The Friendship: Wordsworth and Coleridge

When he confessed to doing nothing, Wordsworth did not mean that he was entirely idle; he was correcting and adding to the poems he had written, a process he continued throughout his career. For Wordsworth, a poem was never finished; as he changed, so he wanted the poem to change, to conform with the man he had become. He found it hard to let go of his work, and only reluctantly would he ever give it to the world. In revising these two poems it may be that he was responding to Dorothy’s criticisms; certainly his later judgement of them closely resembles comments she had made in a letter to Jane Pollard soon after they were published.8 New passages he added to ‘An Evening Walk’ anticipate ideas that Coleridge would later articulate to him more fully, and show that the two of them had been following the same tracks before they came into contact.9

Mathews urged Wordsworth to come to London. He and another young man were thinking about starting a monthly periodical, and wanted Wordsworth to join them. For his part, Wordsworth felt that he could not venture to London unless he were sure of a regular income – but he was attracted by the notion of a ‘monthly miscellany’, and saw no reason why he should not contribute while remaining in the country. In a succession of letters in the early summer of 1794 he set out his thoughts on the subject. He envisaged ‘a vehicle of sound and exalted morality’, provisionally entitled The Philanthropist. (‘Philanthropist’ was a term much used at the time, meaning progressive or reformer.) Wordsworth felt that the three of them should not be ignorant of each other’s political views. ‘You know perhaps already that I am of that odious class of men called democrats, and of that class I shall for ever continue,’ he announced boldly.10

It was not a good moment to advertise radical sentiments. Parliament had just passed a declaration that ‘a traitorous and detestable conspiracy had been formed for subverting the existing laws and constitution, and for introducing the system of anarchy and confusion which has so lately prevailed in France’ – after ministers had presented intelligence to secret committees of both Houses. The Habeas Corpus Act (which protected the individual from detention without trial) was accordingly suspended. Twelve prominent radicals, including leaders of the London Corresponding Society and the Society for Constitutional Information, were arrested and imprisoned in the Tower, awaiting trial on charges of treason. Suspect letters were intercepted and opened by the authorities. On the very day that Wordsworth wrote to Mathews, his elder brother Richard warned him to ‘be cautious in writing or expressing your political opinions’. Dorothy (who until very recently had been living with her brother at Windy Brow) replied to Richard: ‘I think I can answer for William’s caution about expressing his political opinions. He is very cautious and seems well aware of the dangers of a contrary conduct.’11

The government’s crackdown was the culmination of months of less co-ordinated repression. In December 1793 a ‘British Convention’ of reformers meeting in Edinburgh had been broken up by the authorities; the secretary, William Skirving, and two delegates from the London Corresponding Society, Joseph Gerrald and Maurice Margarot, were found guilty of sedition and sentenced to fourteen years’ transportation. The dignified conduct of the prisoners during their manifestly unfair trials made a powerful impression on the public, and the widespread revulsion at the savagery of their sentences was strong enough to counterbalance the prevalent horror at events in France. In a separate Scottish case, Robert Watt and David Downie were accused of planning an armed uprising and found guilty of treason: both were sentenced to death, but Downie was pardoned. Watt, who was executed, had been a government informer, and may have been acting as an agent provocateur; the whole conspiracy was probably a bungled attempt to entrap Downie and other radicals. In England, several prosecutions for sedition collapsed in a mêlée of disreputable witnesses and ridiculous charges. For example, the London Corresponding Society was accused of plotting to assassinate the King with a poisoned arrow fired from an airgun, a charge so ludicrous that it immediately earned the name the ‘Pop-Gun Plot’.

Dorothy was mistaken in her assurances to Richard, because a week or so later Wordsworth wrote another letter to Mathews, setting out his political views in greater detail: ‘I disapprove of monarchical and aristocratical governments, however modified. Hereditary distinctions and privileged orders of every species I think must necessarily counteract the progress of human improvement: hence it follows that I am not amongst the admirers of the British constitution.’ He argued that the constitution was being subverted by two causes: the ‘infatuation profligacy and extravagance of men in power’, and the ‘changes of opinion rapidly’ taking place ‘in the minds of speculative men’. He deplored ‘the miserable situation of the French’ – as well he might, because as he wrote these words the Terror was approaching its murderous climax – and believed that ‘a more excellent system of civil policy’ might still be established in Britain without a cataclysmic upheaval. Ministers, not radicals, were driving the country towards the precipice. ‘I recoil from the bare idea of a revolution; yet, if our conduct with reference both to foreign and domestic policy continues such as it has been for the last two years how is that dreadful event to be averted?’ Wordsworth was sure of the answer: ‘gradual and constant reform of those abuses which, if left to themselves, may grow to such a height as to render, even a revolution desirable’. There was, he felt, ‘a further duty incumbent upon every enlightened friend of mankind’, namely to propagate principles of ‘political justice’; these ‘will guide the hand of reform, and if a revolution must afflict us, they alone can mitigate its horrors and establish freedom with tranquillity’.12

