His Shaping Years
Coleridge came from a respectable family, though they were poor. His father was a pious, absent-minded clergyman and schoolmaster of Ottery Saint Mary in Devon. He was born on October 21, 1772 as the youngest of 10 children by his father’s second marriage. All of them were brought up and settled on their respective paths by their maternal uncle, as their father went bankrupt. The uncle was also a learned man, who published Gentleman’s Magazine, besides school books and commentaries on the Old Testament.
Samuel resembled his father and was his favorite. Yet, he seems to have spent a lonely and miserable childhood. He often spoke of himself as if he were an orphan.
A solitary child, playing alone and burying himself in nursery books as Tom Hick Athrift, Jack the Giant-Killer, Robinson Crusoe, Seven Champions of Christendom and The Arabian Nights. He used to sit at a window and read books by sunlight.
His Roots
Too little is known about his mother, who managed the home under trying economic conditions. She had the pride and spirit to enlighten her family. He had a bad experience in his childhood when he was about seven years of age. While fighting with his brother Frank, Samuel rushed to his brother Frank, who threw him on the ground and pretended to have been seriously hurt. Samuel felt bad and hung over him mourning and his brother leaped up with a horselaugh and gave Samuel a severe blow in face. Seizing a knife, Coleridge ran at him, but at that moment his mother entered the room and took Frank in her arms. Samuel ran away, thinking his mother to be partial and hid himself from villagers. But his father wept and his mother was filled with joy, when he was found.
Coleridge said later, "My father was not a first-rate genius – he was, however a first-rate Christian." He had a highly neurotic personality. He emerged as the family genius, but also suffered from family embarrassment. His behavior appeared so irrational that his brothers entertained grave doubts about his sanity and at one point considered placing him under restraint in a private asylum.
Neurosis in Family
It is significant, genetically, that of his three children, two – brilliant Hartley and the even more brilliant Sarah, were markedly neurotics. Hartley became an alcoholic. Sara, in the strain of child-bearing, was severely incapacitated for a lengthy period what could be an acute anxiety-neurosis.
Early School Days
When he was two years of age he went to Dame School. By the end of 1775 at the age of three, he could read the Bible.
He continued at Dame School until 1778. He did not look his age and therefore could not attend his father’s Grammar school. In his seventh year he was admitted to Grammar school and soon surpassed all his contemporaries.
His Teens
By his 16th year, the quintessential Coleridge clearly emerged. He always referred to himself by his initials, which he often wrote phonetically as Esteese, Esteesee or Esteesi. Only his immediate family called him Samuel. It was a name he detested and he did all he could to discourage its use:
"From my earliest years I have had a feeling of dislike and disgust connected with my Christian name: such a vile short plumpness, such a dull abortive smartness in the first syllable, and this so harshly contrasted by the obscurity and indefiniteness of the syllable vowel, and the feebleness of the uncovered liquid, with which it ends – the wobble it makes and staggering between a diss-and a tri-syllable – and the whole name sounding as if you were abeeceeing. S.M.U.L. – altogether it is perhaps the worst combination, of which vowels and consonants are susceptible."
The name Coleridge on the other hand, pleased him greatly as he further said: “I think, that the word Coleridge, long from both sides, has a noble verbal physiognomy… it is one of the vilest Belzebubb cries of Detraction to pronounce it Coloridge, or Colleridge, or even Cole-ridge. It is and must be to all honest and honorable men, trisyllable Amphimaces, -- !"
First Love
At the age of 16 he fell in love. This first affair might stand as a blueprint for his subsequent ones, his wooing was conducted in literary form and ended disastrously for both parties, particularly for the girl. The girl was Mary Evans, sister of his friend Tom Evans; Coleridge was a regular visitor at Evans family, considered his mother as his own mother and fell in love with his sister.
During his 19th year, in his last months at school, Coleridge had his first sexual experience with Mary Evans. His Farewell Sonnet to Christ’s Hospital hints at this experience, while a letter to Humphrey Davy, states that his 19th to his 22nd year was the period that comprised his unchastities.
At Cambridge
Coleridge was admitted to Jesus College, Cambridge, as a sizar on February 5, 1791 and became a resident then in October. In his worst nightmares he was to dream of his return to Christ’s Hospital. His outstanding memories of the place included savage floggings, semi-starvation, acute homesickness, loneliness and forced homosexuality. During this period he joined the military.
In his 19th year, he left the scenes of childhood and adolescence, bidding them goodbye with nostalgic reluctance. In November 1791, he was awarded Rustat Scholarship, worth £27 a year. He also had a Christ’s Hospital exhibition of £40 a year. By June 10, 1792, he went to visit his family, where his mother banned his drinking wine. It is known that during this period of anxiety and pressure, prior to Craven, Coleridge resorted to opium. In 1792-93, 17 students appeared for the scholarship examination and he expected himself to be selected, but was not. He was depressed by his failure and mental depression invariably had dramatic effect upon his physical state.
