It was on a glorious autumnal evening, late in October, 1838,
that I drove from Mr. Wordsworth’s at Rydal
Mount down to the village of Grasmere, following the shore of that beautiful little lake,
which was shining in the setting sun like a gilded mirror with a veil or crape of amber and
rose colours spread over it. I very soon reached the church and quiet churchyard where now
lie Wordsworth and poor Hartley, and easily found out the humble stone-built cottage, close to the
church, where the junior of the two poets then, long before, and for years after, resided.
He was not at home; but a rosy-cheeked, bright-eyed little maiden told me that I should be
sure to find him at the village inn. Thither I went, and there, in the kitchen, by the side
of a crackling wood fire, and in the midst of a group of waggoners and statesmen, for the
most part drinking beer and smoking pipes, I found the object of my search, the always
original, always vivacious, always interesting Hartley. The reader
must not be misled by the word “statesmen,” or for one moment imagine that
these companions of the bard were men like Mr.
Canning, the Earl of Liverpool, or
Sir Robert Peel; still less that personages like
Lord John Russell or Viscount Palmerston, whose society would not have been very acceptable to
the poet, were drinking beer and smoking with waggoners in the kitchen of that rustic inn.
A “statesman” in Cumberland or Westmorland is merely a small freeholder or
landed proprietor
| CHAP. VI] | WORDSWORTH’S INTRODUCTION | 53 |
I handed the slip to Hartley, who told me that he revered Wordsworth, but that I had no need of any such introduction to him, that my name was enough, that he knew of me through some of my books, and through Matthew Davenport Hill, and other friends. He and I were fast friends in five minutes, or in less time. We sallied out to the margin of the lake, only a few paces from the inn door; but we did not stay there long, for the sunset and twilight came on with a chilling autumnal breeze which drove us back to the kitchen fire, where we sat with the statesmen until a more private room was prepared. I was hungry as well as cold, for I had ridden since the early morning all the way from Penrith and Brougham Hall. I had been too much occupied by Ullswater, the other waters, and all that beautiful scenery, to think of eating or drinking, and I had taken only a glass of sherry and a biscuit at Mr. Wordsworth’s. I was really famishing and impatient for my dinner. Hartley said he would see to that, and vanished out of the kitchen like a little sprite.
I had scarcely seen so very small and yet so compact and active a man; my
“maximum” in littleness had been Crofton
Croker, author of those admirable
| 54 | HARTLEY COLERIDGE | [CHAP. VI |
| CHAP. VI] | DINNER AT GRASMERE | 55 |
Hartley and I were soon seated in a cosy little room—and I know no room so
cosy as the best parlour of a country inn of that sort—with a good sea-coal fire burning, a
table nicely spread and well covered, and the magnum of port glowing in a couple of
decanters, one placed by the poet’s plate and one by mine. Soup, fish, fowl, wine,
and everything were excellent, and no doubt all the more so from the keen appetite I had
brought to table with me. I was in little humour to talk till after the removal of the
trout, by which time poor Hartley had told a dozen
amusing anecdotes, and had nearly emptied his decanter, much applauding the wine at every
glass he took, and getting into such a full flow of spirits as I had seldom witnessed.
After the capon, we had potted char, biscuits, and rather a nice dessert, and the poet
began proposing toasts to this friend or that, to this man of genius or that
other—personally known or unknown did not signify—beginning with Wordsworth as “the greatest poet since Milton,” and then passing to John Wilson as the “heartiest and best fellow
that ever lived and wrote a rhyme,” and so on to others and others. The
formula was this: he would mention the name of some living writer, or I would do so, then
he would ask me if I knew him, and on my affirmation he would fill a bumper and say:
“Suppose we drink his health!” His own bottle was soon finished; and
mine, with two pulls upon it, did not last long. The bell was rung for more wine. Fearing
for the effect on him, and thinking of to-morrow morning for myself, I ordered a single
bottle, but his logic presently turned this order into one for another magnum. He knew that
the port in the magnum bottles was by far the best in the house, and he was rather
decidedly of opinion that an extra quantity of such good, sound, whole-
| 56 | HARTLEY COLERIDGE | [CHAP. VI |
From authors we fell upon authoresses, most of whom he quizzed as “affectatious”—a pet word with him—and as “précieuses ridicules,” but speaking with genial, glowing praise of three or four of them. I chanced to mention old Miss H. M. “What! do you know her too?” said Hartley. “Only by sight,” was my reply. “Then,” said he, filling his glass to the brim, “suppose we drink d——n to her! I abhor the woman as a woman, and I detest her rampant irreligion and all her principles!” The second magnum was telling on him; but he continued to talk, and to talk admirably, consecutively, logically, and with a vast deal of originality and spirit, about books, poetry, history, men, and politics, uttering many an admirable specimen of table talk; this he continued till nearly the midnight hour, when the wine was all gone, and when, quite suddenly, his senses went too.
“Never mind, sir!” said the landlord, who came in with a servant and chamber-candlesticks, “we know his ways; we are used to him; we will put him to bed upstairs; his landlady won’t expect him at home, and he will be all right to-morrow morning.”
