HARTLEY COLERIDGE This page intentionally left blank HARTLEY COLERIDGE

A REASSESSMENT OF HIS LIFE AND WORK

Andrew Keanie HARTLEY COLERIDGE Copyright © Andrew Keanie, 2008. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2008 978-1-4039-7437-2 All rights reserved. First published in 2008 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™ 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS Companies and representatives throughout the world. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-53497-5 ISBN 978-0-230-61277-8 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230612778 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Keanie, Andrew. Hartley Coleridge : a reassessment of his life and work / by Andrew Keanie. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-1-349-53497-5 1. Coleridge, Hartley, 1796–1849. I. Title. PR4468.K43 2008 8219.7—dc22 2007041187 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: June 2008 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 In memory of John Keanie (1916–2007), my Grandad. Dead? What is that? A word to joy unknown, Which love abhors, and faith will never own. A word, whose meaning sense could never find, That has no truth in matter, nor in mind. The passing breezes gone as soon as felt, The flakes of snow that in the soft air melt, The wave that whitening curls its frothy crest, And falls to sleep upon its mother’s breast. The smile that sinks into a maiden’s eye, They come, they go, they change, they do not die. (Hartley Coleridge—“New-Year’s Day”) CONTENTS

Preface ix Acknowledgments xi Abbreviations xiii

Perspective: The Hereditary Longing 1 1 His Childhood 23 The Child of the Plaintive Married Man 23 The Road to Ejuxria 40 2 His Ripening Childhood 51 From the Sublime to the Oxonian 51 Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford 62 Leeds 87 3 Designated Misfit 109 From Elf to Everyman 109 The Echo of a Small Voice 129 4 His Ripening Achievement 145 Nothing to Write About 145 Corpus of Consequence 161 5 King of Ejuxria 167 The First Flâneur 167 Self and Sensibility 173 Conclusion 177 Hartley the Obscure 177

Bibliography 187 Index 191 This page intentionally left blank PREFACE

he last full-length study of Hartley Coleridge (1796–1849) was T published in 1931, so a reassessment of his literary career is overdue. With the publication of Bricks Without Mortar: The Selected Poems of Hartley Coleridge (2000), Lisa Gee aimed at putting the remarkable, though over- looked, poet back in circulation. Taking my cue from Gee, I offer a detailed justification for Hartley Coleridge’s claim on the modern reader’s attention. Inspired by the nov- elist Louis de Bernières’s introduction to Gee’s book, I write with the awareness that impressionistic views—in the manner of Hartley Coleridge himself—can often be more revealing than the judgments of academics. Since the publications of Earl Leslie Griggs’s Hartley Coleridge: His Life and Work (1929) and Herbert Hartman’s Hartley Coleridge: Poet’s Son and Poet (1931), our perception of Romanticism has changed as dramatically as Newton changed how we perceive the universe. I believe a study of the figure, Hartley Coleridge, who was marginal- ized, will contribute significantly to our understanding of the nineteenth century ethos. I explore Hartley’s life and work from a new perspective, and reassess his state of mind, not the least with regard to his having failed to support himself financially. I challenge the view that his eccentricity cut him off from the main literary activities of his time. Specific moments in Hartley’s life and their textual manifestations are connected to broader issues in literary theory, and to the deeper currents operating in large cultural processes. The book is amenable to the necessary interactions between instance and deep structural patterns that make what J.C.C. Mays called the “aesthetics of inachievement” possible. The book offers new insights into the familial culture of Romanticism, and the closed circle. Those who were part of the first emerging genera- tion of Romantic poets (William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge) were drawn into it; those who were biologically related (or related by marriage) became part of it; and those drawn into it for aesthetic x PREFACE or other reasons became part of the family. The book explores the sense in which Hartley Coleridge became the working model of Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s ideas, but it also follows Hartley’s progression away from those ideas toward anticipating aspects of Imagism. While Judith Plotz argues that “[Hartley] formally and thematically stake[d] out the territory of the miniature, the youthful, and the minor,” I contend that his com- mitment to miniaturism is the key to our recognition of a figure who both transcended the prevailing modes and concerns of his period and most significantly anticipated the aspects of Modernism. None of these ideas have been recognized in the two standard studies by Griggs and Hartman. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ver the years, my colleagues at the University of Ulster, Coleraine, Ohave been super in more ways than I could begin to enumerate. I would like to thank Dr Paul Davies, Dr Tim Hancock, Professor Jan Jedrzejewski and Professor Robert Welch. I am particularly grateful to Professor Richard Bradford for all his advice and support in relation to this project. I am particularly grateful to James Hodgson at Greenwich Exchange, London. My thanks, too, to Graham Davidson and all at the Coleridge Bulletin. Thanks to Professor Marilyn Gaull, whose encouragement has been priceless. Thanks to Mrs Priscilla Coleridge Cassam for permission to quote from the Coleridges’ writings. Finally, thanks to Eleanor and Emma. I do not know what I would do without them. This page intentionally left blank ABBREVIATIONS

BL The Bondage of Love: A Life of Mrs Samuel Taylor Coleridge BRE Bacchus in Romantic England: Writers and Drink BRH Bulletin of Research in the Humanities BWM Bricks Without Mortar: Selected Poems of Hartley Coleridge CUD [S.T.] Coleridge and the Uses of Division DA [S.T.] Coleridge: The Damaged Archangel DQCW De Quincey: Collected Writings DR [S.T.] Coleridge: Darker Reflections DSL The Day-Star of Liberty: William Hazlitt’s Radical Style DWMF The Dramatic Works of Massinger And Ford ECV The New Oxford Book of Eighteenth Century Verse ES English Studies EV [S.T.] Coleridge: Early Visions FS A Flame in Sunlight: The Life and Work of Thomas De Quincey HCCI The Hartley Coleridge Letters: a calendar and index HCL Hartley Coleridge Letters HCPW Hartley Coleridge Complete Poetical Works HCNP Hartley Coleridge: New Poems HCRD Henry Crabb Robinson Diaries HEM Hartley Coleridge: Essays and Marginalia HLW Hartley Coleridge: His Life and Work HW The Hidden Wordsworth: Poet, Lover, Rebel, Spy JRCP James Reeves: Collected Poems 1929–1959 LAEL Literary Associations of the English Lakes (3 vols) LBAR Lord Byron: Accounts Rendered LNW Lives of Northern Worthies PC A Poet’s Children PHC The Poetry of Hartley Coleridge MQ Manchester Quarterly XVII xiv ABBREVIATIONS

PPCH Essays: On parties in poetry and on the character of Hamlet PSP Hartley Coleridge: Poet’s Son and Poet PTL Poets Through Their Letters PWS Poetical Works of Shelley PWWW Poetic Works of William Wordsworth RA Romantic Affinities RADV Recollections of Aubrey De Vere RET Romanticism and Esoteric Tradition RVC Romanticism and the Vocation of Childhood SAQ South Atlantic Quarterly STCL Samuel Taylor Coleridge Letters STCN Samuel Taylor Coleridge Notebooks STCPW Samuel Taylor Coleridge Poetical Works THN A Treatise of Human Nature TWC The Wordsworth Circle UC The Unknown Coleridge: Life and Times of Derwent Coleridge WCT Wordsworth and Coleridge in Their Time WF Wordsworth and Feeling WHSW William Hazlitt: Selected Writings