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
Digestion had become impaired, circulation faulty through lack of
exercise, so sleeplessness followed stimulation. Then to quiet pain came
the use of the drug that brings oblivion. And lo! thought burned up
brighter than ever and all the dreams of youth and twenty came trooping
back.
Coleridge had made a discovery. He thought he was getting the start of God
Almighty; but he wasn't, for men have tried that before, and are trying it
today, and many know not yet that we are strong only as we cling close to
the skirts of Mother Nature and follow lovingly in her ways.
From his twenty-ninth year we find Coleridge a wreck in mind and body;
shuffling, sick, disheartened, erratic, uncertain, yet occasionally
brilliant. He tramped the streets, feared and shunned. His money was gone,
his power of concentration had vanished. In search of bread he met an
old-time friend, Doctor Gillman.
"Gillman," said Coleridge, "I am sick and helpless—look at me!"
"Why don't you come to my house and live with me?" asked the kind friend.
"Gillman," said the poor man, "Gillman, I am on my way there!"
So Gillman brought him to his house up at Highgate and took care of him as
a child. And there he remained, the pride and pet of a group of brave,
thinking men and women.
He lived on for thirty years, under the kindly, skilful care of his
friend, but all the real work of his life was done before he was thirty.
Occasionally the old fire would flash forth, and the wit and insight of
his youth would shine out. Keats, Shelley, Lord Byron, and others strong
and great sought him out to hold converse with him. And so he existed, a
sort of oracle, amiable, kind and generous—wreck of a man that
was—protected and defended by loving friends; while up at Keswick,
Southey cared for his wife and educated his children as though they were
his own.
"I am dying," said Coleridge to Gillman in July, Eighteen Hundred
Thirty-four; "dying, but I should have died, like Keats, in youth and not
have made myself a burden to you—do you forgive me?" We can guess the
answer.
The dust of Coleridge rests in Highgate Cemetery, just a step from where
he lived all those years. He, himself, selected the place and wrote his
epitaph. The simple monument that marks the spot was paid for by kind
friends who remembered him and loved him and who pardoned him for all that
he was not, in memory of what he once had been.
To a young man from the country, who makes his way up, no greater shock
ever comes than the discovery that rich people are, for the most part,
woefully ignorant. He has always imagined that material splendor and
spiritual gifts go hand in hand; and now if he is wise he discovers that
millionaires are too busy making money, and too anxious about what they
have made, and their families are too intent on spending it, ever to
acquire a calm, judicial mental attitude.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account