IN THE LAKE COUNTRY AND AT MALTA
A reconciliation between Southey and Coleridge marked the return of the
latter to Stowey, where Mr. and Mrs. Southey came on a visit of some
weeks. Following this Coleridge took his wife to Ottery St. Mary and
joined the family circle for a month. In October he stayed with the
Wordsworths at Sockburn-on-Tees, in the house of Mrs. Wordsworth's
parents, and was with John and William Wordsworth when they lighted on
the old inn that was to become Dove Cottage, the home of William
Wordsworth during the period of his most fruitful labours, and in these
latter days a centre of pilgrimage. By the end of the year Coleridge was
in London again, living at 21 Buckingham Street in the Strand, and
writing for the _Morning Post_. The association was a lengthy one, but
it was not always pleasant, and it gave rise to controversy during the
poet's life and when he was dead. Coleridge said in after years that
Stuart had offered him a partnership and that he had declined it on the
ground that any income in excess of five pounds a week was an evil.
Coleridge may have said this, and doubtless believed what he said; we
have seen that he was quite unable to deal authoritatively with
financial matters. It is fair to say that the poet had few if any of
the qualities that are demanded for daily journalism, in which a man
must be safe and reliable. If he be brilliant, so much the better for
those who employ him, but brilliance is not to be compared with
punctuality in a newspaper office. Coleridge declared that he "wasted
the prime and manhood of his intellect" on the _Morning Post_ and the
_Courier_; but latter-day judgment, while acknowledging the high quality
of some of his journalistic work, cannot accept the statement, which is
yet another example of poetic licence. Modern Fleet Street does not
treat erratic contributors as patiently or liberally as Stuart treated
Coleridge; the rapid march of events and the stress of competition alike
forbid.
When he gave up his regular work on the papers he stayed for some weeks
with Lamb at Pentonville, then went to Stowey, and from there to Dove
Cottage. The translation from Schiller, on which he had been engaged,
was now finished. From Dove Cottage he moved to Greta Hall, near
Keswick, a semi-detached house some twelve miles or so from the
Wordsworths. His landlord, who lived next door, was the possessor of a
good library. Neighbours called upon the new-comer and offered
hospitality, for his work had already attracted some attention.
"Christabel" was finished, but when the two volumes of _Lyrical Ballads_
were published in January 1801, Coleridge had not fulfilled his promise
in regard to them. He was busy promising volumes, still unwritten, to
publishers, he was anticipating his allowance from the Wedgwoods, and
nursing an attack of rheumatic fever. With the road clear before him,
with a certain market for his work, he was paying tribute to "the thief
of time." If at length he wrote, his writing took the form of long and
brilliant letters to private friends. For relief from physical pain he
was indulging in opium. The year 1801 is full of complaints and of
direct or indirect appeals for money. In April 1802 came the famous "Ode
to Dejection"; if space permitted it should be quoted here, for, in a
couple of hundred lines, Coleridge has penned a picture of his own
mental state that none can pass by with indifference, or without
compassion. Not only were there monetary worries and the trouble of a
mind diseased at this early period of the poet's uneasy life; there was
also domestic unhappiness. The breach between the poet and his wife,
already of long standing, was now serious, and he sought solace from his
troubles not at Greta Hall but at Grasmere; his harmless devotion to
Dorothy Wordsworth giving offence, not unnaturally, to his wife. The
following year was uneventful. Coleridge was intensely unhappy at
Keswick, though he had the pleasure of a visit from Charles and Mary
Lamb in August. Later, he went on a tour with his patrons, the
Wedgwoods, and stayed with them for a time in their country house,
sending a few papers to the patient Stuart the while. Thomas Wedgwood
was inclined to trifle with drugs, so he was at best a dangerous
companion for Coleridge.
In 1803, when bad health was the chief source of trouble, a volume of
the earlier poems was reprinted with the editorial aid of Lamb. In 1804,
Coleridge joined William and Mary Wordsworth on their Scottish tour,
but did not remain with them for long. He left them for a solitary
walking tour in the Highlands, apparently seeking in vain to tire
himself so completely that drugs should cease to be a necessity. There
is unfortunately no reason to believe that the device was successful. By
mid-September he was back at Greta Hall, where Robert Southey and his
wife were now installed. Southey, methodical, hard-working and
temperate, was not likely to side with his brother of the pen in the
controversies that made the household unhappy. Further residence in that
house, the home that had so many outside attractions, was becoming
impossible, and Coleridge started for the south, only to fall ill at
Dove Cottage, where he stopped on the way. Recovered, he went for a
while to London, thence to the Beaumonts' place at Dunmow in Essex. In
town again, he sat for his portrait to Northcote, one that seems to
present an accurate picture enough of his strength and weakness, "the
heaven-eyes and flabby irresoluteness of mien." In April left England
for Malta armed with letters to the Civil Commissioner, Vice-Admiral
Ball, and, _mirabile dictu_, a pocket full of money. He had £100 lent by
his patient and admiring friend William Wordsworth, whose position had
improved by the return of the money borrowed from his father, in years
long past, by the head of the Lonsdale family, and he had prevailed upon
his conscience to accept a gift of £100 from Sir George Beaumont. His
fellow-passengers on board the _Speedwell_ were but two, one of them the
"unconscionably fat woman who would have wanted elbow-room on Salisbury
Plain." Mrs. Coleridge remained at Greta Hall in the company of her
sister and brother-in-law, dependent for her support upon the continued
charity of the Wedgwoods, but it may be noticed that her husband
corresponded with her while he was abroad. When the ill-matched pair
were not under the same roof they could be good friends.
