Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey

J >> Joseph Cottle >> Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey

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S. T. Coleridge.

Thomas Wedgewood, Esq."

"Keswick, November 3, 1802.

Dear Wedgewood,

It is now two hours since I received your letter; and after the necessary
consultation, Mrs. Coleridge herself is fully of opinion that to lose
time is merely to lose spirits. Accordingly I have resolved not to look
the children in the face, (the parting from whom is the downright bitter
in the thing) but to go to London by to-morrow's mail. Of course I shall
be in London, God permitting, on Saturday morning. I shall rest that day,
and the next, and proceed to Bristol by the Monday night's mail. At
Bristol I will go to _Cote-House_.[106] At all events, barring serious
illness, serious fractures, and the et cetera of serious unforeseens, I
shall be at Bristol, Tuesday noon, November 9.

You are aware that my whole knowledge of French does not extend beyond
the power of limping slowly, not without a dictionary crutch, or an easy
French book: and that as to pronunciation, all my organs of speech, from
the bottom of the Larynx to the edge of my lips, are utterly and
naturally anti-Gallican. If only I shall have been any comfort, any
alleviation to you I shall feel myself at ease--and whether you go abroad
or no, while I remain with you, it will greatly contribute to my comfort,
if I know you will have no hesitation, nor pain, in telling me what you
wish me to do, or not to do.

I regard it among the blessings of my life, that I have, never lived
among men whom I regarded as my artificial superiors: that all the
respect I have at any time paid, has been wholly to supposed goodness, or
talent. The consequence has been that I have no alarms of pride; no
_cheval de frise_ of independence. I have always lived among equals. It
never occurs to me, even for a moment, that I am otherwise. If I have
quarrelled with men, it has been as brothers, or as school-fellows
quarrel. How little any man can give me, or take from me, save in matters
of kindness and esteem, is not so much a thought or conviction with me,
or even a distinct feeling, as it is my very nature. Much as I dislike
all formal declarations of this kind, I have deemed it well to say this.
I have as strong feelings of gratitude as any man. Shame upon me if in
the sickness and the sorrow which I have had, and which have been kept
unaggravated and supportable by your kindness, and your brother's (Mr.
Josiah Wedgewood) shame upon me if I did not feel a kindness, not unmixed
with reverence towards you both. But yet I never should have had my
present impulses to be with you, and this confidence, that I may become
an occasional comfort to you, if, independently of all gratitude, I did
not thoroughly esteem you; and if I did not appear to myself to
understand the nature of your sufferings; and within the last year, in
some slight degree to have felt myself, something of the same.

Forgive me, my dear sir, if I have said too much. It is better to write
it than to say it, and I am anxious in the event of our travelling
together that you should yourself be at ease with me, even as you would
with a younger brother, to whom, from his childhood you had been in the
habit of saying, 'Do this Col.' or 'don't do that.'

All good be with you,

S. T. Coleridge.

Thomas Wedgewood. Esq."

"Keswick, January 9, 1803.

My dear Wedgewood,

I send you two letters, one from your dear sister, the second from Sharp,
by which you will see at what short notice I must be off, if I go to the
_Canaries_. If your last plan continue in full force, I have not even the
phantom of a wish thitherward struggling, but if aught have happened to
you, in the things without, or in the world within, to induce you to
change the place, or the plan, relatively to me, I think I could raise
the money. But I would a thousand-fold rather go with you whithersoever
you go. I shall be anxious to hear how you have gone on since I left you.
You should decide in favour of a better climate somewhere or other. The
best scheme I can think of, is to go to some part of Italy or Sicily,
which we both liked. I would look out for two houses. Wordsworth and his
family would take the one, and I the other, and then you might have a
home either with me, or if you thought of Mr. and Mrs. Luff, under this
modification, one of your own; and in either case you would have
neighbours, and so return to England when the home sickness pressed heavy
upon you, and back to Italy when it was abated, and the climate of
England began to poison your comforts. So you would have abroad in a
genial climate, certain comforts of society among simple and enlightened
men and women; and I should be an alleviation of the pang which you will
necessarily feel, as often as you quit your own family.

I know no better plan: for travelling in search of objects is at best a
dreary business, and whatever excitement it might have had, you must have
exhausted it. God bless you, my dear friend. I write with dim eyes, for
indeed, indeed, my heart is very full of affectionate sorrowful thoughts
toward you.

