University of Virginia Library

A Coleridge-Wordsworth Manuscript and "Sarah Hutchinson's Poets"
by
R. S. Woof

Sara Hutchinson, sister-in-law of Wordsworth and object of Coleridge's idealised passion, copied poems into a notebook which she entitled "Sarah Hutchinson's Poets". At one end of the book are poems by Words-worth, at the other end are poems by Coleridge. Mr. George Whalley attempted to date the Coleridge poems, both their composition and the date of entry into the notebook, but he dated them wrongly I believe, and thus gave too much weight to the significance the notebook had in the early relationship of Coleridge and Sara Hutchinson. (George Whalley, Coleridge and Sara Hutchinson, University of Toronto Press, 1955.)

All the Wordsworth poems except the last, "Praised be the Art" which was composed in 1811, belong to the spring of 1802, and were probably copied into the notebook soon after Wordsworth wrote them, as the texts are early and little revised. Mr. Whalley argues that the first Coleridge poems were entered in the previous year, that it is consistent with the story of Sara Hutchinson's relationship with Coleridge to imagine her making copies of his poems in the summer of 1801. There are no actual records of Sara's feeling for Coleridge in 1801 or 1802, though clearly enough Coleridge was thinking about her and he probably wrote to her a

good deal. Certainly if it could be shown that the first Coleridge poems in the book were copied down in 1801, then the book indeed might be said to reveal a special interest in Coleridge.

The first Coleridge poem in the notebook is "The Mad Moon in a Passion", a slight, joking, familiar piece of verse arising out of Wordsworth's and Coleridge's habits of poeticising. This is printed for the first time by Mr. Whalley, and he suggests that it was composed in 1801. There is however another manuscript of the poem which seems to corroborate my belief that "The Mad Moon" was written and copied out in 1802. This sheet of paper is in Dove Cottage Library.[1] On it is a copy of "The Mad Moon" in Coleridge's hand; then, all pushed into the remaining space there are, in Dorothy Wordsworth's hand, copies of Wordsworth's "Tinker" and "Foresight"; in Wordsworth's hand, a few verse jottings of a stanza of "Farewell"; in Mary Wordsworth's heavy awkward hand in old age, a descriptive note: "This spoiled MS is the original of a printed Poem, in the handwriting of the Author S. T. Coleridge. M. W." The manuscript is indeed spoiled; one side of the folio sheet has a ragged half-moon shape torn out of it, and the poor quality paper is ruffled as though it has been kept in a much-used wallet. The watermark is a fleur-de-lys. But the surprise in Mary's note is the word "printed", for, as far as we know, "The Mad Moon" was never published by Coleridge. Perhaps of more moment is Mary's use of the word "original"; it suggests that this copy of the poem is, if not a composition draft, the first completed version. And I do think that this version on the Dove Cottage manuscript is earlier than that in "Sarah's Poets", and that this earlier version must be dated April 1802. This means a revision of Mr. Whalley's suggested dating, and consequently some reconsideration of the notebook, "Sarah's Poets".

I collate the two versions here: first appears the "Sarah's Poets" version as presented in Coleridge and Sara Hutchinson (pp. 5-7), and second, to the right of the bracket is the Dove Cottage MS. version:

Undramatic as these variants are, cumulatively they point to the Dove Cottage manuscript as certainly earlier than that in "Sarah's Poets". Those extra lines in the Dove Cottage manuscript (the opening line and the concluding thirteen lines) are generally repetitive and their omission in the "Sarah's Poets" version strengthens the poem; on the other hand the unique lines in the latter text (lines 16-21) consciously add mischievous comparisons. These lines further explain why the moon in the Dove Cottage manuscript refers to the poet abusively as a "witch-wolf" (line 44), while in "Sarah's Poets" he is rather more lamely called a "Ruffian"; in the extra lines in the "Sarah's Poets" text, the "witch-wolf's long howl" is one of the noises that the moon far prefers to the voice of a poet, and thus "Ruffian" replaces "witch-wolf" later in the poem. This is an unlikely emendation to make in reverse.

