CHAPTER XVIII

MRS. COLERIDGE. LAST STAY AT THE LAKE DISTRICT

[Coleridge married Sarah Fricker, as we have already seen, on 5th October, 1795. The first period of Coleridge's married life had been a happy one. Although there is reason to believe Coleridge married his wife to "heal a deeper wound," and that Mary Evans would have been the object of his choice, there is no reason to suppose that he ever regretted his union with Sarah Fricker during the first years of their marriage. All accounts we have of the Clevedon and Stowey periods agree that Coleridge was happy in the new domestic bond. Cottle prints a glowing picture of the life at Clevedon (_Reminiscences_);[44] and Richard Reynell concurs regarding the Stowey cottage life (_Illustrated London News_, 1893). Coleridge, too, wrote most affectionately to his wife during his absence in Germany (_Letters_), and he was a deep lover of his children, and always in dread lest any calamity should happen to them while he was in Germany and Malta (_Letters_). Coleridge, above most men, was peculiarly fitted to make a good husband. He never spoke of his wife as his intellectual inferior, although he knew perfectly well she was not fitted to follow him in his Platonic imaginings. Dorothy Wordsworth's remarks (_Coleorton Memorials_, p. 164) on this point are beside the mark. Coleridge never expected to find in the woman he was prepared to love intellectual grasp of his philosophic system. The woman ideals he has given us are not blue-stockings, but domestic Ophelias and Imogens. Read in this connection _The Eolian Harp_ and _Lines written on having left a Place of Retirement_, _Lewti_, _Christabel_, _Love_, _Fears in Solitude_, the _Day Dream_. "I could," said Coleridge to Thomas Allsop in 1822, "have been happy with a servant-girl had she only in sincerity of heart responded to my affection." (Allsop's _Letters of S. T. Coleridge_, p. 206.)

Strained relations commenced to develop between the poet and Mrs. Coleridge between the summer of 1801 and the summer of 1802; and that Coleridge was not living happily with his wife began to leak out among their acquaintances during 1802; and by 1807 it had become a recognized fact. The evidence of all this does not require to be quoted to those who have read the _Journals_ and Letters of Dorothy Wordsworth. There are numerous notices of the estrangement, and Dorothy in a letter to Lady Beaumont (_Coleorton Memorials_, i, 162), enumerates what she supposes were the causes of the gulf of separation.

The causes of the estrangement were cumulative. While Coleridge never looked upon his wife as his inferior, and never expected attainments in her which she did not have, Mrs. Coleridge, as she advanced in years, could not be slow to perceive that there were other women beside herself who deeply interested themselves in her husband with his conversational fascinations and gentlemanly bearing toward woman. She could not be oblivious to the fact that Dorothy Wordsworth, for instance, was intellectually better fitted than herself to comprehend the "large discourse" which characterized Coleridge; and into Dorothy's ear was poured many a transcendental disquisition not understandable by the wife. Very few wives, as we know from the Carlyle history, can allow their husbands to have a "Gloriana;" and it is not likely that Sarah Fricker was one of the exceptions. Later, Charlotte Brent became one of Coleridge's Platonic sisterhood, but of what intellectual capacity she was of we cannot tell. But she added to the wife's resentment. Opium, too, of course, had its share in irritating the discontented wife.

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 5_s._ 6_d._ 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!]

FOOTNOTES:

[44] [See also _Eolian Harp_, and _Lines written on having left a place of Retirement_.]

[45] [After 1812 the pension was reduced by half.]

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