By early 1793, he was distinctly oriented towards opium. In mid-February he came to know about the death of his brother Francis at Seringapatam. Coleridge’s academic failure at Cambridge must have been the result of his radical political activity. At school, he had his head filled with classical studies, philosophy and verse. In 1789, he succumbed to poetic hero-worship of the newly published sonnets of Bowles. In early 1790, he wrote an ode on the Destruction of the Bastille. By the time he went to Cambridge, the universities were in a ferment of enthusiasm for France and the Revolution.
In his undergraduate days he expressed enthusiasm for the Revolution, because it was the visible manifestation of the political and social democratic principles. He was drawn into serious democratic politics during his first year at Cambridge, not through channels but his interest in Unitarianism.
During his first term at Cambridge, he had been greatly influenced by the company of Middleton, who was far removed from Unitarian thinking.
His Lost Love
Meanwhile, his girlfriend Mary Evans, came in contact with Fryer Todd, a young man of fortune, whom she later married on October 13, 1795. Coleridge was not disappointed by Mary’s going away and bade her farewell. Coleridge and Southey wrote a play in order to raise funds for Pantisocracy. At that point of time, Southey introduced him to Tricker family. Coleridge, a pathological philanderer was in his elements with the pretty intelligent and lively Tricker girls. Coleridge made increasingly warm advances to Sara Fricker, who responded delightedly. He proposed, and the response was positive.
Coleridge married the delicate, dark and vivacious Sara in October 1795 and had two sons and a daughter.
Sara never permitted herself a syllable of criticism for Coleridge in presence of their children. She was always at pains to impress them with his distinction as a man and love for them as a father. Though an introvert, she was a proud and dedicated mother with deep feelings of love and loyalty. In her happier days of early womanhood, under the heady influence of Pantisocracy, she revealed a much freer spirit. She had a practical side too. Flexible and adaptable, she coped when left all alone for long periods, with very little money and no idea of Coleridge’s whereabouts. Her behavior during her engagement showed a surprising disregard for the conventions of female modesty prevailing among respectable young ladies of her day.
Throughout his life, Coleridge attempted to pour flesh-and-blood women into the vapid mould of meek-eyed, characterless creatures. The results were inevitably catastrophic for both him and the women concerned. He was blunt with the men too for the same reason. His hopeless romanticism betrayed him into viewing people not as they really were, but as he wished them to be.
Coleridge had a plan of starting a school of his own in partnership with Montague, but capital required was neither available to Coleridge nor did Montague possess a penny.
Lucky To Have Wordsworth In His Life
In 1798, he met William Wordsworth and was very happy for his friendship. The basic difference dividing the friends lay in their personal philosophies. The central philosophical controversy of the Romantic era, the argument over pantheism was the dissimilarity between Coleridge and Wordsworth. This controversy provided Coleridge with major intellectual struggle of his life and was the inspiration behind his great masterpiece The Ancient Mariner.
By 1798, Coleridge passed beyond the influence of Hartley. His dedication to Hartley is demonstrated by the fact that he named his first-born child in 1796 after the Master. Hartley’s enormous appeal to
Coleridge undoubtedly known by his philosophy continued to fuse Necessitarianism with Christianity.
Coleridge explained the system of Priestley in Aids to Reflection. He adored Nature and much of his response to it was spontaneous in the Romantic way. His attitude to Spinoza was far from being one of categorical rejection. Coleridge passionately believed in the sense of the heart, it was the beginning and the end. By 1796, Coleridge thought through and saw through Dr Priestley. Priestley was a Jew, a Republican, theologian and scientist. Coleridge, abandoning Priestly, turned for a while to George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne. In 1798, Coleridge named his second son after the Bishop.
Coleridge visited Germany in 1798-99, where he studied German and read German philosophy. Meanwhile, his son Berkeley died on May 14, 1798. His abandonment of Unitarianism took several years before he was prepared to accept the Trinity – The idea of God.
He left Malta and returned to England in August, 1806. His unrealized dream was to achieve a systematic reconciliation of the ‘I am’ with the ‘It is’. He had a pathological dread of final decisions, he used to postpone it until the last moment.
Opium-eater
Taking regular opium was essential for him, in ever-increasing quantity, and in order to obtain it he was prepared to beg, borrow or lie, possibly even to steal.
He virtually fought his way out of his bondage of opium, resumed a life of distinguished literary activity, emerged as the Grand Old Man of English Literature and succeeded in establishing a circle of secure personal relationships, which was nothing short of miraculous. Only a man with an exceptionally strong personal philosophy, or faith, could have achieved this. His ultimate acceptance of the Trinitarian concept coincided with the nadir of his morphine reliance. The terrors of drug enslavery and emotional and social isolation stimulated in Coleridge the desire for spiritual comfort. An appalling drug crisis in 1813, precipitated him into an ardent embracement of full Christian orthodoxy.
