Adam Sisman - The Friendship - Wordsworth and Coleridge

In France, the men who for their desperate ends

Had pluck’d up mercy by the roots were glad

Of this new enemy. Tyrants, strong before

In devilish pleas, were ten times stronger now,

And thus beset with foes on every side,

The goaded land waxed mad … 35

And when, in an astonishing turnaround, the new conscript army repelled the enemies of France, and once more surged across the borders, Wordsworth rejoiced – even when English troops fled the battlefield in shame and confusion: *

… the invaders fared as they deserved:

The Herculean Commonwealth had put forth her arms,

And throttled with an infant Godhead’s might

The snakes about her cradle; that was well,

And as it should be … 36

The Terror reached a climax in the early summer. In response to a manufactured ‘conspiracy’ a new law was passed, granting the Revolutionary Tribunal absolute powers. Only by the most extreme measures would the enemy within be exterminated. The accused were permitted no defence; there were to be no witnesses; there would be only one sentence: death. Every day there were dozens of executions. A contemporary cartoon showed Robespierre, having ordered the execution of everyone else, guillotining the executioner. In fact, for much of the six-week period known as the Great Terror, Robespierre kept ominously aloof from both the Committee of Public Safety and the Convention. Then, after a month, he returned to the Convention on 26 July, denouncing a new conspiracy and demanding yet another purge. This time his opponents were prepared. When Robespierre tried to address the Convention again the next day, he was shouted down. He was arrested, and after a bungled attempt at suicide he was hastily guillotined, together with Saint-Just and other close associates. It was the 10th of Thermidor, in Year II of the Republic (28 July 1794).

Wordsworth heard of Robespierre’s downfall while he was staying with cousins at Rampside, near Barrow-in-Furness, the southernmost tip of the Lake District. Some months earlier he and Dorothy had left Windy Brow and gone in different directions, promising each other that they would soon be reunited in a more permanent home; since then he had remained in the Lakes, rotating around his relatives in the area. One morning he strolled to Cartmel, a village just across the estuary of the two little rivers that flow out of Windermere and Coniston. There, wandering through the churchyard, he had happened across the grave of his former schoolteacher, William Taylor. Now he was walking back to Rampside, across the miles of sand revealed by the receding tide. It was sunny, with magnificent prospects of the mountains to the north. At low tide it is easy to wade the shallow stream; the sands stretch far out into Morecambe Bay, and on this fine summer day they were spotted with coaches, carts, riders and walkers. While he paused on a rocky outcrop drinking in the view, a passer-by told him that Robespierre was dead. An exultant Wordsworth let forth a shout of triumph: ‘Come now, ye golden times.’

… few happier moments have been mine

Through my whole life than that when first I heard

That this foul tribe of Moloch was o’erthrown

And their chief regent levelled with the dust. 37

His wavering faith was renewed.

… In the People was my trust,

And in the virtues which mine eyes had seen,

And to the ultimate repose of things

I looked with unabated confidence.

I knew that wound external could not take

Life from the young Republic, that new foes

Would only follow in the path of shame

Their brethren, and her triumphs be in the end

Great, universal, irresistible. 38

Coleridge and Southey heard of Robespierre’s death while they were still with Poole in west Somerset. ‘I had rather have heard of the death of my own father,’ Southey declared solemnly – a declaration that loses some of its force when one reflects that his father had died several years before. But Poole’s cousins in Over Stowey, whom he had taken the visitors to meet, were suitably indignant at such outrageous talk, and even more so when they heard one of the two young men say that Robespierre had been ‘a ministering angel of mercy, sent to slay thousands that he might save millions’. 39

There was no doubt in the minds of the Pantisocrats that Robespierre’s fall was a ‘tragedy’. For Southey, Robespierre was ‘this great man’, who had been ‘sacrificed to the despair of fools and cowards’. For Coleridge he was a man ‘whose great bad actions cast a disastrous lustre over his name’. They agreed that he had been ‘the benefactor of mankind, and that we should lament his death as the greatest misfortune Europe could have sustained’. 40 To these young idealists, Robespierre’s fanatical zealotry was preferable to Pitt’s opportunistic pragmatism. They admired Robespierre’s ardour, his oratory, his ferocity. He had aimed at human perfection, even if he had stumbled along the route. Like other British radicals, they explained away the Terror as a response to pressures from without. Robespierre and his associates had been provoked into violence. Indeed, the Terror was Pitt’s responsibility.

On the walk back to Bristol the two young men decided to commemorate Robespierre’s fall by writing a verse drama, to be published as quickly as possible. Coleridge was to write the first act, Southey the second, and Lovell the third (in the event Lovell dropped out). The money raised from this instant publication would be used to fund the Pantisocracy scheme. They began immediately, working around the clock. Southey’s talent for speedy composition proved useful, as did taking in large chunks from newspaper reports of speeches in the Convention.

… Never, never,

Shall this regenerated country wear

The despot yoke. Though myriads round assail

And with worse fury urge this new crusade

Than savages have known; though all the leagued despots

Depopulate all Europe, so to pour

The accumulated mass upon our coasts,

Sublime amid the storm shall France arise

And like the rock amid surrounding waves

Repel the rushing ocean. – She shall wield

The thunder-bolt of vengeance – She shall blast

The despot’s pride, and liberate the world.

These sentiments might just as easily have been expressed by Wordsworth. But having lived in France and having witnessed the Revolution at close quarters, Wordsworth was much more committed than either Coleridge or Southey; he struggled to interpret each bewildering development, like a believer trying to cling on to his failing faith. Coleridge, on the other hand, was excited by the Revolution, but not caught up in it, as is shown by his eccentric decision to enlist. Had he remained in the army he might well have found himself fighting against Beaupuy and those young volunteers so admired by Wordsworth. Indeed, had Wordsworth followed his impulse to join the Revolutionary cause, the two might have found themselves fighting on opposite sides.

Within a week The Fall of Robespierre was all but finished. Cottle prudently declined to publish it. Coleridge therefore took the manuscript with him to London, where he hoped to find a publisher while he sought new recruits to Pantisocracy. Before he left, the Pantisocrats finalised their scheme. The party would be made up of twelve men and their families. A total of £2,000 would be needed to fund the expedition, including the cost of their passage and the purchase of the land. Within twelve months (at most) they would be settled on the banks of the Susquehanna in Pennsylvania. During the course of the winter, Coleridge decided, ‘those of us whose bodies, from habits of sedentary study or academic indolence, have not acquired their full tone and strength, intend to learn the theory and practice of agriculture and carpentry, according as situation and circumstances make one or the other convenient’. 41