NETHER STOWEY

IN these days of many biographies-auto and other bristling with personalities and private gossip, to say of any fresh addition to their number that it is eminently "racy" might easily convey a wrong impression, and encourage false hopes. And yet that much-abused epithet is precisely applicable to the memoir of Tom Poole-Coleridge's, Wordsworth's, Lamb's, and everybody's Tom Poole -which has just been given us by Mrs. Henry Sandford, herself one of that remarkable Somersetshire family. She has to tell of many persons, such as those just mentioned, "familiar in our mouths as household words," because of their literary importance; and yet it is not too much to say that the peculiar charm of her narrative is due even more to the bit of unfamiliar English scenery among which her characters move, and which did so much to direct their genius and even to mould their characters. The book is racy—because it is "racy of the soil." Mrs.

1 Thomas Poole and his Friends, by Mrs. Henry Sandford. two volumes. London, 1888.

In

Sandford here and there betrays a slight nervousness lest by letting in the light of day upon her beloved Somersetshire hills and coombs she should be inviting the irrepressible tourist, and endangering for all time the quiet and loneliness which now add to the charm of the Quantock country. Not that she is selfish, like the literary gentleman who objected to Chaucer being modernised because he wished to keep the poet "for himself and a few friends,"-only she confesses, with much reason, that the solitude and the untroddenness of the Quantocks have a fascination all their own. Mrs. Sandford clearly knows and loves the country she describes, and she has the art of making her readers know and love it too. And though some among these readers may have heard for the first time through this very book of the noble and public-spirited tanner of Nether Stowey, they will soon find themselves as much interested in the joys and sorrows of the Poole family as if they had known them from childhood. And for the future Nether Stowey will be hardly less celebrated for having produced Thomas Poole, than for having, during two eventful years, given shelter to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and drawn to its neighbourhood William and Dorothy Wordsworth.

Coleridge was an inhabitant of Stowey for nearly two years from the Christmas week of 1796 till the autumn of 1798. He was very low in funds, and in spirits, when his friend and

ardent admirer Thomas Poole, who had made his acquaintance through friends in Bristol, secured a humble cottage then vacant, close to his own house and tan-yard, and found Coleridge, with his young wife and infant son, Hartley, only too willing to accept a modest shelter near so good a friend. The two years that followed were perhaps the happiest—they were certainly the most stimulating to his poetic genius—in all Coleridge's life. The money-question was not urgent for the time. Charles Lloyd, the son of the Birmingham banker, boarded with the Coleridges, content to share the inconveniences of what Coleridge afterwards spoke of as the "Hovel" for the sake of the daily converse with his marvellous friend; and Poole and a few fellow-admirers of the poet subscribed a yearly purse which further helped to keep the wolf from the door. Meantime the life was healthy; the surrounding scenery superb for those who loved long rambles, and Coleridge was as yet a never-tiring walker. The opium-difficulty was not yet serious, though the habit of taking that drug as an antidote to rheumatic pains had certainly begun as early as the summer of 1796, if not before.1 If its effects showed themselves at all upon the poet's genius during these years, it was as yet on the intellectual or imaginative side, rather than on the moral. The enervation of will, and the destruction of self-respect, were yet to be. But in the visionary and spiritual exaltation of

1 [See note on p. 105.]

certain notable poems of this period, the dreamland of opium certainly seems discernible. No one can doubt that the unconscious state between sleep and waking in which Coleridge represents "Kubla Khan" as having come to him, unsought, at that lonely farmhouse near Porlock, was due to no other cause. And, if so, the very misstatement of Coleridge on the subject of the poem's origin is one of those many self-delusions, so often afterwards to recur, which are among the melancholy results of the opium-slavery.

Coleridge and his household were settled in the little cottage at Nether Stowey by Christmas Day, 1796. A certain cheerfulness in facing domestic discomfort was certainly one of the better sides of Coleridge's character. And in this, it has been well said, as in some other respects, a certain parallelism with Mr. Micawber is often noticeable. Poole had rather discouraged the poet from making this venture, when it came to the point. The difficulty of servants seemed even formidable; but Samuel Taylor declared that this could be got over, even as regarded the preparation of their daily food. Omniscience was always his foible, and when Poole urged that the only available servant had no experience that way, the poet replied, "As to cooking, I will myself instruct the maid." On the whole they seem to have managed fairly well among them. Sara Coleridge, who had probably not been reared in a school of domestic idleness, helped in the

cooking and in the washing, and generally showed herself a capable housewife. They were even able to entertain occasional guests, especially as the ever-hospitable Tom Poole and his mother were at hand to provide spare bedrooms and other accommodation. Wordsworth and his sister from Racedown were there in the June of the following year, and Charles Lamb joined the party in July, as he has recorded in a well-known letter.

Out of this pleasant visit, when Coleridge and the Wordsworths and Lamb spent their memorable week together, arose the idea that the two poets might arrange a permanent companionship in that delightful neighbourhood. The party had roamed together over the lovely Quantock Hills, all except poor Coleridge, who was kept at home with his injured leg; and we can imagine the charm that the richly wooded hills and coombs of Somersetshire would have for William and

Dorothy Wordsworth. For the scenery was in every way as beautiful as their native Cumberland, and yet quite different. Why should not the brother and sister, who were quite free to choose their place of abode, migrate from Racedown to the Quantocks? Nothing was easier, if they could only find a home. This proved, through happy accident, a simple matter. An important family of the district lying between Nether Stowey and the Bristol Channel were the St. Albyns of Alfoxden. The St. Albyn of that day was a minor, and the home-farm was let to a