Читать книгу Coleridge: Darker Reflections - Richard Holmes - Страница 27

On 26 October he finally committed himself to the Carlisle stagecoach. But on the way he formed a plan to find Sara Hutchinson where she was staying at Penrith, before going on to his family at Greta Hall. His legs and face swelled during the journey, as he blanketed himself in opium and brandy. At Penrith, he found that Wordsworth had forestalled him. Sara had left half an hour previously with the whole Grasmere household, who had at last set out for their winter stay at Coleorton. They were now stopping over with friends at Kendal. Notes flew between Penrith and Kendal, Coleridge refusing to go on, and the Wordsworths refusing to go back, hampered by their trunks and three small children. It was a chaotic reunion. In the end Coleridge appeared at Kendal at seven in the evening, but took rooms at an inn in a curious gesture of independence, bidding William to join him for supper. Of course they all came hurrying round at once.

They had been apart for nearly three years. Coleridge the Romantic traveller, Coleridge the imagined confidant of the Prelude, Coleridge the tragic exile, had grown to mythical proportions in their minds. But it was far from the emotional reunion they had all imagined. He was physically unrecognizable: pallid, overweight, ill at ease, his mind still drifting somewhere in the Mediterranean.

It was Dorothy who recorded their dismay at the strange, distracted wanderer whom they found in place of their old, long-lost friend. She wrote to Mrs Clarkson: “We all went thither to him and never did I feel such a shock as the first in sight of him. We all felt in the same way…He is utterly changed; and yet sometimes, when he was in animated conversation concerning things removed from him, I saw something of his former self. But never when we were alone with him. He then scarcely ever spoke of anything that concerned him, or us, or our common friends nearly, except we forced him to it; and immediately he changed the conversation to Malta, Sir Alexander Ball, the corruptions of government, anything but what we were yearning after…that he is ill I am well assured, and must sink if he does not grow more happy.” Only once or twice did Dorothy catch a shadow, a transitory gleam, of that “divine expression of his countenance” they all remembered.²²

They remained with him from Sunday evening till Tuesday morning; “his misery has made him so weak”. They supported his plan to separate from Mrs Coleridge, though fearing he would never have the resolution to go through with it. Wordsworth criticized the London lecture scheme, and offered instead to cancel the whole Coleorton plan and rent a large house near Hawkshead so they could all winter together again in the Lakes. Coleridge in turn rejected this, as compromising all hope of financial independence. Finally Wordsworth sent his whole party on to Leicestershire, and remained behind for a third night at the inn alone with Coleridge.

Alone, that is, except for Sara Hutchinson, who also stayed behind unchaperoned with the two men. This was an unconventional move, with some risk of scandal. There is no record of what the three of them discussed or decided on that momentous night of 29 October 1806 at Kendal, but it was to affect Coleridge’s life for the next four years. One immediate result was that, despite all his resolutions and reflections in Italy, Coleridge found that he was still desperately in love with Asra, and he believed the feeling was reciprocated.

He later entered in his Notebook what was perhaps his most open declaration of love for Asra; and not merely love, but undeniable sexual passion: “I know, you love me! – My reason knows it, my heart feels it; yet still let your eyes, your hands tell me; still say, O often & often say, ‘My Beloved! I love you’; indeed I love you: for why should not my ears, and all my outward Being share in the Joy – the fuller my inner Being is of the sense, the more my outward organs yearn & crave for it. O bring my whole nature into balance and harmony.”²³

Wordsworth’s role as friend and confidant, and go-between with Asra, is not entirely easy to understand. His private letters (as well as Dorothy’s) certainly show that he believed Coleridge’s marriage was already wrecked, and that he alone could provide the stable household that could bring Coleridge’s drinking and opium-taking under control. “If anything good is to be done for him, it must be done by me.”²⁴ But he also wanted Coleridge’s help and advice with The Prelude, and perhaps unconsciously did everything he could to forestall Coleridge’s embarking on a new literary career in London.

Sara Hutchinson thus became crucial to the future life Wordsworth envisioned for Coleridge, as the one woman, besides his own sister Dorothy, who could respond to Coleridge’s emotional needs. But was Wordsworth prepared for Sara to become Coleridge’s mistress under his own roof at Coleorton? Or did he believe that Sara herself really wished this? It is very hard to tell. Certainly Coleridge himself would soon be agonizing over his friend’s ambiguity in these matters.

Sara Hutchinson’s own feelings remain as mysterious as ever, though there are some clues. She would write to Coleridge from Coleorton, but these letters have all been destroyed. She evidently shared Dorothy’s sense of shock at Coleridge’s physical appearance and emotional disarray. It seems that she was still deeply attached to him, admired him, and wished to help him as far as possible. But it would gradually emerge that his physical passion was not requited. During Coleridge’s long absence in the Mediterranean, she had settled into an increasingly domestic role in Wordsworth’s household, caring for the Wordsworth children, and sharing with Dorothy the arduous role of Wordsworth’s secretary and amanuensis. As Coleridge would soon discover, she had become less of a free spirit and more of a universal aunt, relied on for her wit and practicality, and dedicated to Wordsworth himself. The death of John Wordsworth had not freed her as Coleridge supposed, but drawn her more tightly into the family circle. His “Moorish maid” – like his Abyssinian maid – had disappeared.

Perhaps they all felt, in their genuine anxiety to help their old friend, that they could “manage” his passion as they could manage his brandy-drinking and opium-taking. This at any rate was what Dorothy seemed to imply in a long, circumspect letter to Lady Beaumont, describing in great detail the breakdown of his health and his marriage: “if he is not inclined to manage himself, we can manage him…”²⁵ The repeated emphasis on “managing” did not bode well. Yet all agreed that the great object was to get Coleridge safely to Coleorton, and it was with this promise that Wordsworth and Asra continued south, and Coleridge turned his face, if not his heart, towards Keswick again.