devil, has got possession of my left temple, eye, cheek, jaw, throat,
and shoulder. I can not see you this evening. I write in agony."
Frequent reference is made in Coleridge's correspondence to his
sufferings, from rheumatic or neuralgic affections, and the following
letter, written in 1797, may possibly explain their origin:
"I had asked my mother one evening to cut my cheese entire, so that I
might toast it. This was no easy matter, it being a _crumbly_
cheese. My mother, however, did it. I went into the garden for
something or other, and in the mean time my brother Frank minced my
cheese, to 'disappoint the favorite.' I returned, saw the exploit,
and in an agony of passion flew at Frank. He pretended to have been
seriously hurt by my blow, flung himself on the ground, and there lay
with outstretched limbs. I hung over him mourning and in a great
fright; he leaped up, and with a horse-laugh gave me a severe blow in
the face. I seized a knife and was running at him, when my mother came
in and took me by the arm. I expected a flogging, and struggling from
her I ran away to a little hill or slope, at the bottom of which the
Otter flows, about a mile from Ottery. There I stayed. My rage died
away, but my obstinancy vanquished my fears, and taking out a shilling
book, which had at the end morning and evening prayers, I very
devoutly repeated them--thinking at the same time, with a gloomy
inward satisfaction, how miserable my mother must be!.... It grew dark
and I fell asleep. It was toward the end of October, and it proved a
stormy night. I felt the cold in my sleep, and dreamed that I was
pulling the blanket over me, and actually pulled over me a dry
thorn-bush which lay on the ground near me. In my sleep I had rolled
from the top of the hill till within three yards of the river, which
flowed by the unfenced edge of the bottom. I awoke several times, and
finding myself wet, and cold, and stiff, closed my eyes again that I
might forget it.
"In the mean time my mother waited about half an hour, expecting my
return when the _sulks_ had evaporated. I not returning, she sent
into the church-yard and round the town. Not found! Several men and
all the boys were sent out to ramble about and seek me. In vain! My
mother was almost distracted, and at ten o'clock at night I was
_cried_ by the crier in Ottery and in two villages near it, with
a reward offered for me. No one went to bed; indeed I believe half the
town were up all the night. To return to myself. About five in the
morning, or a little after, I was broad awake and attempted to get up
and walk, but I could not move. I saw the shepherds and workmen at a
distance and cried, but so faintly that it was impossible to hear me
thirty yards off, and there I might have lain and died--for I was now
almost given over, the pond and even the river near which I was lying
having been dragged--but providentially Sir Stafford Northcote, who
had been out all night, resolved to make one other trial, and came so
near that he heard me crying. He carried me in his arms for nearly a
quarter of a mile, when we met my father and Sir Stafford Northcote's
servants. I remember and never shall forget my father's face as he
looked upon me while I lay in the servant's arms--so calm, and the
tears stealing down his face, for I was the child of his old age. My
mother, as you may suppose, was outrageous with joy. Meantime in
rushed a young lady, crying out, 'I hope you'll whip him,
Mr. Coleridge.' This woman still lives at Ottery, and neither
philosophy nor religion has been able to conquer the antipathy which I
feel toward her whenever I see her. I was put to bed and recovered in
a day or so; but I was certainly injured, for I was weakly and subject
to ague for many years after."
The next year he writes to two other friends: "I have been confined to
my bed for some days through a fever occasioned by the stump of a
tooth which baffled chirurgical efforts to eject, and which by
affecting my eye affected my stomach, and through that my whole
frame. I am better, but still weak in consequence of such long
sleeplessness and wearying pains; weak, very weak.
"I have even now returned from a little excursion that I have taken
for the confirmation of my health, which has suffered a rude assault
from the anguish of the stump of a tooth which had baffled the
attempts of our surgeon here, and which confined' me to my bed. I
suffered much from the disease, and more from the doctor. Rather than
again put my mouth into his hands, I would put my hands into a lion's
mouth."
His nephew says of him: "He was naturally of a joyous temperament, and
in one amusement, swimming, he excelled and took singular
delight. Indeed he believed, and probably with truth, that his health
was singularly injured by his excess in bathing, coupled with such
tricks as swimming across the New River in his clothes, and drying
them on his back, and the like."