Public Image
On his death-bed, during the final evening of his life, he dictated to his friend and disciple in philosophy, Dr J H Green, "And be thou sure in whatever may be published of my posthumous works to remember that, first of all is the ‘I am’, as the eternal reality in itself, and the ground and source of all other reality. And next, that in the idea nevertheless a distinctivity is to be carefully preserved, as manifested in the person of the Logos by whom that reality is communicated to all other beings."
In 1816, he openly established a public image of himself as a romantic opium-eater. But later, he became the Grand Old Man of English Letters and in the opinion of many young liberal-minded English clergies, the foremost religious thinker of the time. Barely two months after Coleridge’s death in July 1834, De Quincey attacked him in Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine of September 1834. Robert Southey, Poet Laureate, and his brother-in-law who in 1798, estranged from Coleridge, had been his closest friend.
In 1836, Joseph Cottle, had noticed the degree of excitement and attention which De Quincey’s Confessions had aroused in Tait’s. He decided to leap on the bandwagon and wrote a book of recollection about his old friend Coleridge. In spite of bitter opposition, Cottle reproduced the opium-letters in two volumes of Early Recollections, which appeared in 1837. Ten years later he re-issued this work as Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey. In it Cottle quoted at length from Southey’s letters to prove that Southey supported him in his decision to publish the opium-letters. This collaboration between Cottle and Southey in their presentation of Coleridge as moral reprobate and slothful, did not do well, public imagination was more profound and lasting. This persistent reaction to Coleridge dilemma was a review, which appeared in The Times of April 25, 1895, on the occasion of the publication of Ernest Hartley Coleridge’s edition of the letters of his grandfather. Opium was assuredly what echoed throughout his life and letters, but our scrutiny and understanding of his dilemma should have changed radically since Early Recollections of 1837 and Reminiscences of 1847
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE <1772 – 1834 >
A man of profound imagination and romanticism, Samuel Taylor Coleridge has contributed into the world of English literature with such lyrical ballads that the generations to come will always be oblidged to him for Kubla Khan, The Ancient Mariner and Biographia Literaria.
"I laugh more, and talk more nonsense in a week, than most other people do in a year," said none other than Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He was a person whose life was a tight rope walk.
His medical history, his shaping years and his drug reliance created his reputation as an opium-taker. A philosopher-poet, who left the scene of childhood and adolescence, bidding goodbye with nostalgic reluctance. Being a hardworking person, he traveled extensively to bring reforms. Throughout his life he longed for his lady love, never enjoyed strong family bonds but was lucky to have sincere friends. Life created a whirl for him, but he proved himself to be a good swimmer by crossing it successfully. Life offered him thorns yet he smartly plucked flowers and paid back the best to the world.
October 21, 1772
Born at Ottery St Mary, Devonshire
1775
Started attending Dame Key’s Reading School.
1778
Started attending Henry VIII Free Grammar School in Ottery.
October 6, 1781
His father died.
July 1782 to 1791
Attended school at Christ’s Hospital, London.
September 1791
Entered Jesus College, Cambridge.
October 4, 1795
Coleridge married Sara Frickier and they moved to Clevedon.
September 19, 1796
Hartley Coleridge was born.
December 31, 1796
Coleridge and family move to Nether Stowey.
June 5, 1797
His first meeting with William and Dorothy Wordsworth.
May 14, 1798
Berkeley Coleridge born (died February 10, 1799 but he came to know about his death in April)
September 19, 1798 to July 1799
Went to Germany to study language and philosophy
September 14, 1800
Derwent Coleridge born
December 23, 1802
His daughter was born
April 9, 1804
Coleridge joined, as undersecretary to British High Commissioner of Malta then became secretary to Alexander Ball, British High Commissioner of Malta.Leaves for Malta and Mediterranean in attempt to regain health and get rid of opium.
May 30, 1814
Was taken under care of Dr Daniel for opium addiction & suicidal depression.
May 1827
Fell seriously ill.
6:30 am, July 25, 1834
Death of S T Coleridge
Not Available
May God Almighty bless and preserve you ! And may you live to know, and feel, and acknowledge that unless we accustom ourselves to meditate adoringly on him, the Source of all Virtue, no Virtue can be permanent . My heart plays an incessant music for which I need an outward Interpreter.
There is something in children that makes love flow out upon them, distinct from beauty, and still more distinct from good-behavior…whenever they go, Love is their natural Heritage.
Any noble minded Child of 7 years old – to whom you told a story of virtuous Action – God = Reason personified Self-Heaven = complacency and satisfaction.
To be in love is simply to confine the feelings prospective of animal enjoyment to one woman is a gross mistake – it is to associate a large proportion of all our obscure feelings with a real form.