Coleridge's "Mad Moon" is not the only poem to indicate textually that the Dove Cottage sheet of paper is an earlier manuscript than "Sarah's Poets". The two complete Wordsworth poems on the Dove Cottage manuscript (not previously recorded there) appear also in "Sarah's Poets", and the texts differ sufficiently to establish that the notebook contains the later

copies. After line 42 of "The Tinker", for example, the line, "Like a Bullfinch black & red", is inserted in the Dove Cottage manuscript; this is properly incorporated into the text in "Sarah's Poets". Again, in line 1 of "Foresight" in the Dove Cottage manuscript there is a unique correction; "That is work which I am [ ruing]" is crossed out and replaced by "Ann that work of yours I'm [ruing]". Wordsworth clearly did not like his correction and the deleted line appears in the other versions before 1815.[2]

Again, the Dove Cottage manuscript helps to establish, if not certainly, then with the strongest probability, that Coleridge wrote "The Mad Moon" in April, 1802, and sent the poem to Wordsworth in the same month. First, all the poems on the manuscript, which, I repeat, is a single folio sheet, must belong to a period earlier than June 14, 1802, for the stanza of "Farewell" that Wordsworth has drafted there contains the phrase, "primrose vest", and this, Wordsworth wrote to Mary Hutchinson on June 14, was to be altered. The fragment on the Dove Cottage manuscript is half lost by the tear, and thus I have used below square brackets to indicate words or letters supplied by me; square brackets with a question mark denote words difficult to read:

This version might be a part of Wordsworth's revision of June 13 (see Dorothy's Journal), but possibly it dates from before May 29 when Dorothy records, "William finished his poem on going for Mary". Second, it seems clear from the physical arrangement of poems on the manuscript that before Wordsworth jotted down the stanza of "Farewell", Dorothy had already written out "Foresight" and "The Tinker". And in her Journal she tells us about the composition of these poems. On April 27, 1802, she writes, "In the evening Wm. began to write The Tinker. We had a letter and verses from Coleridge." The next day, "At dinner time he [Wordsworth] came in with the poem of Children gathering Flowers, but it was not quite finished, and it kept him long off his dinner. It is now done. He is working at The Tinker." The following day she notes, "Before we went out, after I had written down The Tinker, which William finished this morning, Luff called. . ." On April 27, "verses from Coleridge", on April 28, "Foresight" is composed, on April 29, a copy of "The Tinker" in Dorothy's hand. This combination can surely point only to the Dove Cottage manuscript, which, as I have already indicated, cannot be dated after June 14, 1802. The "verses from Coleridge" must be "The Mad Moon". Coleridge probably sent them soon after composition, for, as we saw, the text seems an earlier one than that copied out by Sara Hutchinson, and it was his habit to send poems "hot" to Wordsworth.

Finally, for a variety of supporting reasons, it generally makes sense that "The Mad Moon" should belong to 1802, rather than to 1800 or 1801. Mr. Whalley himself (see pp. 30, 31) recognised that the "references to Voss and to Peter Bell suggest, at first sight, a later date [than 1800 or 1801]". They do indeed; Coleridge planned to translate Voss in 1802 and Wordsworth had revised "Peter Bell" in that February. And it is surely wrong to imply, as Mr. Whalley does (footnote p. 31), that "The Mad Moon" could not have been written after "Dejection", presumably because Mr. Whalley does not feel it proper for the trivial mood of "The Mad Moon" to follow the solemn, moving "Dejection". Even without knowledge of the Dove Cottage manuscript I have described, a careful consideration of Dorothy Wordsworth's Journal might have tempered the view that Sara Hutchinson's notebook is some kind of oblique declaration about Coleridge in 1801. Or, it could be argued, editors might have annotated the Journal more completely.

The second Coleridge poem in Sara's notebook is "The Language of Birds" ("Do you ask what the Birds say? The Chaffinch, the Dove"); it is without title in "Sarah's Poets". Mr. Whalley again, I think wrongly, suggests that this poem was composed in the spring of 1801 and copied out by Sara later that year. But Dorothy's Journal again is illuminating: on May 6, 1802 she writes, "a letter from Coleridge with verses to Hartley." These verses to his son are surely "The Language of Birds". When this poem was published in the Morning Post for October 6, 1802, Coleridge gave it the title: "The Language of Birds: Lines spoken extempore, to a little child, in early spring." The next October, Coleridge sent the poem to the Beaumonts, and the title then was: "Extempore — to a Child of Six Years Old". Hartley had barely gone seven by that time. Coleridge's title perhaps deliberately paralleled Wordsworth's in the latter's recent poem to Hartley: "To H.C. Six Years Old." Certainly it would have been odd for Coleridge to give the Six Years title to a poem he had written in 1801 (Mr. Whalley's date for the composition) when Hartley was only four. And of course such an early date would leave Dorothy's "verses to Hartley" of May, 1802, unidentified.[3]

Notes