The short Romantic

"I am brief myself," Hartley Coleridge declared, "brief in stature..." It is enough to make the short researcher rejoice - "Hurrah!" I cried (or should have), "I have something in common with my researchee!" - until we read on: "...brief in discourse, short of memory and money, and far short of my wishes." "Li'l Hartley", as he was called by his Grasmere neighbours throughout his adult life, was a part of that select group of nineteenth-century writers: those who, in John Keats's words, were "five feet hight." Derwent Coleridge recalled in his "Memoir" of his brother that

The singularity of his appearance, by which he was distinguished through life, and which, together with the shortness of his stature, (possibly attributable in some measure to his premature birth,) had a marked influence on the formation of his character, was apparent from the first...

Hartley Coleridge - possessed of a
"singularity of appearance"

Samuel Taylor Coleridge noted this "singularity" of appearance, writing to a friend after his wife had told him of the similarities between his own looks and the baby's that "in truth, I have received finer compliments in my time." Hartley was not destined to be the looker of his family (that accolade was left for his younger sister Sara, a renowned beauty in her youth). That his looks affected his life Hartley was in no doubt; he was painfully aware of the affect of his appearance on women. But Derwent's suggestion that they affected his character from a young age is telling; it is an early indication of the self-conscious connections between his body and his mind that Hartley was to acknowledge increasingly as he got older, and which others were to notice more and more as his alcohol consumption increased. For Hartley, as for his relatives, his short stature was taken as a metaphor for his disappointing creative output. Echoing his brother's essay, Derwent Coleridge suggested that "all who knew my brother with any degree of intimacy, are agreed that his written productions fall far, very far short of what he might, under happier circumstances, have achieved."

For John Keats, too, this sensitivity about his short stature was self-consciously bound up with his anxieties regarding women. As he wrote in July 1818,

I am certain I have not a right feeling towards Women--at this moment I am striving to be just to them but I cannot--Is it because they fall so far beneath my Boyish imagination? When I was a Schoolboy I thought a fair Woman a pure Goddess, my mind was a soft nest in which some one of them slept though she knew it not--I have no right to expect more than their reality. I thought them etherial above Men--I find them perhaps equal.... I do not like to think insults in a Lady's Company--I commit a Crime with her which absence would have not known--Is it not extraordinary? When among Men I have no evil thoughts, no malice, no spleen--I feel free to speak or to be silent--I can listen and from every one I can learn--my hands are in my pockets I am free from all suspicion and comfortable. When I am among Women I have evil thoughts, malice spleen--I cannot speak or be silent--I am full of Suspicions and therefore listen to no thing--I am in a hurry to be gone--You must be charitable and put all this perversity to my being disappointed since Boyhood–. . . I could say a good deal about this but I will leave it in hopes of better and more worthy dispositions--and also content that I am wronging no one, for after all I do think better of Womankind than to suppose they care whether Mister John Keats five feet hight likes them or not.

John Keats: just "five feet hight"

However, Keats's concerns about women seem to be a cipher for his height-related anxieties about his creative abilities. When he was young, before his shortness upset him, women could sleep in the "soft nest" of his mind; that young mind was then a willing receptacle, open to divine inspiration. This older, self-consciously small poet is affected to his creative detriment: the "Goddess" of his youth resided in his imagination, producing "fair", fruitful thoughts; the real women he meets as an adult inhibit this creative process. It is not a process which men can help him with: although men enable him to "speak" or to "listen," they do not engage his mind in an active process of poetic creation. Keats's poetic power is, it seems, androgynous; a feminine aspect is necessary. His identity as a man, too, is bound up with his awareness of his perceived unmanly height: "five feet hight" seems almost an addition to his name, as if it is both of these attributes which defines the poet to both himself and to "Womankind."

Fortunately, perhaps, for those short people who long for an extra few inches, neither of these men are remembered predominantly for being short, just as Byron is not remembered for his height. It is those other connotations of brevity which are far more damaging. Hartley's complaints of his shortness are from a rather long essay entitled "On Brevity", which Hartley cuts short from an awareness that he has already exceeded his point. It is a playful essay, and indicates the extent to which this creative or professional "brevity" lies entirely in the writer's hands to solve.

(Brevity of money, on the other hand, he provides no answers for. Sorry.)

Grasmere

Photo: Jo Taylor. One of the exhibitions at the
Wordsworth Museum. The shape of the
River Derwent, with manuscript and typed poetry
overlaid within it.

Anyone who says that poetry is dead should come to Grasmere. The economy of the village is predicated upon poetry; Wordsworth haunts the visitor, whether or not you really want him too. Every street corner has a different quotation from either his poems or Dorothy's journals; every bar and eaterie seems to be seeking authentication through a connection with the family. And, of course, the various Wordsworth abodes surround the village, from Dove Cottage to Rydal, and the newly-opened Allan Bank. Thomas Hardy, on a visit to Grasmere in 1911, wrote that

Wordsworth's grave and headstone are looking very trim and new. A group of tourists who have never read a line of him sit near, addressing and sending off picture postcards…

Not much has changed, apart from the tourists' reading habits; even if you've never read a line of Wordsworth before you arrive, you'll have read several (and several family members' besides) by the time you leave. This written presence is supplemented by the oral, in the guise of regular poetry readings organised by the Wordsworth Trust and patronised by locals and tourists alike. Last night (Tuesday), Grasmere welcomed former-laureate Andrew Motion to St. Oswald's church. It was an appropriate venue: Reading from his new collection The Customs House (thanks to Faber & Faber for the advanced preview) Motion conjured up the literary ghosts of, among others, Siegfried Sassoon, Keats and, naturally, Wordsworth. He spoke from beneath a plaque, Wordsworth's marble head gazing down, and Wordsworth's grave (lying amongst those of Dorothy, his wife Mary, and several of his children, with Hartley Coleridge nestled amongst them) just outside the window. Motion read from his novel, Silver, a sequel to Treasure Island. Motion explained that he thought sequels only work if they are far enough removed from the original to allow the audience to gain a fresh perspective of the new story. This theory of a novelist fit well with the poet standing in a graveyard of poets, putting his own spin on talking in the 'language of real men' to evoke emotions his audience could really feel. It was inevitable that this reading would be coloured with comparison; in a village where you're constantly reminded of the dead poets of the canon, the modern poet must push through these ghosts to make their own voice heard.

Photo: Jo Taylor. St. Oswald's Church

Motion's talk this morning, on the poetry of Edward Thomas, fulfilled a different function. Here was Motion the academic, returning to the topic he did his MPhil in, and bringing a new audience to the poet. As he said of his old English teacher, he invited the audience 'into his head'. And that, too, is what Grasmere seems to be doing. If its heart is the landscape, its head is the poetry inspired by it, and Grasmere is then in a constant state of issuing invitations to enter it. It seems to work; the descendents of the tourists Hardy encountered visit today, take photos of the graves, and leave feeling a little more connected to the poets who lie there. This process of passing on interest is in itself a form of inheritance; I was amused, and not a little gratified, when I went to take photos of Hartley Coleridge's grave (much more unkempt than those of the Wordsworth clan) to notice that when I left, my attention to the stone had piqued the interest of a lady standing behind me.

Photo: Jo Taylor. Hartley Coleridge's grave

Grasmere now, then, stands as a monument to poets past and an invitation to poets now; simultaneously, it recalls readers of the past, and invites modern readers to join them. And what's more, it seems to work.