Relating To Coleridge
Jul. 26th, 2024 07:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphilo People who have looked into it say that there's no Mount Abora anywhere on the planet. Coleridge made it up.
I took down my slim volume of Coleridge to check whether it was "Abora" or "Aborah"- and it fell open at the flyleaf and I saw it had once been the property of Eastbourne College. Well I never! How did it end up on my shelves? Well, my Uncle Dick had written his name in it (in 1935)- and , incidentally, decorated it with dinky little schoolboy drawings. I must have known he went to school in Eastbourne- but I'd not bothered to remember because it's only now that Eastbourne means anything to me. I pass by Eastbourne College all the time. It's a rather grand conglomeration of mid to late 19th century architecture on a large campus to the west of the town. I wonder if one can do a tour....
I never crack open a Coleridge without hoping I'll chance upon some really decent poem that has somehow escaped the notice of the cultural gatekeepers but I never do. The gatekeepers are right about him: he was a competent versifier who wrote three blazing masterpieces- or possibly four if you include Frost at Midnight as I'm inclined to do- and spent the rest of his life wondering what had hit him. Uncle Dick's school book reprints a short piece by Emerson- in which he records a visit to Coleridge as an old man living as a charity case in a friend's house in Highgate. Coleridge by this stage of his life was a voluble, tiresome, self-absorbed person who betrayed his addictive nature by continually stuffing his snitch with snuff- and liberally scattering it down the front of his black suit. Knowing that Emerson was a Unitarian he subjected him to a hour long diatribe about the stupidity of Unitarians and the wisdom of a couple of Anglican Bishops who are now completely forgotten. Emerson admits not paying much attention to this talking-to. Coleridge was now one of the sights of London- like The Tower or St Paul's- and he was happy to have been able to tick him off his bucket list.
I took down my slim volume of Coleridge to check whether it was "Abora" or "Aborah"- and it fell open at the flyleaf and I saw it had once been the property of Eastbourne College. Well I never! How did it end up on my shelves? Well, my Uncle Dick had written his name in it (in 1935)- and , incidentally, decorated it with dinky little schoolboy drawings. I must have known he went to school in Eastbourne- but I'd not bothered to remember because it's only now that Eastbourne means anything to me. I pass by Eastbourne College all the time. It's a rather grand conglomeration of mid to late 19th century architecture on a large campus to the west of the town. I wonder if one can do a tour....
I never crack open a Coleridge without hoping I'll chance upon some really decent poem that has somehow escaped the notice of the cultural gatekeepers but I never do. The gatekeepers are right about him: he was a competent versifier who wrote three blazing masterpieces- or possibly four if you include Frost at Midnight as I'm inclined to do- and spent the rest of his life wondering what had hit him. Uncle Dick's school book reprints a short piece by Emerson- in which he records a visit to Coleridge as an old man living as a charity case in a friend's house in Highgate. Coleridge by this stage of his life was a voluble, tiresome, self-absorbed person who betrayed his addictive nature by continually stuffing his snitch with snuff- and liberally scattering it down the front of his black suit. Knowing that Emerson was a Unitarian he subjected him to a hour long diatribe about the stupidity of Unitarians and the wisdom of a couple of Anglican Bishops who are now completely forgotten. Emerson admits not paying much attention to this talking-to. Coleridge was now one of the sights of London- like The Tower or St Paul's- and he was happy to have been able to tick him off his bucket list.
