The Wordsworths

"Christabel" was familiar to Dorothy and William Wordsworth throughout the poem's composition from 1798 to 1800. William fondly recalls the poem in The Prelude:

...beloved Friend! When, looking back, thou seest, in clearer view Than any liveliest sight of yesterday, That summer, under whose indulgent skies, Upon smooth Quantock's airy ridge we roved Unchecked, or loitered 'mid her sylvan combs, 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.(1)

Portions of Coleridge's poem parallel passages in Dorothy's journal of this period. She records, for example, an image of the moon that bears a striking resemblance with the evening sky of Part I of "Christabel." On 31 January 1798, Dorothy writes "...the moon immensely large, the sky scattered with clouds. These soon closed in, contracting the dimensions without concealing her." Coleridge's "one red leaf" episode also echoes Dorothy's journal. On her return from Coleridge's Nether Stowey home on 7 March 1798, Dorothy writes of "one red leaf upon the top of a tree--the sole remaining leaf--danced round and round...."(2) Although images in "Christabel" bear a remarkable resemblance to passages in Dorothy's journal, it is debatable whether Coleridge draws on Dorothy's journal, or, whether Dorothy imbricates within her journal images from "Christabel."

The Wordsworths gained an increasing familiarity with "Christabel" during the late summer and autumn of 1800. Dorothy records in her journal that Coleridge read "part of Christabel" on Sunday, 31 August 1800, for the first time.(3) She also notes two readings in October 1800: on the 4th of the month she writes that she and William are "exceedingly delighted with the second part of Christabel"; and on the following day Dorothy writes that "Coleridge read a 2nd time Christabel; we had increasing pleasure."(4) But the day after--6 October--she comments that her brother is "determined not to print Christabel with the LB."(5) Indeed, apprehensive that type-setting and printing may have begun on lines forwarded to the printers by Coleridge, Wordsworth writes to Biggs and Cottle on 6-7 October that

it is my wish and determination that (whatever the [expense] may be, which I hearby take upon myself) such Pages of the Poem of Christabel (if any such there be) be cancelled--I mean to have other poems substituted.(6)

Coleridge's reaction to and his explanation for Wordsworth's decision to omit "Christabel" from Lyrical Ballads is puzzling. He writes to Humphry Davy on 9 October that

the Christabel was running up to 1300 lines--and was so much admired by Wordsworth, that he thought it indelicate to print two Volumes with his name in which so much of another man's was included--& which was of more consequence--the poem was in direct opposition to the very purpose for which the Lyrical Ballads were published--viz--an expirament to see how far those passions, were capable of interesting, in & of themselves, in the incidents of common Life--We mean to publish the Christabel therefore with a long Blank Verse Poem of Wordsworth's entitled the Pedlar.--I assure you, I think very differently of CHRISTABEL.--I would rather have written Ruth, and Nature's Lady [Wordsworth's "Three Years She Grew in Sun and Shower] than a million such poems.(7)

If Coleridge's comments accurately repeat Wordsworth's own, they stand in opposition to Wordsworth's praise for "Christabel," and to the explanation of the design and content of the Lyrical Ballads that Wordsworth was prepared to offer in a cancelled first sheet of the 1800 preface:

For the sake of variety and from a consciousness of my own weakness I have again requested the assistance of a Friend who contributed largely to the first volume, and who has now furnished me with the long and beautiful poem Christabel, without which I should not yet have ventured to present a second volume to the public.(8)

On 11 October, Coleridge complains to Thomas Poole about the consequences of Wordsworth's omission of "Christabel" from Lyrical Ballads:

For this last fortnight, my dear Poole, I have been about to write you--but jolts & ruts, and flings have constantly unhorsed my Resolve. The truth is, the endeavour to finish Christabel, (which has swelled into 1400 lines) for the second volume of the Lyrical Ballads threw my business terribly back--& now I am sweating for it-- / Dunning Letters &c &c--all the hell of an Author. I wish I had been a tanner.(9)

If the 1300 or 1400-line copy of the poem that Coleridge refers to in his letters ever existed, it has not survived.

Coleridge's efforts to finish Part II during the late summer of 1800 and Wordsworth's decision to cut "Christabel" from Lyrical Ballads burdened Coleridge emotionally and financially. On 13 October, Coleridge--writing to William Godwin--complains that "an attempt to finish a poem of mine for insertion in the second volume of the Lyrical Ballads has thrown me so forcefully back in my bread-and-butter occupation [writing for the Morning Post]."(10) A letter to Josiah Wedgewood presents a more complete picture of his emotional state during October 1800. In explaining the delay between his letter of 1 November 1799 and 24 July 1800 (when he had last written to the Wedgewoods), Coleridge writes:

