Richard Holmes - Coleridge - Darker Reflections

In fact he had just sent off the large packet of work to Wordsworth and Sir George Beaumont (including now a Sicilian journal) in the care of Major Adye, who was returning to England via Gibraltar. And he was planning a trip to Messina and Naples. Daniel Stuart was beginning to use his Malta papers for leaders in the Courier in London, while Wordsworth was tracing his journeys in imagination in Book X of The Prelude , re-dedicating the poem to Coleridge the wanderer.

Oh! Wrap him in your Shades, ye Giant Woods,

On Etna’s side, and thou, O flowery Vale

Of Enna! Is there not some nook of thine,

From the first playtime of the infant earth

Kept sacred to restorative delights?

Wordsworth was blissfully imagining Coleridge, “a Visitant on Etna’s top”, a “lonely wanderer” with “a heart more ripe” for pleasure, drawing inspiration from Aresthusa’s fountain (on the quayside at Syracuse) and “divine” nourishment from Theocritus’s bees who fed the exiled Comates. 91He hoped he would linger there as a happy votary, “and not a Captive, pining for his home”. Nonetheless, Wordsworth also expected Coleridge to return as promised by the following spring, and sort out his marriage and his domestic arrangements.

Coleridge clambered over the ruins of the Greek amphitheatre above Leckie’s villa, but was most drawn to the area of caves and limestone quarries with its famous “Ear of Dionysus” and the “Quarry of the Capuchins”, which with its groves and flowering cliffs appeared a sort of miniature garden of Eden. (Yet it was here that 7,000 captive Athenian soldiers died in a kind of concentration camp in 413 BC.) 92Serious archaeology did not begin until a generation later, but in this autumn of 1804 the most beautiful of all Sicilian statues, the headless Landolina Venus with her shining marble breasts and large voluptuous limbs, was dug out of the earth like a spirit returning from the underworld.

Coleridge described the ruins and the caves in detail, with Etna’s cone hovering above the Epipoli ridge in its “floating mantle of white smoke”; and he took a boat to Tremiglia where Neptune was buried under a bay tree, “with vines wreathing about it: Sleep, Shade, & Quiet!” 93Standing high above the bay of Syracuse, surrounded by these buried antiquities and strange portents, he watched the sun go down into the sea, and wrote one of his most haunting Mediterranean fragments, “A Sunset”. Its thirteen lines end with a shiver of Delphic prophesy, as if the classically haunted landscape would soon release its violent gods and heroes once again as the sun disappears.

Abrupt, as Spirits vanish, he is sunk!

A soul-like breeze possesses all the wood. The boughs, the sprays have stood

As motionless as stands the ancient trunk!

But every leaf through all the forest flutters,

And deep the cavern of the fountain mutters. 94

Despite the affair with Cecilia Bertozzi, or perhaps because of it, Coleridge was now anxious to press on to Naples. He was restless in Syracuse, decayed and baroque, with its corruption and gossip, and the oppressive omnipresence of its Catholic priests. “I found no one native with whom I could talk of anything but the weather and the opera: ignorant beyond belief – the churches take up the third part of the whole city, & the Priests are numerous as the Egyptian Plague.” 95

On 23 October, Sir Alexander sent him a letter of recommendation to Hugh Elliott, the British Minister at the Court of King Ferdinand in Naples. It shows that Coleridge was already held in high esteem, and puts his private feelings of worthlessness in a more generous perspective.

My dear Sir, I beg to introduce to your Excellency Mr Coleridge whose literary fame I make no doubt is well known to you. He possesses great genius, a fine imagination and good judgement, and these qualities are made perfect by an excellent heart and good moral character. He has injured his health by intense study, and he is recommended to travel for its re-establishment. You will have much pleasure in his conversation… 96

But on 5 November, just as he was preparing to board a carriage for Messina, Coleridge was dramatically drawn back into his new role as public servant and all further wanderings were cut short. A diplomatic incident took place in Syracuse harbour, and Leckie deputed Coleridge, as Sir Alexander’s personal emissary, to deal with it. As unexpected as it might seem, Coleridge became part of the British naval war machine.

Four days previously a French privateer had sailed into Syracuse with two captured British merchantmen, claiming the rights of a neutral port to unload its prizes. A British navy cutter, L’Hirondelle , was immediately dispatched from Valletta to dispute the claim, and anchored alongside the privateer with broadside cannons run out, “tompions” uncovered and trained on the French ship. Both captains appealed to the Sicilian Governor, while threatening to blow each other out of the water. Officially the matter turned on the validity of the privateer’s papers, and whether it had the right to take prizes on the high seas under the normal articles of war between the two sovereign states, or whether it was simply a pirate flying the French flag for its own convenience. Unofficially, as so often in these incidents, everything depended on what political pressure could be brought to bear.

Leckie seems to have realized early on that the privateer’s papers were in fact valid, so he took Coleridge with him to make the best of a bad job. The priority was to defuse an ugly situation at the harbour front, where the British Captain Skinner soon found himself surrounded by a hostile crowd. When Leckie and Coleridge arrived at seven in the evening, bloodshed seemed imminent. “On stepping out of the carriage I found by the Torches that about 300 Soldiers were drawn up on the shore opposite the English Cutter, and that the walls etc. were manned: Mr Skinner and two of his Officers were on the rampart, and the Governor and a crowd of Syracusan nobles with him at the distance of two or three yards from Mr Skinner.” 97The Governor “talked, or rather screamed, indeed incessantly”.

Coleridge was surprised to discover that he himself remained calm. “I never witnessed a more pitiable scene of confusion, & weakness, and manifest determination to let the French escape.” The French privateer captain hurled abuse from a nearby wall, but was stoically ignored. Leckie and Coleridge insisted that nothing should be done until the privateer’s papers were translated (from Italian) and properly examined the following day. At last order was restored, the French crew were put under guard at the Lazaretto, and Captain Skinner was removed to the safety of Leckie’s house.

Over the next two days Coleridge visited the Syracuse Governor, and disputed the privateer’s papers. He also drew up a long and vividly circumstantial account of the whole incident for Sir Alexander. It was soon clear that the prize and ransom money would not be released: the Governor “will acquit the Crew of Piracy, and suffer them to escape, and probably make a complaint against Mr Skinner”.

Coleridge quickly realized that it was now Captain Skinner who was in difficulties, having failed in his mission and being liable to reprimand in Malta. He therefore heavily weighted his report in Skinner’s favour, and volunteered to return to Valletta on L’Hirondelle to deliver the report in person. He wrote firmly: “It is but justice however to notice the coolness, dignity and good sense, with which Mr Skinner acted throughout the whole Business, and which formed an interesting Contrast to the noisy Imbecility of the Governor, and the brutal Insolence of the Commander of the Privateer.” 98