Coleridge: Early Visions. Richard Holmes

indeed, realise the age of reason; but however perfectible human nature may be, I fear it is not yet perfect enough to exist long under the regulations of such a system, particularly when the Executors of the plan are taken from a society in a high degree civilized and corrupted…I think a man would do well first to see the country and his future hopes, before he removes his connections or any large portion of his property, there. I could live, I think, in America, much to my satisfaction and credit, without joining such a scheme…though I should like well to accompany them, and see what progress they make.³³

      Poole also gave a summary of the Pantisocratic plan as it had matured by mid-August. Coleridge and Southey were talking of twelve couples, who would embark from Bristol the following April. The men would provide a capital of £125 each, and expect to labour on a common land-holding for two or three hours a day. “The produce of their industry is to be laid up in common for the use of all, and a good library of books is to be collected, and their leisure hours to be spent in study, liberal discussions, and the education of their children.” Political and religious opinions would be free, but the essence of the scheme was to bring up a new generation of enlightened children untainted by corrupt values. In particular, the absence of property ownership – Coleridge’s “Aspheterism” – would philosophically ensure that there were no grounds for selfish materialism. Poole added shrewdly: “the regulations relating to the females strike them as the most difficult; whether the marriage contract shall be dissolved if agreeable to one or both parties, and many other circumstances, are not yet determined.”³⁴

      But most perceptive of all was Tom Poole’s first impression of Coleridge, whom he considered “the Principal in the undertaking”, and a man of “splendid abilities”. He saw at once his mixture of genius and impracticality, someone struggling with themselves, a “shining scholar” bursting with ideas but almost dangerously adrift and confused in his personal life. He also sensed immediately the undercurrent of guilt.

      He speaks with much elegance and energy, and with uncommon facility, but he, as it generally happens to men of his class, feels the justice of Providence in the want of those inferior abilities which are necessary to the rational discharge of the common duties of life. His aberrations from prudence, to use his own expression, have been great; but he now promises to be as sober and rational as his most sober friends could wish. In religion he is a Unitarian, if not a Deist; in politicks a Democrat, to the utmost extent of the word.³⁵

      It is evident from this that even at their first meeting, Coleridge had spoken freely of himself and such matters as the dragoon episode; and that Poole was already adopting the paternal attitude that would soon make him Coleridge’s “sheet-anchor”. By contrast, Poole was much less impressed by Southey, whom he considered “more violent in his principles”, wavering between deism and atheism, and intellectually “a mere Boy” compared to Coleridge. Already there is a touch of surprise that the two young men should be so closely associated, an acute premonition of future difficulties.

      The Pantisocrats were back in Bristol by 22 August. They immediately decided to raise money by writing a topical verse-drama on the death of Robespierre, using the newspaper reports of the final struggle in the Convention between Barère, Tallien, Robespierre and St-Just. Eight hundred lines were completed in forty-eight hours of furious all-night composition. Coleridge wrote the first Act, Southey the second, and Robert Lovell was meant to write the third; but he could not keep Pantisocratic pace. Coleridge’s section shows clearly his sympathies for the Girondists such as Madame Roland and Brissot, whom Robespierre – “the tyrant guardian of the country’s freedom” – had executed. In general it is a farrago of rhetorical bad verse, remarkable only for the swiftness of composition, though Coleridge came up with some striking scientific metaphors, comparing the power of liberty to condensed air in a glass jar,

      …bursting

      (Force irresistible!) from its compressure –

      To shatter the arch chemist in the explosion!³⁶

      Even Joseph Cottle refused to publish it, but Coleridge announced confidently that he would get it printed under his own name in Cambridge that autumn. Cottle may have overlooked – or Coleridge may have later added – one outstanding passage, the Song to “Domestic Peace”, which shows the rapid development of his lyric gift, already heralded in “Genevieve” and “The Sigh”, and soon to overflow in a mass of sonnet-writing. Far from revolutionary in tone, it indicates perhaps better than anything the real undercurrent of his thoughts during this wild summer of scheming and romance: a wistful mixture of Pantisocratic dreams, marriage fantasies (Mary or Sara?), and magic childhood nostalgia (that small boy playing in a distant country churchyard):

      Tell me, on what holy ground

      May Domestic Peace be found?

      Halcyon daughter of the skies,

      Far on fearful wings she flies,

      From the pomp of Sceptered State,

      From the Rebel’s noisy hate,

      In a cottag’d vale She dwells

      Listening to the Sabbath bells!…³⁷

      What strikes one is the Rousseauism of the entire enterprise, and Coleridge’s underlying philosophical belief in the essential innocence of man once retired from corrupt European civilisation in the rural “cottag’d vale”. This philosophical assumption, the absence of inherent evil in man’s nature, and the possibility of retrieving some paradisial “unfallen” state, was to become a central theme in his poetry over the next four years.

      Poole already understood this problem, in his practical way. But Southey, who seemed to think in political cartoons, never touched on the issue at any depth. As he wrote jauntily in Bristol: “Should the resolution of others fail, Coleridge and I will go together, and either find repose in an Indian wig-wam – or from an Indian tomahawk…if earthly virtue and fortitude can be relied on, I shall be happy…What is the origin of moral evil? Whence arise the various vices and misfortunes that disgrace human nature and destroy human happiness? From individual property.”³⁸

      7

      Coleridge left Bristol on 2 September 1794, bidding emotional farewells to the Frickers, Lovell, Burnett, and Southey. It was decided that “by this day twelve months the Pantisocratic society of Aspheterists will be settled on the banks of the Susquehanna.”³⁹ It is not known exactly on what terms he parted from Sara Fricker, but it was certainly tenderly and flirtatiously. For Southey it was “like the losing a limb to part from him”.

      Coleridge was to continue the missionary work in London and Cambridge, research land-purchase deals for Pennsylvania, get The Fall of Robespierre published, and send back “packages” of letters and information. Meanwhile Southey pondered on his emigrant’s wardrobe – “what do common blue trousers cost?” – and continued his rapturous cartooning to Bedford. “When Coleridge and I are sawing down a tree we shall discuss metaphysics: criticise poetry when hunting a buffalo, and write sonnets whilst following the plough.”⁴⁰

      Southey’s catalogue of pioneering delights included the full range of domestic comforts – the Fricker girls, the servants, Lovell’s two sisters, and his own mother, were all of the party. “Our society will be of the most polished order…Our females are beautiful amiable and accomplished – and I shall then call Coleridge my brother in the real sense of the word.” This last remark suggests that, for Southey at least, an engagement between Coleridge and Sara was understood; and this seems to be the clear implication of Coleridge’s first letter from Cambridge just over a fortnight later, which shows the lights of Pantisocracy