So upstairs they carried the little poet, a featherweight, and as unconscious as an unborn babe.
I was up the next morning, dressed and out by eight o’clock, but
Hartley had been out more than an hour before
me, and had been stretching his legs
| CHAP. VI] | VISIT TO RYDAL MOUNT | 57 |
We were preparing to start for luncheon at Rydal Mount, when the considerate hostess said: “Mr. Coleridge, as you are going to Mr. Wordsworth’s, don’t you think you ought to put on a clean shirt, for you have been sleeping in this, you know?” “That is well thought of,” said the poet; “wait here, I will be back in five minutes, and will bring with me my manuscript poem I mentioned last night.” He was true to time; he was very rapid in his movements, rather running or trotting a short trot than walking; but when he felt in his pocket for his poems, they were not there. “That’s odd!” said he; “for I am almost certain that I took them from my lodgings with me!”
“I tell you what it is,” said our host, “you
are always forgetting or dropping that book, and some day you will be losing it for
good, and that will be a pity!” As Hartley and I were walking towards his lodging, he was accosted by a little
peasant boy, who had just picked up the manuscript by the roadside, and who appeared very
well to know its owner. It was a common schoolboy copybook, but the marble cover—if it had
ever had one—had been replaced by a wrapper or cover of common brown paper; it was rolled
up into the form of a baton, and tied with a piece of common string. But there were
beautiful,
| 58 | HARTLEY COLERIDGE | [CHAP. VI |
I had not the pleasure of seeing Miss Wordsworth. Dora was absent on a visit. Her two doves, of which she had several couples in large wicker cages, cooed harmoniously and most lovingly as we sat and talked cheerfully at our luncheon, where Hartley paid due homage to some brisk, sparkling table ale.
The senior poet conducted me again to the favourite culminating point of
view in his circumscribed but beautiful domain to which he had led me on the preceding
evening; and he stayed there some time, admiring the different aspect of the same scene—the
same wooded banks, grassy margins, tranquil lake, and bold mountains—under a difference of
light and shade, it being a bright afternoon instead of an evening sunset. Hartley had stayed in the library with Mrs. Wordsworth, who I believe employed part of the time
in motherly, gentle admonitions. Wordsworth spoke of
him to me with great admiration, and, I thought, with quite as much affection. All that I
saw of the veteran bard certainly went against the too commonly received theory—a theory
very earnestly and ungratefully propagated by De
Quincey—that Wordsworth was a circumspect, cold-hearted
man. He seemed to think that Hartley had been rather harshly treated
at Oxford, and that that blow, that uprooting of him from the soil for which he was best
adapted, had exercised an evil influence on all his after days. Poor fellow! He had gained
distinction, of which he could never have failed—he had gained his fellowship, and with it
either a provision for life or an
| CHAP. VI] | HIS DREAD OF FINE LADIES | 59 |
Wordsworth, so intimately connected with Southey and his family, and with all the Southey-Coleridge connections, did not allude to that “tender passion” which I have been assured finished the unsettling of poor Hartley’s mind. He had been deeply, passionately, long in love with his charming cousin, Edith Southey; and, from first to last, he had loved without hope or a single gleam of hope. See his exquisite sonnet addressed to Edith. From the time of his awakening from that uneasy dream, he had had a strong aversion to female society. Fine ladies he particularly dreaded, and would say so twenty times a day. Except with Mrs. Wordsworth, Dora, and John Wilson’s homely, kind-hearted, sonsie, thoroughly Scottish wife, he did not feel at home with any woman.
Captain Hamilton, author of “Cyril Thornton,” and of a history of
the Duke’s campaigns in the
Peninsula, a very accomplished, agreeable gentleman,
| 60 | HARTLEY COLERIDGE | [CHAP. VI |
I said that he had promised to send me some articles for which I was pretty
sure to find a good market, to which Wordsworth
replied that he only wished that he might adhere to his intention and keep his promise. It
appeared that, for some time, Hartley had been
entirely dependent on an annual fund of some £40 or £50 supplied by relatives—a bare
sufficiency, but still, without his propensities, a sufficiency in that cheap, quiet nook.
I could give full credit to Wordsworth when he said that, in spite of
his poverty and all his irregularities, there was
| CHAP. VI] | LODGINGS AND LIBRARY | 61 |
In returning to our inn at the end of the lake, Hartley took me into his lodging to show me some books. He had two plainly furnished, but clean and comfortable rooms, a very proper apartment for a recluse student. He had not many books: they were nearly all Greek or Roman classics, and most of them of large, excellent editions, and well bound. I took down several: their ample margins were postillated and in parts quite covered with notes in his own hand. If my memory do not betray me, the window of his sitting-room looked on or towards the quiet churchyard where, after ten more years of fitful existence, he was to be interred.
