There is little foundation, as far as I can see, for the charge made against Mrs. Coleridge in Flagg’s Life of Allston, p. 356, that Mrs. Coleridge had a horrible and ungovernable temper. I think ill-temper was created by events and by the non-success of Coleridge, and by the unfavourable comparison Coleridge as a literary man made with Southey, who was luckily successful in his ventures while Coleridge was always unfortunate. She was doubtless sorely tried.
It must also be stated that Coleridge did not neglect his wife in the pecuniary sense. He allowed Mrs. Coleridge to enjoy the whole of the Wedgwood Pension (less £20 a year which he granted to her mother, Mrs. Fricker).[45] In his brief bursts of prosperity he also remitted her supplementary sums, £110 was sent from Malta, and £100 more promised. When Remorse was a success he sent her £100, on 20th January 1813 (Letters, 603), and another £100 was promised in a month. Coleridge also effected an insurance on his life for £1,000, with profits, before going to Malta, the premium for which was £27 5s. 6d. per annum. This was paid to the end of his life, sometimes, no doubt, by the help of friends; and the policy realized £2,560. The charge, therefore, that Coleridge neglected or deserted his wife and family is without foundation. Stuart, in an article otherwise by no means favourable to Coleridge, acquits him on this charge. He says Coleridge “never deserted them in the sense which the words imply. On the contrary, he always spoke of them to me with esteem, affection, and anxiety. He allowed to them the greatest part of his income, but that was sometimes insufficient for their comfortable subsistence, and he himself was usually more distressed for money than they;” (Gentleman’s Magazine, 1838). We may add that Coleridge was a man of a vestal purity; and, in spite of his own experience, never said anything in disparagement of the marriage bond.
Coleridge paid his last visit to the Lake District in the spring of 1812, 23rd February to 26th March (Letters, 575). He quitted his wife on cordial enough terms, and wrote an agreeable letter to her from London (Letters, 579), of date 21st April. But he never returned to Keswick. That mysterious gulf which he has described so wonderfully and weirdly in Christabel which separates sundered hearts, widened with the years; and
They stood aloof, the scars remaining!
CHAPTER XIX
REMORSE AT DRURY LANE[46]
By what I have effected, am I to be judged by my fellow-men; what I could have done is a question for my own conscience.—S. T. C.
As the Biographia Literaria does not mention all Mr. Coleridge’s writings, it will be proper to give some account of them here.
The Poetical Works in three volumes include the Juvenile Poems, Sibylline Leaves, Ancient Mariner, Christabel, Remorse, Zapolya, and Wallenstein.
The first volume of Juvenile Poems was published in the Spring of 1796. It contains three sonnets by Charles Lamb, and a poetical Epistle which he called “Sara’s,” but of which my Mother told me she wrote but little. Indeed it is not very like some simple affecting verses, which were wholly by herself, on the death of her beautiful infant, Berkeley, in 1799. In May, 1797, Mr. C. put forth a collection of poems, containing all that were in his first edition, with the exception of twenty pieces and the addition of ten new ones and a considerable number by his friends, Lloyd and Lamb. The Ancient Mariner, Love,[47] The Nightingale, The Foster Mother’s Tale first appeared with the Lyrical Ballads of Mr. Wordsworth in the summer of 1798. There was a third edition of the Juvenile Poems by themselves in 1803, with the original motto from Statius, Felix curarum, etc. Silo. Lib. iv. A spirit of almost child-like sociability seemed to reign among these young poets—they were fond of joint publications.