LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Class 
 
TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 THE FIRST PHOTOGRAPHER 
 
 AN ACCOUNT OF HIS LIFE, HIS DIS- 
 COVERY AND HIS FRIENDSHIP WITH 
 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 
 INCLUDING THE LETTERS OF 
 COLERIDGE TO THE WEDGWOODS 
 
 AND AN EXAMINATION OF ACCOUNTS 
 
 OF ALLEGED EARLIER PHOTOGRAPHIC 
 
 DISCOVERIES 
 
 BY R. B. LITCHFIELD 
 
 " A mind perhaps the finest I ever met with" T. CAMPBELL 
 
 LONDON 
 DUCKWORTH AND CO. 
 
 3 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN 
 
 1903 
 
' 
 
 " RES OMNES EARUMQUE PROGRESSUS INITIIS SUIS DEBENTUR ' 
 
 LORD BACON (First words of his letter sending a 
 copy of the " De Augmentis" to Trinity College, 
 Cambridge, the place of his early education). 
 
INSCRIBED TO 
 
 GODFREY WEDGWOOD 
 
 GREAT-NEPHEW OF THE FIRST PHOTOGRAPHER, AND 
 
 GREAT-GRANDSON OF THE FAMOUS POTTER, IN 
 
 ADMIRATION OF A LIFE AND CHARACTER 
 
 WORTHY OF THE NAME HE BEARS 
 
 221577 
 
All rights reserved 
 
PREFACE 
 
 THIS Memoir appears, it must be confessed, rather 
 late. It was in the year 1806 that the little world of 
 Tom Wedgwood's friends, relations, and acquaintances 
 a little world, but it included some of the most 
 notable Englishmen of the time were expecting the 
 appearance of a book which was to give an account of 
 his life and character, with an essay expounding his 
 philosophical theories. This essay was to be written by 
 Sir James Mackintosh, and the Memoir by Coleridge. 
 But neither of these eminent persons did what he pro- 
 mised. It is not certain that either even began to do 
 it. Of Mackintosh, Coleridge once wrote : " He is 
 one of those men with whom the meaning to do a 
 thing means nothing." Of Coleridge himself this was 
 absolutely true, and it was not quite untrue of Mackin- 
 tosh ; for he was noted for his infinite capacity for 
 procrastination, as if his rule of life was never to do 
 a thing to-day which could possibly be put off till 
 to-morrow. The plan of a joint Memoir by two such 
 collaborators, two men, as it happened, not the least in 
 sympathy one with the other, was thus virtually hope- 
 less from the first. Mackintosh, moreover, had gone 
 to be a Judge in India, and Coleridge was nearing that 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 saddest time in his life when his best friends could only 
 describe his condition (produced by opium) as one of 
 " paralysis of the will." So it has been Tom Wedg- 
 wood's fate to be but faintly remembered 
 
 carpere lividas * 
 obliviones . . . 
 
 caret quia vate sacro. 
 
 But it seemed to me that, in spite of the lapse of 
 time, partly indeed by reason of it, it might now be 
 worth while for the humblest of biographers to essay a 
 modest record of the man, in part reparation of the 
 failure of those two sadly untrustworthy vates sacri. 
 The- task seemed to come naturally in my way, as, 
 through the accident of private connection, I had 
 happened to have read a great number of old family 
 letters of the Wedgwoods, preserved by the descen- 
 dants of the photographer's brother Josiah, including 
 a mass of correspondence formerly in the possession of 
 Mrs. Charles Darwin, the last survivor of his many 
 nieces and nephews, who died at the age of eighty- 
 eight in 1896. 
 
 This year 1902, the centenary of the date which 
 justifies our calling him the " first photographer," seemed 
 a fitting time for putting some account of him before 
 the world, and for examining the question, which, so 
 far as I know, has not been critically discussed before, 
 whether that title properly applies to him. It was the 
 more necessary to do this, as the story of what he 
 really did had become confused with a foolish legend, 
 a complete misrepresentation of the facts, which had 
 unluckily been put forward in what was the only book 
 (prior to the recent appearance of a notice in the 
 
PREFACE ix 
 
 
 
 " Dictionary of National Biography ") giving information 
 about him.* 
 
 Only two persons, as far as I can ascertain, have been 
 described as doing, or possibly doing, anything photo- 
 graphic before the time of Wedgwood, the German 
 Heinrich Schulze, and the French physicist Charles ; 
 but an examination of the accounts of what they did 
 clearly disposes, I think, of both claims. Knowing 
 next to nothing of the technique of photographic pro- 
 cesses, I should have no right to say this if the question 
 turned on technical points, but that, as the reader of 
 pp. 218-240 will see, is not the case. 
 
 When one thinks of the astonishing developments of 
 the art in these latter years, the now familiar " living 
 pictures," the achievements of the camera in stellar 
 astronomy, and its importance as an aid to various kinds 
 of literary, scientific, and artistic research, with the 
 collateral wonders that have sprung out of photography, 
 the strange mysteries of Rontgen, Becquerel, and 
 Cathode "Rays," with their suggestions of fresh reve- 
 lations of yet unknown natural forces, the poor little 
 results got by Wedgwood may well seem insignificant. 
 But there remains the fact that the step he took was 
 the first step, the premier pasj and his the original 
 
 * "A Group of Englishmen," by Eliza Meteyard, 1872. In this 
 book Miss Meteyard, who had written a life of Josiah the famous 
 potter, gives a pleasant gossipy account of his sons and other relatives. 
 It has been rightly called " an agreeable melange" but it is full of 
 inaccuracy, the authoress habitually mixing up guesswork with fact. 
 
 t " Ah ! Monsieur le Cardinal, dans de pareilles affaires, il n'y a 
 que le premier pas qui coute." The affaire under discussion when 
 Mme. Du Deffand said this was the famous walk of Saint Denis after 
 his decapitation on Montmartre. The Cardinal had been wondering 
 how the saint could possibly have walked all the way to Paris. 
 
xii PREFACE 
 
 picture which has never been engraved, nor, I think, 
 publicly exhibited. 
 
 I am under like obligation to Mr. Godfrey Wedg- 
 wood (of Idlerocks, Staffordshire), who placed at my 
 disposal the whole of the MSS. left by the photo- 
 grapher, and has also very kindly allowed me to re- 
 produce in miniature the very interesting picture by 
 Stubbs, which includes the whole of Tom Wedgwood's 
 family as it was in the year 1780. 
 
 For valuable assistance on specific points my thanks 
 are due to Lord Kelvin and to Professor Liveing of 
 Cambridge, who obligingly answered inquiries as to 
 Tom Wedgwood's physical science work ; as also to 
 Mrs. Henry Sand ford, who kindly allowed me to see 
 some letters of the Wedgwoods, not printed in her Life 
 of Tom Poole. I may mention that I should have printed 
 a remarkable estimate of the character of Tom Wedg- 
 wood written soon after his death by Tom Poole, had 
 not this been already given at length in that biography, 
 a book, it is needless to say, which should be read by 
 any one interested in Coleridge and his circle. 
 
 R. B. LITCHFIELD. 
 
 31 KENSINGTON SQUARE, LONDON, 
 November 1902. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 PREFACE ... . . . . . vii 
 
 SKETCH OF FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS. . . . xvii 
 
 I. EARLY YEARS, 1771-1788 I 
 
 II. ETRURIA AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE, 1789-1793 . . 17 
 
 III. BEDDOES AND THE PNEUMATIC INSTITUTE, 1793-1794 33 
 
 IV. THE FAMILY CIRCLE, 1795-1796 .... 39 
 V. POOLE AND COLERIDGE THE COLERIDGE ANNUITY, 
 
 1797-1798 . . 49 
 VI. WANDERINGS SETTLEMENT IN DORSETSHIRE, 1798- 
 
 1800 . . . . . . . . 65 
 
 VII. THE WEST INDIES A FAILURE, 1800 ... 86 
 VIII. COLERIDGE AT GRETA HALL TRAVEL PLANS, 1800 
 
 1802 102 
 
 IX. SOUTH WALES AND CRESSELLY WITH COLERIDGE, 1802 120 
 
 X. ULLESWATER TO GENEVA AND FLIGHT HOME, 1803 130 
 XI. CONTINUED STRUGGLE FOR HEALTH INVASION ALARMS 
 
 AND VOLUNTEERING, 1803-1804 . . .143 
 
 XII. THE LAST YEAR, 1804-1805 . . . . 166 
 
 XIII. THE PHOTOGRAPHIC WORK . . . . .185 
 
 XIV. His METAPHYSICS AND PSYCHOLOGY 206 
 
xiv CONTENTS 
 
 APPENDICES 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A. AN ALLEGED DISCOVERY OF PHOTOGRAPHY IN 1727 
 
 SCHULZE'S WORD-PATTERNS . . . . .217 
 
 B. THE STORY OF PROFESSOR CHARLES'S SILHOUETTES . 228 
 
 C. A MYTHICAL ACCOUNT OF T. WEDGWOOD'S PHOTO- 
 
 GRAPHIC WORK .241 
 
 D. ON SOME NOTICES OF T. WEDGWOOD IN HISTORIES OF 
 
 PHOTOGRAPHY . . . . 246 
 
 E. As TO SOLID BODIES HAVING THE SAME TEMPERATURE 
 
 AT THE POINT OF INCANDESCENCE . . . .251 
 
 F. PRIESTLEY IN AMERICA . . . . . 253 
 G. THE COLERIDGE ANNUITY ITS AFTER-HISTORY . . 254 
 H. T. WEDGWOOD'S WILL 260 
 
 I. A NOTE ON THE VALUE OF PHOTOGRAPHY TO THE 
 
 WORLD. 262 
 
 SHORTENED REFERENCES TO SOME BOOKS CITED 
 
 " D. C." " Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a Narrative of the Events of 
 his Life." By James Dykes Campbell (Macmillan's, 1894). 
 
 "COLERIDGE'S POETICAL WORKS." The One Volume Edition 
 (Macmillan's, 1893), edited by J. Dykes Campbell, with a 
 Biographical Introduction, being that which was reproduced in 
 1 894 as a separate work. 
 
 T. P." "Thomas Poole and his Friends." By Mrs. Henry 
 Sandford. Two vols. 1888. 
 
 " COLERIDGE LETTERS." The Collection edited by Mr. E. H. 
 Coleridge, 1895. Two vols. 8 vo, paged continuously. 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 TOM WEDGWOOD. From a chalk drawing belonging to Miss 
 
 Wedgwood, of Leith Hill Place. Artist unknown Fronthpiect 
 
 Facing 
 Page 
 
 THE WEDGWOOD FAMILY AT ETRURIA HALL, in or about 
 1780. From the picture by George Stubbs, R.A. (1724- 
 1806), belonging to Mr. Godfrey Wedgwood of Idlerocks, 
 Staffordshire. (It was begun in 1780 but occupied the 
 painter, at intervals, several years.) It shows Josiah 
 Wedgwood of Etruria (1730-1795) with his wife Sarah 
 Wedgwood (d. 1815) and their children. These are 
 (beginning on the right) John (1766-1844), eldest son, 
 afterwards of Cote House; Josiah (1769-1843), afterwards 
 of Gunville Park and MaerHall ; Susannah (176 5-1 8 17), 
 afterwards Mrs. Robert Darwin and mother of Charles 
 Darwin ; Catharine (1774-1823), girl pulling carriage ; 
 Tom (1771-1805), photographer and friend of Coleridge ; 
 Sarah (1776-1856), girl by carriage; Mary Anne, in 
 carriage, born 1778, died in childhood. The spire in 
 the distance, on left, is Wolstanton Church. The object 
 on the table under the tree is the Portland or Barberini 
 Vase, Wedgwood's copies of which greatly advanced his 
 fame. In the distance on the right are the chimneys of 
 Burslem, where his pottery had previously been. Stubbs 
 was the famous animal painter of the time, and was 
 especially noted for his pictures of horses ... 6 
 
 ETRURIA HALL AND POTTERY in 1775. From a drawing in 
 the possession of Mr. Godfrey Wedgwood. The Hall, 
 T. Wedgwood's birthplace, is the large house on the left. 
 
 b 
 
xvi ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Facing 
 Page 
 
 That in the centre is " Little Etruria," the house built for 
 Bentley, Wedgwood's partner. It was pulled down long 
 since. The buildings below it are the Works (still 
 carried on by Wedgwood's great-great-grandsons). The 
 canal runs between the Works and the grounds of the 
 Hall. The distant tower and windmill are at Hanley . i ^ 
 
 FACSIMILE OF TOM WEDGWOOD'S HANDWRITING . . .21 
 
 JOSIAH WEDGWOOD (of Gunville Park and Maer Hall), brother 
 of T. Wedgwood. From the oil painting by Owen, in 
 possession of Miss Wedgwood of Leith Hill Place . . 38 
 
 ELIZABETH (ALLEN), WIFE OF JOSIAH WEDGWOOD. From the 
 portrait by Romney, in possession of Miss Wedgwood. 
 Painted when she was about twenty-eight ... 42 
 
 *HousE AT EASTBURY PARK, DORSETSHIRE. The residence of 
 
 Tom Wedgwood in 1801-1805 ..... 95 
 
 *ENTRANCE TO EASTBURY PARK . . . . . .113 
 
 *VILLAGE OF TARRANT GUNVILLE . . . . . 1 1 3 
 
 *TARRANT GUNVILLE CHURCH. Burial-place of T. Wedgwood 180 
 
 * For these four views the author is indebted to the kindness of the Editors of 
 Photography. They are from photographs taken in 1902 for the Centenary number 
 (May 6, 1902) of that publication. 
 
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CHAPTER I 
 
 EARLY YEARS 
 
 - -* --00 
 
 * The house still exists ; for many years past it has belonged to 
 the Duchy of Lancaster, which owns the minerals under it and 
 the surrounding lands, and is now used for purposes connected with 
 the mines. 
 
 Thomas is often called the third son, one of his elder brothers 
 having died in infancy. 
 
 A 
 
While this work was still in the press, Mr. 
 Litchfield died at Cannes on January 11, 1903. 
 Owing to his absence from England and other 
 causes there had been delay in its appearance. 
 He had greatly hoped that it would appear 
 hi 1902, the Centenary of Tom Wedgwood's 
 photographic work 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 EARLY YEARS 
 
 1771 1788 
 
 THOMAS WEDGWOOD, fourth son of Josiah Wedg- 
 wood, the famous potter, was born on May 14, 1771, 
 at Etruria Hall, near Stoke-upon-Trent. The hall 
 was a new house which his father had built as a resi- 
 dence for the family, hard by the Pottery, the potting 
 business having been removed from Burslem to this 
 site a year or two previously.^ When only six years 
 old the boy was sent to a school kept by Mr. Holland, 
 a Unitarian minister at Bolton, where his brothers 
 already were, and remained there two years. The 
 method of his education was a matter which gave his 
 father many doubts. Josiah Wedgwood's letters to his 
 partner and friend, Bentley, contain frequent specula- 
 tions on the questions as to what his boys should learn, 
 and how to secure their having a healthy bodily life 
 while the schooling went on. 
 
 " Erasmus Darwin," he says in one letter (October 
 1779), "has approved my idea of curtailing the educa- 
 
 * The house still exists ; for many years past it has belonged to 
 the Duchy of Lancaster, which owns the minerals under it and 
 the surrounding lands, and is now used for purposes connected with 
 the mines. 
 
 Thomas is often called the third son, one of his elder brothers 
 having died in infancy. 
 
& TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 tion of my boys in order to establish their health, and 
 give the more strength to their constitution." Dr. 
 Darwin advises him to keep them at home, and this he 
 does. They are to have four Latin lessons a week, 
 " only to keep up what they know, till I have decided 
 as to this part of their learning." " I am distressed to 
 find out a sort of compromise between the body and 
 the mind that shall do the least injury to either." 
 
 In another letter he describes the regime at length. 
 They " read English before breakfast, newspaper or 
 travels, writing one hour with Mr. Swift ; writing 
 French exercises ; then ride or drive their hoop or 
 jump over a cord, or use any exercise they please for 
 an hour." Later in the day there are two French 
 lessons, and " some accounts in the evening, in which 
 the girl takes part." 
 
 The earliest letter of Tom which has been preserved 
 is one written when he was nearly twelve years old, 
 giving an account of a scene during the bread riots, 
 which broke out in the Potteries in 1783. His father 
 is in London. 
 
 Tom Wedgwood to his father, Josiah 
 
 ETRURIA, 
 
 Wednesday, March II, 1783. 
 DEAR PAPA, 
 
 As I thought you would like to hear how the mob went on 
 I will tell you. 
 
 On Sunday all was quiet. There was a meeting at Newcastle 
 (at which my brother John was present) to consider what was 
 the best way to quell the Mob and to keep up the market. 
 John subscribed jlo ; a good many others also subscribed. 
 
 On Monday the mob came to Bilington's where there was 
 
EARLY YEARS 3 
 
 a meeting of the Master Potters, Dr. Falkener, Mr. Ing, 
 Mr. Sneyd of Bellmont, and harrangued to the Mob on the 
 bad way they had begun in to lessen the price of corn, as did 
 my brother John and also Major Sneyd (who came with the 
 Militia) was exceedingly active in speaking to them. He 
 said, " Why do you rise," and he answer'd him " on the same 
 account that your father went out of the country." This 
 distressed him so much that he cried. All their speaking was 
 to no effect. 
 
 They then raised a subscription. John subscribed ^20. 
 This they said would not have been raised without we had 
 risen. This speech pussled them much. They then read the 
 riot act and said if they did not disperse in a hour's time they 
 would fire on them. An hour gone and they did not disperse. 
 Dr. Falkener had got the word " Fire " in his mouth when two 
 men dropt down by accident which stopt him and he con- 
 sidered about it more. The Woemen were much worse than 
 the men ; as for example, Parson Sneyd had got about 30 men 
 to follow him he hurraing and the an all [sic] but a woman 
 cried Nay, nay that wunna do, that wunna do, and so they 
 turned back again ; it was agreed that the corn taken in the 
 boat* should be sold at a fair price. 
 
 Bolton, Barlow are taken up and gone to Stafford the rest of 
 the days have been quiet. John and Mr. Lomas are gone to 
 Stone. They all send their love to you and comt 8 . to Mr. and 
 Mrs. Byerley. 
 
 I am, 
 
 Your dutifull son, 
 
 THOMAS WEDGWOOD. 
 Turn over. 
 
