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Page 44
Lately a book has been published, or rather republished, which
illustrates Coleridge's relations with a world outside his own. _A
House of Letters_ (Jarrolds--N.D.), containing a selection of the
memoirs and correspondence of Miss Mary Matilda Betham, includes a
good many letters from Coleridge, and some few from Charles Lamb which
have not so far been recorded elsewhere. Miss Betham, who was born
in 1776, was a miniature painter by profession, and so far as can be
judged by reproductions a good one. She was a poetess, too, and the
compiler of a Biographical Dictionary of Celebrated Women. In 1797 she
published a volume of _Elegies_, which in 1802 was sent to Coleridge
by his friend Lady Boughton, and of which a short piece, "On a Cloud,"
transported him. He addressed immediately a blank-verse exhortation
"To Matilda Betham, from a Stranger," dated it Keswick, September 9th,
1802, signed it "S.T.C.," and sent it off.
Matilda! I have heard a sweet tune play'd
On a sweet instrument--thy Poesie,
it began; and went on to hope--
That our own Britain, our dear mother Isle,
May boast one Maid, a poetess indeed,
Great as th' impassioned Lesbian, in sweet song,
And O! of holier mind, and happier fate.
That was what he called twining her vernal wreath around the brows of
patriot Hope. He concluded with some cautionary lines whose epithets
are irresistibly comic:
Be bold, meek Woman! but be wisely bold!
Fly, ostrich-like, firm land beneath thy feet.
And for her ultimate reward--
What nobler meed, Matilda! canst thou win
Than tears of gladness in a Boughton's eyes,
And exultation even in strangers' hearts?
It is a wonderful thing indeed that, having composed _The Ancient
Mariner_ (1797), _Love_ (1799), _Christabel_ (1797-1800), and _Kubla
Khan_ (1798), he should slip back into this eighteenth-century
flatulence--but Coleridge could do such things and not turn a hair.
Nevertheless, to a young poetess, a bad poem is still a poem, and
means a reader. An acquaintance invited in such terms will thrive, and
that of Miss Betham and the Stranger ripened into a friendship. She
went to stay at Greta Hall, painted portraits of Mrs. Coleridge
and Sara, and of some of the Southeys too. Through them she became
acquainted with the Lambs, and if never one of their inner circle,
was a familiar correspondent, and had relations with George Dyer, the
Morgans, the Thelwalls, Montagues, Holcrofts and others. Altogether
Lady Boughton's bow at a venture brought down a goodly quarry for Miss
Betham, but many waters were to flow under the restless philosopher
before he could swim into her ken again.
It was in 1808, in fact, when he was living in London (at the
_Courier_ office, 348, Strand), and in the midst of his second course
of lectures, that the intercourse was renewed--or rather it is there
that _A House of Letters_ enables us to pick it up. We find him then
writing in this kind of strain to Matilda:--
"What joy would it not be to you, or to me, Miss Betham, to
meet a Milton in a future state, and with that reverence
due to a superior, pour forth our deep thanks for the noble
feelings he had aroused in us, for the impossibility of many
mean and vulgar feelings and objects which his writings had
secured us!"
The Americans call that sort of thing poppycock, which seems a useful
phrase. No doubt there was more of it, though it is precisely there,
without subscription or signature, that the Editor of _A House of
Letters_ thinks fit to conclude. He has much to learn of the duties of
editorship, among other things, as we shall have to note before long,
reasonable care in recording and printing his originals. Upon that
letter, at any rate, _post_ if not _propter_, Miss Betham proposed to
the philosopher that he should sit to her, and that, with some demur,
he promised to do. An appointment was made to that end, and punctually
broken. Then came this letter of excuse, which should have been
worth many a miniature, being indeed a full-length portrait done by a
master-hand:--
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