Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 05: Little Journeys to the Homes of English AuthorsHubbard, Elbert
History
Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 05: Little Journeys to the Homes of English Authors
Hubbard, Elbert
Authors, English -- Homes and haunts -- Great Britain; English literature -- History and criticism
A date was arranged for sailing, but some trifling matter of finance
delayed the exodus—in fact, certain expected loans were not forthcoming.
Coleridge put in the time lecturing and preaching from Unitarian pulpits.
He also tried his hand as editor, but the publication scheme failed to
bring the shekels that were to buy emancipation. The innate contrariness
of things seemed to be blocking all his plans.
Meanwhile we find Lovell drifting off into commercialism. That is to say,
Barabbas-like, he had turned publisher. Gadzooks! What would you have a
man with a wife and baby do? Live on moonshine—well, well, well!
Death claimed poor Lovell before he could make a success either of
commerce or of art.
Coleridge moved up to the Lake District, and at Keswick, near where the
water comes down at Lodore—or did before the stream dried up—he rented
rooms of a kind friend by the name of Johnson, who owned Greta Hall.
Southey was writing articles for London papers. He received a guinea a
column, and when he wrote a poem, as he did every little while, he sent it
to a publisher who returned him a little good cash.
Southey's wife went up to Keswick on a visit to see her sister, Mrs.
Coleridge. Southey followed up to Keswick, and rather liked the situation.
The Southeys and the Coleridges all lived together as one happy family.
Southey was writing poetry and getting paid for it; and beside this had a
small income. Coleridge allowed Southey to buy the supplies, and when he
went away on tramp lecturing tours he felt perfectly safe in leaving his
family with Southey.
While up that way he met a young man, a native, by the name of
Wordsworth—William Wordsworth—and a poet, too.
Wordsworth had a sister named Dorothy, and this brother and sister lived
together in a little whitewashed stone cottage, built up against the
hillside at Grasmere, a village thirteen miles from Keswick. Coleridge
liked these people first-rate and they liked him. He used to go down to
visit them, and they would all sit up late listening to the splendid talk
of the handsome Coleridge. William said he was the only great man he had
ever met, and Dorothy agreed in the proposition.
Coleridge was discouraged: the world did not care for his work, and the
men in power had set their faces against him—or he thought they had,
which is the same thing. There was a conspiracy, he thought, to keep him
down; and Wordsworth should have advised him to join it, but did not.
Dorothy Wordsworth was a most extraordinary woman—she was gentle, kind,
low-voiced, sympathetic. She was not handsome, but she had the intellect
that entitled her to a membership in the Brotherhood of Fine Minds. She
knew the splendid excellence of Coleridge, and could follow him in his
most abstract dissertations; and if his logic faltered she could lead him
back to the trail.
Dorothy Wordsworth admired and pitied Coleridge; and from pity to love is
but a step.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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