The dinner, the evening at the inn, went off much as the previous day, only
rather more quietly; when bedtime came Hartley was
not absolutely under the necessity of being carried upstairs. The next morning he was awake
and up with the village cocks, and as cheery and crowy as they. But all the time I was with
him I scarcely saw one sad or lasting expression on his countenance, or heard a melancholy
word drop from his lips. He said he despised “lackadaisicals,” and had a
contempt for the man who could not be cheerful whenever he had a congenial companion. Now
and then, when I caught his mobile features and changeful countenance in repose, I could
read in them the man who had deeply thought and deeply suffered, but this was but for a
moment; some sudden thought, some odd conceit, would flash from him, and the whole man and
countenance would be changed. He talked well always, but I
| 62 | HARTLEY COLERIDGE | [CHAP. VI |
On this Monday morning, after breakfast at our inn, I hired a chaise for
Windermere, and Hartley gladly agreed to accompany
me to Bowness, and be my cicerone on the lake. It was a splendid
day; that fine, bright, brisk, autumnal weather still favouring and blessing me. We had a
charming drive; but I rather think that we walked more than we rode, for we alighted at the
foot of every hill, frequently diverged for the sake of some choice prospect, and loitered
and sauntered along the high road whenever the scenery was particularly fine. The sere and
yellow leaves had fallen and were fast falling, coming pattering down with every gust of
wind. The road in places was quite thickly strewed with them, and they crumpled and rustled
under our feet as we walked. I still see poor Hartley raising his
small foot and kicking them before him, where they were so thick as to impede his progress.
In the action, in his guilelessness and singleness of heart, he reminded me of the little
Dauphin, the son
| CHAP. VI] | VISIT TO WINDERMERE | 63 |
It was yet early in the day when we descended at that most comfortable, cosy hotel at Bowness, where everybody seemed to be intimately acquainted with my comrade and to give him a cheering welcome. While I ordered dinner he went to hire a boat. He was as well known to all the boatmen and people along the bank as he was up at the inn; his arrival made quite a fête among them. We rowed for a couple of hours on that beautiful lake, which, with its neighbours, I could admire after all the lakes I had seen in Switzerland, Italy, and Asia Minor. We pulled up at that bowery, fairy little island facing Bowness, an island which, but for the public-house or inn on it, might have recalled the Douglas Isle in the “Lady of the Lake.” Hartley jumped out of the boat and ran away among the trees. I stood for a few minutes at the water’s edge to take in the opposite scenery; and by the time I went through the avenue and reached the house of entertainment, the poet was seated within the porch, with a bottle of port wine and glasses all ready.
He assured me that the port was almost as good as that in the magnums at
Grasmere. Rather fearing such strong potations before dinner, I called up our two boatmen
and gave them a full tumbler of the port, which diminished our mischief; but, with
Hartley’s ready aid, the rest was drunk
off in no time. When I stepped aside with the landlord he would not take my money, saying
that the wine was paid for. As I shrewdly suspected the poet had not a sixpence, I
concluded either that his credit was good, or that the host, for the poet’s own sake,
or for the sake of Professor Wilson and other richer
friends,
| 64 | HARTLEY COLERIDGE | [CHAP. VI |
Thus the poor poet was a bit fuddled before we sat down to table; yet during the whole of the dinner, and for a good hour after it, his conversation was rich, racy, full of point and wit, and quite delightful.
Before his evanescent turn, I spoke about the articles which he was to send me; and in as delicate a manner as I could manage, I extracted from him, not without difficulty, the confession that he was, at the moment, penniless. I had no money about me that I could spare, but I was happy in being able to give him a cheque upon a London banker, which he said he could easily get cashed. I would gladly have stayed a day or two longer at the Lakes, but my absence from home had already been longer than calculated at starting, and I was called back by work to do and by domestic considerations. On arriving at Bowness I had ordered a chaise to convey me to Staley Bridge, at the end of the lake, where I was sure of finding the public conveyance for Lancaster and Preston at an early hour next morning. The chaise came to the door about eight o’clock in the evening, and coincidently with its arrival was the retreat of Hartley to a sofa in the room, near a comfortable fire. The poet was past speech, and in a minute or two he was fast asleep. I called up the worthy landlord, thought it prudent to tell him about the cheque, and begged him to take care of the poet.
Like our host at Grasmere, he told me that he knew his ways, and that the
people in the house were used
| CHAP. VI] | LIFE AS SCHOOLMASTER | 65 |
The next morning I had for a companion in the stage-coach a young Cumbrian who was going up to Cambridge, and who, a year or two before, had been pupil in a school where Hartley had undertaken the drudgery of an under-master. According to the young man’s account, he was steady and quite exemplary for a time, but he then broke loose, and there was then hardly ever any chance of catching him again. The boys all loved him, would have done anything and everything for him; being so much liked and having such a way of engaging their attention, and such a happy knack in teaching, they learned more from him in three or four months than they would have done from any other master in thrice the time. The head-master and the good lady his wife did all they could to conceal his irregularities, and to amend them; but, unhappily, the last was not to be. Yet, at the very end, there was no dismissal, no weariness in their generous efforts on the part of that excellent pair; Hartley took himself off with a few shillings in his pocket, and returned no more. He had told me at Grasmere that he had once been a dominie, and found the life insupportable, but he had gone into no particulars.
Some six weeks after my return home I received, by coach, a queer little
parcel done up in grocer’s
| 66 | HARTLEY COLERIDGE | [CHAP. VI |
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