Devonshire Oct to Dec 17

At three STC went to the
so-called Reading school in
Ottery, “because I was too little
to be trusted among my father’s
schoolboys". By the end of
that first year he could read a
chapter from the Bible.
Father's book burning
At six years he had found some
of the racier stories in The
Arabian Nights and the tale
of a man who was compelled
to seek for a pure virgin: “I
had read it in the evening
while my mother was mending
stockings and was haunted by
spectres, whenever I was in the
dark: my father found out the
effect which these books had
produced, and burnt them”.
By the time he graduated to
his father’s school he was a
phenomena - and by his own
account something of an enfant
terrible. “So I became fretful
and timorous, and a tell-tale;
and the schoolboys drove me
from play, and were always
tormenting me, and hence I
took no pleasure in boyish
sports, but read incessantly”.
Boyish charm
“And though despised and hated
by the boys; because I could
read and spell, I was flattered
and wondered at by all the old
women. And so I became very
vain”.
Of his father, STC wrote “He
had so little parental ambition
in him, that, but for my
Mother’s pride and spirit, he
would certainly have brought
up his other sons to trades -
had nevertheless resolved that
I should be a parson. He was
very fond of me and used to
take me on his knee and hold
long conversations with me”.
The deep impression his
father’s words and teachings
made on his young mind was
profound and is evident in his
philosophical works and poetry,
yet Coleridge was only to know
him for seven short years.
“I remember walking with him
one winter evening”, he said,
“from a farmer’s house, a mile
from Ottery - he told me the
names of the stars and… when
I came home he showed me
how they rolled round”.
“I heard him with a profound
delight and admiration but
without the least mixture of
wonder or incredulity. Ought
children to be permitted to
read romances and stories of
giants , magicians and genii? I
know of no other way of giving
the mind a love of the Great
and the Whole”.
STC’s mother, Anne Bowden
Coleridge (1726-1809) came
from Exmoor and married her
husband, a widower with four
sons, in Exeter. She bore him
nine sons and one daughter,
Samuel being the baby of the
family.
She was “industriously
attentive to her household
duties, and devoted to the care
of her husband and family”.
“She had neither love nor
sympathy for display in others
and she disliked, as she would
say, ‘harpsichord ladies’, and
strongly tried to impress upon
her sons their little value in
these accomplishments in their
choice of wives”.
A night of drama
Anne spoiled her youngest
child, something that did not
endear him to his older brother,
Francis.“When I was seven,”
Coleridge related, “I had asked
my mother one evening to
cut my cheese entire so that
I might toast it. This was no
easy matter , it being a crumbly
cheese”.
YOUNG COLERIDGE IN THE PIXIES’ PARLOUR:
Lord Byron mocked him and said that he had a fairy for a muse
“I went into the garden for
something or other and in
the meantime my Brother
Frank minced my cheese ‘to
disappoint the favourite’. I
returned, saw the exploit, and
in an agony of passion flew
at Frank - he pretended to be
seriously hurt by the blow,
flung himself on the ground,
and there lay with outstretched
limbs - I hung over his moaning
& in a great fright - he leapt
up & with a horse laugh gave
me a severe blow in the face - I
seized a knife, and was running
at him when my Mother came
in & took me by the arm - I
expected a flogging - and
struggling from her I ran away,
to the hill at the bottom of
which the Otter flows - about
one mile from Ottery”.
“There I stayed: my rage died
away but not my obstinacy
& taking out a little shilling
book which had, at the end,
morning & evening prayers , I
very devotedly repeated them -
thinking at the same time with
inward & gloomy satisfaction,
how miserable my Mother must
be!”
Night fell by the Otter amid
pouring rain and as he hid
in the damp grass he was
cry’d by the Ottery Crier and
neighbours scoured the woods
and meadows, ponds were
dragged, so too was the river -
all in vain.
He was found in the morning
and carried to his bed. The
rheumatic fever he later
contracted afflicted him for
years to come and was treated
with laudanum, which fostered
a lifelong opium addiction.
With the church (including the
church cat) and churchyard
his immediate playgrounds he
later recalled how “I used to
lie by the wall and mope, and
my spirits used to come upon
me sudden and in a flood; and I
then was accustomed to run up
and down the churchyard and
act over again all I had been
reading, to the docks and the
nettles and the rank grass. I
became a dreamer.”
Towards the latter end of
September 1781 his father died
suddenly and unexpectedly
on his return from Plymouth
where he had taken brother
Francis to become a
midshipman. “The image of my
father,” Coleridge wrote, “my
revered, kind, kind, learned,
simple hearted father, is a
religion to me”.
A change of name
In April of the next year he was
taken to the Feniton crossroads
and lifted up and onto the
outside of the coach that was
to take him to London: that
departure point, marked today
by a tall, stone cross erected
to honour the memory of a
martyred kinsman, Bishop John
Coleridge Patteson - was the
start of his exile away from the
place and people he loved, for
some seven long years.
He had been given a charity
place at Christ’s Hospital in
London and of his time there he
wrote that he was “Depressed,
moping, friendless, a poor
orphan, half starved,” yet it
was here .that he made lifelong
friendships with boys who were
to become some of the great
writers in the English language.
Charles Lamb, William Hazlitt
and Leigh Hunt to name but a
few.
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