clevedon is now entered by the modern suburban developments of walton park. suburbs and light railways, and all the things they mean, do not come into the minds of those who have merely read of clevedon and have not been there. clevedon to these untravelled folk means coleridge and tennyson and hallam, a certain “quiet cot,” a stately court and a lone church on a hilltop, overlooking the severn sea. these are essentials; the rest is incidental. but when you come at last to clevedon, you discover, with a pained surprise to which you have no sort of a right, that the position is altogether reversed: these literary landmarks and associations are the incidentals, and the essentials—well, what are they? it would puzzle even an old-established resident of clevedon to say. nothing matters very much at clevedon—except that half the houses are to let; and that is a matter of moment only to the owners of them and to the tradesfolk. how do people make shift to pass the time here? 26they don’t care for literature: they don’t stroll the sands, for there are none; and they don’t walk, for it is a neighbourhood of atrocious hills, except on the way to the railway-station, the dust-destructor, and the gas-works.
what is it, then, they do? i will tell you. they sit upon the rocks, waiting for the next mealtime and refusing (rightly) to support the miserable creatures who, calling themselves “pierrots,” infest the front. in the exiguous public gardens old ladies of both sexes knit impossible and useless articles or pretend to read the newspapers, and wonder why they ever came to the place.
the paradoxical tragedy of clevedon is that there is at once too little and too much of it: too little sea-front, and a great deal too much of the town in these later times built beside it; but the place must indeed have been delightful in 1795, at the time when samuel taylor coleridge brought his bride here from bristol, where they had been married, in the church of st. mary redcliffe. he was twenty-three, and a visionary immersed in german metaphysics and the kantean philosophy; and had but recently been bought out of the 15th light dragoons, in which in a moment of despair and starvation, he had enlisted. four months of military duties untempered with glory, but strongly savoured with riding-lessons and stable-fatigue, did not make him a more practical man; and he remained in all the sixty-two years that made up 27his span of life, although the most gifted of all the clever coleridge family, an amiable dreamer.
the dreams in which he and southey and other friends were at this time immersed were concerned with a fantastic kind of socialism they were pleased to style a “pantisocracy,” in which ideal state all property was to be held in common, and all spare time was to be occupied with literature; a truly terrible prospect! this ideal community was to be established in north america, on the susquehanna river, there to live a life of plain living and high thinking, punctuated with washing up the domestic dishes, weeding the potato-patch, and propagating a new generation of prigs. but money was needed for the starting of this pretty and pedantic scheme, and because “pantisocracy” (heavens! what a name!) did not appeal, and was never likely to appeal, to any one who was master of any honest coin of the realm, it remained a vision. it failed for want of money; and, human nature being what it is, it would still have failed disastrously had funds been provided.
so our pantisocrats remained in england; “myrtle cottage,” clevedon, remaining for a little while the address of the coleridges, until they removed to nether stowey. we may fairly suppose that here this wayward genius, a brilliant talker, a poet of gorgeous ideas and noble language, but a man constitutionally infirm of purpose, and made yet more inconstant by deep reading of mystical german philosophy that led 28to mental blind alleys, lived the happiest time of his life. we obtain an early first glimpse of him—the second day after arrival—in his letter to cottle, the amiable and helpful bookseller of bristol, who greatly befriended coleridge and southey when they needed friendship most:
to his “dear cottle” he wrote, october 6th, 1795: “pray send me a riddle, slice, a candle-box, two ventilators, two glasses for the washstand, one tin dust-pan, one small tin tea-kettle, one pair of candlesticks, one carpet-brush, one flour dredge, three tin extinguishers, two mats, a pair of slippers, a cheese toaster, two large tin spoons, a bible, a keg of porter, coffee, raisins, currants, catsup, nutmegs, allspice, cinnamon, rice, ginger, and mace.”
coleridge’s cottage, clevedon.
29the imagination readily pictures the essentially unpractical samuel taylor coleridge, certainly not well versed in domestic economy, taking down this list of household small gear from his “pensive sara”; prepared, with the receipt of them, to open his campaign for existence against an indifferent world.
he sang the praises of that early home in no uncertain manner:
low was our pretty cot; our tallest rose
peeped at the chamber window. we could hear
at silent noon, and eve, and early morn,
the sea’s faint murmur. in the open air
our myrtle blossomed; and across the porch
thick jasmins twined: the little landscape round
was green and woody, and refreshed the eye.
it was a spot which you might aptly call
the valley of seclusion!
you might indeed so call it now, if inclined to poetry, but you would be wholly wrong. the painful fact must be recorded that “myrtle cottage” stands beside the road, directly on the busiest route between the railway-station and the sea-front (such as the sea-front is), and that flys, “charleybanks,” wagonettes, motor-cars, and all conceivable traffic come this way. indeed, this cottage and its trim fellow are now almost the only vestiges in the road left of the clevedon that coleridge knew. what little remained of the rocky bluff at the back is now being actively blasted and quarried away by the local authority, 30in its attempt—highly successful, too—at matching the place with the london district of notting hill. property owners have already filled clevedon with stuccoed semi-“italian” villas on the ladbroke grove model, that became discredited a generation ago; the kind of property that has dismal semi-underground dungeons called “breakfast-rooms” (by way of a penitential beginning of the day), and long flights of stone steps to the front door, alleged to be ornamental, and certainly excessively tiring. this is a kind of property that never, or rarely, lets nowadays; and clevedon has many empty villas.
the white-paled, red-tiled trim cottages—coleridge’s and another—are among the pleasantest sights of clevedon, by reason of their unconventional, homely style, and the fine trees that surround and overhang them. tiles, you will observe, have replaced the thatch of the poet’s description; but the jessamine still twines over the porch. five pounds a year, the landlord paying the taxes; that was the rent of this then idyllic spot.
it should here be added that doubts have recently been expressed as to the genuine nature of the tradition that makes “myrtle cottage” the temporary home of coleridge. and not only have these doubts been expressed, but very strongly worded statements have been made, to the effect that the real coleridge cottage was in the valley at east clevedon, adjoining walton-in-gordano. but the matter is controversial, and 31at any rate the legend—if, indeed, it be but a legend—that has attached to the cottage popularly known as coleridge’s, has had so long a start that it will be difficult, if not impossible, ever to demolish it.
