Coleridge: Darker Reflections

Coleridge: Darker Reflections
Richard Holmes

Timely reissue of the second volume of Holmes’s classic biographies of one of the greatest Romantic poets.Richard Holmes’s biography of Coleridge transforms our view of the poet of ‘Kubla Khan’ forever. Holmes’s Coleridge leaps out of these pages as the brilliant, animated and endlessly provoking poet of genius that he was.This second volume covers the last 30 years of Coleridge’s career (1804-1834) during which he travelled restlessly through the Mediterranean, returned to his old haunts in the Lake District and the West Country, and finally settled in Highgate. It was a period of domestic and professional turmoil. His marriage broke up, his opium addiction increased, he quarrelled with Wordsworth, his own son Hartley Coleridge (a gifted poet himself) became an alcoholic. And after a desperate time of transition, Coleridge re-emerged on the literary scene as a new kind of philosophical and meditative author.Note that it has not been possible to include the same picture content that appeared in the original print version.

Coleridge

Darker Reflections

Richard Holmes

To Rose, with love

Table of Contents

Cover Page (#u9d760e43-1FFF-11e9-9e03-0cc47a520474)

Title Page (#u9d760e43-2FFF-11e9-9e03-0cc47a520474)

ONE ADRIFT IN THE MEDITERRANEAN (#u9d760e43-7FFF-11e9-9e03-0cc47a520474)

TWO THE SENSE OF HOME (#u9d760e43-26FF-11e9-9e03-0cc47a520474)

THREE THE LECTURE SHIRT (#u9d760e43-40FF-11e9-9e03-0cc47a520474)

FOUR THE FRIEND IN NEED (#u9d760e43-49FF-11e9-9e03-0cc47a520474)

FIVE IN THE DARK CHAMBER (#litres_trial_promo)

SIX HAMLET IN FLEET STREET (#litres_trial_promo)

SEVEN PHANTOM PURPOSES (#litres_trial_promo)

EIGHT TRUE CONFESSIONS (#litres_trial_promo)

NINE CLIMBING HIGHGATE HILL (#litres_trial_promo)

TEN MAGIC CHILDREN (#litres_trial_promo)

ELEVEN GLIDE, RICH STREAMS, AWAY! (#litres_trial_promo)

AFTERWORD (#litres_trial_promo)

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND REFERENCES (#litres_trial_promo)

BIBLIOGRAPHY (#litres_trial_promo)

REFERENCES (#litres_trial_promo)

REFERENCE NOTES (#litres_trial_promo)

INDEX (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Praise (#litres_trial_promo)

Also by Richard Holmes (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

ONE ADRIFT IN THE MEDITERRANEAN (#)

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“Signals, Drums, Guns, Bells, & the sound of Voices weighing up & clearing Anchors”. So Coleridge fled south aboard the Speedwell, expecting to die but half-hoping to be reborn. “Monday April 9th, 1804, really set sail…No health or Happiness without Work.”

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Behind him he left his family under Southey’s care in the Lake District; he left the Wordsworths and his love Sara Hutchinson; he left Charles Lamb and Daniel Stuart and all his London friends; each of them anxiously speculating about his future. “Far art thou wandered now,” wrote Wordsworth in The Prelude, “in search of health,/And milder breezes…Speed thee well”.

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Ahead of him lay the glittering Mediterranean, the legendary outposts of Gibraltar, Malta and Sicily, a war-zone of fleets and harbour-fortresses, where he would fight his own battles against opium and despair. “Do we not pity our past selves?” he reflected in his new Notebook, using a special metallic pencil designed to withstand sea-salt. “Is not this always accompanied by Hope? It makes the Images of the Past vivid…Are not vivid Ideas themselves a sort of pleasure, as Music whether sad or lively, is always Music?”

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Down in his cabin on the first night, he watched the lights of England recede along the Cornish coast through the brass porthole above his narrow berth. The 130-ton ship moved uneasily, not rolling on its beam, but rocking sharply from stem to stern, “as a cruel Nurse rocks a screaming baby”.

(#) Coleridge lay with his eyes closed, thirty-one years old, but hearing childhood music. “Thought of a Lullaby song, to a Child on a Ship: great rocking Cradle…creak of main top Irons, rattle of Ropes, & squeak of the Rudder…And so play Bo-peep with the Rising Moon, and the Lizard Light. ‘There is thy native country, Boy! Whither art thou going to…’”

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Coleridge’s ship the Speedwell was a two-masted merchant brig, lightly armed with fourteen guns, but carrying a heavy cargo of eighty-four cannons in her hold destined for Trieste.

(#) Smartly trimmed in silver and gold, she was one of the fastest merchants in the fleet, commanded by a thoughtful Scotsman, Captain John Findlay, from whom Coleridge gradually extracted much sea-lore, sailor’s yarns and sea-shanties.

She was part of the spring-time convoy of thirty-five ships, escorted by ten men-o’-war and the flagship HMS Leviathan, going to join Nelson’s fleet in the Mediterranean and carrying supplies to British and allied ports in the war against France and Spain. Having finally left Spithead on 9 April 1804, the first leg of their journey ran through the Bay of Biscay and round Cape St Vincent to Gibraltar.

As the French fleet under Villeneuve was bottled up by Nelson’s squadron off Toulon, the greatest danger came from privateers and corsairs operating out of Spanish and North African ports. So Captain Findlay cheerfully instructed Coleridge: “in a calm [they] will run out, pick up a merchant Vessel under the very stern of the Commodore, as a Fox will a Fowl when the Wolf dog that guards the poultry yard can only bark at him from his Chain”.

(#) Coleridge kept a close eye on the wind throughout their voyage, as he did on all other maritime matters, so the whole imagery of the sea journey came to possess him.

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