This is a Godwinian manifesto, punctuated with Godwinian ideas and terminology. Indeed the whole Philanthropist project reeks of Godwin. It is obvious from Wordsworth’s letters in the spring of 1794 that he has read Godwin’s Political Justice. He is moving away from a belief in direct action to achieve political change in Britain towards one of disseminating progressive ideas to bring about reform. ‘I know that the multitude walk in darkness. I would put into each man’s hand a lantern to guide him,’ he wrote to Mathews – echoing Godwin’s metaphor ‘the illumination of our understanding’. Quite when Wordsworth read Godwin is not obvious. It is interesting to speculate how he might have obtained a copy of Political Justice, given that it was relatively expensive* and he was so short of money. Perhaps Calvert had a copy. (Pitt is supposed to have advised the Privy Council that there was no need to suppress Political Justice, as ‘a three guinea book could never do much harm among those who had not three shillings to spare’ – though the price of the first edition was in fact £1.16s.13)

Coleridge’s military career lasted little more than four months. He was an unsuitable dragoon, being ‘a very indocile equestrian’ and moreover saddle-sore. In a single week he was thrown from his horse three times, and ‘run away with’ almost every day: ‘I ride a horse young, and as undisciplined as myself.’ During a couple of months’ basic training in the Home Counties Coleridge had evidently not impressed his commanding officers, because when the regiment moved on he was left behind in Henley-upon-Thames to care for a soldier suffering from smallpox. An anxious letter from his brother George caught up with him there. Coleridge’s reply was hysterical with pious remorse and abject self-pity: ‘O that without guilt I might ask of my Maker Annihilation!’14 He did not attempt to explain his conduct: ‘my mind is illegible to myself’. George tried to organise his release; his eldest surviving brother James, a professional soldier, made a direct appeal to the General in command. The General was too busy to reply, being fully occupied in raising a new regiment, but after three weeks’ delay a response came from the new officer in command. Coleridge had received six and a half guineas’ bounty to enlist; his brothers must pay twenty-five guineas to secure his discharge – on the basis that it would require such an amount to obtain a substitute. No substitute was forthcoming, so another pretext for his release had to be found. An entry in the muster roll of the regiment dated 10 April 1794 reads, ‘discharged S.T. Comberbach/Insane’.

Coleridge returned to Cambridge, to receive another reprimand from the Master. His punishment was to be gated for a month, and to translate ninety pages from the Greek. He accepted his sentence humbly, conscious of his luck that the college had kept his place open. To complete his degree he would have to stay an extra year, to the end of 1795. His brothers had supplied him with cash for his immediate expenses, and raised a handsome sum towards liquidating his college debts; in return, Coleridge promised to reform. In fact, his mind was wandering. At the end of the Trinity term, after only a couple of months in Cambridge, he set out on a walking tour with a good-natured undergraduate called Joseph Hucks. They were destined for Wales – but first they made a stopover in Oxford, to visit Coleridge’s earliest school friend, Robert Allen, who was studying medicine at University College. Allen, who in time would himself join the dragoons as a military surgeon, had sent Coleridge money and various small luxuries during his army ordeal, and twice visited him in his quarters. Allen was renowned for his charm, his intelligence and his good looks; after he had accidentally run into a barrow woman in the street one day, she started to swear at him until she saw his face: ‘Where are you driving to, you great hulking, good-for-nothing – beautiful fellow, God bless you!’

