “I shall take no notice of him or his libels.”56 Encouraged by Gillman, he wrote firmly to Rest Fenner about debts and deadlines – “I dare not send off what dissatisfies my own judgement” – and insisted that his opium addiction should be accepted as a medical condition, and not used to undermine his professional standing by gossip or “calumnies”.
Gillman’s calm support, and even his clinical vocabulary, is evident in these assertions to his demanding publisher. There was now a “total absence of all concealment” about his addiction, which had after all begun “unwittingly” in the dread physical necessity “of taking antispasmodic drugs”. His case was far from unique, and he should be treated accordingly. “For instance, who has dared blacken Mr Wilberforce’s good name on this account? Yet he has been for years under the same necessity. Talk with any eminent druggist or medical practitioner, especially at the West End of the town, concerning the frequency of this calamity among men and women of eminence.” It was true that he could not be relied on to compose and deliver copy with the regularity and “facility” of a man like Robert Southey. “But I am not Southey – and according as it is given to each, each must act.”57
With this renewed self-confidence, Coleridge prepared to return to Highgate for Christmas. He also brought with him the first sketch of the paper that would occupy him and Gillman throughout 1817, perhaps inspired by their botanizing on the sandbanks of Christchurch Bay. This was to become A Theory of Life, a foray into the contemporary debate on Vitalism.
Coleridge, with his extraordinary feel for theoretical developments, was intending to apply German Naturphilosophie to the conflicting theories of the British anatomists like John Hunter (1728– 93), Astley Cooper (1768–1841) and John Abernethy (1764–1831). The text of the Theory of Life would open, dramatically, in front of Hunter’s bust in the Royal College, with the daring claim that his largely practical and anatomical approach to the life-principle had not allowed him to “unfold and organize” sufficiently “distinct, clear” conceptions of its true meaning.58
For Coleridge, this meaning had to be a universal law of development, working through some larger evolutionary force. He sent ahead to Gillman (already returned to Highgate) a Delphic outline of the way in which they would explore the subject in the spring. “I propose to begin at once with Life; but with Life in its very first manifestations – demonstrating that there is no other possible definition of Life but Individuality…in the fluxions or nascent forms of Individuality it will be absolutely necessary to shew the analogy between organic growth, and self-repetition, and a more universal form whether it be called Magnetism or Polarity.”59 Typically, these weighty matters were concluded with little Henry’s affectionate greetings to “Papa & Mr Wiz”.
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Throughout the spring of 1817, Coleridge buckled to the task of dealing with his new publishers, Rest Fenner and the Reverend Mr Curtis, and extracting himself from the claims of John Gutch. The negotiations were tortuous, and increasingly ill-humoured. By May, Gutch was writing to Fenner that had he been aware of all the difficulties in reaching a settlement, he would have put the entire manuscript of Coleridge’s work “behind the fire”.60
The upshot was that by June Curtis had secured for Rest Fenner the complete copywright in all Coleridge’s work – poetry, prose and drama – for a very modest outlay. He settled Gutch’s printing bill of £284.18s.4d. but waived all responsibility for William Hood’s advances and also left Coleridge to pay carriage expenses of £28, and to return the £50 Murray had advanced on Zapolya.61 He made no separate payment for either of the Lay Sermons, and secured Coleridge’s agreement to write a general Introduction to a part-work Encyclopaedia. The contract, not finally signed until 18 August 1817, included the future reissue of The Friend in three volumes, as well as the two-volume Biographia (with added materials), and Sibylline Leaves (both published in July). For this huge body of work, in effect everything that Coleridge had produced (except the “Christabel” volume), Curtis advanced a total sum of £300, of which £255 was not made available until January 1818.62 It was, for a minor publishing house known mainly for small editions of religious works, a triumph to have secured an author like Coleridge so cheaply and so completely.
To Stuart, Coleridge wrote sadly that he felt “bullied” by his new publishers, and was “angry” at his own weakness in agreeing to various stipulations.63 John Murray was now completely alienated, and the powerful guns of the Quarterly Review (which he also published) joined the batteries trained on Coleridge’s forthcoming publications. When Southey himself suggested to “the Grand Murray” that he review Coleridge’s Biographia in the Quarterly, “and under that text make a direct personal attack upon Jeffrey and Hazlitt”, even this indirect offer of support to Coleridge was turned down.64
So Coleridge continued to advance into the public arena almost uniquely exposed to criticism, undefended from either party-political wing, unsupported by any influential journal of the day, and now bound hand and foot to a second-rate publisher whose main aim was (as it quickly emerged) to shore up its own crumbling finances.
11
But there was no going back, no retreat. In March 1817 Coleridge published his second Lay Sermon, “addressed to the Higher and Middle Classes on the Existing Distresses and Discontents”. It was better organized, but no less rhapsodical than the first, urging in biblical language and imagery the Christian duties of the governing class towards the governed. It opened with another text from Isaiah, “Blessed are ye that sow beside all waters”.65 It was an extraordinary appeal to appear in the year of the Pentridge Revolution, when working-class leaders were being tried and hung for sedition.66
Yet Coleridge offered little comfort to the Tory establishment. He bitterly attacked the economic selfishness and laissez-faire attitudes that were tearing Britain apart. The rich landlords and manufacturers were coming to regard society simply as a wealth-creating machine: they were “Christian Mammonists” hardened by “the Spirit of Trade”.67 These attacks contained some of his most powerful passages, as biting as any political journalism Coleridge had written since 1800.
We shall perhaps be told too, that the very Evils of this System, even the periodical crash itself, are to be regarded but as so much superfluous steam ejected by the Escape Pipes and Safety Valves of a self-regulating Machine: and lastly, that in a free and trading country all things find their level…But persons are not Things – but Man does not find his level. Neither in Body nor in Soul does the Man find his level! After hard and calamitous season, during which the thousand Wheels of some vast manufactory had remained silent as a frozen water-fall, be it that plenty has returned and that Trade has once more become
brisk and stirring: go, ask the overseer, and question the parish doctor, whether the workman’s health and temperance…have found their level again!68
He particularly singled out the sufferings of child-workers, as the ultimate victims of economic callousness and cruelty. They were exploited, sick and “ill-fed”, ill-clothed”. He had watched them on hot summer afternoons at Calne, “each with its little shoulders up to its ears, and its chest pinched inward” with the memory of perpetual cold from the “unfuelled winters” they endured. “But as with the Body, so or still worse with the Mind.”69
Coleridge urged the need for social change and social policies. “Our manufacturers must consent to regulations; our gentry must concern themselves in the education as well as the instruction of their natural clients and dependents…”70 These passages, radical in their implications, did find some welcome response in surprising places. The working-class publisher William Hone quoted them extensively in the April edition of Hone’s Reformist Register, as “good seed” that he had found “unexpectedly”. Again in July, he praised Coleridge for “the homage which his pen has honestly paid to the best feelings of our nature”.71
But the final position of the second Lay Sermon, with its attacks on Cobbett and other democratic reformers, was also seen as conservative. Coleridge expected to be assaulted from all sides. He sent an inscribed copy to Southey, with an anxious annotation in Latin. “My fate has drawn me unwilling and unforeseeing into these tempests, so that I am allowed neither to keep silent nor to speak as befits a philosopher. The butcher who hacked my first Lay Sermon to pieces with such malign ignorance in the Edin. Rev. is that wretch Hazlitt, no man but a monster. As regards his work, I beg you to help me, who was once your Coleridge (olim tuum Coleridgium)…”72
Coleridge- Darker Reflections Page 53