 P.S. I would have written this letter well but I have got 
 the head ach, but did not like to miss the opportunity of a 
 box. T.W. 
 
 * A barge which was stopped and plundered at Etruria, as it was 
 making its way to Manchester, the mob imagining that, as the corn 
 
4 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 Another letter to his father, of about a year later, 
 gives a pleasant glimpse of his home life, and shows 
 him as certainly very much grown up for a boy of 
 thirteen. It shows, too, that he was on charmingly 
 easy terms with his father. 
 
 Tom Wedgwood to his father 
 
 ETRURIA, 
 
 April 20, 1/84. 
 DEAR PAPA, 
 
 By the time this letter reaches you I hope you will have had 
 a pleasant journey and got safe and sound to London. Matthew 
 Mills is very busy at the Garden Pools repairing the dams at 
 the lower Pool, which the cows have damaged very much that 
 go to drink there, and unless some remedy is thought of to secure 
 the dam, it will be considerably damaged. Now making a 
 drinking place just below the lower Pool with the water that 
 runs from the Pool and fencing a post and railing round the 
 dam, will be good security. If you will give me the post of 
 Superintendant of your pools, I will see that they are done pro- 
 perly and soon. My hotbed is compleated all but glazing. The 
 Bricklayers have pulled down part of the lower wall and are 
 building it up again and will finish at the end of the week. 
 
 I have had several large fish at my line lately (fishing with a 
 Gudgeon) and leaving it in all night. Some large fish at the 
 top Pool struck at my Bait as I lifted it up. Another, my rod 
 drawn in the water and the bait eat of. Still another, half my 
 bait eat of and the other half drawn up the line. 
 
 I'd be very glad if you would give me that post for indeed 
 
 was going out of the district, the owners were trying to raise prices 
 against the Staffordshire people. John Wedgwood, Tom's eldest 
 brother, is at this time a lad of seventeen. The reply of the mob 
 to Major Sneyd is enigmatical. Possibly Mr. Wedgwood would 
 understand why it made him cry. The two men taken to Stafford 
 were convicted, and Barlow executed. 
 
EARLY YEARS c 
 
 J 
 
 1 would take very good care and always keep them in good 
 order. Mathew only waits only for Command to go on and 
 finish his job. 
 
 My Aunt is much better and will drink Beer and brandy and 
 I don't know what. I wish you would get me a pair of Buckles 
 and send them immediately, for I have got none but a broken 
 pair. I shall furnish all your pools with plenty of baits as I 
 have now near a dozen hands under employment. I have got 
 leave to fish of Mr. Stockley and the miller will get leave of 
 the tenant of Mr. Allen and J. Beech of Mr. Jarvis, so then 
 for Wilkes and liberty. 
 
 Give my love to my sister and will answer her letter very 
 soon. Mary Anne is very well indeed and was much pleased 
 with her journey. 
 
 Almost everybody have colds but I have escap'd yet. Mr. 
 Chisolm is very well and sends his best respects to you and 
 family. 
 
 Give my best love to my Mother, sister and John and should 
 be happy in hearing from them. Pray remember me to Mr. 
 and Mrs. Byerley and believe me to be, 
 
 Your dutifull son, 
 
 THOS. WEDGWOOD. 
 
 Would have written it better but had not time. 
 
 (Address on cover : Mr. Wedgwood, London. No postmark ; 
 it no doubt went in the box.) 
 
 The person who had most to do with the education 
 of Tom * Wedgwood, after his father, was Alexander 
 Chisolm, Josiah Wedgwood's faithful secretary and 
 chemical assistant. Chisolm came to Etruria, a man 
 of middle age, in 1780, when Tom was nine years old. 
 
 * I shall refer to him thus throughout the book, as he was always 
 so-called, both in and outside of the family circle. 
 
6 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 He was a good chemist, a man of education, and 
 at least something of a classical scholar. The boys 
 became much attached to him. The various other 
 influences which would help to mould the mind 
 and character of a boy growing up in the Etruria 
 household may be easily imagined from what we know 
 of Josiah Wedgwood and his life.* Among the friends 
 of the great Potter were some of the foremost English- 
 men of the time. He was intimate with James Watt 
 from 1768 onwards. Priestley, who settled in Bir- 
 mingham in 1780, owed much to his friendship. 
 Wedgwood sent him annually twenty-five guineas in 
 aid of his expenditure on scientific experiments. With 
 Erasmus Darwin and his family there was constant 
 intercourse. Derby, where Darwin lived from about 
 1781, was not far off, and the children of the two 
 houses were intimate as well as the parents. James 
 Keir of West Bromwich, ex-captain of foot and glass 
 manufacturer, whom James Watt called " a mighty 
 chemist and very agreeable man/' was one of the group. 
 Richard Lovell Edgeworth was another. It was a 
 circle in which " advanced " ideas prevailed, ideas which 
 
 * Unfortunately there is no satisfactory biography of Josiah, the 
 Potter. Miss Meteyard's two bulky volumes give a large amount of 
 information about him, but, as sufficiently appears from her entirely 
 mythical account of Tom Wedgwood's photography (see p. 241) 
 no statement of hers can be trusted which is not confirmed by other 
 evidence, while her persistent strain of magniloquent eulogy is a 
 constant irritation to the reader. The little book by Mr. Smiles 
 (1894) is a lively sketch of the man and his career, but it has many 
 technical errors, and was evidently put together in great haste. The 
 memoir in the " Dictionary of National Biography," by Professor 
 Church, F.R.S., is (I am told by a high authority on the subject) 
 excellently well done. 
 
EARLY YEARS 7 
 
 were in great part a reverberation from the pre-revolu- 
 tionary movement in France. All this could not fail 
 to give a strong bent to Tom Wedgwood's mind. His 
 training was scientific rather than literary, but we find 
 him working hard at the Latin classics with Chisolm, 
 and also with a tutor by name Lomas, who however, 
 according to his brother Josiah's account, was a quite 
 uninspiring teacher. A French prisoner was found to 
 teach the boys French. 
 
 In the autumn of 1786 (<*?/. fifteen), Tom joined his 
 brother Josiah at Edinburgh University. The lads 
 lived with Dr. Blacklock, the blind poet, who must 
 have been an interesting man in many ways. He was 
 one to whom the world owes something, for it was he 
 who, at a critical moment in the life of Robert Burns, 
 when the young poet, despairing of a career in Scotland, 
 had resolved to leave his native country for ever and 
 was on the point of embarking for the West Indies, 
 induced him to give up the scheme and come to 
 Edinburgh.* 
 
 The letters of the two young men from Edinburgh 
 show them, as one would expect, plentifully interested 
 in the place and its student life. They are busy with 
 their lectures and their various societies, and take a 
 good deal of exercise golf, apparently, is the chief 
 
 * " My chest was on its way to Greenock " (writes Burns to Dr. 
 Moore, August 2, 1787) "when a letter from Dr. Blacklock to a 
 friend of mine overthrew all my schemes, by opening new prospects 
 to poetic ambition. His opinion that I would meet with encourage- 
 ment in Edinburgh for a second edition fixed me so much that away 
 I posted for that city without a single acquaintance or a single letter 
 of introduction." (" Currie's Life," Ed. 1800. See also Sir Leslie 
 Stephen's account in " Diet. Nat. Biog.") 
 
8 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 form of it, which Jos expects will keep off Tom's 
 headaches. Jos tells his father " the students here are 
 not very genteel ; the Divinity students are the dirtiest 
 set I ever saw ; a company of old potters look like 
 gentlemen compared to them." 
 
 Tom corresponds with Chisolm, chiefly on chemical 
 topics ; his letters bristle with rows of the queer old 
 symbols for gases, acids, and metals which were still 
 then in use among chemists. Chisolm gives him wise 
 advice about his studies ; his letters are big folio sheets, 
 closely written in a clear and careful hand. Some read 
 like chapters out of a chemical journal, discussions on 
 what Priestley or Lavoisier is doing, and the conflicting 
 theories of the day. He addresses the boy (who is 
 only fifteen) with the ceremonious formality of the 
 time. 
 
 Alexander Chisolm to Tom Wedgwood 
 
 ETRURIA, 
 
 Dec 23, 1786. 
 DEAR SIR, 
 
 I wrote to you a few lines two or three days ago along with 
 some books, which I understand are not yet gone, and therefore 
 I cannot let slip the opportunity of thanking you for the very 
 sensible letter I received from you last night, and expressing my 
 unfeigned pleasure in the avidity I observe in you for useful 
 knowledge, and your assiduity in acquiring it. Your plan or 
 study has my perfect approbation. . . . The classics I could 
 wish to be a principal object this winter ; you can now read 
 them with understanding ; you will soon read them with 
 pleasure. 
 
 [Here follows much about the question of using translations, 
 the Latin of Livy and of Buchanan, &c. ; then advice as to 
 how to read to the blind Dr. Blacklock, not sinking the voice 
 
EARLY YEARS 9 
 
 
 
 in the final syllables. At present let him not try to study 
 Moral Philosophy or "Belles Lettres," but let Classics and 
 Chemistry take his whole time.] 
 
 Your elaboratory shall be taken care of [and this leads to a 
 long chemical excursus.] 
 
 I will only add that I am sincerely glad the salubrious exercise 
 of golf is agreeable to you, and I recommend it to you as 
 strongly for Saturdays as I would Chemistry or Classics any 
 other day. 
 
 Interpone tuis interdum gaudia curis, 
 
 Ut quemvis animo possis perferre laborem. 
 
 Remember me to Jos, and believe me to be, 
 
 Dear Sir, Your faithful & Obedient servant, 
 
 ALEX r . CHISOLM. 
 
 Tom Wedgwood to his Father 
 
 Dec. 31, 1786. 
 DEAR SIR, 
 
 # * * * * 
 
 I have just got into a new society here, called the Philo- 
 logical Society, in which I must exert all my oratory powers, 
 which, as I never yet tried them in public, you know, may be very 
 great ; but I dinna ken. There are some very clever members 
 of it : I shall have to write a paper in a little time, but am as 
 yet quite undetermined of the subject of it, and should be very 
 thankful if you would help me a little in this. 
 
 ***** 
 
 There has been a very disagreeable thing here [story of a 
 student having tried to pass a forged bill at a shop]. He was 
 sent to the Tolbooth (the prison). He stands no chance for his 
 life. This unlucky affair will confirm the townspeople a bad 
 opinion of the Irish gentry (He was one). There has already 
 been one hanged, and several have taken French leave. 
 
io TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 I am come to the end of my paper, and so I shall finish with 
 desiring you to 
 
 Believe me. 
 
 Yours affectionately, 
 
 THOS. WEDGWOOD. 
 
 Auld Reekie, Dec r ., Saturday before New Year's Day, 1786. 
 
 Josiah Wedgwood to *Alex r Chisolm 
 
 January n, 1787. 
 DEAR SIR, 
 
 Tom began this letter and I shall finish it. ... The Philo- 
 logical Society consists of 13 or 14 young men, among which 
 are two or three very clever. I intend to write on the sublime 
 ... I like Dr. Blacklock more every day. . . . We had three 
 visits from Mr. Burns, a natural poet ; his brother is a farmer 
 and he was the ploughman, but had a very uncommon poetic 
 turn. He is now publishing a second edition of his poems, to 
 which I shall subscribe. Many of them are in the Scottish 
 dialect. 
 
 My love to all at Etruria, 
 
 I am your much obliged friend, 
 
 JOSIAH WEDGWOOD. 
 
 Tom Wedgwood spent two winter sessions, appa- 
 rently, at Edinburgh, 1786-7 and 1787-8. In the 
 spring of 1788 there was a scheme for his going to 
 Rome ; but this dropped, and he remained at Etruria, 
 taking part in the work of the pottery. We find him 
 writing to his father, in March 1790, about such 
 matters as the dismissal of apprentices at Etruria for 
 over much swearing, and the colouring and furnishing 
 of the London show-room in Greek Street. But his 
 letters show him to be keenly eager, all this time, to go 
 on with his studies in Natural Philosophy. This was the 
 
EARLY YEARS n 
 
 main motive of a scheme which he now proposed to his 
 father. 
 
 While at Edinburgh he had made the acquaintance 
 of John Leslie, a young man about five years older than 
 himself who had come there as a student of Theology, 
 but had given up the intention of becoming a minister 
 and was working at natural science. Tom and he had 
 not been particularly intimate at Edinburgh, but they 
 had since corresponded at intervals. Leslie, who had 
 no private means his father was a carpenter had been 
 to America as a travelling tutor, and was now without 
 any definite plans, supporting himself in a precarious 
 way by teaching and lecturing. Tom's proposition to 
 his father was that Leslie should be asked to come to 
 stay at Etruria to assist him and his brother Josiah in 
 their laboratory work and scientific studies generally. 
 His father agreed to this, and Leslie received the offer 
 with rapturous delight. 
 
 John Leslie to 'Tom Wedgwood 
 
 LONDON, 
 
 Jprilis, 1790. 
 MY DEAREST SIR, 
 
 To-day I received your very kind and flattering letter of the 
 9th instant. Your uncommon manner of writing throws me 
 into a maze of wonder, and transports me with heartfelt joy. 
 What a charming picture of a polished, elegant, and feeling 
 mind ! I am at a loss to answer your kindness. That warmth 
 of affection, and that goodness of heart, give a lovely cast to 
 human nature. A crowd of ideas at once rush upon me. That 
 diffidence and extreme delicacy is highly pleasing ; but to me 
 is unnecessary. Talk freely from you nothing can displease. 
 . . . The idea of residing with a young man whose heart is 
 
12 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 of the same mould, and whose mind is so benevolent, so 
 generous, and so enlarged, is beyond measure delightful. Every 
 other view vanishes in an instant. Money, my dear friend, is 
 to me no object. The situation which you describe is the most 
 fortunate, the most happy I could picture in my imagination. . . . 
 
 I am afraid, my dearest friend, you over-rate my real merit. 
 . . . The smallness of my acquisitions will I hope be compen- 
 sated by steady attention and warm affections. [Then follows 
 an eulogy of the genius of Josiah Wedgwood, the father.] I 
 have long been accustomed to admire the ingenuity and bold- 
 ness which created a manufacture, that contributes more to the 
 real glory and wealth of our country than our fleets and 
 armies. . . . 
 
 But I exhaust your patience and precious time with long 
 epistles. I wait with trembling anxiety my happiness hangs 
 upon your decision. 
 
 I am, my dear Sir, 
 
 Yours ever sincerely, 
 
 Jo. LESLIE. 
 
 Excuse this scrawl. 
 
 This letter is a characteristic specimen of Leslie's 
 epistolary style. Except when he happens to be writ- 
 ing of thermometers or gases, we seem to be reading 
 Mr. Collins in " Pride and Prejudice." The " scrawl " 
 for which he excuses himself is a piece of quite perfect 
 penmanship, without sign of erasure or alteration. 
 
 It was a part of Tom Wedgwood's plan that he and 
 Leslie should live together, not in the family house 
 at Etruria, but in a separate house hard by. His 
 father did not see the advantage of this, but Tom is 
 urgent in arguing the point. Here is one of several 
 letters in which he expounds his views. They dis- 
 close intensely " earnest " views of life and duty. 
 
EARLY YEARS 13 
 
 9 
 
 He is full of exalted ideas of self-culture, and of 
 devotion to the service of mankind. 
 
 Tom Wedgwood to his Father 
 
 May 8, 1790. 
 
 * 
 
 I rather suppose that you have formed a wrong idea of my 
 intention. ... Be assured there is no danger of my entering 
 into the selfish, insignificant character of a hermit. I know 
 too well the purposes of my creation. I have conceived too 
 exalted a notion of the real dignity of man, existing in Action 
 from principle, and despise too heartily those mistaken beings 
 who amuse themselves unprofitably in the mazes of meta- 
 physical refinements and abstruse philosophy. My aim is to 
 strengthen the power of reason by the habit of reflection, and 
 by cultivating the virtues of the heart in a temporal [sic\ retire- 
 ment from the world at large ; to purify the motives of conduct 
 for what is Action unless the sources be pure ? With that open- 
 ness which should subsist between a father and a son, I joyfully 
 acquaint you that I have already made considerable progress in 
 this most important work a thousand sensations convince me 
 that in this confidence I am not misled by the illusions of 
 vanity. . . . 
 
 I am well aware that the next three or four years of my life 
 are the most important. Manhood is the seal of man. Our 
 passions and affections are all to be moderated and corrected in 
 the season of youth. In this critical moment I shall strive hard 
 to fashion myself so, that I may best perform the grand dutys 
 [his spelling is not impeccable] of this life. I reflect every day 
 on the nature of the relation between the creator and creature, 
 and hope by these instructive speculations to arrive at the know- 
 ledge of the purposes of creation, and hence of what these dutys 
 consist in. The question is extremely intricate and compre- 
 hensive, and can never receive a full decisive answer from human 
 reason. . . . An inactive and virtuous life are incompatible, 
 
14 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 and I mean to exert myself for the good of my fellow crea- 
 tures. . . . 
 
 [In another letter]. Our main dutys are Beneficence and the 
 Social. I can say for myself that whatever my situation and 
 circumstances may be, I shall never sleep in the service of my 
 fellow creatures. 
 
 Promiscuous company has no allurements. ... I have a 
 strong desire of enjoying the blessing the right, perhaps, of 
 choosing my own company and of avoiding that I dislike, by 
 easier methods than I have now recourse to. 
 
 One may smile at many things in this letter, but 
 we must remember that the writer is just nineteen 
 years old, and that the time is ten months after the 
 fall of the Bastille. In his aspirations after a life of 
 " beneficence and virtue " one feels the ring of the new 
 ideas which the great upheaval of 1789 was stirring in 
 the young and ardent souls of the time. How Josiah 
 Wedgwood replied to his son's eager pleadings we do 
 not know. We may be sure that the wise father did 
 not laugh at his young enthusiasm, though he may 
 have been amused at the didactic solemnity with which 
 the lad expounds his ideal of life. Nor do we know 
 whether he and Leslie were allowed to set up house 
 apart from the family at Etruria Hall. We might 
 guess that Tom's friend and tutor was treated with 
 Josiah Wedgwood's usual liberality, and received cor- 
 dially as one of the family. Leslie lets us know, in his 
 magnificent language, that this was the case. 
 