Allen introduced them to another medical student, Robert Southey of Balliol, who coincidentally had made his own ‘pedestrian scheme’ to Cambridge and back the previous May,* when he had attended Frend’s trial in the university court and admired Frend’s oratory in his own defence. Southey and Coleridge took to each other immediately. Though very different characters, the two had much in common: politics, poetry, philosophy, anxiety about money, enthusiasm for walking. They began ‘disputing on metaphysical subjects’, arguing, debating, laughing in the sheer pleasure of having found a kindred spirit. Coleridge was so delighted with his discovery that he postponed his departure from Oxford by more than a fortnight. Hucks, who had accepted Coleridge’s word that they would be stopping in Oxford no longer than three or four days, was compelled to wait while the two new friends talked incessantly.

Southey, still not quite twenty (two years younger than Coleridge), was the eldest son of a Bristol linen-draper who had fallen on hard times and died, leaving the young undergraduate responsible for his mother and three younger brothers. He had acquired polished manners at the home of his wealthy aunt, where he had spent much of his childhood and where he continued to be a favoured guest. Like Wordsworth and so many others, he was depressed by the looming prospect of a career in the Church – ‘starving in creditable celibacy upon 40 pounds a year’ – not least because he found it impossible to stifle doubts, and disliked the thought of perjuring himself. At Westminster he had started a school magazine, The Flagellant; with such a title, it was inevitable that the publication should vigorously condemn the practice of corporal punishment in schools, the only surprise being that this attack was not launched until the fifth issue; Southey was expelled as a result. He arrived in Oxford with ‘a heart full of poetry and feeling, a head full of Rousseau and Werther’.* As if in imitation of Werther, he became infatuated with a young woman before discovering that she was already attached – inspiring him to compose an ‘Ode to Grief’. Southey wrote very fast, all the more impressive as poor eyesight prevented him from reading or writing by candlelight. Together with another young Bristol poet, the Quaker Robert Lovell, he was preparing a volume of poems. Furthermore, he was working on a long epic poem, Joan of Arc, and contemplating another, Wat Tyler. These historical epics rang with contemporary resonance. Southey’s Joan addressed the common people as ‘Citizens’ and owed her position to their support. ‘My Joan is a great democrat,’ he wrote; and in his hands Tyler would become a revolutionary martyr, another Marat.† The story of the peasants’ revolt seemed apposite at a time when sans-culottes† were escorting aristocrats to the scaffold, and indeed Southey was convinced that a revolutionary cataclysm was inevitable in Britain.

Southey freely expressed extreme political opinions, often adopting a posture of noble self-sacrifice. In another poem, ‘The Exiled Patriots’, he celebrated the reformers transported to the colonies:

So shall your great examples fire each soul

So in each freeborn heart for ever dwell

‘Till Man shall rise above the unjust controul

Stand where ye stood – & triumph where ye fell.

For Coleridge, this combination of politics and poetry was irresistible. ‘Thy soaring is even unto heaven,’ he wrote to Southey the day after they parted – ‘Or let me add (for my Appetite for Similies is truly canine at this moment) that as the Italian Nobles their new-fashioned Doors, so thou dost make the adamantine Gate of Democracy turn on it’s [sic]* golden Hinges to most sweet Music.’15

Tall and bony, Southey was reckoned handsome; in an attempt at dignity he held his chin high; he refused to let his ‘mane’ of dark curly hair be shorn by the college barber, boldly allowing it to hang free and unpowdered when he went into hall to dine; large, dark eyes framed a prominent, beakish nose, giving him ‘a falcon glance’; long, curving eyebrows suggested a sardonic cast of mind. Generous, suave and stoical, stern, principled and dogmatic, he emanated self-satisfied rectitude. To Coleridge, Southey’s combination of cool decisiveness and violent convictions was compelling. He admired his disciplined working habits, and was excited by his daring republican talk. Southey seemed to him to embody the admirably austere qualities of the ancients. ‘He is truly a man of perpendicular Virtue – a down-right upright Republican!’ wrote Coleridge, who could rarely resist a pun, in this case a double entendre; he had discovered that Southey was still a virgin.16

Southey was immediately impressed by Coleridge’s volcanic intellect, hurling out ideas red hot from the bubbling tumult of his brain: ‘He is of most uncommon merit – of the strongest genius, the clearest judgment, the best heart.’17 Within a day or two of their meeting he was writing of his new friend as ‘one whom I very much esteem and admire tho two thirds of our conversation be spent in disputing on metaphysical subjects’.18 Coleridge’s intellectual interests were encyclopaedic, nourished by voracious reading. In particular he was drawn towards philosophy – not the abstract philosophy of word games, but metaphysics, enquiry into the ultimate nature of reality. His arrival energised Southey, who had been languishing in a melancholic stupor.