In the biography of the poet by his friend Dr. Gilman, in whose family
he resided for the last twenty years of his life, the subjoined
statements are found:
"From his own account, as well as from Lamb and others who knew him
when at school, he must have been a delicate and suffering boy. His
principal ailments he owed much to the state of his stomach, which was
at that time so delicate that when compelled to go to a large closet
containing shoes, to pick out a pair easy to his feet, which were
always tender, the smell from the number in this place used to make
him so sick that I have often seen him shudder, even in late life,
when he gave an account of it.
"'Conceive,' says Coleridge, 'what I must have been at fourteen. I was
in a continual low fever. My whole being was, with eyes closed to
every object of present sense, to crumple myself up in a sunny corner
and read, read, read; fancy myself on Robinson Crusoe's Island,
finding a mountain of plum-cake, and eating a room for myself, and
then eating it into the shapes of tables and chairs--hunger and
fancy!'
"Full half the time from seventeen to eighteen was passed in the
sick-ward of Christ's Hospital, afflicted with jaundice and rheumatic
fever. From these indiscretions and their consequences may be dated
all his bodily sufferings in future life--in short, rheumatism sadly
afflicting him, while the remedies only slightly alleviated his
sufferings, without hope of a permanent cure. Medical men are too
often called upon to witness the effects of acute rheumatism in the
young subject. In some the attack is on the heart, and its
consequences are immediate; in others it leaves behind bodily
suffering, which may indeed be palliated, but terminates only in a
lingering dissolution.
"In early life he was remarkably joyous. Nature had blessed him with a
buoyancy of spirits, and even when suffering he deceived the partial
observer.
"At this time (while a soldier) he frequently complained of a pain at
the pit of his stomach, accompanied with sickness, which totally
prevented his stooping, and in consequence he could never arrive at
the power of bending his body to rub the heels of his horse. During
the latter part of his life he became nearly crippled by the
rheumatism."
Under date of July 24, 1800, Coleridge writes: "I have been more
unwell than I have ever been since I left school. For many days was
forced to keep my bed, and when released from that incarceration I
suffered most grievously from a brace of swollen eyelids and a head
into which, on the least agitation, the blood was felt as rushing in
and flowing back again, like the raking of the tide on a coast of
loose stones."
In January, 1803, he says: "I write with difficulty, with all the
fingers but one of my right hand very much swollen. Before I was half
up the _Kirkstone mountain_, the storm had wetted me through and
through. In spite of the wet and the cold I should have had some
pleasure in it, but for two vexations; first, an almost intolerable
pain came into my right eye, a smarting and burning pain; and
secondly, in consequence of riding with such cold water under my seat,
extremely uneasy and burdensome feelings attacked my groin, so that,
what with the pain from the one, and the alarm from the other, I had
no enjoyment at all!
"I went on to Grasmere. I was not at all unwell when I arrived there,
though wet of course to the skin. My right eye had nothing the matter
with it, either to the sight of others or to my own feelings, but I
had a bad night with distressful dreams, chiefly about my eye; and
waking often in the dark, I thought it was the effect of mere
recollection, but it appeared in the morning that my right eye was
bloodshot and the lid swollen. That morning, however, I walked home,
and before I reached Keswick my eye was quite well, but _I felt
unwell all over_. Yesterday I continued unusually unwell all over
me till eight o'clock in the evening. I took no _laudanum or
opium_, but at eight o'clock, unable to bear the stomach uneasiness
and aching of my limbs, I took two large tea-spoons full of ether in a
wine-glass of camphorated gum-water, and a third tea-spoon full at ten
o'clock, and I received complete relief, my body calmed, my sleep
placid; but when I awoke in the morning my right hand, with three of
the fingers, were swollen and inflamed. The swelling in the hand is
gone down, and of two of the fingers somewhat abated, but the middle
finger is still twice its natural size, so that I write with
difficulty."