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, and before I reached the top it
was so wild and outrageous, that it would have been unmanly to have
suffered the poor woman (guide) to continue pushing on, up against such a
torrent of wind and rain: so I dismounted and sent her home with the
storm in her back. I am no novice in mountain mischiefs, but such a storm
as this was, I never witnessed, combining the intensity of the cold, with
the violence of the wind and rain. The rain drops were pelted or slung
against my face by the gusts, just like splinters of flint, and I felt as
if every drop cut my flesh. My hands were all shrivelled up like a
washerwoman's, and so benumbed that I was obliged to carry my stick under
my arm. O, it was a wild business! Such hurry skurry of clouds, such
volleys of sound! 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 burthensome 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!_

Just at the brow of the hill I met a man dismounted, who could not sit on
horse-back. He seemed quite scared by the uproar, and said to me, with
much feeling, 'O sir, it is a perilous buffeting, but it is worse for you
than for me, for I have it at my back.' However I got safely over, and
immediately all was calm and breathless, as if it was some mighty
fountain put on the summit of Kirkstone, that shot forth its volcano of
air, and precipitated huge streams of invisible lava down the road to
Patterdale.

I went on to Grasmere.[107] 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
blood-shot, 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 achings 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 was 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. This has been a very rough attack,
but though I am much weakened by it, and look sickly and haggard, yet I
am not out of heart. Such a _bout_; such a 'periless buffetting' was
enough to have hurt the health of a strong man. Few constitutions can
bear to be long wet through in intense cold I fear it will tire you to
death to read this prolix scrawled story.

Affectionately dear friend, Yours ever,

S. T. Coleridge."

"November 12,1800.

My dear sir,

I received your kind letter, with the L20. My eyes are in such a state of
inflammation that I might as well write blindfold, they are so blood-red.
I have had leeches twice, and have now a blister behind my right ear. How
I caught the cold, in the first instance, I can scarcely guess; but I
improved it to its present glorious state, by taking long walks all the
mornings, spite of the wind, and writing late at night, while my eyes
were weak.

I have made some rather curious observations on the rising up of spectra
in the eye, in its inflamed state, and their influence on ideas, &c., but
I cannot see to make myself intelligible to you. Present my kindest
remembrance to Mrs. W. and your brother. Pray did you ever pay any
particular attention to the first time of your little ones smiling and
laughing? Both I and Mrs. C. have carefully watched our little one, and
noticed down all the circumstances, under which he smiled, and under
which he laughed, for the first six times, nor have we remitted our
attention; but I have not been able to derive the least confirmation of
Hartley's or Darwin's Theory. You say most truly, my dear sir, that a
pursuit is necessary. Pursuit, for even praiseworthy employment, merely
for good, or general good, is not sufficient for happiness, nor fit for
man.

I have not at present made out how I stand in pecuniary ways, but I
believe that I have anticipated on the next year to the amount of Thirty
or Forty pounds, probably more. God bless you, my dear sir, and your
sincerely

Affectionate friend,

S. T. Coleridge.

Josiah Wedgewood, Esq."

"Friday night, Jan. 14, 1803.

Dear Friend,

I was glad at heart to receive your letter, and still more gladdened by
the reading of it. The exceeding kindness which it breathed was literally
medicinal to me, and I firmly believe, cured me of a nervous rheumatic
affection, the acid and the oil, very completely at Patterdale; but by
the time it came to Keswick, the oil was all atop.

You ask me, 'Why, in the name of goodness, I did not return when I saw
the state of the weather?' The true reason is simple, though it may be
somewhat strange. The thought never once entered my head. The cause of
this I suppose to be, that (I do not remember it at least) I never once
in my whole life turned back in fear of the weather. Prudence is a plant,
of which I no doubt, possess some valuable specimens, but they are always
in my hothouse, never out of the glasses, and least of all things would
endure the climate of the mountains. In simple earnestness, I never find
myself alone, within the embracement of rocks and hills, a traveller up
an alpine road, but my spirit careers, drives, and eddies, like a leaf in
autumn; a wild activity of thoughts, imaginations, feelings, and impulses
of motion rises up from within me; a sort of bottom wind, that blows to
no point of the compass, comes from I know not whence, but agitates the
whole of me; my whole being is filled with waves that roll and stumble,
one this way, and one that way, like things that have no common master. I
think that my soul must have pre-existed in the body of a chamois chaser.
The simple image of the old object has been obliterated, but the
feelings, and impulsive habits, and incipient actions, are in me, and the
old scenery awakens them.

The further I ascend from animated nature, from men, and cattle, and the
common birds of the woods and fields, the greater becomes in me the
intensity of the feeling of life. Life seems to me then an universal
spirit, that neither has, nor can have an opposite. 'God is everywhere' I
have exclaimed, and works everywhere, and where is there room for death?
In these moments it has been my creed, that death exists only because
ideas exist; that life is limitless sensation; that death is a child of
the organic senses, chiefly of the sight; that feelings die by flowing
into the mould of the intellect becoming ideas, and that ideas passing
forth into action, reinstate themselves again in the world of life. And I
do believe that truth lies in these loose generalizations. I do not think
it possible that any bodily pains could eat out the love of joy, that is
so substantially part of me, towards hills, and rocks, and steep waters;
and I have had some trial.

