Coleridge: Darker Reflections. Richard Holmes
he saw himself once again as footloose adventurer, poetic traveller, special correspondent for Daniel Stuart’s newspaper. His letter gives detailed naval “intelligence” of Nelson’s lost dispatches, and the Hindoostan burnt out with only four survivors and the loss of fifty guns and £300,000 of cargo, “chiefly of naval Stores of all kinds for Malta with a hundred Artificers”. Malta would be in “great Distress” for these losses, and he thought this would be the first crucial chance to get the news to London, by the return convoy: “after Letters will be better worth the postage”.39
But, of course, beneath breathless activity, the manly sweating extraversion of the new self, older feelings stirred. “What change of place, Country, climate, company, situation, health – of Shrubs, Flowers, Trees – moving Seasons: & ever is that one feeling at my heart, felt like a faint Pain, a spot which it seems I could lay my finger on.” It was Asra, of course; and everything she represented of the Wordsworths, the Lakes, lost love.
The past self stood like a ghostly reflection in every company; the remembered hills rose up behind every sunlit cliff and rock. “I talk loud or eager, or I read or meditate the abstrusest Researches; or I laugh, jest, tell tales of mirth; & ever as it were, within & behind, I think & image you; and while I am talking of Government or War or Chemistry, there comes ever into my bodily eye some Tree, beneath which we have rested, some Rock where we have walked together, or on the perilous road edging high above the Crummock Lake, where we sat beneath the rock, & those dear Lips pressed my forehead.”40 This was the cargo of memory that could not be sunk or abandoned or burnt; the secret self that crouched below the waterline.
Coleridge’s last day on Gibraltar was spent on a “long & instructive walk” with Major Adye round the entire defences, from the gun emplacements to the brewery, discussing British strategy in the Mediterranean. They visited St Michael’s Cave again, and Coleridge was more and more struck by its mysterious rock formations, “the obelisks, the pillars, the rude statues of strange animals” like some cathedral of half-created forms and monuments.41
They planned to meet again in Malta, and Adye promised to carry home to England whatever letters and journals Coleridge had prepared. Back on the Speedwell, they discussed the dangers of the voyage ahead, and sailors’ superstitions about dates and positions of the moon which reminded Coleridge of his Mariner. Captain Findlay said briskly, “Damn me! I have no superstition”, but then revealed that he thought “Sunday is a really lucky day to sail on.” They were interrupted by a huge cargo-ship, which nearly rammed them as they lay at anchor, and were only saved by Findlay shouting directions to the lubberly crew to go about. “Myself, the Capt. and the Mate all confessed, that our knees trembled under us,” for the towering forecastle threatened to strike them amidships and sink them instantly. This at any rate was not a good omen.42
6
The Speedwell got under way from Gibraltar on 25 April 1804, now escorted by HMS Maidstone, and hoping to make the second leg of their journey in a week. In the event it took twenty-eight days, alternately beaten by storms and transfixed by calms, which took a terrible toll on Coleridge’s health and spirits. Initially his journal records the continuing beauty of the seascape, the excitement of a turtle hunt, hornpipe dancing on the deck, and long grog sessions in Captain Findlay’s cabin.
To beguile the time he began an essay on Superstition, “taken in its philosophical and most comprehensive Sense”, as it affects men of action – soldiers, sailors, fishermen, farmers, even lovers and gamblers – who are placed “in an absolute Dependence on Powers & Events, over which they have no Control”.43 He noted how the patterns of “an old Idolatry” rose in response to physical fear, and fixed themselves angrily on scapegoats or astronomical signs, like the star which dogs a crescent moon. There began to be talk of a “Jonas in the Fleet”, and he dryly remarked that this was one advantage of sailing in a convoy. “On a single Vessel the Jonas must have been sought among ourselves.”
Conditions aboard the Speedwell steadily deteriorated. The “Mephitis of the bilge burst forth, like a fury” filling the cabins with nauseous stench, turning the gold paintwork red and black and covering everything with a kind of “silvery grease” which stank of sulphur. (Coleridge made a note to ask Humphry Davy about the chemistry of this effect.)44 He became incapable of holding down food, and began to resort to opium: “desperately sick, ill, abed, one deep dose after another”.45 His unhappy dreams of Asra returned, mixed up with memories of schoolboy bullying and deprivation, “Christ Hospitalized the forms & incidents”.46*
On 1 May, in wet, foggy, oppressive weather, they had drifted back towards the Barbary coast off Carthagina. “We are very nearly on the spot, where on Friday last about this same hour we caught the Turtles – And what are 5 days’ toiling to windward just not to lose ground, to almost 5 years. Alas! alas! what have I been doing on the Great Voyage of Life since my return from Germany but fretting upon the front of the wind – well for me if I have indeed kept my ground even!”47
On 4 May, a wind got up, and Coleridge composed a grateful sea-shanty for Captain Findlay, “who foretold a fair wind/ Of a constant mind”, though “neither Poet, nor Sheep” could yet eat.48 But the wind turned into a squall, and then a storm, which carried away their foremost yard-arm on 6 May. He sank further into opium, besieged by “these Sleeps, these Horrors, these Frightful Dreams of Despair”. He could no longer get up on deck, and was now seriously ill, with violent stomach pains and humiliating flatulence. A flowered curtain was rigged round his bunk, and he began to hallucinate, seeing “yellow faces” in the cloth. The ship was again becalmed, and he thought the flapping sails were fish dying on the deck.49 Mr Hardy, the surgeon of the Maidstone, was alerted and the rumour went round the convoy that one of the Speedwell’s passengers was dying. Coleridge knew he had become the Jonas of the fleet.
The opium doses had completely blocked his bowels. The shame, guilt and horrid symbolism of this seized upon him. His body had closed upon itself, just as his mind had become fruitless and unproductive. He was a vessel full of mephitic horror. His journal becomes extraordinarily explicit, and details his sufferings with weird, unsparing exactitude. “Tuesday Night, a dreadful Labour, & fruitless throes, of costiveness – individual faeces, and constricted orifices. Went to bed & dozed & started in great distress.”50
Wednesday, 9 May was “a day of Horror”. He spent the morning sitting over a bucket of hot water, “face convulsed, & the sweat streaming from me like Rain”. Captain Findlay brought the Speedwell alongside the Maidstone, and sent for Mr Hardy. “The Surgeon instantly came, went back for Pipe & Syringe & returned & with extreme difficulty & the exertion of his utmost strength injected the latter. Good God! – What a sensation when the obstruction suddenly shot up!” Coleridge lay with a hot water bottle on his belly, “with pains & sore uneasiness, & indescribable desires”, instructed to retain himself as long as possible. “At length went: O what a time! – equal in pain to any before. Anguish took away all disgust, & I picked out the hardened matter & after awhile was completely relieved. The poor mate who stood by me all this while had the tears running down his face.”51
The humiliation of this experience never left Coleridge. He knew it was caused by opium, and he reverted to it frequently