216501_Samuel_T ... e_A_Biographical_Study.pdf - OUDL Home

30 CAMBRIDGE [1791thought
that the company would split on religion, and
remained critical. In the middle of October, Southey's aunt
heard of the scheme, and turned him out of her house. The
'apostle of Pantisocracy' fled in a rainstorm to Bath. 1
Coleridge had gone to London on 21 August, losing his
Casimir on the way, but taking with him The Fall of Robespierre,
of which he had written the first act and Southey the rest in
two days, Lovell, who undertook the third, having failed
them. In London he met Southey's friend Grosvenor Bedford,
and Franklin introduced him to George Dyer, of an
older Christ's Hospital generation, who was enraptured with
Pantisocracy, pronounced it impregnable, and was sure that
Joseph Priestley, already an exile in America, would join the
enterprise. Coleridge stayed at the 'Angel* in Newgate St. but
spent his evenings at a neighbouring coffee-house called the
'Salutation and Cat', where he fell in with an American landagent,
from whom it is not surprising to learn that he
also received encouragement. They could do the thing on
£2,000. The passage would not cost more than £400. Land
could be bought more cheaply over there, and twelve men
could easily clear three hundred acres in four or five months.
A thousand could be cleared and houses built on them for
six hundred dollars. He advised the district of the Susquehanna
in Pennsylvania, which was free from hostile Indians.
The bisons were quite 'backwards', and the mosquitoes not
so bad as English gnats. Literary characters made money
there. Evidently the land-agent knew his business. Coleridge
sent fraternal love to the Lovells and Flickers and to
Miss Fricker 'more'. Favell and the younger Le Grice wanted
to join Pantisocracy when they left college. According to
Cottle and Gillman, Coleridge was much attracted by the
name Susquehanna. 2
On 17 September he reached Cambridge, where he evidently
meant to complete another term before starting for
America in the spring, and sat down to write to Miss Fricker
and then to Southey.
My God! how tumultuous are the movements of my heart. Since
1
C. 41 (note); Southey (L.), i. 211, 214, 220, 222; Bodl. MS. English Letters, C. 22,
f. 126.
2 C. 35; G. 15; Rem. 21; Gillman, 69; Lowes, 554.