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 Tuesday I
was uncommonly well all the morning, and ate an excellent dinner; but
playing too long and, too rompingly with Hartley and Derwent, I was very
unwell that evening. On Wednesday I was well, and after dinner wrapped
myself up warm, and walked with Sarah Hutchinson, to Lodore. I never
beheld anything more impressive than the wild outline of the black masses
of mountain over Lodore, and so on to the gorge of Borrowdale. Even
through the bare twigs of a grove of birch trees, through which the road
passes; and on emerging from the grove a red planet, so very red that I
never saw a star so red, being clear and bright at the same time. It
seemed to have sky behind it. It started, as it were from the heavens,
like an eye-ball of fire. I wished aloud at that moment that you had been
with me.

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 blood-shot 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 blood-shot. 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 from vegetables, wine,
spirits, and beer, which I have adopted by your advice.

I have no dread or anxiety respecting any fatigue which either of us is
likely to undergo, even in continental travelling. Many a healthy man
would have been laid up with such a bout of thorough wet, and intense
cold at the same time, as I had at Kirkstone. Would to God that also for
your sake I were a stronger man, but I have strong wishes to be with you.
I love your society, and receiving much comfort from you, and believing
likewise that I receive much improvement, I find a delight very great, my
dear friend! indeed it is, when I have reason to imagine that I am in
return an alleviation to your destinies, and a comfort to you. I have no
fears and am ready to leave home at a two days' warning. For myself I
should say two hours, but bustle and hurry might disorder Mrs. Coleridge.
She and the three children are quite well.

I grieve that there is a lowering in politics. The 'Moniteur' contains
almost daily some bitter abuse of our minister and parliament, and in
London there is great anxiety and omening. I have dreaded war from the
time that the disastrous fortunes of the expedition to Saint Domingo,
under Le Clerc, was known in France. Write me one or two lines, as few as
you like.

I remain, my dear Wedgewood, with most affectionate esteem, and grateful
attachment,

Your sincere friend,

S. T. Coleridge.

Thomas Wedgewood, Esq."

"Nether Stowey, Feb. 10, 1803.

Dear Wedgewood,

Last night Poole and I fully expected a few lines from you. When the
newspaper came in, without your letter, we felt as if a dull neighbour
had been ushered in after a knock at the door which had made us rise up
and start forward to welcome some long absent friend. Indeed in Poole's
case, this simile is less over-swollen than in mine, for in contempt of
my convictions and assurance to the contrary, Poole, passing off the
Brummagem coin of his wishes for sterling reasons, had persuaded himself
fully that he should see you in _propria persona._ The truth is, we had
no right to expect a letter from you, and I should have attributed your
not writing to your having nothing to write, to your bodily dislike of
writing, or, though with reluctance, to low spirits, but that I have been
haunted with the fear that your sister is worse, and that you are at
Cote-House, in the mournful office of comforter to your brother. God keep
us from idle dreams. Life has enough of real pains.

I wrote to Captain Wordsworth to get me some Bang. The captain in an
affectionate letter answers me: 'The Bang if possible shall be sent. If
any country ship arrives I shall certainly get it. We have not got
anything of the kind in our China ships.' If you would rather wait till
it can be brought by Captain Wordsworth himself from China, give me a
line that I may write and tell him. We shall hope for a letter from you
to-night. I need not say, dear Wedgewood, how anxious I am to hear the
particulars of your health and spirits.

Poole's account of his conversations, &c., in Prance, are very
interesting and instructive. If your inclination lead you hither you
would be very comfortable here. But I am ready at an hour's warning;
ready in heart and mind, as well as in body and moveables.

I am, dear Wedgewood, most truly yours,

S. T. Coleridge.

Thomas Wedgewood, Esq."

"Stowey, Feb. 10, 1803.

My dear Wedgewood,

With regard to myself and my accompanying you, let me say thus much. My
health is not worse than it was in the North; indeed it is much better. I
have no fears. But if you fear that, my health being what you know it to
be, the inconveniences of my being with you will be greater than the
advantages; (I feel no reluctance in telling you so) it is so entirely an
affair of spirits and feeling that the conclusion must be made by you,
not in your reason, but purely in your spirit and feeling. Sorry indeed
should I be to know that you had gone abroad with one, to whom you were
comparatively indifferent. Sorry if there should be no one with you, who
could with fellow-feeling and general like-mindedness, yield you sympathy
in your sunshiny moments. Dear Wedgewood, my heart swells within me as it
were. I have no other wish to accompany you than what arises immediately
from my personal attachment, and a deep sense in my own heart, that let
us be as dejected as we will, a week together cannot pass in which a mind
like yours would not feel the want of affection, or be wholly torpid to
its pleasurable influences. I cannot bear to think of your going abroad
with a mere travelling companion; with one at all influenced by salary,
or personal conveniences. You will not suspect me of flattering you, but
indeed dear Wedgewood, you are too good and too valuable a man to deserve
to receive attendance from a hireling, even for a month together, in your
present state.