It was inevitable that these two young idealists should discuss Southey’s utopian dreams. Into the mixture went Rousseau and Godwin, republicanism and philanthropy, notions of pastoral simplicity and honest toil. Within three weeks they had sketched the outline of a scheme for an ideal community of a dozen young couples, isolated from the rest of the world, in which property should be held in common, labour should be contributed to the common good, and all (even women) should participate in government. Two or three hours’ manual work each day should be enough, they calculated, and the rest of the time could be given up to ‘study, liberal discussions, and the education of their children’. Coleridge, who made a habit of coining new words, came up with a name for this system of complete equality: ‘Pantocracy’, later amended to ‘Pantisocracy’.* Some remote part of America seemed the obvious place to try this experiment; Southey proposed Kentucky, but they settled on the Susquehanna as the best possible destination – because, Coleridge later said, he liked the name. It was agreed that they should seek out others to join them. Another Balliol man, George Burnett, was quickly recruited; he and Southey were to travel to Bristol, where they hoped to persuade Robert Lovell to come too. More in hope than expectation, Southey invited his aristocratic friend Grosvenor Charles Bedford: ‘When the storm burst[s] on England you may perhaps follow us to America.’ As Pitt’s government tightened the screw in England, the news from France was of more and more executions, and Southey seems to have envisaged Pantisocracy as a refuge from an impending Armageddon. He decided that his mother and siblings should accompany them. ‘The storm is gathering, and must soon break,’ he wrote to Bedford’s brother Horace. He amused himself with the idea of seeing all his aristocratic friends ‘come flying over for shelter’ to America: ‘You must all come when the fire and brimstone descend.’19

At last, on 5 July, Coleridge was ready to continue his interrupted walking tour. To make up for lost time, he and Hucks caught the fly* to Gloucester, from where Coleridge wrote to Southey – whom he had left only the day before – saluting him ‘Health and Republicanism!’ Perhaps remembering Southey’s horrifying story of a fifteen-year-old servant girl who had strangled her newborn baby, he parroted Hucks’s reaction to an episode on the road:

It is wrong, Southey! for a little Girl with a half-famished sickly Baby in her arms to put her head in at the window of an Inn – ‘Pray give me a bit of Bread and Meat’! from a Party dining on Lamb, Green Pease, & Sallad – Why?? Because it is impertinent & obtrusive! – I am a Gentleman! – and wherefore should the clamorous Voice of Woe intrude upon mine Ear!?

‘My companion is a Man of cultivated, tho’ not vigorous, understanding,’ he explained; ‘his feelings are all on the side of humanity – yet such are the unfeeling remarks, which the lingering remains of Aristocracy occasionally prompt.’ Coleridge was confident that their new system would put an end to such things. (But even so, there were limits – when, later in the tour, a horny-handed Welsh democrat shook his hand vigorously, Coleridge ‘trembled’ lest some parasite had ‘emigrated’.) In high spirits he informed Southey that he had bought ‘a little Blank Book, and a portable Ink horn – as I journey onward, I ever and anon pluck the wild Flowers of Poesy’. Thus began a lifelong habit of note-keeping.

He continued with an allegory of regicide: ‘When Serpents sting, the only Remedy is – to kill the Serpent …’ (These were dangerous ideas to express in a letter. Though Southey voiced extreme views in conversation, he was more circumspect about what he committed to paper.20) There followed an extract from a poem Coleridge was composing, entitled ‘Perspiration, A Travelling Eclogue’:

The Dust flies smothering, as on clatt’ring Wheels

Loath’d Aristocracy careers along.

Coleridge ended his lively letter, ‘Farewell, sturdy Republican!’ and begged Southey to send ‘Fraternity and civic Remembrances’ to Lovell.21

Coleridge and Hucks walked north-west, through Ross and Hereford, and then turned north, following the Welsh border. On the road they met two other undergraduates from Coleridge’s college, and ‘laughed famously’ because ‘these rival pedestrians … were vigorously pursuing their tour – in a post chaise!’ Their excuse for taking it easy thus was that one of them ‘had got clapped’. A week after leaving Hereford, Coleridge arrived at Wrexham, where he wrote to Southey again: ‘I have positively done nothing but dream of the System of no Property every step of the Way since I left you.’22