EARLY YEARS 15 
 
 John Leslie to 'Tom Wedgwood 
 
 LONDON, 
 
 April 29, 1790. 
 
 ***** 
 
 How shall I make a proper return ? I hope the magnitude 
 of the offer will be an additional spur to my exertions. There 
 is a circumstance, my dear friend, which gives me peculiar 
 pleasure. From the generosity of your nature I am convinced 
 that I shall be upon an easy footing. I am a moderate lover of 
 liberty, but I am every day more riveted in a settled aversion to 
 the fawning arts of the sycophant, and to be submitted to the 
 caprices and tyranny of an Aristocrate [sic"] would to me be 
 the more dreadful of punishments. At the same time my dear 
 Sir, I hope this disposition does not arise from any overweaned 
 conceit of myself, but springs from the consciousness of the 
 unalienable rights and native dignity of man. . . . 
 
 I am rilled with a mixture of wonder and gratitude. . . . 
 United with a gentleman who possesses all the warmth of dis- 
 position and the acuteness of discernment of our friend T. M. 
 Randolph, but who possesses, besides, a virtue the most essential 
 to the dignity and success of life, steadiness of conduct and 
 resolution of character, whose passions are subordinate to his 
 reason, and who has imbibed more of the spirit of the Stoic than 
 the Epicurean philosophy and not yet nineteen ! I upbraid 
 myself that I am five years older. This is the age of bliss, the 
 head not hardened by jarring interests is susceptible of every 
 delicate impression, and the soul springs unbounded. . . . What 
 character is so benevolent and so generous as that of a young 
 man who has just left college. You feel the justness of the 
 
 remark. 
 
 ***** 
 
 I am, my dear Sir, 
 
 Yours affect ly ., 
 
 Jo. LESLIE. 
 
16 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 Leslie remained at Etruria about two years, from 
 June 1790. His stay there was doubtless a great help 
 to Tom Wedgwood in his scientific work. One may 
 doubt whether his influence was good in other ways. 
 He pours out his admiration for his pupil in language 
 which is too exuberant to sound sincere, and whether 
 sincere or not, it was hardly wholesome reading for a 
 lad of nineteen. 
 
 <c Our dispositions, you say, are congenial. I esteem this 
 the highest compliment I could receive." 
 
 "I derived great advantage from it [Edinburgh University], 
 but what I am confident is the greatest of all, I commenced at 
 Edinburgh an acquaintance with yourself." 
 
 "To reside with a young man whose heart is of the same 
 mould, and whose mind is so benevolent, so generous and so 
 enlarged, is altogether delightful." 
 
 " Your time is too precious to spend much of it with me 
 but to enjoy your company in your intervals of leisure is the 
 most flattering prospect." 
 
 These are specimens of Leslie's outpourings ; but 
 his career as a man of science showed him to be a man 
 of more real capacity than one would have inferred 
 from the absurd pomposity of his letters. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 ETRURIA AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE WORK 
 17891793 
 
 THE three years which followed Tom Wedgwood's 
 stay at Edinburgh University, 178991, were spent 
 mainly at Etruria, and they may be said to have been 
 the only working years of his short life, for this was 
 the only time during which health allowed him to set 
 himself to any definite occupation. Early in 1790 he 
 became a partner in his father's business, and began 
 taking part in the management of the pottery. During 
 these years he was also working at physical science. The 
 laboratory and the pottery processes at Etruria gave him 
 special facilities for experiments bearing on the relations 
 between heat and light, and he gave much time to a 
 course of experiments of this kind. The results of his 
 work were embodied in two papers which were read 
 before the Royal Society. The first of these, read on 
 December 22, 1791 {'Transactions for 1792, pp. 28-47), 
 is entitled " Experiments and Observations on the 
 production of Light from different bodies by heat and 
 attrition," by Mr. Thomas Wedgwood, communicated 
 by Sir Joseph Banks, Bart., F.R.S. The second paper 
 is described as a continuation of the first. This 
 special field of investigation was apparently a new one. 
 He corresponded with Priestley on the subject, and we 
 
i8 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 find the great chemist telling him : " I do not know 
 that any experiments have been made on the curious 
 and important subjects that you mention," and again, 
 " they (your experiments) will throw some new light 
 on a very important subject, about which we as yet 
 know very little."* 
 
 In his first paper, after a brief summary of the 
 results of previous observations, beginning with the 
 discovery of the stone which went by the name of 
 " Bolognese Phosphorus," he describes how a great 
 variety of substances, some fifty or more, can be 
 rendered luminous by the method of reducing the 
 substance to powder and sprinkling it on a warm^plate 
 of iron, and then gives an account of the processes 
 whereby he has been able to obtain phosphoric effect by 
 attrition. 
 
 In his second paper he gives the particulars of 
 various experiments showing the results of making 
 different substances red hot. In the first of these (to 
 take an instance) he fixes two equal cylinders of silver, 
 half an inch long and a quarter of an inch in diameter, 
 with polished surfaces, in a tube of earthenware. One 
 cylinder is painted over, one not so. Both are put 
 into a red hot crucible surrounded by burning coals, 
 and he observes that the blackened silver shines much 
 before that with the non-blackened surface. 
 
 A particular interest attaches to one of these experi- 
 ments (the seventh), as it was the first announcement, 
 apparently, of a law at that time unknown. He 
 " gilded a piece of earthenware in lines running across " 
 
 * Quoted by Miss Meteyard ("Group of Englishmen," p. 53) 
 from letters described as Finch MSS. 
 
ETRURIA AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE 19 
 
 and gradually made it red hot ; and he " could not, 
 after many trials, perceive that either the gold or the 
 earthenware began to shine first." Whereon he adds : 
 "As it appears from this experiment that gold and 
 earthenware begin to shine at the same temperature, 
 and as no two bodies can well be more different, in all 
 their sensible properties, may it not be inferred, that 
 almost all bodies begin to shine at the same tempera- 
 ture ? " The inference, it will be seen, is put in an 
 interrogative form ; but though this experiment would 
 not in itself establish the suggested law, it is the fact 
 that all bodies " begin to shine at the same tempera- 
 ture," or, as it sometimes is expressed, have the same 
 point of incandescence. 
 
 I have been unable to ascertain to whom the first 
 discovery of this law has usually been attributed, but I 
 have not at present found any reference to it, other 
 than that in Tom Wedgwood's paper, earlier than the 
 year 1847. (See Appendix, p. 241.) 
 
 While working at the long series of experiments 
 described in the two papers, Wedgwood was corre- 
 sponding on the subject with Priestley, and with 
 another chemist of note, James Keir, of West 
 Bromwich.* 
 
 * James Keir was a man of mark, and had a singular career. He 
 had been a medical student at Edinburgh, where he was a great 
 friend of Erasmus Darwin, and afterwards, for about nine years, 
 an officer in the army. His proclivities to science ultimately led 
 him to settle at West Bromwich and devote himself to chemistry and 
 geology. Then he became a glass manufacturer, and was concerned 
 in other manufacturing works, being at one time associated with 
 Boulton and Watt. He, like so many of Tom Wedgwood's friends, 
 was a sympathiser with the French Revolution, and became con- 
 spicuous in that character by taking the chair at the meeting at 
 Birmingham on July 14, 1791 (second anniversary of the fall of the 
 
FACSIMILE OF T. WEDGWOOD'S WRITING 
 
ETRURIA AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE 21 
 
 direction of photography is wholly uncertain. At 
 present there seems to be no evidence definitely show- 
 ing that he did ; but this point will be touched on in 
 the chapter dealing with his photographic work. 
 
 Other problems connected with light and heat 
 occupied him for a long time in these years. But 
 by the year 1792 the ill health from which he had 
 suffered more or less from childhood had become so 
 constant as to make him unfit for any serious or Con- 
 tinous work, and from that time onwards he seems to 
 have done nothing in physical science save in a frag- 
 mentary and occasional way. 
 
 A memorandum in his writing, preserved among his 
 letters, records this arrest of what promised to be a 
 fruitful course of scientific work. It is on a half-sheet 
 of letter paper, and bears marks of wafers, by which it 
 seems to have been closed up as if for special preserva- 
 tion, with the endorsement " Account of proposed 
 experiments in vacuo." It runs as follows : 
 
 <c I spent half a year in endeavouring to suspend a ther- 
 mometer in vacuo. Olive oil seemed to promise better than 
 mercury. I thought that the thermometer might be raised to a 
 great height by exposing it with a blackened bulb to the rays of 
 the sun, suspended by a very fine wire or hair, as I concluded 
 that a true vacuum would not conduct the heat away from the 
 bulb, all it would lose would be by the wire or hair. I proposed 
 to converge the rays of the moon on it also to try if their heat 
 could be thus appreciated. I proposed likewise to have sails 
 upon a delicate axis to turn round by the impulse of light. But 
 not succeeding in my trials at a vacuum, and finding my health 
 impaired, I resolved to give up experimenting. 
 
 " April, 1792.* THOS. WEDGWOOD." 
 
 * This date is so placed (the word " experimenting " being at the 
 
22 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 His object, I should imagine, in writing this, was to 
 keep some record of ideas which he might pursue at a 
 future time if his health should mend, or which might 
 be useful as suggestions to future experimenters. The 
 first sentence testifies to his perseverance as well as his 
 enthusiasm. To spend six months in struggling with 
 a single mechanical problem shows something of the 
 " infinite capacity for taking pains," in which we have 
 been told that genius mainly consists. But the interest 
 of the record is in the date, which shows that at least 
 as early as April 1792 his health had become too bad 
 to allow of his going on with any continuous work. 
 He was then some weeks short of twenty-one years 
 old. There is a pathos in the thought of so eager a 
 student being forced, when still only at the outset of 
 his work, to abandon the hope of doing anything 
 effective. 
 
 His idea of getting sails upon a delicate axis to turn 
 round by the action of light may perhaps remind a 
 modern reader of the curious radiometer of Sir William 
 Crookes, in which something like this appears to be 
 going on. But of course Wedgwood could have had 
 no real prevision of what happens in the radiometer. 
 Reasoning on Newton's emission theory of light, he 
 thought that if the opposing pressure of the air could 
 be got rid of, the shock of the little particles of light 
 knocking on the sails would make them turn round. 
 In the radiometer, as I understand, the turning of the 
 little vanes has to do with light only in the sense that 
 
 end of a line) that it may signify either the date on which the paper 
 was written, or the date when he " resolved to give up experiment- 
 ing." 
 
ETRURIA AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE 23 
 
 '(0 x 
 
 the heat accompanying it makes inequalities of tem- 
 perature in the gas surrounding the instrument, whence 
 come differences of pressure causing the motion. Tom 
 Wedgwood, naturally, had no glimmering of these 
 mysteries of molecular action, which were to be ex- 
 pounded nearly a century later by Clerk Maxwell and 
 other physicists.* 
 
 The detection and measurement of the heat sent to 
 the earth by the moon was another problem which had 
 to wait long for a solution. Lord Rosse attempted it 
 some forty years ago, but it has only recently, I believe, 
 been settled by means of Mr. Boys's " micro-radio- 
 meter," a wonderful instrument, which measures very 
 minute changes of temperature by means of a test 
 founded on the electrical action of one metal on 
 another. 
 
 Tom Wedgwood's " resolve to give up experiment- 
 ing " on account of impaired health brings us to what 
 was the dominant fact of his life. He never had any 
 health. In his early years he was weakly ; we hear of 
 headaches troubling him as a boy, and in his student 
 days at Edinburgh. As years went on it became clear 
 that he had a grave constitutional disease, which, as we 
 shall see, made the last ten years of his life utterly 
 miserable. What the ailment was the best medical 
 skill of the time failed to discover. The doctors 
 seem to have generally agreed that it had to do with 
 the digestive system. Some called it a paralysis or 
 semi-paralysis of the colon. One considered it to be 
 
 * Clerk Maxwell in Phil. Tr. of 1879 on Stresses in rarefied 
 gases, &c. " Enc. Brit." Art. " Pneumatics," p. 249. 
 
24 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 the sequel of an attack of dysentery which he had when 
 a student at Edinburgh. Others would only call it 
 " hypochondria." Whatever the physical cause was, a 
 main feature of the disease was a continual recurrence 
 of fits of depression, sometimes lasting for weeks 
 together. His mental misery at these times, especially 
 towards the close of his life, made his condition hardly 
 distinguishable from one of insanity. The impression, 
 however, left by the letters is that the disease was not 
 primarily mental. There is not the slightest trace in 
 them of anything approaching a delusion, and in letters 
 written in moments of the deepest despondency we find 
 him discussing practical matters in the manner of a 
 man who is in complete possession of his faculties. 
 There were intervals when he was well capable of 
 bodily and mental labour, but as time went on the 
 periods of depression became longer and more frequent, 
 making his life well-nigh unbearable. Thus it came 
 about that, broadly speaking, his whole adult life, from 
 about 1792 on to the end in 1805, was devoted to a 
 single object, the fighting this terrible and mysterious 
 enemy. He went the round of the most notable 
 physicians of the day, Clive, Baillie, Erasmus Darwin, 
 Beddoes, and many more. He tried all manner of 
 cures, strange and fantastic regimes, new modes of life. 
 " Change of scene " was continually recommended as a 
 remedy ; hence he was perpetually travelling, in 
 England and abroad, and continually visiting relatives 
 and friends. It was not till nearly the end of his life 
 that he had a house of his own, and that was only 
 nominally a home. Its acquisition hardly arrested his 
 wandering course of life. 
 
ETRUR1A AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE 25 
 
 
 
 To revert to the year 1792 it was then that he was 
 for the first time out of England, making a flying visit 
 to Paris in order to be present at the great " Federa- 
 tion " fte held on July 14, on the Champ-de-Mars, to 
 celebrate the third anniversary of the fall of the 
 Bastille. Like most of his friends and belongings he 
 was ardently in sympathy with the revolutionary move- 
 ment in its early stages. The following letter gives 
 some of the impressions made by this first sight of a 
 foreign country. At this moment, it will be remem- 
 bered, the fall of the French monarchy was imminent. 
 Another month was to see the attack on the Tuileries 
 and the massacre of the Swiss Guard (August 10, 
 1792). Six months later Louis had been guillotined 
 and France and England were at war. 
 
 Tom Wedgwood to his Father 
 
 PARIS, 
 
 July 7, 1792. 
 DEAR SIR, 
 
 We have had a most delightful journey from London to 
 this place. We spent near three days at Brighton, waiting for 
 a good packet, and the wind being favourable got to Dieppe 
 in nine hours. We were about 25 passengers, all groaning 
 under sickness. . . . Mr. Biddulph made a third in a cabriolet 
 with us from Dieppe to Paris. . . . The last 50 or 60 miles 
 to Paris is all vineyard and a charming country. We stopped 
 near a day at Rouen with Mr. Wild ; nine-tenths of the people 
 are Aristocrats ; nearly three dozen churches are turning into 
 shops and dwellings by a decree of the N. Assembly, and yet 
 seventeen Parish Churches are left. I lodge here in the same 
 house with young Watt he is a furious democrat detests the 
 King and Fayette. The latter seems to be pretty generally 
 suspected of treachery Condorcet is equally so. It is entirely 
 
26 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 impossible for me to give you any good account of French 
 politics ; they are mutable as the wind. Watt says that a new 
 revolution must inevitably take place, and that it will in all 
 probability be fatal to the King, Fayette, and some hundred 
 others. The I4th of this month will probably be eventful. 
 He means to join the French Army in case of any civil rupture. 
 I have this morning been to some of the principal buildings of 
 Paris with him as a guide. The Thuilleries are shut up by 
 the King's order, though they are national property. I am 
 this moment risen from a dinner at Bouvilliers (which John 
 knows) where everything is given in a style far superior to 
 what they do in London, and very much cheaper. . . . The 
 streets of Paris stink more than the dirtiest hole in London, 
 and you cannot walk even in this dry time, without repeated 
 splashes. I have been most completely lost many times already, 
 and find the little French I know of the greatest use. Poor 
 John Turner * has never yet given utterance to a single word. 
 I shall endeavour to get some intelligence about the safety 
 with which one may be a spectator at the Federation. I do 
 not intend to run any risk in the matter, though every one 
 agrees that the sight will be grand beyond conception. I shall 
 write again before I leave Paris. . . . The English here are 
 all Aristocrats, and I do not intend to dine again at the Table 
 d'Hote, as politics are discussed with such freedom that it is 
 difficult to avoid disagreeable disputes. . . . 
 
 Believe me, Yours affectionately, 
 
 THO. WEDGWOOD.t 
 
 Best love to all. 
 
 P.S. You cannot write to me in Paris. 
 
 * Who he was does not appear ; perhaps an employe from Etruria, 
 going over to France on a business errand. 
 
 t This and the letter next mentioned are the only letters of his 
 among the family papers between the years 1791 and 1795. 
 
ETRURIA AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE 27 
 
 - 
 
 The P.S. probably means that he is hurrying 
 home after the fete. His making the journey for 
 such a short stay is a sign of his revolutionary ardour. 
 One can well imagine him making, like Wordsworth 
 at the same time, a pilgrimage to the site of the 
 Bastille, and piously bringing away a bit of stone from 
 the fallen fortress. 
 
 Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, 
 But to be young was very heaven ! 
 
 It was only for about two years that Tom Wedg- 
 wood was a partner in the Etruria works. Whether he 
 really worked at the business it is impossible to say 
 probably he did very little, considering his poor health 
 and his laboratory work. A letter of April 1792 gives 
 a glimpse of him as attending to sundry matters relat- 
 ing to the pottery, and sending a string of memoranda 
 thereon to his father and brother in London. " Our 
 common jasper is not yet at all as it should be ; it is 
 too soft and all the things made of it drop in firing. 
 . . . This is a great disappointment." Then come 
 questions as to purchases of adjacent land, and as to 
 what can be done with a tipsy coachman or postilion. 
 Twice in a fortnight " Dan has got very drunk at Mr. 
 Fletchers, and had like to have fallen off his horses. 
 He alarmed my sisters by his bad driving and was very 
 saucy to George this morning." 
 
 But by April in the next year, 1793, we ^ ave discus- 
 sions as to the terms on which he and John Wedgwood 
 are to retire from the partnership, and in June they 
 ceased to be members of the firm. Tom had now 
 
28 % TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 some thoughts, apparently, of settling in America. To 
 the young enthusiasts of that revolutionary time the 
 lately born republic seemed, as we know, a blessed land 
 of promise, a land where men might live in " freedom 
 and virtue," untrammelled by the corruptions and 
 superstitions of the old world. Leslie, who had spent 
 a year or two in the States, argues with Tom against 
 this project. 
 
