Even so the dream of some permanent post in the Mediterranean was not entirely abandoned. Now the moment of departure really approached, Coleridge began wondering if he might not after all return and settle permanently. The possibilities held forth by the Governor still promised the enchantments of the South. “Sir Alexander Ball’s Kindness & Confidence in me is unlimited. He told a Gentleman a few days ago, that were he a man of Fortune he would gladly give me £500 a year to dine with him twice a week for the mere advantage which he received from my Conversation. And for a long time past he has been offering me different places to induce me to return. He would give me a handsome House, Garden, Country House, & a place of £600 a year certain. I thank him cordially – but neither accept nor refuse.” Even more galling for Mrs Coleridge, perhaps, was an airy mention of “a fine Opening in America” that he had lately received – probably through Captain Decatur. “I was much inclined to accept; but my knowledge of Wordsworth’s aversion to America stood in my way.”156
It would be easy to dismiss much of this as Coleridge’s optimistic fantasy of some perfect state of exile, and perhaps even as a provocation or warning to his wife. But Sir Alexander did in fact recommend Coleridge to the War Office for just such a posting, which would have provided very much the situation and the salary he describes. In a letter dated 18 September 1805, he wrote to Granville Penn, chief assistant to the Secretary of State at Downing Street. In it he suggested that Coleridge combine the largely formal post of Superintendent of Quarantine (as applied to ships), with the much more interesting job of turning the Malta Gazette into an influential wartime newspaper to be distributed across the Mediterranean. The terms of this letter, despite its measured official tones, were a remarkable endorsement of Coleridge’s unlikely success as a wartime bureaucrat. It also suggests Coleridge’s continuing power to throw his spell over even the most rigorous executive mind.
The Governor first mentioned Coleridge’s “literary Talents”, political principles and moral character, and confirmed that he had fulfilled the Public Secretaryship “seven months to my satisfaction”. He could also provide “the fullest information” on the Malta government to the Foreign Office. He then added: “As the climate agrees with Mr Coleridge he would accept Mr Eton’s situation [as Superintendent] and allow him three hundred Pound a year, and as the business of the office would occupy but little of his time he could assist Mr Barzoni in making the Malta Gazette a powerful political engine besides rendering other services to this Government.” He asked Penn to approach the head of department, persuaded “of deriving great public good from his appointment”.157 A similar note of private recommendation went to Ball’s brother back in England. As Coleridge already possessed the recommendation to Hugh Elliot of the previous autumn, praising his imagination, judgement, and goodness of heart, he could feel pleasingly well documented by officialdom, as he prepared to leave.
When Mr Chapman finally arrived in Valletta on 9 September, Coleridge prepared to leave, depositing many of his books and papers with John Stoddart to be forwarded by convoy. None of these would he see again. There is no record of his farewells, though he noted “Tears & misery at the Thought of not returning” on one occasion after a talk with Captain Pasley. He prepared himself by reading Italian poets of the fifteenth century, and noted their “pleasing” confusion of heathen and Christian mythology. The layerings of classical myth, of Renaissance Latin upon Greek, as he hoped to study in Italy this autumn, also produced a characteristic word-coinage. It required “a strong imagination as well as an accurate psycho-analytical understanding” to conceive “the passion of those Times for Jupiter, Apollo etc.; & the nature of the Faith (for a Faith it was…)”.158 The bureaucrat was to become the independent, wandering scholar once more.
15
Coleridge finally left Valletta a little after midnight on 4 September 1805, making a night crossing to Sicily under a shower of shooting stars. He could not make up his mind to sleep and, in an expressive gesture, left it to the stars to decide. “I was standing gazing at the starry Heaven, and said, I will go to bed at the next star that shoots.” He knew that this tiny moment symbolized much about his long Mediterranean sojourn, and the self-knowledge that he had gained. “Observe this in counting fixed numbers previous to doing anything etc. etc. & deduce from man’s own unconscious acknowledgement man’s dependence on some thing out of him, on something apparently & believedly subject to regular and certain Laws other than his own Will & Reason.”159
Coleridge’s wanderings now became so uncertain that they are barely traceable until he arrived unexpectedly in Rome on 31 December, some three months later. He wrote no letters, and kept the barest record of dates and places in his Notebooks. On 26 September he was at Syracuse with the Leckies, and he visited Cecilia Bertozzi for the last time. On 4 October he was at Messina, and made the “melancholy observation” that he was growing fat. Perhaps Cecilia had pointed it out to him as a gesture of farewell.
Sometime after 15 October he abandoned the plan to sail to Trieste and return overland, perhaps on hearing news of the defeat, on 20 October, of the Austrian army at the Ulm. By mid-November he had sailed to Naples, probably on a troop ship belonging to General Craig’s convoy, and dined with Hugh Elliott at the British Embassy.
All the news then was of the Battle of Trafalgar, which had been fought on 21 October (Coleridge’s 33rd birthday), achieving a great strategic victory. But when news of Nelson’s death reached Naples, Coleridge walked through the streets and found many Englishmen openly in tears, coming up to him to shake hands and completely overcome with an emotion which he instinctively shared.160 Ball had received a final dispatch from Nelson at Valletta four days before the engagement, describing his daring battle plan to cut through the centre of the huge French squadron in a double line astern. Nelson told Ball that his young officers had christened it “the Nelson touch”, and added with a characteristic insouciance, “I hope it is touch and taken!” The only record of this dispatch remained unpublished in Ball’s private papers, but similar stories circulated widely, the kind of thing that made all Nelson’s officers adore him and filled Coleridge with admiration.161
There was now much confusion in Naples, and Coleridge was not after all “franked home” with official papers by Elliot. So instead he made a leisurely expedition into Calabria with Captain Pasley. He visited Virgil’s tomb and contemplated Vesuvius. In late December he was offered a carriage-trip to Rome, for a fortnight as he supposed, and leaving his boxes of books and papers with an embassy friend, set out on Christmas Day. Almost immediately on his arrival, he heard from Mr Jackson, the English consul, of the battle of Austerlitz and the French armies sweeping southwards into Italy. “To stay, or not to stay?” he noted calmly. He decided to stay, and once again found himself marooned by circumstances. He made no attempt to continue his journey until the spring, and still he wrote no letters home.
The absence of news frightened the Wordsworths and infuriated Southey. Dorothy wrote to Lady Beaumont on Christmas Day: “Poor Coleridge was with us two years ago at this time…We hear no further tidings of him, and I cannot help being very uneasy and anxious: though without any evil, many causes might delay him; yet it is a long time since he left Malta. The weather is dreadful for a sea voyage. O my dear friend, what a fearful thing a windy night is now at our house! I am too often haunted with dreadful images of Shipwrecks and the Sea when I am in bed and hear a stormy wind, and now that we are thinking so much of Coleridge it is worse than ever.”162
The truth seems to be that Coleridge, with plenty of money and several letters of recommendation and credit, was embarked
