Coleridge: Early Visions. Richard Holmes
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On 30 March, still not discharged, Coleridge wrote humbly to George promising the “utmost contrivances of Economy” and speaking for the first time of his religious doubts. “Fond of the dazzle of Wit, fond of subtlety of Argument”, he had read Voltaire and Helvetius, who had drawn him into “a kind of religious Twilight”. He still loved the Jesus of the Gospels, but “my reasonings would not permit me to worship.” This marks the beginning of his Unitarian phase, which would lead him for several years into a radical view of Christianity as a philosophy of social reform, with strong egalitarian overtones, which were evidently encouraged by his army experience. He fervently reassured George of his penitence: “believe me your severities only wound me as they awake the Voice within to speak ah! how more harshly! I feel gratitude and love towards you, even when I shrink and shiver –”60
When on 7 April definite news of his imminent discharge arrived, he cheered up again and announced he was writing the libretto for an opera.61 The army had found its own method of dealing with the matter; after an unofficial payment from George of some twenty-five guineas, the Regimental Muster Roll recorded succintly: “discharged S. T. Comberbache, Insane; 10 April 1794”.62
1
Coleridge returned to Cambridge on 11 April 1794, travelling up on the outside of the night mail after symbolically missing the Cambridge fly. He had booked a seat, but then went for a contemplative walk, and the fly shot by him on the road. For all his brothers’ hopes, he would never again settle down at the university; his dreams were elsewhere. Outwardly he was full of good resolutions: having sat the Rustat Exam and got a credit, he would now study hard, contend “for all the Prizes”, and compile his slim volume of Imitations from the Modern Latin Poets to pay off his debts. (It was advertised in the Cambridge Intelligencer for June, but never appeared.) He would “solemnly” drop all unsuitable college friends, rise at six o’clock every morning, forswear wine parties and politics, and practise a “severe Economy”. “Every enjoyment – except of necessary comforts – I look upon as criminal.” Even in his Greek verse he would now aim at “correctness & perspicuity, not genius”. His last Ode had been so sublime that no one could understand it.1
He accepted the college’s reprimand, a month’s gating, and ninety pages of Greek translation from Demetrius Phalereus (“dry, and utterly intransferable to modern use”) with a great show of philosophy. Though his tutor, Mr Plampin, had treated him with “exceeding and most delicate kindness”, the Master, Dr Pearce, had behaved with great asperity. “All the Fellows tried to persuade the Master to greater Lenity, but in vain – without the least affectation I applaud his conduct – and think nothing of it,” he told George on 1 May. “The confinement is nothing – I have the fields and Grove of the college to walk in – and what can I wish more? What do I wish more? Nothing.”2
But of course, he now wished for everything. He played the part of the penitent prodigal with conviction, indeed he rather enjoyed it. But as Trooper Comberbache he had seen the outside world, and tasted notoriety; and guiltily he enjoyed that too. How could he return to the small existence of college honours, the remote degree (now postponed until Christmas 1795), or the narrow prospect of a clergyman’s career like dear, earnest brother George? Radical politics, Unitarian theology, poetry, newspapers, the glories of nature and science, were all fizzing in his mind. He had already attracted a following among Bob Allen’s circle in Oxford. At Cambridge, even cautious men like Caldwell treated him with respect and “almost fraternal affection”. He had become one of the wild men of his university generation, and people waited to see what he would do next. He confided to his fellow undergraduate Samuel Butler: “There are hours in which I am inclined to think very meanly of myself, but when I call to memory the number & character of those who have honoured me with their esteem, I am almost reconciled to my follies, and again listen to the whispers of self-adulation.”3 Pride and guilt mixed in him like combustible fuel, waiting to be ignited. What he wished for was an ideal cause, a grand scheme, a mighty passion. And even deeper than this, perhaps, love and friendship. It was to come initially in the shape of Pantisocracy.
2
Like many things in Coleridge’s life, it all began with a walking tour. These tours, common enough today, were then a new fashion with strong democratic overtones. Young men from the universities dressed as tramps and wandered over the countryside, staying at local inns, talking enthusiastically with “the common people”, hill-climbing, swimming, star-gazing and communing with nature. William Frend had walked through France, Wordsworth had crossed the Alps into Italy, Bowles had wandered through Wales and Germany. Coleridge now planned “a pedestrian scheme” through the Wye Valley and up into North Wales, starting the moment that his gating was officially over. His practical preparations consisted largely in purchasing a curious five-foot walking-stick carved to a suitably modest design. “On one side it displays the head of an Eagle, the Eyes of which represent rising Suns, and the Ears Turkish Crescents. On the other side is the portrait of the Owner in Wood-work. Beneath the head of the Eagle is a Welch Wig – and around the neck of the Stick is a Queen Elizabeth’s Ruff in Tin. All adown it waves the Line of Beauty in very ugly Carving.”4
He chose a large, genial, fellow undergraduate, Joseph Hucks, to accompany him: “a man of cultivated, tho’ not vigorous understanding”, as Coleridge kindly described his Sancho Panza. Hucks subsequently published a Rousseauesque account of the tour, which leadenly omits every incident of human interest. When they met nude female bathers at Abergele, Hucks chose “to retire further up the shore”. Coleridge insisted on wearing rough workmen’s jackets, loose trousers, (rather than gentleman’s breeches and stockings), and carrying canvas knapsacks, which Hucks thought gave them the appearance of “two pilgrims performing a journey to the tomb of some wonder-working saint”. In fact they were usually mistaken for French tinkers (dangerously republican) or demobbed soldiers (dangerously drunk).
It was the first of Coleridge’s many epic walks: during the serious part of the tour they covered over 500 miles in just over a month – from Gloucester to Anglesey through the Welsh hills, and back by the coast to Bristol. They departed from Cambridge at dawn on 15 June, planning a brief stop-over with Bob Allen in Oxford, before disappearing into wild Wales. Coleridge, feeling like a man released from prison, was in a state of manic enthusiasm. On the way he bought the first of many Notebooks, with a “portable Ink horn” and quills: “as I journey onward, I ever and anon pluck the wild Flowers of Poesy.”5
They tramped into Oxford about 17 June, going straight round to Allen’s rooms in University College for a memorable reunion between the two Grecians. Coleridge had brought a subscribers’ list for his Imitations in his knapsack, and armed with this they trooped over to Balliol to meet Robert Southey, the twenty-year-old poet from Bristol who was already renowned for his extreme republican views. This meeting delayed their planned three-day stop-over for three weeks, and saw the birth of the famous “Pantisocratic” scheme.
The tall, idealistic, rather forbidding young Southey was then sporting a radical beard, studying anatomy, and finishing an epic drama, Joan of Arc. His rooms were next to the college lavatories, by an alley that opened on to St Giles. He was leaving Oxford that summer without a degree, destined for the Church, though he proclaimed himself an atheist and democrat with strong French Jacobin sympathies. He was profoundly depressed at his situation, and the arrival of the ebullient and voluble Coleridge