 "I am afraid you will hardly find a situation in America 
 where you could settle comfortably. The society is neither 
 sufficiently enlightened for you, nor sufficiently refined. That 
 country, seen at a distance, will present its fairest aspect ; and, 
 though the slavish disposition of the people of Britain is 
 mortifying to a generous man, we may reasonably hope that 
 the impulse lately given to men's minds will soon triumph 
 over every obstacle, and finally produce a general renovation of 
 things." 
 
 Wedgwood, in turning his thoughts to America, 
 probably had in his mind the notable example of 
 Priestley, who, shrinking from the idea of returning to 
 Birmingham after the destruction of his home in the 
 riots of 1791, was on the point of migrating to Penn- 
 sylvania. But Leslie's advice was sensible, whatever 
 we may think of his reasons. Priestley's own experi- 
 ence a year or two later was a good commentary on the 
 hint that America was not altogether an ideal abode 
 for the "friends of liberty." The unorthodox 
 theologian and savant did not find it at all a peaceful 
 retreat.* 
 
 At some time in the year 1793 Tom Wedgwood 
 
 * See Appendix, p. 253. 
 
ETRURIA AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE 29 
 
 made the acquaintance of William Godwin,* then a 
 prominent figure among the " friends of liberty." 
 His " Enquiry concerning Political Justice " had 
 appeared early in that year, and it had made him 
 known as the philosophical representative of English 
 Radicalism. Wedgwood, a youth of twenty-two, still 
 in the stage of vehement revolt against things as they 
 were, readily fell into the attitude of a reverent dis- 
 ciple, and we may be sure that to the impecunious 
 and much-borrowing philosopher, the devoted allegi- 
 ance of a young man belonging to a circle in which 
 there was no lack of money, and himself on the way 
 to being rich, would be more than welcome. The 
 earliest of the extant letters addressed to Godwin 
 (November 9, 1795) * s on tne subject of a proffered 
 gift. It would seem that Wedgwood had proposed to 
 send him a copying machine, and that Godwin had de- 
 clined the gift, explaining at the same time his " senti- 
 ments on the giving and taking of presents."! This 
 evoked from Wedgwood a lengthy reply, in which he 
 treats the matter from the high ethical standpoint. 
 
 * William Godwin, born at Wisbech in 1756, began life as a 
 Presbyterian minister, but at about thirty became a "complete 
 unbeliever"; published " Political Justice " in 1793, and "Caleb 
 Williams" in 1794; married Mary Wollstonecraft (father by her 
 of Shelley's second wife) ; and afterwards Mrs. Clements or Claire- 
 mont, mother of the "Claire" who was mother of Byron's 
 " Allegra " ; got the sinecure post of yeoman-usher of the Exchequer 
 in 1833, and died in l8 3^. 
 
 t One would like to know what these "sentiments" were. 
 Godwin's delicacy in the matter of gifts was of a singular kind. In 
 after years he did not mind begging of Shelley, but stipulated that 
 his son-in-law's drafts should be made out without his own name 
 appearing on them. 
 

 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 Tom Wedgwood to Godwin 
 
 'November 9, 1795. 
 
 [After an elaborate preamble] ^ Prostituted as we all are to 
 the customs and opinions of Society, the attempt to build all 
 our actions on motives of vestal purity is obviously impractic- 
 able. I durst not give, nor could another accept, an invitation 
 to my table. . . . But what would result from the total suspen- 
 sion of good offices ? A disposition of mind unalloyed by 
 selfishness ? No, our selfishness would increase with our 
 wants and our principles would become every day weaker and 
 weaker from not being brought into action. ... I will now 
 y explain to you the precise motives of the action which gave 
 birth to this speculation." [This he does at great length, be- 
 ginning with the " pleasure that curious mechanical inventions 
 afford." Copying machines had just lately been invented by 
 James Watt. Then he proceeds :] 
 
 " I was glad when it occurred to me that by thus becoming 
 useful to your pursuits and by cautiously avoiding at the same 
 time any interruption of them from unseasonable visits, it was 
 not improbable you might connect some agreeable associations 
 with my person, and conceive some interest in my fellowship. 
 . . . The above is a perfectly ingenuous and accurate review 
 of the ideas that determined and grew out of an action of my 
 life that I can never wish to retract. There may be a speck 
 of selfishness on the face of it, but it is sound and untainted at 
 heart. . . . May I solicit from you an explication as unreserved 
 of the feelings that accompanied your passive situation ? If more 
 agreeable to you, defer it till our next meeting. I confess that 
 on some accounts I prefer writing to conversation. But this 
 preference is owing entirely to my want of a frank and clear 
 expression of my thoughts which exercise alone can supply. 
 
 " THOMAS WEDGWOOD." 
 
 Wedgwood's early letters are written, as this speci- 
 men shows, in an elaborately formal dialect, which we 
 
ETRURIA AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE 31 
 
 may set down in part to the fashion of the time. Later 
 they became less stiff. In this instance, doubtless, the 
 reverential attitude of the disciple to the master is 
 accountable for the solemnity with which he discusses 
 Godwin's pragmatical refusal of a small present. Like 
 many older and wiser people, he was completely taken 
 in by the audacious vigour with which Godwin ex- 
 pounded an utterly preposterous theory of human life. 
 'JMr. Kegan Paul tells us that the two men did not 
 really get on very well together ; they were " antipa- 
 thetic when they met, and suited each other only at a 
 distance." Wedgwood, while helping his friend with 
 liberal loans, "preferred that they should not meet, 
 and that their discussions should be conducted on 
 paper."* 
 
 It is rather entertaining, when one remembers the 
 philosopher's many borrowings, euphemistically so 
 called, to find that he was annoyed at his disciple 
 being so indelicate as to prepay the postage of his 
 letters. Mrs. Shelley tells us that at one time Tom 
 Wedgwood and her father " contemplated making a 
 common household together." Such a common 
 household would not have lasted many days without an 
 explosion. 
 
 Wedgwood's papers include one or two bits of what 
 appear to be compositions sent to Godwin for correc- 
 tion and comment. The criticisms in Godwin's hand 
 are not of a kind to suggest that the master's help was 
 of much value to the pupil. They are minute verbal 
 corrections, in the manner rather of the schoolmaster 
 
 * Kegan Paul's "Life of Godwin," i. 311. 
 
32 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 than of the philosopher. Wedgwood, for instance, 
 writes : " This feeling, from the cradle to the death 
 bed, never once deserts us." Godwin comments : 
 " ' Once/ pleonastic." Wedgwood describes a man as 
 being in a " live" mood. Godwin says, "for 'live* 
 read ' vigilant,' the other is scarcely English." Wedg- 
 wood's English is lax (e.g., the odd use of the word 
 " prostituted " in the above letter), but Godwin's cor- 
 rections are of the kind which would take the life out 
 of any style. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 BEDDOES AND THE PNEUMATIC INSTITUTE 
 
 17931794 
 
 SOON after the rearrangement of the Wedgwood part- 
 nership in 1793, when Tom Wedgwood and his eldest 
 brother John retired from the firm, the latter took up 
 his abode at Cote House, a country place not far from 
 Bristol, and there Tom was a frequent visitor. That, 
 apparently, led to his becoming acquainted with Dr. 
 Beddoes, the noted physician, who had lately come to 
 settle in Bristol. The two men became intimate. 
 Their views of things were in general accord, as would 
 be sufficiently shown by the fact that it was Beddoes' 
 sympathy with the French Revolution which had in 
 some way been the cause of his having to give up the 
 post of reader in chemistry at Oxford.* Both men 
 shared the passion for reforming and improving the 
 world, which moved so many of the younger men of 
 the time. Beddoes was a singularly interesting man. 
 His letters give the impression of a mind overflowing 
 with new ideas, a nature full of energy and initiative, 
 
 * Beddoes was born in 1760 at Shifnal in Shropshire, and died in 
 London, where he had a large practice in his later years, in 1808. 
 He was father of Thomas Lovell Beddoes, the half-mad poet, author 
 of " Death's Jest Book." See the notices of both in the " Diet. 
 Nat. Biog." 
 
 C 
 
34 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 sanguine, optimistic, rebelling against antiquated 
 routine, keen on striking out new paths. One of the 
 things he preached was the importance of " preventive " 
 medicine. He must have been one of the earliest 
 workers in that field, and one of his schemes was a plan 
 for setting a staff of young doctors to go about Bristol 
 lecturing on the prevention of disease. " By this plan," 
 he tells Wedgwood, " I think 550 a year would con- 
 fer the full benefit of preventive and to a great extent 
 of curative medicine upon all Bristol and the counties 
 within attending distance." " This preventive medi- 
 cine," he says, in another letter, " is much the most 
 important of the two divisions." At another time we 
 find him advocating a new system of " rational toys," 
 and at another a new method of teaching geometry. 
 But his chief enterprise was the " Pneumatic Institute," 
 a scheme which aimed at giving a full trial to the 
 method of treating consumption, cancer, and other 
 diseases by the use of "factitious airs" i.e., by the 
 inhalation of certain gases, or of chemically modified 
 atmospheric air. The institute was to be a small 
 hospital for the reception of patients thus to be treated. 
 Various eminent men, such as Dr. Erasmus Darwin, 
 Keir the chemist, Professor Black, James Watt the 
 great engineer, and some leading physicians, supported 
 the scheme. Watt invented apparatus for making and 
 administering the gases. (Jhe Wedgwoods, father and 
 sons, gave substantial contributions. Tom Wedgwood 
 was also active in helping Beddoes to collect the need- 
 ful funds ; and when there seemed to be a difficulty in 
 getting together what was wanted, he gave an addi- 
 tional thousand pounds in order that the plan might 
 
THE PNEUMATIC INSTITUTE 35 
 
 be at once started.^ His feeling about it is shown by 
 a few words he puts on a letter of Beddoes (dated 
 August 12, 1794), which he sends on to his brother 
 Josiah. " I think I shall contribute" (this was at the 
 first inception of the scheme), " as the attempt must be 
 successful in part if it only goes to show that c airs * 
 are not efficacious in medicine. "j 
 
 The Institute was duly opened in 1798, the patients 
 being taken into a house in Dowry Square, on the 
 Clifton side of Bristol, but it did not, alas ! answer the 
 sanguine hopes of Beddoes. Consumption, cancers, 
 and internal ulcers refused to yield to the new treat- 
 ment. The experiment had only the negative success 
 guessed at in Tom Wedgwood's wise and suggestive 
 words. It showed that " airs are not efficacious in 
 medicine." After two or three years the Institute was 
 given up, and in 1801 Beddoes left Bristol for London. 
 During these years Tom Wedgwood was one of 
 Beddoes' patients, stopping at Clifton at intervals to be 
 under his care. The " airs," however, did him no 
 good, nor had he better success with other strange 
 sorts of treatment which he tried, apparently, under 
 Beddoes' advice. One was the "warm-room plan.'' 
 His brother Josiah (December 1799) describes him as 
 living in a completely closed room, with a stove, 
 double windows, and double doors, in a temperature 
 kept up to 70 degrees, without once going out of the 
 room for seventy-two hours. He tells us also of con- 
 sumptive patients living in cow-houses, " three cows in 
 
 * In the notice of Josiah Wedgwood (the father) in the " Diet. 
 Nat. Biog.," it is implied that he gave this large contribution, but it 
 seems to have been Tom Wedgwood's. 
 
36 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 each of the cow-houses," warmed by stoves. Whether 
 Tom Wedgwood lived with the cows does not appear. 
 " For mere temperature," says Beddoes in his beautiful 
 optimistic way," " living with cows is the most 
 delicious thing imaginable ; perhaps the fumes would 
 give a salutary stimulus to the surface of the lungs, 
 which might communicate itself to the whole system. 
 I find this much better than living with a butcher." 
 (Beddoes to T. W. November 12, 1799.) The last 
 words seem to show that Beddoes had other patients 
 living with butchers, presumably on the theory that the 
 meaty atmosphere would do them good. In another 
 letter (Beddoes to Tom Wedgwood, August 3, 1792) 
 he says : " I have had strict inquiry made concerning 
 the state of health among the Bristol butchers. The 
 information is curious and satisfactory, and the result 
 will be of great use to my essay on consumption." We 
 come across this strange cow-cure in the " Life and 
 Letters of Maria Edgeworth," whose sister Anna 
 Beddoes married. " One of his hobbies," it is there 
 asserted, " was to introduce cows into invalids' bed- 
 rooms, that they might inhale the breath of the 
 animals, a prescription which naturally gave umbrage 
 to the Clifton lodging-house keepers." De Quincey, 
 many years afterwards, described Tom Wedgwood as 
 having at one time kept a butcher's shop. This myth 
 may perhaps have arisen from some twisted account of 
 the theory held, and apparently practised, by his 
 doctor.* 
 
 * The story is in De Quincey's gossiping account of Coleridge in 
 the " Autobiographic Sketches," first published in Taifs Magazine, 
 and afterwards republished (1854) among the "Selections Grave and 
 
THE PNEUMATIC INSTITUTE . 37 
 
 It was through Beddoes' " Pneumatic Institution " 
 that the world first heard of the afterwards famous 
 chemist, Humphrey Davy, of whom we shall have 
 more to say as collaborating with Tom Wedgwood in 
 his photographic work. The Wedgwoods had met 
 him at Penzance, his native place, where he was an 
 apothecary's apprentice, when staying there in the 
 winter of 1797-8 for the sake of the warm climate. 
 Beddoes, hearing that the youth knew something of 
 chemistry, engaged him as assistant in the laboratory 
 at Dowry Square. There, doubtless, he and Tom 
 Wedgwood became more closely acquainted. One of 
 the excitements of the time was Davy's discovery of 
 the so-called " laughing gas." He had found a way of 
 making nitrous oxide safely respirable, and was trying 
 its effects on troops of friends who came to the labora- 
 tory to see and feel the new wonder. Southey called 
 it " the wonder-working gas of delight." Here is Tom 
 Wedgwood's written report of his sensations : 
 
 I called on Mr. Davy at the Medical Institution on July 23. 
 ... I had six quarts of the oxide given me in a bag undiluted, 
 and as soon as I had breathed three or four respirations, I felt 
 myself affected, and my respiration hurried, which effect in- 
 creased rapidly until I became as it were entranced, when I 
 
 Gay." " As a desperate attempt to rouse and irritate the decaying 
 sensibility of his system, I have been assured, by a surviving friend, that 
 Mr. Wedgwood at one time opened a butcher's shop, conceiving that 
 the affronts and disputes to which such a situation would expose him 
 might act beneficially upon his increasing torpor." "Which, how- 
 ever" (he adds in a note to the reprint of 1854), "his brother Josiah 
 denied as a pure fable." 
 
 De Quincey's account of Tom Wedgwood, in the passage of which 
 this is a part, has all his accustomed charm of manner, but is too 
 full of inaccuracies and confusions to be worth quoting. 
 
38 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 threw the bag from me and kept breathing on furiously with 
 an open mouth, and holding my nose with my left hand, 
 having no power to take it away, though aware of the 
 ridiculousness of my situation. . . . Before I breathed the air 
 I felt a good deal fatigued from a very long ride I had had the 
 day before ; but after breathing, I lost all sense of fatigue.* 
 
 After the Institute was given up and Beddoes went 
 to London, Tom Wedgwood appears to have seen 
 little of him. In letters of the year 1803 we find him 
 collecting funds for some project the nature of which 
 is not mentioned, to which Tom gives ,100 and his 
 brother Josiah 50.) 
 
 * Printed in the collected works of Davy with reports of other 
 like experiences. 
 
JOSIAH WEDGWOOD 
 Of Gunville, Dorset, and Maer Hall, Staffordshire 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE FAMILY CIRCLE 
 i 795 _ I79 6 
 
 IN the last few pages I have departed from chrono- 
 logical sequence in order to give an account of Tom 
 Wedgwood's relations with Beddoes. I will now take 
 up the thread of his life from the time when the death 
 of old Josiah Wedgwood of Etruria led to a dispersion 
 of the family circle. 
 
 That death happened in January 1795. The fortune 
 the great potter left to be divided among his children 
 was large, and thus at the age of twenty-three Tom 
 became a fairly rich man. His broken health forbade 
 him to think of taking up any regular pursuit, and his 
 frequent fits of dejection and restlessness drove him to 
 seek relief in a wandering life. Of marriage he cannot 
 have thought, it was too plainly impossible ; and 
 neither his extant letters nor family tradition tell us 
 of his caring for any woman outside the circle of 
 his relations. But he had a warmly affectionate 
 nature ; he clung closely to his family, and could not 
 endure to be for long away from his brothers and 
 sisters and their children. Among them he may 
 be said to have lived, though in an intermittent way. 
 And here it may be convenient to say what were 
 
40 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 his family surroundings in this year 1795 and there- 
 after. 
 