The years so briefly summarised here show Coleridge at his best as a
poet and at his worst as a man, sometimes kindled by the fire of genius,
sometimes so degraded that he is dangerously near the ranks of the
begging-letter writer. He is only saved from the contempt of his critics
because he was at least sincere in his belief that the lack of pence
alone stood between him and the mental tranquillity that would enable
him to enrich the world with a masterpiece.
There is a passage in Lucretius, in which the poet speaks of the wealthy
senator, no longer able to endure the turmoil of the capital, galloping
away as hard as his chariot can carry him to his country villa, only to
find that change cannot cure his unrest, and to come thundering back to
Rome. It is of himself that he is tired, and from himself there is no
escape. So it has been with men of uneven mind for all time, so it was
with Coleridge, so it will ever be with those to whom the secret of
rational living is "a garden enclosed, a fountain sealed."
For rather more than two years he left England behind him, but his
letters, or those that remain to us, would suggest that he was no
happier out of England than he was at home. At first the change
stimulated his sick mind, he enjoyed his stay in Gibraltar, even while
he complained that the lack of exercise on board affected his health and
spirits. At Valetta, he became first the guest and then the private
secretary of the Civil Commissioner, in whose service he describes
himself rather complacently as "a sort of diplomatic understrapper." In
August he left Malta for Sicily, to draw up a report of the island's
possibilities. Sir Alexander Ball had a firm belief that Sicily should
be taken over by Great Britain to keep it from falling into Napoleon's
hands. Nothing came of the proposal, and by the beginning of the winter
Coleridge was back in Malta, to find himself formally installed as the
Commissioner's private secretary. The Public Secretary of Malta died
soon afterward, and, while his successor was absent from the island,
Coleridge was appointed to the temporary charge of the department at a
salary of £600, no bad allowance for the man who could assure his
friends that he had refused to accept a share in the _Morning Post_
because he thought that £250 per annum was enough for anybody, the man
whose wife and children were being supported in his absence from England
by the charity of friends. But the work at Malta was regular, and
demanded constant attention; there was no leisure for dreaming of what
was to be accomplished some day, so the position was bound to prove
irksome to Coleridge, who was soon full of bitter complaints. The
official salary attaching to the post was £1200 per annum; Coleridge, as
a temporary substitute for the gentleman appointed, a Mr. Chapman, was
paid half, and this inequality of reward provided ground for a
considerable grievance. But the real trouble lay more in the work than
in the pay, for at the end of April we find him greatly distressed by
the news that Mr. Chapman could not arrive before July. Even that month
brought no Secretary; he did not reach Malta until September, and then
Coleridge went in company with a friend to Rome and Naples. Of his stay
in Italy his own accounts are vague and unsatisfactory, but he claims to
have obtained a better knowledge of the Fine Arts in three months spent
at Rome than he could have gained in his own country in twenty years.
Doubtless his health was bad; the Roman winter in 1805-6 was not as
healthy as it is to-day; it may be, too, that the poet was particularly
susceptible to low fever and ague, and that he cured his attacks, or
sought to cure them, with the aid of drugs. He reached London in the
middle of August 1806, and described his forlorn state in a letter
written long after to Josiah Wedgwood, whose brother Thomas had died in
the previous year. He said he had reached England, "ill, penniless, and
worse than homeless." That he was ill is undoubted; that he was homeless
is a figure of speech that will pass, though it should be remembered
that Greta Hall was still open to him; but inasmuch as he had been the
Civil Commissioner's private secretary, had earned over four hundred
pounds as Public Secretary, and had gone to Italy at the expense of his
travelling companion, the financial straits are more than ever
inexplicable and unsatisfactory. Stuart was still willing and anxious
to publish and pay for his erratic contributor's work; travel had
increased its value. There can be no doubt but that Coleridge's
will-power and self-respect were both at the lowest ebb at this period,
all had gone save the love of friends and the admiration of those with
whom he came in contact. He could still hold an audience silent, still
prove to his immediate circle that his intellect was of the keenest and
highest order. But the world, which demands from all poor men a definite
expression of their rights to live, was far too strong for him, nor
could any of the chances that came his way, and they were many, give to
his strange character the strength it needed. He seemed to have
inherited the curse of Cain--"a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be on
the earth." So with a sick mind and an ailing body he cast about once
more for the means to live in some position which should meet his own
undefined requirements.