The Friendship: Wordsworth and Coleridge. Adam Sisman
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then are the other nineteen employed? Some of them are mechanics and merchants who collect and prepare those things which urge this field Labourer to unnatural Toil by unnatural Luxuries – others are Princes and Nobles and Gentlemen who stimulate his exertions by exciting his envy, and others are Lawyers and Priests and Hangmen who seduce or terrify him into passive submission. Now if instead of this one man the whole twenty were to divide the labor and dismiss all unnecessary wants it is evident that none of us would work more than two hours a day of necessity, and that all of us might be learned from the advantages of opportunities, and innocent from the absence of Temptation.
The lectures demonstrate the central importance to Coleridge of Christian revelation, an emphasis that distinguished him from radicals such as Thelwall. Indeed, Coleridge was repelled by the atheism and apparent immorality of many of the most prominent radicals, and appalled that such men might capture the leadership of the people. He was particularly concerned at the ubiquity of Godwin’s ideas in the minds of radicals. In the process of writing these lectures Coleridge sought to develop a Christian alternative to Godwin’s atheistic radicalism.35 Much of his opposition to Godwin stemmed from his (brief) personal experience of the man, and of Godwin’s close associate Holcroft. There is a pugnacious tone to his criticism of Godwin, which suggests rivalry: ‘I set him at Defiance.’
Coleridge also delivered two stand-alone lectures, one, ‘by particular desire’, devoted to a subject particularly controversial in Bristol: a condemnation of the slave trade. Coleridge’s final lecture was on Pitt’s recently introduced hair-powder tax, a fine subject for his satirical wit, as democrats chose to wear their hair unpowdered anyway. Only ‘aristocrats’ would pay the guinea necessary for a licence to wear hair powder.
Meanwhile, all was not well in the Pantisocratic household. Coleridge exasperated Southey by his erratic working habits. Southey was by nature disciplined and organised, Coleridge wayward and chaotic. Even Coleridge’s appearance irritated Southey: untidy, unkempt and sometimes not entirely clean.36 The strain began to show. Coleridge had agreed to give the fourth of Southey’s historical lectures – ‘On the Rise, Progress, and Decline of the Roman Empire’ – as it was a subject which he had particularly studied. At the end of Southey’s third lecture, therefore, it was announced that Coleridge would be giving the next. When the time came, ‘the room was thronged’ – but the lecturer failed to appear. After waiting half an hour, the disgruntled crowd dispersed. Coleridge was eventually found in his lodgings, smoking a pipe, deep in thought.
The next day, on a ramble up the Wye Valley with Cottle and the two Fricker sisters, Southey remonstrated with Coleridge. The two friends quarrelled, embarrassing Cottle, especially when each of the sisters entered the argument in support of her suitor. Afterwards, in the woods above Tintern, they lost their way as darkness descended, with Coleridge riding ahead on Cottle’s horse and shouting back encouragement, while Southey advanced supporting a sister on each arm, and the lame Cottle hobbled along behind, until at last they reached the inn.
Southey’s zeal for Pantisocracy was cooling. His priorities had changed; marriage to Edith was now in the forefront of his mind, and other considerations subsidiary. He began to express reservations about aspects of the scheme. Coleridge perceived his diminishing enthusiasm, and strove to keep him true to the principles to which they had devoted themselves. Southey was caught in a trap of his own making. Having advertised his own integrity so freely, having laid such stress on principle, having insisted to Coleridge that Pantisocracy was a duty, he found it difficult to withdraw. A succession of impassioned arguments ensued, followed by partial reconciliations. Each man accused the other of behaving coldly towards him. Strong words were exchanged, and tears shed. One night, just before they went to bed, Southey confessed that he had acted wrongly. But soon his manners became cold and gloomy again. It was like the break-up of a marriage. Poor George Burnett was a spectator of this contest; he watched aghast.