 Josiah Wedgwood of Etruria left behind him a 
 widow and six children : three sons, John, Josiah, and 
 Thomas, and three daughters, Susannah, Catharine, 
 and Sarah. John, the eldest son, who had given up his 
 partnership in the pottery in 1793, had become a 
 London banker, and was living in Devonshire Place, 
 Marylebone. A year or two later he took up his 
 abode at Cote House, a country place about two miles 
 out of Bristol. Josiah, the next brother, remained for 
 a time at Etruria, carrying on the works in conjunction 
 with his cousin, Thomas Byerley, who for many years 
 was the working head of the business. He not long 
 afterwards sought an abode in the south of England, 
 fixing himself first at Stoke d'Abernon, near Cobham, 
 in Surrey, and ultimately (17991800) at Gunville 
 House, near Blandford, in Dorsetshire. Josiah had 
 married, in 1792, Elizabeth Allen, the eldest of many 
 daughters of John Bartlett Allen of Cresselly, a Pem- 
 brokeshire squire, and John, about a year later, had 
 married Jane Allen, another of the sisters. Both 
 brothers had children. Susannah Wedgwood, Tom's 
 eldest sister, married, a few months after her father's 
 death, Dr. Robert Darwin of Shrewsbury, son of Dr. 
 Erasmus the poet. One of her many children was 
 Charles Darwin, author of the " Origin of Species " 
 (born 1 809). The two younger sisters, Catharine and 
 Sarah Wedgwood (always spoken of as Kitty and 
 Sally), aged twenty and eighteen, lived with their 
 mother for a few years in Staffordshire, and afterwards 
 moved with her into Dorsetshire to be near Josiah's 
 
HIS FAMILY 41 
 
 
 
 family. The person who counted for most in Tom 
 Wedgwood's life was his brother Josiah. An intense 
 affection united these two men. It was to Josiah that 
 Tom turned in all his troubles. Intellectually, the 
 two were not much alike. Josiah was a man of solid 
 character, wide-minded and high-minded ; an upright, 
 calmly judging person, a man whom every one 
 trusted, and on whom every one near him leant. He 
 had intellectual tastes, but these were quite secondary 
 to the practical interests of life, and warm affections, 
 but no man could have been more inexpressive. His 
 letters are the ne plus ultra of dryness. As he was his 
 poor sick brother's mainstay, so he was a rock of sup- 
 port at all times of doubt and difficulty to the whole 
 of his family, including his wife's relations. The 
 strong family belief in his excellent judgment was well 
 shown at a critical moment in the life of his nephew, 
 Charles Darwin. The turning-point in Darwin's 
 career was his going as naturalist on the voyage of the 
 Beagle. When the offer was made to him he was 
 then twenty-one his father strongly objected to his 
 accepting it, and he was on the point of sending a 
 refusal ; but his " Uncle Jos " backed him up in his 
 desire to go, and wrote to Dr. Darwin, discussing 
 seriatim the latter's objections. His reasonings con- 
 vinced the father, and the son became a naturalist, 
 instead of, as he had intended, a clergyman. Darwin, 
 in the brief autobiography which he wrote (in 1876) 
 for his wife and children, describes his uncle thus : 
 
 I greatly revered him ; he was siient and reserved so as to 
 be rather an awful man ; but he sometimes talked openly with 
 
42 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 me. He was the very type of an upright man, with the clearest 
 judgment. I do not believe that any power on earth could 
 have made him swerve an inch from what he considered the 
 right course. I used to apply to him in my mind the well- 
 known ode of Horace, now forgotten by me, in which the 
 words, " nee vultus tyranni," &c., come in.* 
 
 Josiah had had the happiness to marry a delightful 
 woman. His " Bessy" was the best beloved of the 
 whole family circle, and her letters give the reflection 
 of an ideally beautiful character. The family tradition 
 tells the same story with one voice, and we can well 
 believe it when we look at the " radiantly cheerful 
 countenance " that beams upon us out of one of the 
 loveliest of Romney's portraits, t 
 
 Cote House, the abode of John Wedgwood, was 
 Tom's most frequent resort after that of his brother 
 Josiah. There, too, he had always an affectionate wel- 
 come from another charming sister-in-law. Louisa 
 Jane Wedgwood (always called " Jenny " in the family) 
 was the beauty of the Wedgwood-Allen circle, and the 
 family letters give ample proof that she must have been 
 a singularly attractive woman. The Robert Darwins 
 of Shrewsbury seem to have seen but little of Tom. 
 
 * " Life of C. Darwin," by F. Darwin, I. 44. (The ode is that 
 beginning " Justum et tenacem propositi virum.") The interesting 
 letter of Josiah's about the Beagle business is given on p. 198 of the 
 same volume. 
 
 t Now belonging to her grand-daughter, Miss Wedgwood, of 
 Leith Hill Place. " She has her mother's radiantly cheerful counten- 
 ance," are the words used by Maria Edgeworth, a life-long friend 
 of the family, in describing Mrs. Charles Darwin, Mrs. Josiah's 
 youngest daughter, then in her thirty-third year. (Letter of Decem- 
 ber 26, 1840, to Fanny Butler.) 
 
MRS. JOSIAH WEDGWOOD, BORN ELIZABETH ALLEN 
 From Portrait by Romney 
 
HIS FAMILY 43 
 
 Of his two unmarried sisters, both of whom were culti- 
 vated and intelligent women, Sally was the one with 
 whom he had most in common intellectually. During 
 his wanderings in search of health it is to her that he 
 most often sends affectionate messages.^ 
 
 Through his two sisters-in-law he became intimate 
 with the family at Cresselly. Fanny Allen, f the 
 youngest, gayest, and most keen witted of the group 
 of sisters, became, during the last few years of his life, 
 one of his best friends. 
 
 Catherine Allen, another of the Cresselly sisters, 
 married Mr. Mackintosh (afterwards Sir James) in 
 1798. They naturally became friends of Tom Wedg- 
 wood, and the two men were brought the closer 
 together by their common interest in metaphysical 
 speculation. 
 
 Such was the family entourage of Tom Wedgwood 
 when he ceased to live at Etruria after his father's 
 death. What plan of life, if any, he formed at that 
 time, there is nothing to show. Metaphysical study 
 and speculation was evidently, as always, one of his 
 chief interests.^ Physical investigations he had put 
 
 * Sarah Wedgwood lived to the age of eighty and died in 1856. 
 She spent her last years at Down, in Kent, living near her nephew 
 and niece, Charles and Emma Darwin. 
 
 t Fanny Allen lived to be ninety-three, dying in 1875, and was 
 the last link between Tom Wedgwood's generation and that of his 
 great-nephews and nieces. They remember her as a most enter- 
 taining old lady, with a sharp tongue and caustic wit ; a fiercely 
 bigoted whig of the old school, full of Holland House traditions, 
 including the worship of Napoleon. Mackintosh and Sydney Smith 
 were among her particular friends. When the news of Waterloo 
 came, she wrote of it as " a splendid victory, but in a terribly bad 
 cause." (As to Jessie Allen, Mme. Sismondi, see p. 123.) 
 
 I See chap. xiv. 
 
44 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 aside, at least for a time. Such active work as his 
 letters disclose always took the form of helping for- 
 ward some scheme aiming at the improvement of the 
 world. v Anything of the kind we now call a social or 
 philanthropic " movement," any plan for teaching 
 mankind to mend its ways, if it ran on what he 
 thought sound philosophical or liberal lines, found in 
 i him a zealous supporter. To such plans he would 
 give work as well as money. To spread, for instance, 
 a knowledge of inoculation as a preventive of small- 
 pox was one of the things with which he busied him- 
 self. He corresponded with people in various parts of 
 England who were engaged in the same effort, and 
 used his local influence in the cause. We find him 
 getting a thousand copies printed of an " address to 
 parents" on the subject, for distribution among the 
 people of the Potteries. This was in 1795, after 
 which time I find no more letters on the subject. 
 Jenner was just then completing the investigations 
 which led to vaccination taking the place of inocula- 
 tion. 
 
 ^Another correspondent is a worthy Quaker book- 
 seller, Mr. Samuel Phillips, whom he has commissioned 
 to send him a supply of books fit for popular reading. 
 Mr. Phillips applauds " thy praiseworthy attempts to 
 improve the minds of the labouring poor in your 
 neighbourhood," and sends a supply of booksp He 
 has severe views as to what reading is beneficial, and 
 sternly bars ail fiction. " I was much pleased with the 
 hesitating perhaps to * two or three novels.' Experto 
 crede "P^oberto. Let them read none. Few of them are 
 true pictures of life. The best of them fill the mind 
 
THE FAMILY CIRCLE 45 
 
 with dreams of imaginary happiness not to be enjoyed 
 in this life." 
 
 In 1796, Tom Wedgwood took the first of many 
 tours out of England in search of health, spending 
 some five months in Germany and Switzerland, with 
 Leslie for his companion. As a rule his letters during 
 such absences are not cheerful reading, being but too 
 full of his health troubles ; but this journey was com- 
 paratively prosperous. He does much of it on foot, 
 at one time walking 200 miles, as he reckons, in 
 fourteen days ; and he apparently walks without diffi- 
 culty over mountain passes in the Swiss Oberland. 
 The two friends follow the now familiar route, 
 Lucerne, Rigi, Brunig, Meyringen, Grindelwald, 
 Lauterbrunnen, Thun ; and his long, cheerful letters, 
 telling his brother Jos of each day's experiences, show 
 that at this time he had a spell of fair health. 
 
 It is merely through the accidental preservation of a 
 few letters from his friends that a record has survived 
 of some of his charitable and public-spirited deeds 
 during the years immediately following his father's 
 death ; * but enough appears to show that he was 
 acting out the scheme of life and duty which was the 
 burden of those enthusiastic outpourings to his father 
 in his early youth. 
 
 u I mean," he had said at nineteen, " to exert myself 
 for the good of my fellow creatures." He had become 
 
 * His only letters of this time are those from abroad. He was an 
 enjoying traveller, and every word must have been interesting to the 
 readers of a century ago in Staffordshire. But travel-letters have too 
 often proved the bane of biographers, and these would be no excep- 
 tion to the rule. 
 
(46) TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 i \^y 
 
 a rich man, and this was what he was trying to do, 
 though a cruel fate had cut him off from the possi- 
 bility of trying to do it by direct personal work. He 
 believed, e/idently, that advance in knowledge was the 
 surest means of bettering the condition of the world. 
 This belief, doubtless, quite as much as personal 
 friendship, was the governing motive which led him to 
 promise John Leslie an annuity of ^150 a year, to be 
 increased to 250 in the case of his marrying, with the 
 view of putting him in a position to go on working at 
 physical science, unhampered by anxiety as to his daily 
 bread. Leslie at this time (1797) was thirty-one years 
 old. He had been pursuing his physical researches, 
 but had not got any post suitable to his powers, or any 
 other prospect of making a regular income. He was 
 at a loose end, and had vague intentions of seeking his 
 fortune on the continent or in India. The query on 
 which Wedgwood hung the offer of the annuity was : 
 " would it materially increase the sum total of your 
 philosophical product ? " Leslie's response to this 
 (August 1 8, 1797) is in his customary strain of 
 magniloquence : 
 
 " Your letter I have perused with surprise and with admira- 
 tion. Sentiments so remote from vulgar apprehension, so pure, 
 so refined, so far exalted above the cold maxims that govern 
 the world ! I well know your elevation of mind, fired by 
 every generous resolve, yet attempered by the calm dictates of 
 philosophy. But how wide the difference between the aspira- 
 tions of beneficence and that vigour of character which success- 
 fully spurns the low, the incessant whisperings of opinions and 
 interest, and in spite of sacrifice carries its plans into deliberate 
 effect ! " 
 
PROVISION FOR LESLIE 47 
 
 In another letter, after taking time to consider the 
 query, he answers it (at great length) in the affirma- 
 tive.^ 
 
 Of the letter offering the annuity there is no copy 
 among the Wedgwood papers. But we may take the 
 motives of the generous act to have been the same as 
 we shall see expressed, a little later, in the offer of an 
 annuity to Coleridge. What degree of personal attach- 
 ment existed between Tom Wedgwood and Leslie it is 
 not easy to say. It was apparently a warm feeling, on 
 Wedgwood's side at any rate, in the early days of 
 their acquaintance at Edinburgh, but the impression 
 given by the later letters is that it afterwards sub- 
 sided into no more than an intellectual friendship. 
 In Wedgwood's letters during their five months 
 touring in 1796, he hardly ever mentions his com- 
 panion, and the elaborate pomposity of Leslie's style 
 effectually masks any feeling there may have been on 
 his side. 
 
 Wedgwood's generosity, in this instance, may be said 
 to have borne good fruit in the way which he desired. 
 Leslie's contributions to the advance of physical science 
 were substantial, and they rested on long-continued 
 experimental researches which he certainly could not 
 have pursued without some assurance of a maintenance. 
 His " Experimental Inquiry into the Nature and Pro- 
 perties of Heat," has been described as "an important 
 contribution to the scientific study of the subject," and 
 his discoveries as to the radiation of heat made his 
 name widely known. His " differential thermometer " 
 is, I understand, still a familiar instrument in physical 
 laboratories. He is mentioned by Clerk Maxwell as 
 
48 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 having u given the first correct explanation of the rise 
 of liquid in a tube " (capillary attraction). Ice-making 
 machines were his invention.* 
 
 * He received the annuity up to the year 1812. He became 
 Professor of Mathematics at Edinburgh in 1805, and Professor of 
 Natural Philosophy there in 1819. He was knighted in 1832 and 
 died in the same year. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 POOLE AND COLERIDGE THE COLERIDGE ANNUITY 
 
 I797I798 
 
 THE year 1797 brought with it a notable extension of 
 Tom Wedgwood's friendships. He was staying in the 
 summer with his brother John at Cote House (near 
 Bristol), and it was probably there that he made the 
 acquaintance of that interesting and singular man 
 Thomas Poole, or " Tom Poole " as every one called 
 him, tanner, farmer, and land agent, of Nether Stowey. 
 The acquaintance soon became a very close friendship, 
 and out of it sprang an equally close friendship with 
 Coleridge the poet. 
 
 The admirable biography of Poole by Mrs. Henry 
 Sandford,^ gives a vivid picture of his life, besides 
 much information, some of it new, as to Coleridge and 
 as to Tom Wedgwood. Poole was a man of rough 
 exterior, and for the most part self-educated, but what 
 we now know of his mind and character fully explains 
 
 * " Thomas Poole and his Friends," 2 vols. Macmillan, 1886. See 
 also the notice of Poole in " Diet. Nat. Biog." by Sir L. Stephen. Mrs, 
 Sandford is, I believe, the grand-daughter of one of Poole's first cousins, 
 He was born in 1765, lived practically his whole life at Nether 
 Stowey, and died in 1837. The group of friends among whom 
 Tom Wedgwood now found himself were all young together. Their 
 birth dates all fall within the range of a few years : Coleridge 1772, 
 Wedgwood 1771, Wordsworth 1770, Dorothy Wordsworth 1771,. 
 Poole 1765, Lamb 1775. 
 
 D 
 
50 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 how it was that he became the attached friend of some 
 of the most remarkable Englishmen of his time. 
 Here is De Quincey's description of the man as he 
 found him in 1807, ten years later than the time of 
 his first acquaintance with Tom Wedgwood : 
 
 I found him a stout, plain-looking farmer, leading a bachelor 
 life, in a rustic, old-fashioned house, the house, however, upon 
 further acquaintance, proving to be amply furnished with 
 modern luxuries, and especially with a good library, superbly 
 mounted in all departments bearing upon political philosophy ; 
 and the farmer turning out a polished and liberal Englishman, 
 who had travelled extensively, and who had so entirely dedicated 
 himself to the service of his humble fellow countrymen the 
 hewers of wood and drawers of water in this part of Somerset- 
 shire that for many miles round he was the general arbiter of 
 their disputes, the guide and counsellor of their difficulties ; 
 besides being appointed executor and guardian to his children 
 by every third man who died in or about the town of Nether 
 Stowey.* 
 
 Coleridge had at this time (Midsummer 1797) been 
 living for six months in a cottage at Stowey with his 
 wife and their infant child. He and Poole were almost 
 next door neighbours, for a walk of a few yards along 
 a back lane led from the garden of the cottage to the 
 garden of Poole's house. Wordsworth and his sister 
 Dorothy were just then taking up their abode at 
 Alfoxden House in the Quantocks, where they lived 
 for a year, about three miles away ; and it was then 
 
 * From an article contributed to T ait's Magazine in 1834, vol. ii. 
 p. 139 of Professor Masson's Ed. of De Quincey, 1889. The epithet 
 " polished " as applied to Poole, is absurdly out of place. But De 
 Quincey's inaccuracies of detail are innumerable, especially when he 
 is writing from recollections of thirty or forty years back. 
 
POOLE AND COLERIDGE 51 
 
 that they and Coleridge first became intimate. 
 Dorothy's journal gives a delightful picture of the 
 three friends. There were almost daily meetings, con- 
 tinual walkings to and fro between Stowey and Alfox- 
 den, wanderings among the glades and over the downs 
 of the Quantocks they were, as Coleridge said, " three 
 people and one soul." In much of this intimacy Poole 
 shared. He had been a good friend to Coleridge since 
 1794, the days of the wild Pantisocracy scheme, had 
 helped him much, and was still helping him. For some 
 years past he had been his chief stand-by in all trouble. 
 Into this remarkable group of friends Tom Wedgwood 
 came through his acquaintance with Poole. Unfortu- 
 nately we have none of his letters of this date, and it is 
 only through a few words in a note book kept for 
 jotting down memoranda bearing on his metaphysical 
 studies that we know that in September of this year he 
 paid a visit of five days to the Wordsworths at 
 Alfoxden. The note is as follows : 
 
 Time, entering the garden at Langford, September 15, 1797. 
 
 Went down to Wordsworth's with n. Spent 5 days 
 
 there. Remarked to n on the 5th day at Alfoxden that 
 
 the time had gone like lightning. He agreed with me. Enter- 
 ing the garden at L , it struck me as being very long since 
 
 I had entered it before, though I knew it was only five days. 
 Might not this be owing to my having never " intermediately " 
 thought of the garden ? Its recollection was faint, and sug- 
 gested remoteness of time, as faint objects do distance in sight.* 
 
 * Tom Wedgwood evidently did much of his metaphysical think- 
 ing while travelling, and it was his habit to keep by him a notebook 
 wherein he could record at the moment anything that occurred to 
 him. The front page of the one containing the above observation 
 
52 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 One would have liked to have heard something of 
 the impressions left by those five days spent in the 
 company of Coleridge and Wordsworth, and of that 
 delightful woman, Dorothy Wordsworth, who was so 
 much to both of them. The moment was one of 
 supreme interest. For what was stirring those three 
 minds was to be the beginning of a new departure in 
 English poetry. Wordsworth was still unknown to 
 the world, but most of the " Lyrical Ballads " lay on 
 his table, ready for the press ; and it was only a few 
 weeks later that the three happy people started on that 
 memorable walk to Porlock and Lynton, during the 
 first few miles of which the " Rime of the Ancient 
 Mariner " began to take shape. The talks which went 
 on during those autumn days, when, as Wordsworth 
 has it in the Prelude : 
 
 Upon smooth Quantoclc's airy ridge they roved 
 Unchecked, or loitered 'mid her sylvan combes, 
 
 or in the many walks between Stowey and Alfoxden, 
 were giving form and force to ideas which were to issue 
 in a literary revolution, to mould, more or less, the 
 poetry of the coming century, and to colour the whole 
 of its intellectual movement. Wedgwood, probably, 
 could have had little prevision of what was to come out 
 of the association of his new group of friends. The 
 poetic side of Coleridge's genius would appeal to him 
 
 bears the words : " If this book is sent by coach or other conveyance 
 to A. R. BUSH TAVERN, BRISTOL, to lie till called for, one 
 crown will be given to the person sending it." I should guess that 
 
 his companion " n," was the James Tobin with whom both he 
 
 and the Wordsworths were intimate. (See note p. 143.) 
 
