MRS. COLERIDGE. LAST STAY AT THE LAKE DISTRICT
[Coleridge married Sarah Fricker, as we have already seen, on 5th
October, 1795. The first period of Coleridge's married life had been a
happy one. Although there is reason to believe Coleridge married his
wife to "heal a deeper wound," and that Mary Evans would have been the
object of his choice, there is no reason to suppose that he ever
regretted his union with Sarah Fricker during the first years of their
marriage. All accounts we have of the Clevedon and Stowey periods agree
that Coleridge was happy in the new domestic bond. Cottle prints a
glowing picture of the life at Clevedon (_Reminiscences_);[44] and
Richard Reynell concurs regarding the Stowey cottage life (_Illustrated
London News_, 1893). Coleridge, too, wrote most affectionately to his
wife during his absence in Germany (_Letters_), and he was a deep lover
of his children, and always in dread lest any calamity should happen to
them while he was in Germany and Malta (_Letters_). Coleridge, above
most men, was peculiarly fitted to make a good husband. He never spoke
of his wife as his intellectual inferior, although he knew perfectly
well she was not fitted to follow him in his Platonic imaginings.
Dorothy Wordsworth's remarks (_Coleorton Memorials_, p. 164) on this
point are beside the mark. Coleridge never expected to find in the woman
he was prepared to love intellectual grasp of his philosophic system.
The woman ideals he has given us are not blue-stockings, but domestic
Ophelias and Imogens. Read in this connection _The Eolian Harp_ and
_Lines written on having left a Place of Retirement_, _Lewti_,
_Christabel_, _Love_, _Fears in Solitude_, the _Day Dream_. "I could,"
said Coleridge to Thomas Allsop in 1822, "have been happy with a
servant-girl had she only in sincerity of heart responded to my
affection." (Allsop's _Letters of S. T. Coleridge_, p. 206.)
Strained relations commenced to develop between the poet and Mrs.
Coleridge between the summer of 1801 and the summer of 1802; and that
Coleridge was not living happily with his wife began to leak out among
their acquaintances during 1802; and by 1807 it had become a recognized
fact. The evidence of all this does not require to be quoted to those
who have read the _Journals_ and Letters of Dorothy Wordsworth. There
are numerous notices of the estrangement, and Dorothy in a letter to
Lady Beaumont (_Coleorton Memorials_, i, 162), enumerates what she
supposes were the causes of the gulf of separation.
The causes of the estrangement were cumulative. While Coleridge never
looked upon his wife as his inferior, and never expected attainments in
her which she did not have, Mrs. Coleridge, as she advanced in years,
could not be slow to perceive that there were other women beside herself
who deeply interested themselves in her husband with his conversational
fascinations and gentlemanly bearing toward woman. She could not be
oblivious to the fact that Dorothy Wordsworth, for instance, was
intellectually better fitted than herself to comprehend the "large
discourse" which characterized Coleridge; and into Dorothy's ear was
poured many a transcendental disquisition not understandable by the
wife. Very few wives, as we know from the Carlyle history, can allow
their husbands to have a "Gloriana;" and it is not likely that Sarah
Fricker was one of the exceptions. Later, Charlotte Brent became one of
Coleridge's Platonic sisterhood, but of what intellectual capacity she
was of we cannot tell. But she added to the wife's resentment. Opium,
too, of course, had its share in irritating the discontented wife.
There is little foundation, as far as I can see, for the charge made
against Mrs. Coleridge in Flagg's _Life of Allston_, p. 356, that Mrs.
Coleridge had a horrible and ungovernable temper. I think ill-temper was
created by events and by the non-success of Coleridge, and by the
unfavourable comparison Coleridge as a literary man made with Southey,
who was luckily successful in his ventures while Coleridge was always
unfortunate. She was doubtless sorely tried.
It must also be stated that Coleridge did not neglect his wife in the
pecuniary sense. He allowed Mrs. Coleridge to enjoy the whole of the
Wedgwood Pension (less £20 a year which he granted to her mother, Mrs.
Fricker).[45] In his brief bursts of prosperity he also remitted her
supplementary sums, £110 was sent from Malta, and £100 more promised.
When _Remorse_ was a success he sent her £100, on 20th January 1813
(_Letters_, 603), and another £100 was promised in a month. Coleridge
also effected an insurance on his life for £1,000, with profits, before
going to Malta, the premium for which was £27 5_s._ 6_d._ per annum.
This was paid to the end of his life, sometimes, no doubt, by the help
of friends; and the policy realized £2,560. The charge, therefore, that
Coleridge neglected or deserted his wife and family is without
foundation. Stuart, in an article otherwise by no means favourable to
Coleridge, acquits him on this charge. He says Coleridge "never deserted
them in the sense which the words imply. On the contrary, he always
spoke of them to me with esteem, affection, and anxiety. He allowed to
them the greatest part of his income, but that was sometimes
insufficient for their comfortable subsistence, and he himself was
usually more distressed for money than they;" (_Gentleman's Magazine_,
1838). We may add that Coleridge was a man of a vestal purity; and, in
spite of his own experience, never said anything in disparagement of the
marriage bond.
Coleridge paid his last visit to the Lake District in the spring of
1812, 23rd February to 26th March (_Letters_, 575). He quitted his wife
on cordial enough terms, and wrote an agreeable letter to her from
London (_Letters_, 579), of date 21st April. But he never returned to
Keswick. That mysterious gulf which he has described so wonderfully and
weirdly in _Christabel_ which separates sundered hearts, widened with
the years; and
They stood aloof, the scars remaining!]
FOOTNOTES:
[44] [See also _Eolian Harp_, and _Lines written on having left a
place of Retirement_.]
[45] [After 1812 the pension was reduced by half.]