A few days later, he writes to the same friend: "On Monday night I had
an attack in my stomach and right side, which in pain, and the length
of its continuance, appeared to me by far the severest I ever
had. About one o'clock the pain passed out of my stomach, like
lightning from a cloud, into the extremities of my right foot. My toe
swelled and throbbed, and I was in a state of delicious ease which the
pain in my toe did not seem at all to interfere with. On Wednesday I
was well, and after dinner wrapped myself up warm and walked to
Lodore.
"The walk appears to have done me good, but I had a wretched night:
shocking pains in my head, occiput, and teeth, and found in the
morning that I had two bloodshot eyes. But almost immediately after
the receipt and perusal of your letter the pains left me, and I am
bettered to this hour; and am now indeed as well as usual saving that
my left eye is very much bloodshot. It is a sort of duty with me to be
particular respecting parts that relate to my health. I have retained
a good sound appetite through the whole of it, without any craving
after exhilarants or narcotics, and I have got well as in a
moment. Rapid recovery is constitutional with me; but the former
circumstances I can with certainty refer to the system of diet,
abstinence of vegetables, wine, spirits, and beer, which I have
adopted by your advice."
The same year he writes to a friend suffering from a chronic disorder,
and records the trial of Bang--"the powder of the leaves of a kind of
hemp that grows in the hot climates. It is prepared, and I believe
used, in all parts of the east, from Morocco to China. In Europe it is
found to act very differently on different constitutions. Some it
elevates in the extreme; others it renders torpid, and scarcely
observant of any evil that may befall them. In Barbary it is always
taken, if it can be procured, by criminals condemned to suffer
amputation, and it is said to enable those miserables to bear the
rough operations of an unfeeling executioner more than we Europeans
can the keen knife of our most skillful chirurgeons:
"We will have a fair trial of Bang. Do bring down some of the
Hyoscyamine pills, and I will give a fair trial to Opium, Henbane, and
Nepenthe. By the bye, I always considered Homer's account of the
Nepenthe as a _Banging_ lie."
In September, 1803, he gives a gloomy account of his condition. It
seems probable that at this time his use of opium must have become
habitual:
"For five months past my mind has been strangely shut up. I have
taken the paper with the intention to write to you many times, but it
has been one blank feeling--one blank idealess feeling. I had nothing
to say--could say nothing. How dearly I love you, my very dreams make
known to me. I will not trouble you with the gloomy tale of my
health. When I am awake, by patience, employment, effort of mind, and
walking, I can keep the fiend at arm's-length, but the night is my
Hell! sleep my tormenting Angel. Three nights out of four I fall
asleep, struggling to lie awake, and my frequent night-screams have
almost made me a nuisance in my own house. Dreams with me are no
shadows, but the very calamities of my life.
"In the hope of drawing the gout, if gout it should be, into my feet,
I walked, previously to my getting into the coach at Perth, 263 miles
in eight days, with no unpleasant fatigue. My head is equally strong;
but acid or not acid, gout or not gout, something there is in my
stomach.
"To diversify this dusky letter, I will write an _Epitaph_, which
I composed in my sleep for myself while dreaming that I was dying. To
the best of my recollection I have not altered a word:
"'Here sleeps at length poor Col. and without screaming,
Who died as he had always lived, a dreaming;
Shot dead, while sleeping, by the gout within,
Alone, and all unknown, at E'nbro' in an Inn'"
In the beginning of the next year, 1804, the state of his health is
thus indicated: "I stayed at Grasmere (Mr. Wordsworth's) a
month--three-fourths of the time bedridden--and deeply do I feel the
enthusiastic kindness of Wordsworth's wife and sister, who sat up by
me, one or the other, in order to awaken me at the first symptoms of
distressful feeling; and even when they went to rest, continued often
and often to weep and watch for me even in their dreams.
"Though my right hand is so much swollen that I can scarcely keep my
pen steady between my thumb and finger, yet my stomach is easy and my
breathing comfortable, and I am eager to hope all good things of my
health. That gained, I have a cheering and I trust prideless
confidence that I shall make an active and perseverant use of the
faculties and requirements that have been entrusted to my keeping, and
a fair trial of their height, depth, and width."