POOLE AND COLERIDGE 53 
 
 less than the outpourings of that wonderful mind upon 
 the subjects which most occupied his own thoughts 
 Ethics and Metaphysics.^ In any case the impression 
 he carried away was a deep one, as is sufficiently shown 
 by what occurred three months later. 
 
 Coleridge's whole existence was made up of visions, 
 and his then plan of life, if plan it could be called, was 
 one of these. He was living in the cottage found for 
 him by Poole. There he was trying, or professed to 
 be trying, to support himself with his wife and child 
 by a " combination of literature and husbandry." 
 Charles Lloyd, the young man who had been living 
 with him for a time as pupil and friend, paying 80 a 
 year, had left him. The cottage stood in a garden of 
 an acre and a half. On this he thought he could 
 " raise vegetables and corn enough for myself and wife, 
 and feed a couple of grunting cousins from the refuse." 
 His evenings he was to devote to literature. "By 
 reviews in the magazine and other shilling-scavenger 
 employments, I shall probably gain 40 a year, which 
 economy and self-denial, gold-beaters, shall hammer 
 till it cover my annual expenses." The ever kind 
 Poole, who let him have the cottage rent free, was also 
 apparently to supply the family with milk, and no 
 doubt with other incidentals. Before Tom Wedgwood 
 came on the scene, this arcadian dream, hardly less 
 
 * I feel it difficult to imagine that Tom Wedgwood cared deeply 
 for poetry. Hazlitt quotes Coleridge as saying that " Mackintosh 
 and Tom Wedgwood (of whom, however, he spoke highly) had 
 expressed a very indifferent opinion of Mr. Wordsworth, on which 
 he remarked to them, * he strides on so far before you that he 
 dwindles in the distance.'" 
 
54 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 absurd than the Pantisocracy of a few years earlier, 
 must have nearly faded away. The " Watchman " 
 enterprise of the previous year (1796) had utterly 
 failed, and Coleridge was in great straits. Poole had 
 then got together a sum of 35 to 40, six or seven 
 friends contributing five guineas each, which was given 
 him as a " testimonial, " with the expressed intention 
 that the like help should be continued annually for a 
 time. The gift seems to have been repeated in 1797. 
 
 It was in December of this year that Coleridge was 
 invited to preach in a Unitarian Chapel at Shrewsbury, 
 with the prospect of being appointed its minister at a 
 salary of 150 a year. "This coming to the know- 
 ledge of Josiah and Thomas Wedgwood, they hastened 
 to send him a present of 100, to relieve his immediate 
 necessities, and to dissuade him from abandoning poetry 
 and philosophy for the ministry. The cheque was 
 immediately returned by Coleridge with a grateful 
 letter, explaining that the ^100 would soon be con- 
 sumed, and prospectless poverty recur." * Immedi- 
 ately after writing this, he went to Shrewsbury, and on 
 the next Sunday, January 14, 1798, preached there the 
 sermon so graphically described many years later by 
 William Hazlitt in an often quoted passage. Mean- 
 while, on the preceding Saturday (January 13), there 
 had reached Stowey the following letter, addressed to 
 him by Josiah Wedgwood, writing on behalf of himself 
 and his brother. 
 
 * These are the words of Mr. Dykes Campbell, p. 81, but see 
 note on p. 56 infra. There is nothing in the Wedgwood papers 
 referring to this matter. A copy of Coleridge's letter declining 
 the jioo exists in Tom Poole's letter-book (T. P., i. 256), but 
 Mrs. Sandford does not print it. 
 
POOLE AND COLERIDGE 55 
 
 Josiah Wedgwood to S. 'T. Coleridge 
 
 PENZANCE, 
 
 January 10, 1798. 
 DEAR SIR, 
 
 In the absence of my brother, who has an engagement this 
 morning, I take up the pen to reply to your letter received 
 yesterday. I cannot help regretting very sincerely that, at this 
 critical moment, we are separated by so great a length of the 
 worst road in the kingdom. It is not that we have found 
 much difficulty in deciding how to act in the present juncture 
 of your affairs, but we are apprehensive that, deprived of the 
 benefit of conversation, we may fail somewhat in explaining 
 our views and intentions with that clearness and persuasion 
 which should induce you to accede to our proposal without 
 scruple or hesitation nay, with that glow of pleasure which 
 the accession of merited good fortune, and the observation of 
 virtuous conduct in others, ought powerfully to excite in the 
 breast of healthful sensibility. Writing is painful to me. I 
 must endeavour to be concise, yet to avoid abruptness. My 
 brother and myself are possessed of a considerable superfluity of 
 fortune ; squandering and hoarding are equally distant from our 
 inclinations. But we are earnestly desirous to convert this 
 superfluity into a fund of beneficence, and we have now been 
 accustomed for some time, to regard ourselves rather as Trustees 
 than Proprietors. We have canvassed your past life, your 
 present situation and prospects, your character and abilities. 
 As far as certainty is compatible with the delicacy of the esti- 
 mate, we have no hesitation in declaring that your claim upon 
 the fund appears to come under more of the conditions we 
 have prescribed for its disposal, and to be every way more un- 
 objectionable, than we could possibly have expected. This 
 result is so congenial with our heartfelt wishes, that it will be 
 a real mortification to us if any misconception or distrust of 
 our intentions, or any unworthy diffidence of yourself, should 
 interfere to prevent its full operation in your favour. 
 
56 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 After what my brother Thomas has written,* I have only 
 to state the proposal we wish to make to you. It is that you 
 shall accept an annuity for life of 150, to be regularly paid 
 by us, no condition whatsoever being annexed to it. Thus 
 your liberty will remain entire, you will be under the influence 
 of no professional bias, and will be in possession of a "permanent 
 income not inconsistent with your religious and political creeds" t so 
 necessary to your health and activity. 
 
 I do not now enter into the particulars of the mode of 
 securing the annuity, &c. that will be done when we receive 
 your consent to the proposal we are making ; and we shall only 
 say that we mean the annuity to be independent of everything 
 but the wreck of our fortune, an event which we hope is not 
 very likely .to happen, though it must in these times be regarded 
 as more than a bare possibility. 
 
 Give me leave now to thank you for the openness with 
 which you have written to me, and the kindness you express 
 for me, to neither of which can I be indifferent, and I shall 
 be happy to derive the advantages from them that a friendly 
 intercourse with you cannot fail to afford me. 
 
 I am very sincerely yours, 
 
 JOSIAH WEDGWOOD. J 
 
 * What Tom had written we do not, and probably never shall, 
 know* Presumably Josiah is alluding to the letter sending Coleridge 
 jioo, which Mr. Dykes Campbell describes as written " to dissuade 
 him from abandoning poetry and philosophy for the ministry." The 
 terms of that letter have never, I believe, been published, and pro- 
 bably it does not exist. Coleridge's mention of it in a letter of 
 January 30, 1798, to Thelwall (" Letters of S. T. C.," 234), shows 
 nothing to connect it with the Shrewsbury invitation, save the fact 
 that it and the invitation reached him at the same time. But the 
 Wedgwoods may have known before that time that Coleridge was 
 thinking of becoming a Unitarian minister. 
 
 t A "quotation," says Mrs. Sandford, "from S. T. C.'s last 
 letter." 
 
 t Poole entered a copy of Josiah's letter in his own letter-book, 
 from which copy it was printed for the first time by Mrs. Sandford 
 (T. P., i. 259). She describes it as a reply to the letter of 
 Coleridge declining the 100, which letter I take to be the one 
 
POOLE AND COLERIDGE 57 
 
 This letter was opened by Poole, who at once wrote 
 to Coleridge, sending him a copy of it ; and strenuously 
 urging him to accept the offer. This found Coleridge 
 at Wem, a village near Shrewsbury, where he was stay- 
 ing for a few days with the Hazlitts. He accepted 
 the proposal at once. Hazlitt's account * says : 
 
 When I came down to breakfast, I found that he had just 
 received a letter from his friend T. Wedgwood, making him an 
 offer of 150 a year if he chose to waive his present pursuit, 
 and devote himself entirely to the study of poetry and philosophy. 
 Coleridge seemed to make up his mind to close with this pro- 
 posal in the act of tying on one of his shoes. 
 
 The letter conveying the acceptance is apparently 
 not now extant ; that it expressed his deep gratitude 
 may be safely inferred from his allusions to the 
 brothers 7 generosity in other letters and at other times. 
 " You know, of course," he writes to Wordsworth, 
 " that I have accepted the magnificent liberality of 
 Josiah and Thomas Wedgwood." And to Thelwall 
 (January 30, 1798), he says: "Astonished, agitated, 
 and feeling as I could not help feeling, I accepted the 
 offer in the same worthy spirit, I hope, in which it was 
 made." (Letters of S. T. C, pp. 234, 235.) 
 
 Josiah mentions as " received yesterday." Poole's letter to Coleridge 
 sending him a copy of Josiah's (also printed by Mrs. Sandford) is 
 curiously argumentative, as if he were afraid Coleridge would decline 
 the offer. 
 
 * First published in 1817 by Hazlitt in the Examiner and reprinted 
 by him with additions more than once. The whole story evidently 
 made a deep impression on him, so that his recollections were 
 probably accurate, notwithstanding the lapse of twenty years. 
 
58 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 The following letter has more than once been printed 
 as being that conveying the acceptance. This it was 
 not, but a reply to a note from Tom Wedgwood 
 asking him to come at once to Cote House, whither, 
 no doubt, Tom was then going from Penzance. The 
 "Friday night " must have been January 26, 1798.* 
 
 S. 'T. Coleridge to Tom Wedgwood 
 
 Friday night, 
 
 Twelve o'clock. 
 MY DEAR SIR, 
 
 I have this moment received your letter, and have scarcely 
 more than a moment to answer it by return of post. If kindly 
 feelings can be repaid by kindly feelings, I am not your debtor. 
 I would wish to express the something that is big at my heart, 
 but I know not how to do it without indelicacy. As much ab- 
 stracted from personal feelings, as is possible, I honour and esteem 
 you for that which you have done. I must, of necessity, stay here 
 till the close of Sunday next. On Monday morning I shall 
 leave it, and on Tuesday will be with you at Cote House. 
 Very affectionately yours, 
 
 S. T. COLERIDGE. 
 Shrewsbury. 
 
 The letter making the offer of the annuity was 
 written, it will be seen, by Josiah Wedgwood, but this, 
 as the first words show, was an accident. I think it is 
 
 * (See T. P., i. 261, and Dykes Campbell, p. 84.) This point 
 of detail would be of no consequence if Coleridge's hasty note had 
 not been wrongly read as representing his feelings on receiving the 
 offer of the annuity. Cottle's print of the letter is, as usual, inaccu- 
 rate in several places. The original is at Leith Hill Place. 
 
POOLE AND COLERIDGE 59 
 
 certain that the act was due to Tom's initiative. Sub- 
 sequent correspondence shows that Coleridge was much 
 less intimate with Josiah than with his brother, and 
 there can be little doubt that it was the impression 
 which Tom took away from those autumn days at 
 Stowey and Alfoxden that impelled him to come to 
 Coleridge's assistance at the critical moment of the 
 Shrewsbury candidature. It was in the preceding 
 summer that he had promised the annuity to Leslie. 
 In that Josiah had no share ; but there was the closest 
 possible union between the brothers, and we may easily 
 suppose that he would be anxious to take his part in 
 this new exercise of a wise generosity. 
 
 Wordsworth called it an act of " unexampled 
 liberality," and this it probably was. There have been, 
 of course, in all times " patrons" of poets and men of 
 genius. But this act had nothing of patronage in it, 
 nor anything savouring of selfishness. It sprang from 
 the same kind of impulse as prompted that memorable 
 legacy of ^900 left by the dying Raisley Calvert to 
 Wordsworth, upon which little sum, with a few slight 
 windfalls, he and his sister managed to live during 
 those seven or eight years at Alfoxden and Dove 
 Cottage which gave to the world the most imperish- 
 able of his poems. The history of the world, perhaps, 
 could show no case of a little money better used than 
 that. The act differed from the Wedgwoods' only in 
 being a bequest while theirs was an immediate gift. 
 But whether " unexampled " or not, their liberality was 
 of a rare kind.^ The brothers were acting out, in a 
 
 * The nearest parallel to it which I can remember, is that of the 
 
60 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 very uncommon way, that high conception of wealth as 
 a trust which is so often heard of but so seldom trans- 
 lated into deeds. How far the annuity worked for the 
 good of Coleridge, or for the benefit of the world, 
 except as a fine example of public spirit, is a question 
 not to be answered with certainty. No one can be 
 sure that if he had taken for a time the charge of the 
 Shrewsbury chapel, the pressure and stimulus of regular 
 work might not have saved him from the weakness 
 which practically spoilt his life. One can hardly say 
 that the relief from pressing money cares stimulated 
 his poetic faculty. The " Ancient Mariner " was begun 
 
 annuity secured to Beethoven by three Viennese grandees, in order 
 to deliver him from the necessity of teaching for a livelihood, and 
 give him the leisure to which we owe the grandest of his music. 
 Their wise liberality has given a secure immortality to the names 
 of the Archduke Rudolph, Prince Lobkowitz, and Prince Kinsky ; 
 but their act was not clear of a touch of selfishness ; for they did 
 it partly to keep Beethoven in Vienna, fearing lest he might be 
 tempted by some royal or noble music-lover to migrate to Berlin or 
 elsewhere. Similarly the world has reason to be grateful to the 
 Esterhazys for maintaining Haydn in ease and plenty for many 
 years ; but that, of course, was only in a secondary sense an act of 
 public spirit, to keep an orchestra and a composer as part of a 
 princely establishment being in that time and country much the 
 same thing as an English peer's keeping a pack of foxhounds. 
 
 Southey had, from 1797 (<zt. 23), an annuity settled on him by 
 his old schoolfellow Charles Wynn, which he insisted on relinquishing 
 when Wynn married, but private friendship counted for much in 
 that case. 
 
 The case of Auguste Comte and his English admirers, Grote, 
 Molesworth, Mill, and Currie, who came to his assistance on his 
 losing an official income, is another example of public spirit. But 
 it ended somewhat uncomfortably, for when the philosopher began 
 to claim payment of the subsidy as a right, the donors, partly perhaps 
 because they had cooled in their estimate of his philosophy, did 
 not see their way to continue it. 
 
POOLE AND COLERIDGE 61 
 
 in November 1797, before the annuity was thought of, 
 and finished in March 1798 ; the first part of " Chris- 
 tabel " was produced in that same year 1797. Save 
 the second part of " Christabel," which was completed 
 in 1800, little of his work after 1797 can be said to be 
 of substantial value.^ That the " shaping spirit of 
 imagination" which produced such a marvel as the 
 " Ancient Mariner " should have thus gone to sleep, 
 only to wake again at rare moments, is one of the sad 
 wonders of Coleridge's life. The annuity, however, 
 had one immediate result, the effects of which were far- 
 reaching. Coleridge's stay in Germany was from 
 September 1798 to June 1799. It was there that he 
 got his knowledge of the language and began to make 
 a close acquaintance with German poetry and philo- 
 sophy. German literature was at that time practically 
 unknown in England, though there had been signs 
 here and there, towards the end of the century, that 
 we were beginning to take note of its existence. It 
 was Coleridge who played the leading part in bringing 
 German philosophy within the range of English ideas, 
 and the residence in the country which enabled him to 
 do this was the first result of the annuity. f The 
 
 * "Kubla Khan was written about April 1798 (D. C., p. 88), 
 "Love" in 1798-99, "France" in February 1798, "Dejection" 
 and the " Chamounix Sunrise-hymn" in 1802. Sara Coleridge, 
 herein agreeing with all the world, calls 1797 her father's " annus 
 mirabilis," his "poetical zenith " (" Biog. Lit." ed. 1847, ii. 421). 
 
 t Sir L. Stephen, in the " History of English Thought in the 
 Eighteenth Century," calls Coleridge " the interpreter of Germany 
 to England." See also the same writer's Essay on the " Importation 
 of German " (" Studies of a Biographer "), in which he brings together 
 a number of curious particulars as to the first beginnings of the 
 study of German literature and philosophy in England. "Cole- 
 
62 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 project had been talked over, apparently, between him 
 and the Wordsworths at Alfoxden, and it took shape 
 almost immediately after they gave up that abode at 
 Midsummer 1798. By September they and Coleridge 
 were on their way to Hamburg, he leaving his wife and 
 child at Stowey. The route they took, by Gottingen, 
 Goslar, and the Hartz Mountains, was exactly that 
 which Tom Wedgwood had followed with Leslie a year 
 and a half earlier. This was probably more than a 
 coincidence. We may suppose the whole scheme to 
 have been planned at Alfoxden, where Wedgwood 
 would naturally have talked about his travels of the 
 preceding year in the country the three friends were 
 about to visit. In any case it was the annuity which 
 made the journey possible to Coleridge. 5 * His meeting 
 with Tom Wedgwood was the turning-point of his 
 life. 
 
 He was then twenty-five, and had yet thirty-seven 
 years to live. During many of these years he was 
 under the bondage of the opium-slavery, which so 
 nearly wrecked his life. But from this he was to re- 
 cover, as we all know, and to such effect that one of 
 
 ridge," he says, " must be regarded as the main channel through 
 which German philosophy began to influence Englishmen." 
 
 * It has been stated that the Wedgwoods supplied the funds for 
 Coleridge's journey, besides giving him the annuity : but I know of 
 nothing to show that they did this. Professor Knight (" Life of 
 Wordsworth," vol. i.) seems to think that they also defrayed part 
 of the Wordsworths' expenses, but I think any help they gave him 
 was only by way of loan, and by enabling him to get his drafts 
 cashed through their German correspondents. A letter of Josiah 
 (February 5, 1799) mentions drawings of this kind, and in another 
 letter (July 31, 1800) he alludes to the repayment of an advance 
 of 100 which he made to Wordsworth for the tour. 
 