At Wrexham Church Coleridge was surprised to see Elizabeth, sister of his former girlfriend Mary Evans; he had forgotten that their grandmother lived there. Indeed, he had virtually forgotten Mary – but the chance encounter provided an opportunity for a good deal of posturing on both sides. Later, at the inn, he saw both Eliza and Mary hovering outside the window: ‘I turned sick, and all but fainted away!’ The young women passed by the window several times. ‘I neither eat, or slept yesterday,’ he wrote after he and Hucks had resumed their journey; ‘but Love is a local Anguish – I am 16 miles distant, and am not half so miserable.’ Coleridge plunged into an ecstasy of Wertherism, all the more delicious because he could expatiate to Southey:

She lives, but lives not for me: as a loving bride, perhaps – ah, sadness! – she has thrown her arms around another man’s neck. Farewell, ye deceitful dreams of a love-lorn mind; ye beloved shores, farewell; farewell, ah, beautiful Mary!*

He convinced himself that he had not pursued Mary because his prospects were so dim. ‘I never durst in a whisper avow my passion, though I knew she loved me.’23

‘For God’s sake, Southey! enter not into the church.’ Coleridge’s abhorrence of Anglicanism was grounded in belief rather than doubt. He was a devout Christian, then tending towards Unitarianism, and his conscience would not allow him to accept the compromises swallowed by many young men wanting to pursue a career in the established Church.

Coleridge and Hucks continued across north Wales to Anglesey, where they were reunited with the other two Cantabs, now back on their feet. Together they climbed some of the highest peaks in Wales, including Snowdon and Cader Idris, several of the ascents made during the midday summer heat. Coleridge, who thought nothing of walking forty miles in a single day, went so fast that Hucks found it difficult to keep up with him. Afterwards they made their way south again, parting company at Llandovery. Coleridge was headed for Bristol, and followed the Wye Valley downstream towards the sea via Tintern, taking the same route that Wordsworth had followed a year earlier, but in the opposite direction.

Arriving in Bristol, Coleridge immediately sought out Southey. He sent a message to Lovell – signing himself ‘Your fellow Citizen’ – asking where his friend was to be found. Southey happened to be dining that evening with Lovell and his new wife, the actress Mary Fricker, together with her pretty eldest sister, Sara.* These three had already heard much from Southey of Coleridge’s genius, so they were intrigued when he appeared at the dinner table, brown as a berry, his clothes in tatters and his hair wild, weary of walking but certainly not of talking. He was in high good humour, exhilarated at seeing Southey again, animated and funny. Sara laughed at his jokes and made some sharp remarks of her own. As he held forth, he noticed her sparkling dark eyes, her brown curling hair and her full, inviting figure.

There were five Fricker girls (and one boy), as Coleridge rapidly discovered, daughters of a widow who kept a dress shop in Bristol. Lovell had just married one daughter, and Southey was courting another. George Burnett had his eye on a third. Obviously it was urgent for the Pantisocrats to find themselves mates. It seemed possible that the whole Fricker family, mother and all, might be joining them on the banks of the Susquehanna. How appropriate if Coleridge were to become united with one of the two remaining daughters! For him, it was a similar set-up to the one he had enjoyed at Villiers Street. He had lost Mary Evans, and in doing so lost a family. Now, perhaps, he had found another.

Over the next few days, as they discussed and refined the Pantisocratic project, Southey introduced Coleridge to his Bristol friends and showed him around. Until recently Bristol had been England’s second city after London, though it was rapidly being overhauled by the new industrial cities of the north. It remained an important port, with a busy quayside and clusters of masts poking up above the roofline, lurching at drunken angles when the tide fell and the ships settled on the mud. Also prominent on the skyline were many church steeples, and the chimneys of glassworks belching out black smoke. The city had spread right across the floodplain of the Avon, and extended up the adjoining hills to form the smart suburbs of Clifton and Kingsdown, where gracious terraces and crescents provided commanding views. The river curved behind the hills through a gorge, with hanging woods: ‘a scene truly magnificent’, wrote Southey, ‘and wanting nothing but clearer water’.24 Bristol was a centre of glass and china manufacture, with significant numbers of literate and politically sophisticated artisans. The radical sympathies of a prosperous nonconformist community confronted the conservatism of professional men and wealthy merchants, including those who had grown rich trading in slaves.25 The issue of the war cut across this divide. Because Bristol was so dependent on commerce, it had been badly affected by mercantile failures consequent upon the war; there had been riots in the city for the past two years.