If I do not go with you, I shall stay in England only such time as may be
necessary for me to raise the travelling money, and go immediately to the
south of France. I shall probably cross the Pyrennees to Bilboa, see the
country of Biscay, and cross the north of Spain to Perpignan, and so on
to the north of Italy, and pass my next winter at Nice. I have every
reason to believe that I can live, even as a traveller, as cheap as I can
in England. God bless you. I will repeat no professions, even in the
superscription of a letter. You know me, and that it is my serious,
simple wish, that in everything respecting me, you would think altogether
of yourself, and nothing of me, and be assured that no resolve of yours,
however suddenly adopted, or however nakedly communicated, will give me
any pain, any at least arising from my own bearings. Yours ever,

S. T. Coleridge.

Thomas Wedgewood, Esq.

P. S. Perhaps Leslie will go with you."

"Poole's, Feb. 17, 1803.

My dear Wedgewood,

I do not know that I have anything to say that justifies me in troubling
you with the postage and perusal of this scrawl. I received a short and
kind letter from Josiah last night. He is named the sheriff. Poole, who
has received a very kind invitation from your brother John, in a letter
of last Monday, and which was repeated in last night's letter, goes with
me, I hope in the full persuasion that you will be there (at Cote-House)
before he be under the necessity of returning home. Poole is a very, very
good man, I like even his incorrigibility in little faults and
deficiencies. It looks like a wise determination of nature to let well
alone.

Are you not laying out a scheme which will throw your travelling in
Italy, into an unpleasant and unwholesome part of the year? From all I
can gather, you ought to leave this country at the first of April at the
latest. But no doubt you know these things better than I. If I do not go
with you, it is very probable we shall meet somewhere or other. At all
events you will know where I am, and I can come to you if you wish it.
And if I go with you, there will be this advantage, that you may drop me
where you like, if you should meet any Frenchman, Italian, or Swiss, whom
you liked, and who would be pleasant and profitable to you. But this we
can discuss at Gunville.

As to ----, I never doubted that he means to fulfil his engagements with
you, but he is one of those weak moralled men, with whom the meaning to
do a thing means nothing. He promises with ninety parts out of a hundred
of his whole heart, but there is always a stock of cold at the core that
transubstantiates the whole resolve into a lie.

I remain in comfortable health,--warm rooms, an old friend, and
tranquillity, are specifics for my complaints. With all my ups and downs
I have a deal of joyous feeling, and I would with gladness give a good
part of it to you, my dear friend. God grant that spring may come to you
with healing on her wings.

God bless you, my dear Wedgewood. I remain with most affectionate esteem,
and regular attachment, and good wishes. Yours ever,

S. T. Coleridge.

Thomas Wedgewood, Esq.

P. S. If Southey should send a couple of bottles, one of the red
sulphate, and one of the compound acids for me, will you be so good as to
bring them with you?"

"Stowey, Feb. 17, 1803.

My dear Wedgewood,

Last night I received a four ounce parcel letter, by the post, which
Poole and I concluded was the mistake or carelessness of the servant, who
had put the letter into the post office, instead of the coach office. I
should have been indignant, if dear Poole had not set me laughing. On
opening it, it contained my letter from Gunville, and a small parcel of
'Bang,' from Purkis. I will transcribe the parts of his letter which
relate to it.

'Brentford, Feb. 7, 1803.

My dear Coleridge,

I thank you for your letter, and am happy to be the means of obliging
you. Immediately on the receipt of yours, I wrote to Sir Joseph Banks,
who I verily believe is one of the most excellent and useful men of this
country, requesting a small quantity of Bang, and saying it was for the
use of Mr. T. Wedgewood. I yesterday received the parcel which I now
send, accompanied with a very kind letter, and as part of it will be
interesting to you and your friend, I will transcribe it. 'The Bang you
ask for is 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 skilful chirurgeons.
This it may be necessary to have said to my friend Mr. T. Wedgewood, whom
I respect much, as his virtues deserve, and I know them well. I send a
small quantity only as I possess but little. If however, it is found to
agree, I will instantly forward the whole of my stock, and write without
delay to Barbary, from whence it came, for more.

Sir Joseph adds, in a postscript: 'It seems almost beyond a doubt, that
the Nepenthe was a preparation of the Bang, known to the Ancients'

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