POOLE AND COLERIDGE 63 
 
 the greatest thinkers of the succeeding generation, one 
 whose words were as oracles to the English youth of 
 his time, could speak of him as " one of the two 
 seminal minds of the century." Thus wrote John 
 Stuart Mill in 1840, coupling him with Bentham a 
 curious collocation, but one that shows, at least, the 
 breadth of view on which the judgment was founded. 
 If Coleridge's far-reaching influence on many of the 
 finest minds of the next generations has tended to the 
 benefit of the world, we may well " count it for right- 
 eousness " to Tom Wedgwood that he had the insight 
 to discern, in the unknown young man of twenty-five, 
 during these five days at Stowey and Alfoxden, a rare 
 and original genius, and that when the opportunity 
 came he did what he could to set that genius free for 
 doing the highest service to the world. How it was 
 that such a life as Coleridge's, made up of visionary 
 schemings, with only fitful intervals of fragmentary 
 effort, and with hardly any accomplished result save 
 the few pages of poetry which have enshrined him 
 among the immortals, should have left such an influ- 
 ence behind it, is a standing wonder. His earlier and 
 his later life seem like the lives of two different men. 
 Any attempt to estimate the extent of that influence 
 would be here out of place. I may perhaps recall 
 one example which to myself has always been a con- 
 vincing proof of its reality and power, the life and 
 work of Frederick Denison Maurice. The aims and 
 beliefs of that " spiritual splendour " (as Gladstone 
 called him, quoting Dante's description of St. Dominic 
 in the Taradiso\ whose mind and character became, in 
 their turn, a living and inspiring influence still felt in 
 
64 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 various spheres of English life, were a direct out- 
 come of Coleridge's teaching.^ 
 
 * Whatever may be the true view of Coleridge's teaching we 
 need not, I think, take any serious account of Carlyle's famous 
 caricature of him in the " Life of Sterling." (" Coleridge sat on 
 the top of Highgate Hill," &c.) That I prefer to think of as merely 
 a piece of picturesque satire, thrown in for the sake of literary 
 effect, and a good example of the rule that in writing history the 
 picturesque is the deadly enemy of the true. This, perhaps, was 
 what Jowett chiefly meant when he wrote of Carlyle as " a man 
 totally regardless of truth." He certainly had in him, with all his 
 virtues, a strain of churlish jealousy which made him incapable of 
 heartily admiring genius in a contemporary. A man who was 
 always talking of the "eternal verities," and yet never told the 
 world how much he himself believed of any known creed, should 
 not have scoffed at another man's religion as " Coleridgean moon- 
 shine." " Coleridge was not," says Carlyle, "without what talkers 
 call wit" ! Did ever a sneer go more hopelessly wide of the mark ? 
 But perhaps what looks like malice may have only been dyspepsia. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 WANDERINGS SETTLEMENT IN DORSETSHIRE 
 1798 1800 
 
 IN the winter of 1797-98, Tom Wedgwood, as we 
 have seen, was at Penzance with his brother, making 
 one of his many experiments on change of climate as a 
 means of combating his disease. During the latter part 
 of 1798, Josiah's house at Stoke d'Abernon in Surrey 
 was apparently his temporary home, and here we find 
 Coleridge visiting them shortly before his departure 
 for Germany. Writing hence to Poole (in June), he 
 says : 
 
 The Wedgwoods received me with joy and affection. I 
 have been metaphysicizing so long and so closely with T. W. 
 that I am a caput mortuum^ mere lees and residuum. . . . This 
 place is a noble, large house in a rich, pleasant country ; but 
 the little toe of Quantock is better than the head and shoulders 
 of Surrey and Middlesex.* 
 
 During a great part of these two years (1798-99) 
 the brothers were making journeys and inquiries in 
 various parts of the South of England, trying to find 
 an estate which they could make their permanent 
 home. In this search Poole joined very zealously, and 
 
 * T. P., i. 271. 
 
66 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 at one time they were on the point of settling near 
 Taunton, in his immediate neighbourhood. They had 
 nearly purchased an attractive estate there, and were 
 planning to get an abode in the same country for their 
 mother and sisters. This project, however, broke down, 
 another purchaser having anticipated them. Poole had 
 set his heart upon securing them as life-long neigh- 
 bours, and his disappointment at this failure was intense. 
 Here is his letter announcing it : 
 
 2". Poole to T. Wedgwood 
 
 TAUNTON, 
 
 Wednesday (Feb. 1799). 
 
 This morning I got to Combe Florey, and was too much 
 sickened with the intelligence I heard to proceed upon the 
 business I was upon. I heard that Gwyn had actually yesterday 
 sold Pigott the Mansion House and fifty acres of land and 
 Lethbridge Coomdown Estate. To be certain I came here 
 and have seen Gwyn. // is true. ... I hope this disappoint- 
 ment is not severe to you, but it is indeed to me the greatest I 
 ever sustained. ... I will never set my heart upon anything 
 again. 
 
 Yours ever, 
 
 THOMAS POOLE. 
 
 A letter of Poole to Coleridge brings in this grievous 
 disappointment as to the estate in a curious way. 
 Mrs. Coleridge had just lost her youngest boy, the 
 baby Berkeley. 
 
 I have advised her [writes Poole to Josiah Wedgwood] not 
 to inform Coleridge of his death. For he indulges in such 
 tumultuous feelings upon every possible occasion where his 
 wife and children are concerned, and his untired imagination 
 
WANDERINGS 67 
 
 is so active in conjuring up every possible scene of distress 
 which could have occurred to them, that I am persuaded the 
 knowledge of this event would either hurry him home, or at 
 least prevent for a long time his exerting himself to any 
 advantage. 
 
 Poole accordingly writes himself to Coleridge to tell 
 him the sad news in a judicious fashion. After detail- 
 ing the circumstances of the baby's death, he launches 
 into an argument to the effect that as a parent's love of 
 an infant is not " a thing of reason," but only " a wise 
 law of nature/' " a mere instinct, destined to preserve 
 man in his infant state," such a death ought not to be 
 a serious grief to the parent. 
 
 Let your mind act [he says] not your feelings. . . . Mrs. 
 Coleridge is now perfectly well, and does not make herself 
 miserable by recalling the engaging, though, remember, mere 
 instinctive "attractions" of an infant a few months old. 
 Heaven and Earth ! I have myself experienced disappoint- 
 ments more weighty than the death of ten infants. There are 
 two particular friends of mine who offered, ten days ago, 
 22,000 for a delightful estate within seven miles of Stowey. 
 But for an untoward circumstance, they would have had it. ... 
 The loss to the neighbourhood is incalculable. . . .* 
 
 This odd outburst is not in keeping with Poole's 
 undeniable kindness of heart, and it betokens a strange 
 lack of imagination. But it also shows the warmth of 
 his attachment to the Wedgwoods. His letters, of 
 which many remain, show that no man can have had a 
 truer friend than Tom Wedgwood had in him. Many 
 were evidently written with no other purpose than to 
 
 * Letter of March 15, 1799. T. P., i. 290. 
 
68 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 put a little hope and brightness into the gloomy life 
 of the poor, sick, broken man. With the same object 
 he was always ready to go to him, to be his com- 
 panion in travel or to welcome him to Stowey and 
 a most burdensome guest he must have been when- 
 ever it seemed likely that a change of surroundings 
 would help to mitigate his troubles. It was a quite 
 brotherly devotion. 
 
 When Coleridge's stay in Germany was drawing to 
 a close, Josiah had from him the following letter : 
 
 S. < T. Coleridge to Josiah Wedgwood 
 
 GOTTINGEN, 
 
 May 21, 1799. 
 MY DEAR SIR, 
 
 I have lying by my side six huge letters, with your name on 
 each of them, and all excepting one have been written for 
 these three months. About this time Mr. Hamilton, by whom 
 I send this and the little parcel for my wife, was, as it were, 
 setting off for England ; and I seized the opportunity of sending 
 them by him, as without any mock-modesty I really thought 
 that the expense of the Postage to me and to you would be 
 more than their worth. Day after day, and week after week, 
 was Hamilton going, and still delayed; and now that it is 
 absolutely settled that he goes to-morrow, it is likewise abso- 
 lutely settled that I shall go this day three weeks, and I have 
 therefore sent only this and the Picture by him, but the letters 
 I will now take myself, for I should not like them to be lost, 
 as they comprise the only subject on which I have had any 
 opportunity of making myself thoroughly informed, and if I 
 carry them myself, I can carry them without danger of their 
 being seized at Yarmouth, as all my letters were, yours to the 
 Von Axens, &c., excepted, which were luckily not sealed. 
 Before left England, I had read the Book of which you 
 
COLERIDGE IN GERMANY 69 
 
 speak.* I must confess that it appeared to me exceedingly 
 illogical. Godwin's and Condorcet's extravagancies were not 
 worth confuting; and yet I thought that the Essay on Popula- 
 tion had not confuted them. Professor Wallace, Derham, and 
 a number of German Statistic and Physico-theological writers 
 had taken the same ground, namely, that Population increases 
 in a geometrical but the accessional nutriment only in an 
 arithmetical ratio ; and that vice and misery, the natural con- 
 sequences of this order of things, were intended by Providence 
 as the Counterpoise. I have here no means of procuring so 
 obscure a book as Rudgard's ; but to the best of my recollection, 
 at the time that the Fifth Monarchy enthusiasts created so 
 great a sensation in England, under the Protectorate and the 
 beginning of Charles the Second's reign, Rudgard or Rutgard 
 (I am not positive even of the name) wrote an Essay to the 
 same purpose ; in which he asserted, that if War, Pestilence, 
 Vice, and Poverty were wholly removed, the World could not 
 exist two hundred years, &c. Stissmilch, in his great work 
 concerning the divine order and regularity in the Destiny of 
 the human Race has a chapter entitled a confutation of this 
 idea ; I read it with great eagerness, and found therein that this 
 idea militated against the Glory and Goodness of God, and 
 must therefore be false, but further confutation found I none ! 
 This book of Sussmilch's has a prodigious character throughout 
 Germany ; and never methinks did a Work less deserve it. It 
 is in 3 huge octavos, and wholly on the general Laws that 
 regulate the Population of the human species ; but is throughout 
 most unphilosophical, and the tables, which he has collected 
 with great Industry, proved nothing. My objections to the 
 Essay on Population you will find in my sixth letter at large ; 
 but do not, my dear sir, suppose that because unconvinced by 
 this Essay, I am therefore convinced of the contrary. No, 
 God knows I am sufficiently sceptical, and in truth more than 
 sceptical, concerning the possibility of universal Plenty and 
 
 * Malthus's " Essay on the Principle of Population " was published 
 (anonymously) in 1798. 
 
yo TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 Wisdom ; but my doubts rest on other grounds. I had some 
 conversation with you before I left England on this subject ; 
 and from that time I had proposed to myself to examine as 
 thoroughly as it was possible for me the important question, 
 Is the march of the Human Race progressive, or in cycles ? 
 But more of this when we meet. 
 
 What have I done in Germany ? I have learned the lan- 
 guage, both high and low German ; I can read both, and speak 
 the former so fluently, that it must be a torture for a German 
 to be in my company that is, I have words enough and 
 phrases enough, and I arrange them tolerably ; but my pronuncia- 
 tion is hideous. 2ndly, I can read the oldest German, the 
 Prankish, and the Swabian. 3rdly, I have attended the 
 lectures on Physiology, Anatomy, and Natural History, with 
 regularity, and have endeavoured to understand these subjects. 
 4thly, I have read and made collections for a History of the 
 Belles Lettres in Germany before the time of Lessing ; and 
 5thly, very large collections for a Life of Lessing, to which I 
 was led by the miserably bad and unsatisfactory Biographies 
 that have been hitherto given, and by my personal acquaintance 
 with two of Lessing's Friends. Soon after I came into 
 Germany, I made up my mind fully not to publish anything 
 concerning my Travels, as people call them ; yet I soon per- 
 ceived that with all possible economy my expenses would be 
 greater than I could justify, unless I did something that would 
 to a moral certainty repay them. I chose the Life of Lessing 
 for the reasons above assigned, and because it would give me 
 an opportunity of conveying, under a better name than my own 
 ever will be, opinions * which I deem of the highest importance. 
 Accordingly my main business at Gottingen has been to read 
 all the numerous Controversies in which L. was engaged; 
 and the works of all those German Poets before the time of 
 Lessing, which I could not or could not afford to buy. For 
 these last four months, with the exception of last week, in 
 
 * Here he wrote, apparently, and then struck out, the words " on' 
 History and Metaphysics." 
 
COLERIDGE IN GERMANY 71 
 
 which I visited the Hartz, I have worked harder than, I trust 
 in God Almighty, I shall ever have occasion to work again ; 
 this endless transcription is such a body-and-soul-wearying 
 Purgatory. I shall have bought thirty pounds worth of books, 
 chiefly metaphysics, and with a view to the one work to which 
 I hope to dedicate in silence the prime of my life ; but I believe 
 and indeed doubt not, that before Christmas I shall have 
 repayed myself; but before that time I shall have been under 
 the necessity of requesting your permission that I may during 
 the year anticipate for 40 or fifty pound. I have hitherto 
 drawn on you for 35 & 30 & 30 & 30 = 125^. Of this sum 
 I left about 32 or 33 pounds in your hands, of Mr. Chester's, 
 when I left England, and Chester has since desired his brother 
 to transmit 25^, and again in his last letter 30.^. Wordsworth 
 has promised me that he will pay into your hands 4^ for me, 
 33 & 25 & 30 & 4 = 92^. Hitherto, therefore, I have drawn 
 as it were about 33 or 34 pound, but this week, to pay both our 
 Gottingen Bills, and our journey to England, I must draw for 
 jo. So that altogether I shall have in this year drawn for 
 103 pound. 
 
 I never, to the best of my recollections, felt the fear of Death 
 but once ; that was yesterday when I delivered the picture to 
 Hamilton. I felt, and shivered as I felt it, that I should not 
 like to die by land or water before I see my wife and the little 
 one that I hope yet remains to me. But it was an idle sort of 
 feeling, and I should not like to have it again. Poole half 
 mentioned, in a hasty way, a circumstance that depressed my 
 spirits for many days, that you and Thomas were on the point 
 of settling near Stowey, but had abandoned it. " God Al- 
 mighty ! what a dream of happiness it held out to me ! " writes 
 Poole. 7 felt disappointment without having had hope ! 
 
 In about a month I hope to see you. Till then may heaven 
 bless and preserve us ! Believe me, my dear sir, with every 
 feeling of love, esteem, and gratitude, 
 
 Your affectionate Friend, 
 
 S. T. COLERIDGE. 
 
72 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 The object of this letter was evidently to satisfy the 
 natural wish of the brothers to hear what Coleridge was 
 doing. They would not understand as well as we do 
 how little, alas ! was signified by the large literary pro- 
 jects he tells them of. Neither the JLessing biography, 
 as we know, nor the pre-Lessing history of Belles 
 Lettres, came to anything. One is half inclined to 
 wonder whether the " six huge letters," which had 
 waited so mysteriously three months for a means of 
 conveyance, ever had any objective existence. If they 
 ever reached Josiah's hands it seems strange that they 
 should not be found with other letters of Coleridge 
 carefully kept by him. 
 
 In August 1799 the brothers' long hunt for a place 
 of abode was ended by their hearing of what seemed a 
 suitable property in Dorsetshire, a house with an estate 
 of moderate size round it, which Josiah soon agreed to 
 take. This was Gunville House (or Park) at Tarrant 
 Gunville, some five or six miles from Blandford. 
 Josiah's plan was to live here during most of each year, 
 migrating to Staffordshire for about three months every 
 summer, in order to look after the works at Etruria. 
 A year later Tom bought the Eastbury estate, a pro- 
 perty separated only by a road from Gunville, and here 
 soon afterwards his mother and sisters joined him. 
 The place was remote from any considerable town, the 
 nearest being Salisbury, about seventeen miles away. 
 One may judge from the present old-world look of the 
 little village how utterly rural must have been its 
 aspect in 1800. The house at Eastbury Park was (and 
 
COLERIDGE LIFE IN LONDON 73 
 
 is) a singular one, being but a remnant of a magnificent 
 mansion built by Vanbrugh, about 1718, for Bubb 
 Dodington, at a cost, it is said, of about 150,000. 
 Earl Temple, who inherited the estate, found the vast 
 building a burdensome possession. He offered to pay 
 any gentleman 200 a year to inhabit it, and when this 
 failed to secure a tenant, he took it down, selling it 
 piecemeal, all but one wing. This was done about 
 
 Josiah's life at Gunville became that of a country 
 gentleman. He hunted, shot, did his share of county 
 business, and became deeply interested in improving his 
 breed of sheep. * 
 
 This would have been a happy family settlement but 
 for the gloom thrown over it by Tom's sad condition 
 of health. He had long given up all serious work, 
 and his life was devoted to the wearying struggle to 
 get the better of his disease. The " warm-room cure " 
 had had no good result ; but cold, apparently, was his 
 great enemy, and we now find him busy with the pro- 
 blem how to adapt a part of Gunville House to carry- 
 ing out some regime , of the same kind. Herein he 
 sought the aid of his and his father's old friend, James 
 Watt, who had already been the deviser of the appa- 
 ratus for generating Beddoes' medicinal " airs." How 
 eager the great engineer was to help him is shown by 
 
 * Tom Wedgwood's educational theories (p. 208) absolutely 
 ignored any such thing as inheritance or congenital character. And 
 yet he must have seen his brother taking vast pains to get rams or 
 the right sort. Strange that this object-lesson never, apparently, 
 led him to question the omnipotence of education, a theory which 
 seems to assume that all human infants are born with substantially 
 the same character ! 
 
74 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 five or six very long letters, in which Watt describes, 
 with careful drawings by his own hand, various elabo- 
 rate appliances, special grates, window fittings, and 
 ventilating contrivances, which he thinks will suit 
 Wedgwood's purpose. But Gunville is not yet in a 
 condition fit for an invalid's occupation, and in the 
 beginning of 1 800 Tom is planning a voyage to the 
 West Indies, hoping that a year of tropical heat may do 
 something for him. 
 
 The following two letters from Coleridge are of this 
 time. The first gives an idea of his life in London, 
 where he is writing for the Morning Post, and of his 
 various shadowy literary projects. The other answers 
 a letter from Josiah about the West India scheme. 
 
 S. 'T. Coleridge to 'Tom Wedgwood 
 
 No. 2 I BUCKINGHAM STREET, STRAND. 
 