Immediately on my arrival in this country [Coleridge's return from Germany] I undertook to finish a poem which I had begun entitled Christabel, for a second volume of Lyrical Ballads. I tried to perform my promise; but a deep unutterable Disgust, which I suffered in the translation of that accursed Wallenstein, seemed to have stricken me with barrenness--for I tried--& tried, & nothing would come of it. I desisted with a deeper dejection that I am willing to remember--till one day I dined out at the house of a neighbouring clergyman & some how or other drank so much wine, that I found some effort & dexterity requisite to balance myself on the hither Edge of Society. The next day, my verse making faculties returned to me, and I produced successfully--till my poem grew so long... & in Wordsworth's opinion so impressive, that he rejected it from his volume as disproportionate both in size & merit, & as discordant in its character.(11)

Wordsworth offers few reasons for the excision of "Christabel" from Lyrical Ballads, although a brief explanation of his reasons appears in a letter to Thomas Longman:

A poem of Mr. Coleridge's was to have concluded the Volumes; but upon mature deliberation, I found that the Style of this Poem was so discordant from my own that it could not be printed along with my poem with any propriety.(12)

On 22 December 1830, Robert John Tennant writes to Lord Tennyson, describing a visit with Wordsworth in which Wordsworth offered more specific comments on "Christabel": Wordsworth "said he wished that Coleridge had not written the second part of Christabel because that required the tale to be finished. Moreover, he said that the conclusion of Part I, 'it was a lovely sight to see,' was too much laboured."(13)

Although Wordsworth did on occasion further distance himself from "Christabel," he and his sister remained fans of the poem. He writes enthusiastically to Thomas Poole of the poem's planned printing on 9 April 1801: "Christabel is to be printed at the Bulmerian Press, with Vignettes &c &c I long to have the book in my hand it will make such a beauty."(14) William and Dorothy both recited "Christabel" for friends and family regularly. And together Dorothy and Mary Hutchinson (Wordsworth's future wife, as of October 1802) transcribed a copy of the poem between November 1801 and January 1802. Dorothy recorded lines 1-294 while Mary Hutchinson copied the remainder. Their transcription bears a striking resemblance to a surviving 1800 holograph that Coleridge gave to Sarah Hutchinson in 1800. If the Wordsworth-Hutchinson transcript does not derive directly from the 1800 holograph, it probably is a copy of a transcription that Sarah made of the 1800 holograph. Sarah Hutchinson's transcript bears directly upon the course that "Christabel" takes to press.(15)

back to 1800

Notes

1. Book 14, 392-401 as quoted in David Perkins, ed., English Romantic Writers 2nd. ed. (Forth Worth: Harcourt Brace, 1995), 430. (back)
2. Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, ed. Ernest de Selincourt, 2 vols (London: Macmillan, 1959), 1: 5. (back)
3. Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, 1: 11-12. (back)
4. Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, 1: 58. (back)
5. Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, 1: 64. (back)
6. The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth: Early Years, ed. Ernest de Selincourt, 2nd ed. rev. Chester L. Shaver (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), 304-05. (back)
7. Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1: 631-32; original emphasis. (back)
8. As quoted in Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1: 631n2; original emphasis. It is unclear what copy of the cancelled sheet Griggs quotes in Coleridge's Collected Letters--although it may be from a copy at Cornell University. John Edwin Wells reprints a slightly different version of the sheet, quoting, as he notes, from a copy owned by Dr. Tinker in 1938 that is now at Yale University:

   For the sake of variety and from a consciousness / of my own weakness I have again requested / the assistance of a Friend who contributed largely to / the first volume, and who has now furnished me / with the Poem of Christabel, without which I / should not have ventured to present a second / volume to the public. I should not however have / requested this assistance, had I not believed that / the poems of my Friend would in a great measure have the same tendency as my own.... ("Lyrical Ballads, 1800: Cancel Leaves" PMLA 53 (1938): 207).

   See too Edward L. McAdam Jr., "The Publication of the Lyrical Ballads Yale University Library Gazette 8 (July 1933): 43-46. (back)
9. Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. E.L. Griggs, 6 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1956-71), 1: 631. (back)
10. Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1: 634-35. (back)
11. Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1: 643. (back)
12. MS in New York Public Library, as quoted in Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1: 643n. A more complete discussion of the motives behind Wordsworth's decision to omit "Christabel" from Lyrical Ballads is beyond the scope of this discussion. For commentaries on Wordsworth's omission of "Christabel" and on the relationship between "Christabel" and the poem that was published in its place in Lyrical Ballads, "Michael," see Susan Eilenberg,Strange Power of Speech: Wordsworth, Coleridge and Literary Possession (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992) and James Kissane, "'Michael', 'Christabel', and the Lyrical Ballads of 1800" Wordsworth Circle 9 (1978): 57-63. (back)
13. The Letters of Alfred Lord Tennyson, ed. Cecil Y. Lang and Edgar F. Shannon Jr., 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1981-90), 3: 46. (back)
14. The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth: Early Years, 366. (back)
15. A.H. Nethercot, The Road to Tryermaine: A Study in the Background, History and Purposes of Coleridge's Christabel (1939; Reprinted New York: Russell and Russell, 1962), 18-20; Jack Stillinger, Coleridge and Textual Instability (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 81. (back)