A few days later he writes to a friend who was suffering like himself:
"Have you ever thought of trying large doses of opium, a hot climate,
keeping your body open by grapes, and the fruits of the climate? Is it
possible that by drinking freely you might at last produce the gout,
and that a violent pain and inflammation in the extremities might
produce new trains of motion and feeling in your stomach, and the
organs connected with the stomach, known and unknown? I know by a
little what your sufferings are, and that to shut the eyes and stop up
the ears is to give one's self up to storm and darkness, and the lurid
forms and horrors of a dream."
In reference to these statements regarding Coleridge's physical
condition, Cottle remarks: "I can testify that, during the four or
five years in which Mr. C. resided in or near Bristol, no young man
could enjoy more robust health. Dr. Carlyon also verbally stated that
Mr. C., both at Cambridge and at Gottingen, 'possessed sound health.'
From these premises the conclusion is fair that Mr. Coleridge's
unhappy use of narcotics, which commenced thus early, was the true
cause of all his maladies, his languor, his acute and chronic pains,
his indigestion, his swellings, the disturbances of his general
corporeal system, his sleepless nights, and his terrific dreams."
Scattered through Dr. Gilman's "Life of Coleridge" are indications of
this kind:
"In 1804, his rheumatic sufferings increasing, he determined on a
change of climate, and went in May to Malta. He seemed at this time,
in addition to his rheumatism, to have been oppressed in his
breathing, which oppression crept on him, imperceptibly to himself,
without suspicion of its cause. Yet so obvious was it that it was
noticed by others 'as laborious;' and continuing to increase, though
with little apparent advancement, at length terminated in death.
"At first he remarked that he was relieved by the climate of Malta,
but afterward speaks of his limbs 'as lifeless tools,' and of the
violent pain in his bowels, which neither opium, ether, nor
peppermint, separately or combined, could relieve.
"Coleridge _began_ the use of opium from bodily pain
(rheumatism), and for the same reason _continued_ it, till he had
acquired a habit too difficult uder his own management to control. To
him it was the thorn in the flesh, which will be seen in the following
note found in his pocket-book: 'I have never loved evil for its own
sake; no! nor ever sought pleasure for its own sake, but only as the
means of escaping from pains that coiled around my mental powers as a
serpent around the body and wings of an eagle! My sole sensuality was
_not_ to be in pain.'"
Little is known of Coleridge's opium habits during his residence at
Malta. On his return to England in 1807, he wrote to Mr. Cottle: "On
my return to Bristol, whenever that may be, I will certainly give you
the right hand of old fellowship; but, alas! you will find me the
wretched wreck of what you knew me, rolling, rudderless. My health is
extremely bad. Pain I have enough of, but that is indeed to me a mere
trifle, but the almost unceasing, overpowering sensations of
wretchedness--achings in my limbs, with an indescribable restlessness
that makes action to any available purpose almost impossible--and
worst of all the sense of blighted utility, regrets, not
remorseless. But enough; yea, more than enough, if these things
produce or deepen the conviction of the utter powerlessness of
ourselves, and that we either perish or find aid from something that
passes understanding."
A period of seven years here intervenes, during which no light is
thrown upon the opium life of Coleridge. The following extract from a
letter written by him during this period, sufficiently indicates,
however, both his consciousness of his great powers and his remorse
for their imperfect use:
"As to the letter you propose to write to a man who is unworthy even
of a rebuke from you, I might most unfeignedly object to some parts of
it from a pang of conscience forbidding me to allow, even from a dear
friend, words of admiration which are inapplicable in exact proportion
to the power given to me of having deserved them if I had done my
duty.
"It is not of comparative utility I speak; for as to what has been
actually done, and in relation to useful effects produced--whether on
the minds of individuals or of the public--I dare boldly stand
forward, and (let every man have his own, and that be counted mine
which but for and through me would not have existed) will challenge
the proudest of my literary contemporaries to compare proofs with me
of usefulness in the excitement of reflection, and the diffusion of
original or forgotten yet necessary and important truths and
knowledge; and this is not the less true because I have suffered
others to reap all the advantages. But, O dear friend, this
consciousness, raised by insult of enemies and alienated friends,
stands me in little stead to my own soul--in how little, then, before
the all-righteous Judge! who, requiring back the talents he had
entrusted, will, if the mercies of Christ do not intervene, not demand
of me what I have done, but why I did not do more; why, with powers
above so many, I had sunk in many things below most!"
