Coleridge: Darker Reflections. Richard Holmes
all constant matters of Arbitration.” Sir Alexander, despite his importunities, is still described as “indeed exceedingly kind to me”. From his point of view, of course, Coleridge was sticking honourably to his post.
In August the heat went up to 88° in the shade and 140° in full sunlight. The buildings were full of sweating men and splitting furniture, with cracking boards and exploding tea-chests. “Captain Lamb’s tea chest went off, as loud as a Pistol…the Cooper’s shop (where there is at present a large quantity of Mahogany & English oak) presents to the Ear a successive Let-off of Fireworks.” Up at San Antonio all the floorboards in Sir Alexander’s beautiful new dining-room split, one by one, with startling cracks, as they sat at dinner.
Curiously the heat suited Coleridge, and once again he found himself wishing that Asra, and all the Wordsworths and his children, were with him. “I have the prickly Heat on my Body, but without…annoying me, & I am better than I have been in a long time. In short, if my mind & heart were at ease, if my children + SH + WDMW were with me, & they were well, I should be more than well. I should luxuriate, like a Negro, in the Oven of the Shade and the Blaze of the Sunshine.”153
Assuming that Coleridge had already left Malta, Wordsworth in fact was expecting Coleridge to appear at any moment in London, probably at Daniel Stuart’s Courier offices. He scotched a “rumour” that the appointment as Public Secretary was permanent, and was making a first tentative plan for them all to reunite at Sir George Beaumont’s new estate in Leicestershire. He had finished the Prelude and was anxious for Coleridge’s opinion.154
But as August progressed a new mood of despondency descended on Coleridge. He walked at 5 a.m. on the roof of San Antonio, “deeply depressed”, and gazed out at the pitiless beauty of the sea, “the Horizon dusky crimson” and the many boats swaying at anchor. He watched the wild dogs “reviving in the moonlight, & playing & gamboling in flocks”. Boils returned on his arm, and he drank “Castor oil in Gin & Water”, and had an “epileptic” return of his sexual dreams – “alas! alas! the consequences – stimulos”.155
On 21 August he wrote to Mrs Coleridge, and this time the tone of exhaustion and disenchantment is unmistakable. “Malta, alas! it is a barren Rock: the Sky, the Sea, the Bays, the buildings are all beautiful. But no rivers, no brooks, no hedges, no green fields, almost no trees, & the few that are unlovely.” He now felt it would have been better if he had remained “independent”, and continued with his own writing. His position seemed ridiculous rather than important: “for the living in a huge palace all to myself, like a mouse in a Cathedral on a Fair on Market day, and the being hailed ‘Most Illustrious Lord, the Public Secretary’ are no pleasures to me who have no ambition.”
Sir Alexander had always “contrived, in one way or another” to prevent his return, but now it was assured for September. He had the Governor’s “solemn promise” that as soon as he had completed a series of public Letters “& examined into the Law-forms of the Island”, he would be sent home on a convoy via Naples. Sir Alexander would also use his best interest with Hugh Elliott, the British Ambassador in Naples, to send him back officially with dispatches, which would “frank him home” free of charge. Nevertheless he would retain a further £120 of his salary in case he had to travel overland.
Even so the dream of some permanent post in the Mediterranean was not entirely abandoned. Now the moment of departure really approached, Coleridge began wondering if he might not after all return and settle permanently. The possibilities held forth by the Governor still promised the enchantments of the South. “Sir Alexander Ball’s Kindness & Confidence in me is unlimited. He told a Gentleman a few days ago, that were he a man of Fortune he would gladly give me £500 a year to dine with him twice a week for the mere advantage which he received from my Conversation. And for a long time past he has been offering me different places to induce me to return. He would give me a handsome House, Garden, Country House, & a place of £600 a year certain. I thank him cordially – but neither accept nor refuse.” Even more galling for Mrs Coleridge, perhaps, was an airy mention of “a fine Opening in America” that he had lately received – probably through Captain Decatur. “I was much inclined to accept; but my knowledge of Wordsworth’s aversion to America stood in my way.”156
It would be easy to dismiss much of this as Coleridge’s optimistic fantasy of some perfect state of exile, and perhaps even as a provocation or warning to his wife. But Sir Alexander did in fact recommend Coleridge to the War Office for just such a posting, which would have provided very much the situation and the salary he describes. In a letter dated 18 September 1805, he wrote to Granville Penn, chief assistant to the Secretary of State at Downing Street. In it he suggested that Coleridge combine the largely formal post of Superintendent of Quarantine (as applied to ships), with the much more interesting job of turning the Malta Gazette into an influential wartime newspaper to be distributed across the Mediterranean. The terms of this letter, despite its measured official tones, were a remarkable endorsement of Coleridge’s unlikely success as a wartime bureaucrat. It also suggests Coleridge’s continuing power to throw his spell over even the most rigorous executive mind.
The Governor first mentioned Coleridge’s “literary Talents”, political principles and moral character, and confirmed that he had fulfilled the Public Secretaryship “seven months to my satisfaction”. He could also provide “the fullest information” on the Malta government to the Foreign Office. He then added: “As the climate agrees with Mr Coleridge he would accept Mr Eton’s situation [as Superintendent] and allow him three hundred Pound a year, and as the business of the office would occupy but little of his time he could assist Mr Barzoni in making the Malta Gazette a powerful political engine besides rendering other services to this Government.” He asked Penn to approach the head of department, persuaded “of deriving great public good from his appointment”.157 A similar note of private recommendation went to Ball’s brother back in England. As Coleridge already possessed the recommendation to Hugh Elliot of the previous autumn, praising his imagination, judgement, and goodness of heart, he could feel pleasingly well documented by officialdom, as he prepared to leave.
When Mr Chapman finally arrived in Valletta on 9 September, Coleridge prepared to leave, depositing many of his books and papers with John Stoddart to be forwarded by convoy. None of these would he see again. There is no record of his farewells, though he noted “Tears & misery at the Thought of not returning” on one occasion after a talk with Captain Pasley. He prepared himself by reading Italian poets of the fifteenth century, and noted their “pleasing” confusion of heathen and Christian mythology. The layerings of classical myth, of Renaissance Latin upon Greek, as he hoped to study in Italy this autumn, also produced a characteristic word-coinage. It required “a strong imagination as well as an accurate psycho-analytical understanding” to conceive “the passion of those Times for Jupiter, Apollo etc.; & the nature of the Faith (for a Faith it was…)”.158 The bureaucrat was to become the independent, wandering scholar once more.
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Coleridge finally left Valletta a little after midnight on 4 September 1805, making a night crossing to Sicily under a shower of shooting stars. He could not make up his mind to sleep and, in an expressive gesture, left it to the stars to decide. “I was standing gazing at the starry Heaven, and said, I will go to bed at the next star that shoots.” He knew that this tiny moment symbolized much about his long Mediterranean sojourn, and the self-knowledge that he had gained. “Observe this in counting fixed numbers previous to doing anything etc. etc. & deduce from man’s own unconscious acknowledgement man’s dependence on some thing out of him, on something apparently & believedly subject to regular and certain Laws other than his own Will & Reason.”159
Coleridge’s