and now wondered if Coleridge could come down to help him the following summer. This letter was to be the cause of much misunderstanding and bitterness subsequently within the family.
As Coleridge recalled, George wrote of himself as “distressed by the desertion of my Brother Edward with regard to his School – & dwelt on the hope & idea of my coming to him & being an aid & comfort to him in such affecting language that I was exceedingly moved – being at that time very unhappy at Coleorton from causes, I cannot mention, after a thousand painful struggles I wrote to him to say, that I would come & should be happy to assist him for any number of months that might be of service to his Health.”65
This letter was sent on 2 April 1807, after long discussions with Wordsworth. Coleridge believed that he and his brother could take on “50 scholars at 50 guineas a year”, and that Hartley and Derwent could now be educated at the Ottery school.66 It was not an unreasonable plan, though it suggests how low Coleridge’s professional expectations had fallen at Coleorton. He was now prepared to “strike root in my native place”, working as a simple country schoolmaster, and “pour his whole Heart” into George. But Coleridge also felt he must first explain his own domestic situation to George: “I could not bear to come into his presence and bring my wife with me, with such a load of concealment on my heart.” Accordingly, he described the “Trial” of his marriage, and how despite Mrs Coleridge’s “many excellent qualities, of strict modesty, attention to her children, and economy”, it was now “wholly incompatible with an endurable life”.67
He also wished George to help smooth the parting from his wife, by receiving them all on a family visit in the early summer. “Mrs Coleridge wishes – & very naturally – to accompany me in to Devonshire that our separation may appear free from all shadow of suspicion of any other cause than that of unfitness and unconquerable difference of Temper.” He added that the resolution to settle himself so far from the Wordsworths had occasioned “one of the two or three very severe struggles of my life”.68
But Coleridge’s fraternal letter contained some notable omissions. He did not mention that he was virtually penniless. He dropped no hint of ill-health, or opium; let alone Sara Hutchinson. Nor did he explain that on his instructions Mrs Coleridge, with Derwent and little Sara, were immediately setting out from Keswick for Bristol, on the assumption that George would acquiesce to this scheme.
In the event, George was nervous of the potential scandal of this new situation, and loath to compound his own family difficulties, abruptly changed his mind, and on 6 April wrote a confused and painful letter of refusal. But this was sent, on Coleridge’s own instructions, to Josiah Wade’s in Bristol where it awaited collection for the next two months.69 This absurd and painful confusion was to become typical of Coleridge’s practical arrangements in the coming years, when unopened letters and delayed meetings would cause havoc among even his staunchest friends and supporters.
At Coleorton it was decided that the whole household would go down to London in April for the publication of Wordsworth’s Poems in Two Volumes, while Coleridge and Hartley prepared for Bristol. Only Dorothy and the children remained behind, planning a return to the Lake District. Now, she did not regret Coleridge’s departure: “we had long experience at Coleorton, that it was not in our power to make him happy,” she wrote sadly to Mrs Clarkson.70
Coleridge, in anticipation of the diplomatic visit to “Uncle G. Coleridge”, wrote some instructions for Hartley to be read over “every two or three days”, so that his behaviour at Ottery would be “such as to do yourself, and me and your dear Mother, credit”. They reflect equally upon the anxious father and the brilliant, but unruly son, and show Coleridge slowly accepting the unaccustomed role of paterfamilias.
He wrote not in anger, but “on the contrary with great Love”. He felt Hartley’s nature was “very kind and forgiving, and wholly free from Revenge and Sullenness”; but equally he had “a very active & self-gratifying fancy, and such a high tide & flood of pleasurable feelings, that all unpleasant and painful Thoughts and events are hurried away upon it”. This led Hartley into “bad Habits” and a refusal to accept discipline. He stole food, picked and snatched up things he liked, interrupted his elders, spoke too loudly, and had a maddening way of standing in half-opened doors. “Come in – or go out – & always speak and listen with the door shut.”
He was a clever boy – Coleridge was immensely proud of this – but alas his cleverness led to lies and fantasies and false excuses. “Excuses may show your ingenuity, but they make your honesty suspected. We may admire a man for his cleverness; but we love and esteem him only for his goodness – and a strict attachment to Truth…” Hartley must do what he was told at once – “No procrastination – no self-delusion”. If he took a little trouble, “everyone will be delighted with you”. Coleridge added, “I have not spoken about your mad passions, and frantic Looks & poutmouthing; because I trust, that is all over.”
What worried Coleridge most about Hartley was a quality he knew now that he himself had bequeathed to his eldest son. “This power, which you possess, of shoving aside all disagreeable reflections, or losing them in a labyrinth of day-dreams, which saves you from present pain, has on the other hand interwoven into your nature a habit of procrastination, which unless you correct them in time (and it will require all your best exertions to do it effectually) – must lead you into lasting Unhappiness.”
Not even Southey could have put this more acutely. It was the perfect device, that neither father nor son would ever quite accept. Coleridge had found a mirror in Hartley, and the reflections would haunt him, sometimes with laughter but more often with tears. He signed himself, “my dear, my very dear Hartley, most anxiously, Your fond Father, S.T. Coleridge”.71
11
The trip to London was planned for a week, but lasted a month. They stayed with the Montagus, met up with Walter Scott, and took Hartley to visit the great sights of the capital. He was deliriously happy and excited. They saw the animals in the Tower of London, Humphry Davy’s laboratories at the Royal Institution, and a pantomime at Covent Garden. In one of his earliest memories, Hartley recalled “the tiered boxes, the almost stupendous galleries, and the novelty of the sliding-scenes” which caught his young poet’s imagination. He also remembered an oddly deflating remark of Sara Hutchinson’s, who laughed at his astonishment at the wonderful stage-moon descending on a wire and compared it dismissively “to a copper warming-pan”.72
Coleridge enjoyed showing off his son, but was much concerned with finances for the year ahead. He borrowed £50 from Wordsworth to pay his life assurance, and a further £50 from his old friend Sotheby to pay for the West Country expedition. He talked again with Davy about lecturing, and wrote to Godwin in search of the manuscript of his play Osorio which he suddenly thought of reviving for the new generation of actor-managers who seemed much taken with elaborate staging and exotic tales. Amazingly – but typically – he had kept no copy.
He wondered if Godwin “would take the trouble of rescuing it from any chance rubbish-corner, in which it may have been preserved. It is not merely a work which employed 8 months of my life from 23 to 24, it is interesting to me in the history of my own mind.” Godwin did indeed find the manuscript in his meticulous filing system, and much later it would bring Coleridge the greatest financial success he had ever known.
He invited Godwin to the unlikely event of a Coleridgean breakfast at half past nine in the morning, but added that he was ill and much abed. “I am so unwell & so languid from – no matter what – other’s follies and my own – from hopelessness without rest, & restlessness without hope – that I dare scarcely