In 1814 he returned to Bristol, and here the painful narrative of
Mr. Cottle comes in: "Is it expedient, is it lawful, to give publicity
to Mr. Coleridge's practice of inordinately taking opium; which to a
certain extent, at one part of his life, inflicted on a heart
naturally cheerful the stings of conscience, and sometimes almost the
horrors of despair?
"In the year 1814, all this, I am afflicted to say, applied to
Mr. Coleridge. Once Mr. Coleridge expressed to me, with indescribable
emotion, the joy he should feel if he could collect around him all who
were 'beginning to tamper with the lulling but fatal draught,' so that
he might proclaim as with a trumpet, 'the worse than death that opium
entailed.'
"When it is considered, also, how many men of high mental endowments
have shrouded their lustre by a passion for this stimulus, would it not
be a criminal concession to unauthorized feelings to allow so
impressive an exhibition of this subtle species of intemperance to
escape from public notice? In the exhibition here made, the
inexperienced in future may learn a memorable lesson, and be taught to
shrink from opium as they would from a scorpion, which, before it
destroys, invariably expels peace from the mind, and excites the worst
species of conflict--that of setting a man at war with himself.
"I had often spoken to Hannah More of S. T. Coleridge, and proceeded
with him one morning to Barley Wood, her residence, eleven miles from
Bristol. The interview was mutually agreeable, nor was there any lack
of conversation; but I was struck with something singular in
Mr. Coleridge's eye. I expressed to a friend, the next day, my concern
at having beheld him during his visit to Hannah More so extremely
paralytic, his hands shaking to an alarming degree, so that he could
not take a glass of wine without spilling it, though one hand
supported the other! 'That,' said he, 'arises from the immoderate
quantity of OPIUM he takes.'
"It is remarkable that this was the first time the melancholy fact of
Mr. Coleridge's excessive indulgence in opium had come to my
knowledge. It astonished and afflicted me. Now the cause of his
ailments became manifest. On this subject Mr. C. may have been
communicative to others, but to me he was silent.
"I ruminated long upon this subject with indescribable sorrow; and
having ascertained from others not only the existence of the evil but
its extent, I determined to write to Mr. Coleridge. I addressed him
the following letter, under the full impression that it was a case of
'life and death,' and that if some strong effort were not made to
arouse him from his insensibility, speedy destruction must inevitably
follow.
"'BRISTOL, April 25,1814.
"'DEAR COLERIDGE:--I am conscious of being influenced by the purest
motives in addressing to you the following letter. Permit me to
remind you that I am the oldest friend you have in Bristol, that I was
such when my friendship was of more consequence to you than it is at
present, and that at that time you were neither insensible of my
kindnesses nor backward to acknowledge them. I bring these things to
your remembrance to impress on your mind that it is still a
_friend_ who is writing to you; one who ever has been such, and
who is now going to give you the most decisive evidence of his
sincerity.
"'When I think of Coleridge I wish to recall the image of him such as
he appeared in past years; now, how has the baneful use of opium
thrown a dark cloud over you and your prospects! I would not say any
thing needlessly harsh or unkind, but I must be _faithful_. It is
the irresistible voice of conscience. Others may still flatter you,
and hang upon your words, but I have another, though a less gracious
duty to perform. I see a brother sinning a sin unto death, and shall I
not warn him? I see him perhaps on the borders of eternity; in
effect, despising his Maker's law, and yet indifferent to his perilous
state!
"'In recalling what the expectations concerning you once were, and the
excellency with which seven years ago you wrote and spoke on religious
truth, my heart bleeds to see how you are now fallen, and thus to
notice how many exhilarating hopes are almost blasted by your present
habits. This is said, not to wound, but to arouse you to reflection.