Coleridge's Christabel

by Irene Hsiao

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The history of the protracted composition and publication of Coleridge's poem, Christabel, is in many ways as murky as that of his Kubla Khan, with which Christabel first appeared in formal publication in 1816. Like Kubla Khan, which, by Coleridge's assertion, is a "fragment," Christabel was never realized in the four or five part ballad Coleridge was supposed to have originally envisioned, despite the 17-18 year period between initiation and first printing. Details, exact dates of its creation, and perhaps, by some accounts, even several hundred lines have been lost. Coleridge suffered greatly over his and others' desire to have the poem completed and doubts over his ability to execute his vision. Nevertheless, its impression as a fragment proved captivating in its mystery during his lifetime and well after.

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The opening lines of Coleridge's 1816 preface to Christabel state, "The first part of the following poem was written in the year 1797, at Stowey, in the country of Somerset. The second part, after my return from Germany, in the year 1800, at Keswick, Cumberland." While the true story of when and where he composed his poem may never be ascertained, evidence exists that suggests the above statements are inaccurate. From June 1797 to June 1798, Coleridge lived in a cottage at Nether Stowey, three miles from Wordsworth's residence at Alfoxden. The result of this proximity was a year of intense production for both poets, culminating most prominently in Lyrical Ballads, published in September 1798. Christabel was one of three ballads Coleridge was planning for Lyrical Ballads (the others being The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and The Dark Ladie), and it is believed that he did not begin writing Christabel until after he completed Rime on March 23, 1798. In addition to this fairly soft surmise, several passages from Dorothy Wordsworth's journal of January to March of that year almost unquestionably inspired certain lines in Christabel (see Appendix). Finally, in Book XIII of Wordsworth's Prelude, he speaks of "That summer... Thou in bewitching words, with happy heart,/Didst chaunt the vision of that Ancient Man,/The bright-eyed Mariner, and rueful woes/Didst utter of the Lady Christabel" (392-410, Norton ed.), which, due to the presence of the Mariner (nonexistent in summer 1797), almost certainly refers to the summer of 1798.

Towards the end of the 1700s, a revival of interest in Gothic legends and ballads was taking place in England, as well as a new interest in German lyric and drama. Coleridge at the time had read Spenser's Faerie Queene, numerous ballads, and works by Surrey, Wyatt, Shakespeare and others. He had also gathered old myths and tales of the supernatural from travel books, such as Shelvocke's Voyage (1726), and old writings, such as Michael Psellus' De Daemonibus (11th century), which first inspired some of the spirits in Rime. While the wealth of writing he could access and read provided material for Christabel, Coleridge also wrote in his Biographia Literaria that he and Wordsworth had originally agreed within "the plan of the 'Lyrical Ballads'... my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic; yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief that constitutes poetic faith" (ch.14). These words return Coleridge's ventures into ballad to the front of revolution rather than the mere assimilation of popular appeal, at least in ambition.

No matter the source of his ambition, only part I of Christabel had been written at the time of Lyrical Ballads' first printing, and was therefore not included. After departing for Germany in September 1798, Coleridge did not resume writing his unfinished ballad until his return to England late July 1799, when his friend and brother-in-law, Robert Southey, requested it for the opening poem of the 1800 Annual Anthology he was assembling. Unfortunately, Coleridge was not in optimal ballad breeding conditions, having come home to a critical and somewhat neglected wife, a dead son, and the failure of Lyrical Ballads. He was also under the influence of a great deal of opium as treatment for his rheumatism and various ills. He expressed his doubts in correspondence with Southey, and after the cold public reception of his ballad, The Dark Ladie, published in the December 21, 1799 Morning Post, Coleridge, demoralized, once more abandoned his efforts on Christabel.

On July 24, 1800, Coleridge moved to Greta Hall, Keswick, in the Lake District, where the Wordsworths had settled at Grasmere. The second edition of Lyrical Ballads was being cast after the first edition had unexpectedly sold out in June, and although hurt by Wordsworth's modification and reframing of Rime, Coleridge planned to finish Christabel for the new book. The conclusion to Part I was possibly also written in this period, as suggested by correspondences between the passage and letters he wrote at the time. Coleridge read Christabel through the completed Part II to the Wordsworths on October 4 and 5, 1800, as Dorothy recorded in her journal. However, in spite of the "increasing pleasure" Dorothy described on Oct. 5, by October 6, she wrote, "Determined not to print Christabel with the LB." No one knows precisely why this decision was made; Coleridge either explained or rationalized in a letter to his patron, Josiah Wedgwood, "... my poem grew so long, and in Wordsworth's opinion so impressive, that we rejected it from his volume as disproportionate both in size and merit, and as discordant in character" (November 1, 1800). In another letter dated October 9, 1800, and addressed to editor Humphry Davy, he wrote, "... Christabel was running up to 1,300 lines.... the poem was in direct opposition to the very purpose for which the Lyrical Ballads were published[.]" No known manuscript of 1,300 lines exists -- on the other hand, the conclusion to Part II was also not found on any of the original manuscripts but was actually recorded in a letter to Southey dated May 6, 1801.

