Читать книгу Coleridge: Darker Reflections - Richard Holmes - Страница 37

Coleridge’s abrupt disappearance into the bosom of the Morgan household in autumn 1807 was as significant as his descent upon the Wordsworths at Grasmere in 1800. He had discovered a new adoptive family, and all his cuckoo-like propensities were at once aroused. John Morgan was a Bristol lawyer in his early thirties, a one-time pupil of Christ’s Hospital, and a friend of Charles Lamb’s. After practising briefly in the City of London (he seems to have worked at the Blackfriars office of Coleridge’s life assurance company), he had recently married a Miss Mary Brent, the wealthy daughter of a Hatton Garden silversmith. Together the young couple had moved back to an elegant house in St James’s Square, Bristol, where they were joined by Mary’s very attractive younger sister, Charlotte Brent.

The family was vivacious, fun-loving and, as events were to show, improvident. They were also childless, and had much time for books, theatre and pets (one of their favourites being a dog called “Vision”). John Morgan was a sensitive and intelligent man, having been brought up as a Unitarian, and frequently subject to relapses into religious gloom, which Coleridge was able to alleviate. He was to write of Coleridge’s first, momentous residence: “Amongst other obligations to you I feel strongly that of making me able to defend at least in my own mind the Orthodox religion against the Unitarian philosophy.”¹⁵

In return, Morgan had an unshakable admiration for Coleridge’s literary gifts, a deep sympathy for his marital predicament, and an unusual understanding of his opium addiction which seems to have been revealed from the outset of their friendship. Less organizing than Tom Poole, less censorious than George Coleridge, and far less demanding than Wordsworth, John Morgan slipped unconsciously into the role of Coleridge’s ideal and long-sought brother. Loyal, generous and naive, he became Coleridge’s unfailing anchorpoint in the dark years ahead.

Morgan’s naivety extended from financial to emotional matters. It was never clear quite how far he realized the extraordinary mirror-image that Coleridge projected on to his triangular household. John, Mary and Charlotte became youthful substitutes for Wordsworth, Mary and Asra; and Coleridge orchestrated them into this sentimental pattern with alarming rapidity. When he eventually arrived in London, he wrote immediately to Dorothy Wordsworth of this fateful revelation, sounding both excited and guilty. “I never knew two pairs of human beings so alike, as Mrs Morgan & her Sister, Charlotte Brent, and Mary and Sara. I was reminded afresh of the resemblance every hour – & at times felt a self-reproach, that I could not love two such amiable, pure & affectionate Beings for their own sakes. But there is a time in Life, when the Heart stops growing.”¹⁶

But Coleridge’s heart, and his fantasies, were actually in a most active state. He had started a poem on the subject, and he was already recalling a host of tender moments at St James’s Square: gifts, keepsakes, pet-names and shared jokes. In his mirror-universe, even the famous sofa scene with Mary and Asra at Gallow Hill (the subject of his Keswick poem, “A Day-Dream”) had been re-enacted in Bristol. He would recall it fondly to Mary Morgan, as a token of their new-found intimacy: “that evening, when dear Morgan was asleep in the Parlour, and you and beloved Caroletta asleep at opposite Corners of the Sopha in the Drawing Room, of which I occupied the centre in a state of blessed half-consciousness, as a drowsy Guardian of your Slumbers…”¹⁷