Then a wealthy friend offered Southey an annuity of £160, to begin the following autumn. Now that he had the prospect of some property, Southey found himself less inclined to share it. He put forward a new proposal: everything in Wales should be owned separately, except five or six acres. Coleridge reacted with indignation and contempt; Southey’s scheme amounted to rank apostasy: ‘In short, we were to commence Partners in a petty Farming Trade. This was the Mouse of which the Mountain Pantisocracy was at last safely delivered!’ From this time on, Coleridge kept up the appearance of a friendship with Southey – ‘but I locked up my heart from you’.
In August, Southey’s clergyman uncle Herbert Hill returned to England from Portugal. He had funded Southey’s education at Westminster and Oxford in the expectation that his nephew would follow his example, and he now wrote urging Southey to take Holy Orders. Apparently Hill was intimate with a bishop, and a post worth £300 a year was Southey’s for the asking. Southey informed his fellow lodgers of the offer one evening. ‘What answer have you returned?’ asked Coleridge. ‘None – Nor do I know what Answer I shall return,’ replied Southey, and retired to bed. Coleridge was incredulous; Southey had been as scathing as he was on the iniquity of the Church – indeed, had been so before they met (in December 1793, for example, Southey had written that to enter the Church ‘I must become contemptible infamous and perjured’37). Burnett sat gaping, half-petrified at the possibility that his idol might abandon them. Coleridge wrote a letter to Southey that same night, frantically urging him not to ‘perjure himself’. The next morning he walked with Southey to Bath, insisting on the ‘criminality’ of such an action. Southey wavered, tempted by the prospect of a regular income that would at last allow him to marry Edith. After a struggle, he decided against the Church; but his uncle was determined to lure him away from Pantisocracy. Further inducements were placed in front of Southey to return to Oxford and study law – a course that Coleridge described as ‘more opposite to your avowed principles, if possible, than even the Church’. The temptations were proving too great for Southey, whose scruples disappeared one by one. He was now talking of ‘rejoining Pantisocracy in about 14 years’, citing Coleridge’s ‘indolence’* as a reason for his quitting. On 22 August 1795 Coleridge wrote bitterly to Cottle that Southey ‘leaves our Party’. On 1 September Southey quitted their shared lodgings in College Street. Their landlady was reduced to tears at his departure.
A week or two later Coleridge made his way back to west Somerset. On 19 September Poole’s cousin Charlotte noted in her journal that Tom had with him a friend by the name of ‘Coldridge: a young man of brilliant understanding, great eloquence, desperate fortune, democratick principle, and entirely led away by the feelings of the moment’. A poem by Poole (not known as a poet) addressed to ‘Coldridge’ – ‘Hail to thee, Coldridge, youth of various powers!’ – is dated seven days earlier. Presumably Coleridge stayed the intervening week with Poole at Nether Stowey. He may have visited Henry Poole at Shurton Court as well, because some time during September he composed a poem nearby, at Shurton Bars, where a murky, gently shelving sea recedes with the tide to reveal a shingle beach, broken by bars of exposed rock. ‘Lines Written at Shurton Bars’ was a response to a letter from Sara, in which she seems to have referred to chilly treatment from Southey and Edith. The growing estrangement from Southey was obviously prominent in Coleridge’s thoughts at the time. Poole’s poem refers to the same subject. On his return from Shurton to Bristol, Coleridge encountered Southey, who offered his usual handshake. Coleridge took Southey’s outstretched hand, and shook it ‘mechanically’. The significance of this handshake, or lack of it, subsequently became a point of contention between them.
In ‘Lines Written at Shurton Bars’ Coleridge quoted an expression borrowed from Wordsworth’s ‘An Evening Walk’. Such borrowing was a form of acknowledgement much practised at the time, and in fact Coleridge had already used another phrase of Wordsworth’s elsewhere.38 A note to the published version of Coleridge’s poem would refer to ‘Mr. Wordsworth’ as ‘a Poet whose versification is occasionally harsh, and his diction too frequently obscure; but whom I deem unrivalled among the writers of the present day in manly