Up until this point, although not printed and distributed to the public, Coleridge had read his poem (or that which existed) to literary circles in London and the Lake district, and a number of manuscripts were circulated. In October 1802, Walter Scott happened to hear a recitation from one of these manuscripts and was inspired to write a ballad of his own, the Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), which not only had the same gothic tones and character of bard, but also employed the experimental meter that Coleridge used in Christabel and declared "a new principle" in its Preface, a tetrameter based on the number of accents rather than the number of syllables. The unmistakeably echoing line in Lay, "Jesu Maria, shield us well!" confirmed the imitation, though Scott refused to admit his borrowing to the public until 1830 and in fact, wrote at least two anonymously published articles asserting that he was the inventor of the irregular meter and directing a few pointed insults at Coleridge. However, despite the dampening effect of Lay on the eventual reception of Coleridge's romantic, unusually-metered ballad, Scott proved instrumental in the actual publication of Christabel, for in June 1815, Scott recited Coleridge's Christabel to Byron. Byron was so impressed by the poem that he wrote to Coleridge, asking for a manuscript, and in November of that year, suggested its publication as a fragment to his publisher, John Murray. The first printing of Christabel appeared in a 64-page octavo pamphlet titled Christabel;Kubla Khan, a Vision; The Pains of Sleep on May 25, 1816.

To Coleridge's intense disappointment, the poem was met with hostility, unlike Scott's Lay, which had sold 15,000 copies. In terms of its lack of public success, Scott's poem is thought to be simpler than Coleridge's and obviously, is a complete story rather than a dark, unresolved account of weirdness. Its critical unpopularity may be attributed to both Coleridge's reputation as a radical and his censure of current democratic attitudes, as well as critics' wariness of the entire Lake School. Additionally, Murray had advertised the pamphlet with one of Byron's notes to his Siege of Corinth that described Christabel as "that wild and singularly original and beautiful poem" (Feb. 7, 1816), which really served the poem's misfortune because Byron himself was in public disfavor due in part to his recent separation with his wife. Coleridge revised the poem in November 1816 but did not publish the revisions until 1828. He would continue to think about Christabel until his death in 1834; he says in Table Talk on July 6, 1833, "The reason of my not finishing Christabel is not that I don't know how to do it -- for I have, as I always had, the whole plan entire from beginning to end in my mind, but I fear I could not carry on with equal success the execution of the idea, an extremely subtle and difficult one."

Christabel is perhaps far more interesting as a fragment than it ever would have been as a complete poem. To its credit, it was so well read as an unpublished fragment that Scott felt he had to justify his complete authorship of Lay through his articles in the Quarterly Review and the Edinburgh Annual Register. Furthermore, besides serving as inspiration for Scott's Lay and Byron's Siege of Corinth, Christabel is probably one of the few poems to have parodies of itself printed before the original (Christobell, a Gothic Tale by Anna Vardill in 1815, and Isabelle by James Hogg, 1816). Christabel owes its impact in part to its unfinished nature, as the many requests for its completion over the years and many more theories about Coleridge's real intent for the poem show. Even reading it today, the reader is left exactly opposite to Christabel's fey "little child," who "always finds and never seeks" (lines 656, 659): as if in answer to Coleridge's lifelong desire for approval, we must constantly thirst after his vision.

Bibliography

Ashton, Rosemary, The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1996.

Coleridge, Ernest Hartley, Christabel, A Facsimile of the Manuscript, and by Textual and Other Notes, Oxford, 1907.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, Biographia Literaria, chapter XIV "Literary Life and Opinions", p. 264 of Selected Poetry and Prose of Coleridge, ed. Donald A. Stauffer, New York: Random House, 1951.

Wordsworth, Dorothy, The Alfoxden Journals, 1798, and The Grasmere Journals, 1800-1803, ed. Mary Moorman, Oxford, 1971.

Appendix

Lines from Dorothy Wordsworth's journal, followed by corresponding lines in Christabel:

January 27, 1798 "... again her [the moon's] form became dimmer; the sky flat, unmarked by distances, a white thin cloud. The manufacturer's dog makes a strange, uncouth howl..." January 31, 1798 "When we left home, the moon immensely large, the sky scattered over with clouds. These soon closed in, contracting the dimensions of the moon without concealing her."

Christabel, lines 16-19 "The thin gray cloud is spread on high, It covers but not hides the sky. The moon is behind and at the full; And yet she looks but small and dull." (also, of course, the howling mastiff)

March 7, 1798 "One only leaf upon the top of a tree -- the sole remaining leaf -- danced round and round like a rag blown by wind."

Christabel, lines 49-52 The one red leaf, the last of its clan, Which dances as often as dance it can, Hanging so light and hanging so high, On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky.

March 24, 1798 "The spring continues to advance very slowly, no green trees, the hedges leafless; nothing green but the brambles..."

Christabel, line 33 "And naught was green upon the oak" line 22: "And the Spring comes slowly up this way."

note: Other dates were cited in E.H. Coleridge's book, but I could not draw the correspondences.