 [Jan.] 1800. 
 
 [Address : CORNWALLIS HOUSE, CLIFTON, BRISTOL.] 
 MY DEAR SIR, 
 
 I am sitting by a fire in a rug great coat. Your room is 
 doubtless to a greater degree air-tight than mine, or your notion 
 of Tartarus would veer round to the Greenlander's creed. It 
 is most barbarously cold, and you, I fear, can shield yourself 
 from it only by perpetual imprisonment. If any place in the 
 southern Climates were in a state of real quiet, and likely to 
 continue so, should you feel no inclination to migrate ? Poor 
 Southey, from over great industry as I suspect, the Industry, too> 
 of a solitary Composition, has reduced himself to a terrible state 
 of weakness, and is determined to leave this Country as soon as 
 he has finished the poem on which he is now employed. 'Tis 
 
COLERIDGE'S LIFE IN LONDON 75 
 
 a melancholy thing so young a man, and one whose life has 
 ever been so simple and self-denying ! Oh, for Peace, and 
 the south of France ! I could almost wish fora Bourbon king, 
 if it were only that Sieyes and Buonaparte might finish their 
 career in the old orthodox way of Hanging. Thank God, I 
 have my health perfectly and I am working hard ; yet the present 
 state of human affairs presses on me for days together, so as to 
 deprive me of all my chearfulness. It is probable that a man's 
 private and personal connections and interests ought to be upper- 
 most in his daily and hourly Thoughts, and that the dedication 
 of much hope and fear to subjects which are perhaps dispro- 
 portionate to our faculties and power is a disease. But I have 
 had this disease so long, and my early Education was so undo- 
 mestic, that I know not how to get rid of it ; or even to wish 
 to get rid of it. Life was so flat a thing without enthusiasm, 
 that if fora moment it leaves me, I have a sort of a stomach- 
 sensation attached to all my Thoughts, like those which succeed 
 to the pleasurable operation of a dose of opium. Now I make 
 up my mind to a sort of heroism in believing the progressiveness 
 of all nature, during the present melancholy state of Humanity; 
 and on this subject I am now writing ; and no work on which 
 I ever employed myself makes me so happy while I am writing. 
 I shall remain in London till April. \The expences of my 
 last year made it necessary for me to exert my industry ; ana 
 many other good ends are answered at the same time. Where 
 I next settle I shall continue, and that must be in a state o 
 retirement and rustication. It is therefore good for me to have 
 a run of society, and that various, and consisting of marked 
 characters. Likewise by being obliged to write without much 
 elaboration I shall greatly improve myself in naturalness and 
 facility of style ; and the particular subjects on which I write 
 for money are nearly connected with my future schemes. My 
 mornings I give to compilations, which I am sure cannot be 
 wholly useless, and for which by the beginning of April I shall 
 have earned nearly an 150^; my evenings to the Theatres,as I am 
 to conduct a sort of Dramaturgy or series of Essays on the 
 
76 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 Drama ; both its general principles, and likewise in reference 
 to the present state of the English Theatres. This I shall 
 publish in the Morning Tost. The attendance on the Theatres 
 costs me nothing, and Stuart, the Editor, covers my expences in 
 London. Two mornings and one whole day, I dedicate to the 
 Essay on the possible Progressiveness of man and on the prin- 
 ciples of Population. In April I retire to my greater work, 
 The Life of Lessing. My German chests are arrived, but I 
 have them not yet, but expect them from Stowey daily ; when 
 they come I shall send a little pacquet down to you.; 
 
 To pay my wife's travelling expences in London I borrowed 
 29j from my friend Purkis, for which I gave him an order on 
 your Brother, York Street, dating it Jan. 5, 1800. Will you 
 be kind enough to excuse my having done this without having 
 previously written ; but I have every reason to believe that I 
 shall have no occasion to draw again till the year 1801 ; and I 
 believe, that as I now, [sic] I have not anticipated beyond the 
 year, if I have wholly anticipated that. I shall write to Jos. to- 
 morrow for certain. 
 
 I have seen a good deal of Godwin, who has just published a 
 novel. I like him for thinking so well of Davy. He talks of 
 him everywhere as the most extraordinary human Being he had 
 ever met with. I cannot say that, for I know one whom I feel 
 to be the superior, but I never met with so extraordinary a 
 young man. I have likewise dined with Home Tooke. He is 
 a clear headed old man, as every man needs must be who attends 
 to the real import of words ; but there is a sort of charlatannery 
 in his manner that did not please me. He makes such a mystery 
 and difficulty out of plain and palpable things, and never tells 
 you any thing without first exciting and detaining your curiosity. 
 But it were a bad Heart that could not pardon worse faults than 
 these in the author of the Epea Pteroenta.* 
 
 Believe me, my dear sir, with much affection, 
 
 Yours, 
 
 S. T. C. 
 
 * Home Tooke, ex-clergyman, radical politician, and philologist, 
 
COLERIDGE'S LIFE IN LONDON 77 
 
 S. T. Coleridge to Josiah Wedgwood 
 
 [Address : CORNWALLIS HOUSE, CLIFTON, BRISTOL.] 
 Tuesday Morning, 4 Feb., 1800. 
 
 21 BUCKINGHAM STREET, STRAND. 
 
 MY DEAR SIR, 
 
 Your brother's health outweighs all other considerations ; and 
 beyond a doubt he has made himself acquainted with the degree 
 of heat which he is to experience there. The only objections 
 that I see are so obvious, that it is idle in me to mention them : 
 the total want of men with whose pursuits your brother can 
 have a fellow feeling ; the length and difficulty of the return, 
 in case of a disappointment ; and the necessity of Sea-voyages 
 to almost every change of Scenery. I will not think of the 
 Yellow Fever ; that, I hope, is quite out of all probability. 
 Believe me, my dear friend, I have some difficulty in suppressing 
 all that is within me of affection and grief ! God knows my 
 heart ; wherever your Brother is, I shall follow him in spirit ; 
 follow him with my thoughts and most affectionate wishes. 
 
 I read your Letter, and did as you desired me. Montagu* 
 is very cool to me. Whether I have still any of the leaven of 
 the citizen and visionary about me, too much for his present 
 zeal ; or whether M. is incapable of attending to more than 
 one man at a time ; or whether from his dislike of my pressing 
 him to do something for poor Wordsworth ; or perhaps from all 
 these causes combined certain it is that he is shy of me. Of 
 
 (born 1736, died 1812), published his " Err fa nrepoevra, or the 
 Diversions of Purley," an entertaining medley of Etymology, Meta- 
 physics, and Politics, in the years 1786-1805. 
 
 * Basil Montagu (b. 1770, d. 1851), friend of Wordsworth, Cole- 
 ridge, Mackintosh, and Godwin, was at this time beginning his legal 
 career. He became known in later life by the edition of Bacon 
 which Macaulay made the text of his famous Essay. It was some 
 ten years after this that he was the -:ause of an unfortunate estrange- 
 ment between Wordsworth and Coleridge by misreporting something 
 Wordsworth had said to him. 
 
78 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 course, I am supposed to know but little of him distinctly from 
 himself; this however in Montagu's case implies no loss of any 
 authentic source of Information. From his friends I hear that 
 the pressure of his immediate circumstances increases, and that 
 (as how could it be otherwise, poor fellow !) he lives accumu- 
 lating Debts and Obligations. He leaves Wordsworth without 
 his Principal and Interest, which of course he would not do, 
 W.'s daily bread and meat depending in great part on him, if he 
 were not painfully embarrassed. Embarrassed I should have 
 said ; for Pinny tells me that he suffers no pain from it. As 
 to his views, he is now going to Cambridge to canvass for a fel- 
 lowship in Trinity Hall. Mackintosh has kindly written to Dr. 
 Lawrence, who is very intimate with the Master ; and he has 
 other interest. He is also trying hard for and in expectation of 
 a Commissionership of Bankruptcy, and means to pursue the 
 Law with all ardour and steadiness. As to the state of his mind 
 it is that which it was and will be. God love him ! He has a 
 most incurable Forehead. John Pinny called on him and look- 
 ing on his table saw by accident a letter directed to himself. "Why, 
 Montagu ! that letter is for me, and from Wordsworth ! " 
 " Yes ! I have had it some time." " Why did you not give it 
 me ? " " Oh ! it wants some explanation first. You must not 
 read it now, for I can't give you the explanation now." And 
 Pinny, who you know is a right easy-natured man, has not been 
 able to get his own Letter from him to this Hour ! Of his 
 success at Cambridge Caldwell is doubtful, or more than 
 doubtful. He says that men at Cambridge don't trust overmuch 
 these sudden changes of Principle. And most certainly, there 
 is a zeal, an over acted fervour, a spirit of proselytism that dis- 
 tinguishes these men from the manners, and divides them from 
 the sympathies, of the very persons to whose party they have gone 
 over. Smoking hot from the oven of conversion they don't 
 assort well with the old Loaves. So much of Montagu ; all that 
 I know, and all, I suspect, that is to be known. A kind, gentle- 
 manly, affectionate-hearted man, possessed of an absolute Talent 
 for Industry ; would to God ! he had never heard of Philosophy! 
 
COLERIDGE'S LIFE IN LONDON 79 
 
 I have been three times to the House of Commons ; each 
 time earlier than the former ; and each time hideously crowded. 
 The two first Days the Debate was put off ; yesterday I went 
 at a quarter before 8, and remained till 3 this morning ; and 
 then sat writing, and correcting other men's writing till 8 a 
 good twenty four hours of unpleasant activity ! I have not felt 
 myself sleepy yet. Pitt and Fox completely answered my pre- 
 formed ideas of them. The elegance and high finish of Pitt's 
 Periods, even in the most sudden replies, is curious^ but that is 
 all. He argues but so so, and does not reason at all. Nothing 
 is rememberable in what he says. Fox possesses all the full and 
 overflowing Eloquence of a man of clear head, clean heart, and 
 impetuous feelings. He is to my mind a great orator ; all the 
 rest that spoke were mere creatures. I could make a better 
 speech myself than any that I heard, except Pitt's and Fox's. 
 I reported that part of Pitt's which I have enclosed in crotchets, 
 not that I report ex-officio ; but curiosity haying led me there, 
 I did Stuart a service by taking a few notesA I work from morn- 
 ing to night, but in a few weeks I shall have Completed my pur- 
 pose ; and then adieu to London for ever ! We newspaper 
 scribes are true Galley-Slaves. When the high winds of Events 
 blow loud and frequent then the Sails are hoisted, or the ship 
 drives on of itself. When all is calm and Sunshine, then to our 
 oars. Yet it is not unflattering to a man's vanity to reflect that 
 what he writes at twelve at night will before twelve hours is over 
 have perhaps 5 or 6000 Readers ! To trace a happy phrase, 
 good image, or new argument, running through the town and 
 sliding into all the papers ! Few Wine-merchants can boast of 
 creating more sensation. Then to hear a favourite and often- 
 urged argument repeated almost in your own particular phrases 
 in the House of Commons ; and quietly in the silent self-com- 
 placence of your own heart chuckle over the plagiarism, as if 
 you were grand Monopolist of all good Reasons ! But seriously, 
 considering that I have newspapered it merely as means of 
 subsistence while I was doing other things, I have been very 
 lucky. The New Constitution, the Proposals for Peace, the Irish 
 
8o TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 Union, &c. &c. they are important in themselves, and excellent 
 Vehicles for general Truths. I am not ashamed of what I 
 have written. 
 
 I desired Poole to send you all the papers antecedent to your 
 own. I think you will like the different Analyses of the French 
 Constitution. I have attended Mackintosh regularly. He was 
 so kind as to send me a Ticket, and I have not failed to profit 
 by it. What I think of M. and all I think I will tell you in 
 some future Letter. My affectionate respects to Mrs. W. God 
 love you, my dear Sir ! 
 
 I remain, with grateful and most affectionate Esteem, 
 
 Your faithful Friend, 
 
 S. T. COLERIDGE. 
 
 It was while Tom Wedgwood was preparing for his 
 voyage to the West Indies, that he must have been, as 
 we may suppose, startled by receiving from Leslie a 
 letter making a proposal for the hand of one of his 
 sisters. It was of quite prodigious length, and of course 
 a most ornate and poetical composition, one so re- 
 markable indeed that I am tempted to insert part of it 
 here, as a curiosity of amatory literature. Leslie 
 having left no descendants, we may hope that no one's 
 feelings will be hurt by our taking this liberty with a 
 century-old love-story. We may remember that his 
 first sight of Kitty and Sarah Wedgwood was when he 
 came to stay with the family at Etruria in 1790. 
 When he left it in 1792, Sarah, the younger, was about 
 sixteen years old. She was now in her twenty-fourth 
 year. He does not mention the lady's name, but it is 
 believed that Sarah was the adored one. The letter 
 begins without any introductory words. 
 
LESLIE A PROPOSAL 8r 
 
 John Leslie to Tom Wedgwood 
 
 ISLINGTON, 
 
 10 Feb., 1800. 
 
 On the eve of bidding a tender adieu, may I venture at last 
 to communicate a matter of the most serious and delicate 
 nature ? Long has the thought fired and tortured my brain. 
 Often have I been on the point of disclosing it and as often 
 have I been restrained by timidity or a sense of propriety. 
 Still I hesitate. Shall I, by one rash step, provoke your dis- 
 pleasure ? That reflection would be the torment of my life. 
 Yet to whom should I unbosom myself but to my early and 
 tried friend, who has felt such a lively interest in all my 
 concerns, and who on this occasion is called by the most sacred 
 ties to interpose his counsel ? By dwelling on a loved object 
 which absorbs the imagination, by cherishing a sort of forlorn 
 hope amidst obstacles seemingly almost insurmountable, a 
 passion full of delicious anxiety has gradually sprung up, has 
 acquired consistency, and has at length mounted to such a pitch 
 as to threaten my repose. I need your indulgence. I will 
 submit to your direction. And as the ardour of my attachment 
 is chastened by sentiments of deference and distant respect, I 
 have some room to expect you will judge me with tenderness. 
 Not to keep you longer in suspense, I have had the temerity to 
 think of soliciting an alliance in your family. 
 
 You startle at this declaration. It may appear presumptuous 
 and romantic. I must intreat you to suppress your emotions 
 until you have finished the perusal of this letter. I owe it to 
 my conscience to disclaim the idea of being stimulated by 
 ambitious motives. Calculations of interest would on this 
 occasion ill comport with the warmth of my feelings. I am 
 indeed convinced that riches would in a very slight degree, if 
 at all, augment my happiness. I have hitherto betrayed no 
 disposition to outstep the bounds of mediocrity. The close 
 and artificial garb of ambition is foreign to my heart. By dis- 
 guising or retracting my sentiments it was more than once in 
 
 F 
 
82 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 my power to have obtained situations which the bulk of men 
 considered respectable. I have sought only the approbation of 
 my own mind and that of a few discerning friends. My 
 attachment to the fair object of all my vows is founded on a 
 certain sympathy of character, rendered irresistible by the 
 fascination of personal charms. Her fortune and condition, so 
 far from inviting the suit, present the most formidable bar to 
 the accomplishment of my wishes. 
 
 I have seen very few, indeed none of their sex, with whom 
 I would compare your younger sisters. What a bewitching 
 assemblage of all the qualities fitted to inspire love, affection 
 and esteem ! One of them, and I believe your particular 
 favourite, to great personal attractions unites the most un- 
 common powers of mind. But her sister seems to possess those 
 soft feminine charms which touch and melt the soul. The 
 impression I first received can never be effaced. In the bloom of 
 health and beauty but what a sweetness was expressed on every 
 feature ! I was confused, intoxicated. Fortune soon placed 
 me beside her, and the memory of that happy period will always 
 affect me with delight. My prepossessions were surpassed by 
 experience. That species of mild beauty which is most capti- 
 vating, and those qualities of head and heart which justify the 
 triumph ! The image was realised which my fancy had framed, 
 of the most amiable of women. Gentle, kind, frank and open 
 invariably, habitually chearful, without levity, and without 
 the smallest particle of affectation. Blessed with the finest 
 dispositions on earth, she seemed formed to be happy herself 
 and to diffuse happiness around her. Such admirable equality 
 of temper ! Never a frown was seen on her brow. Endued 
 with good sense, a correct judgment, and a cultivated under- 
 standing, with considerable accomplishments, she yet appeared 
 unconscious of her merits, and showed on all occasions a 
 hesitation and a modesty bordering on timidity, which in her 
 sex is altogether irresistible. When I remarked, too, the interior 
 economy of the family, those excellent patterns exhibited, the 
 ease, simplicity, and decorum which prevailed, that knowledge 
 
LESLIE A PROPOSAL 83 
 
 and liberality of sentiment which seasoned every conversation 
 I envied the happy man who was destined to enjoy those 
 reflected charms. For my part, I durst not aspire I sighed 
 in secret. I strove to repress every symptom that might excite 
 suspicion. Yet a gleam of hope would at times flit across my 
 mind and lift it to extacy. 
 
 A long separation followed, but she remained undisputed 
 mistress of my heart. . . . How I longed to see her, without 
 daring to signify a wish ! How often my attempts were traversed ! 
 At length I enjoyed that supreme satisfaction last summer. I 
 found her fresh as Hebe ; and if possible more amiable than 
 ever. What kindness and condescension ! My senses were 
 overpowered. In the delirium of imagination, I even fancied 
 that she betrayed some marks of partiality. I formed the 
 resolution to disclose my passion, but I wanted courage and 
 opportunity. The most imperious urgency only, the obligation 
 of previously consulting your sentiments, could compel me to a 
 confession. 
 
 But why fatigue you with this amorous tale ? ... If I am 
 guilty of an offence, I have endeavoured to make it as light as 
 possible. Never shall the young lady need to ... [words torn 
 away] ... on my account. The secret has not been entrusted 
 to mortal ; it shall rest in my breast, it shall perish with me. I 
 shall religiously avoid hurting her feelings or those of the family. 
 Yet such is my opinion of her perfect goodness that I am 
 persuaded she is incapable of conceiving hatred or disdain, and 
 that even a repulse from her would be couched in obliging 
 terms. 
 
 I owe a thousand apologies for abusing your patience. It is 
 the first time I have written in such a strain the first time I ever 
 made profession of love. You see the state of my mind. I am 
 agitated by conflicting passions. This is the most momentous 
 crisis of my life. My heart swells with anxiety. I tremble to 
 hear your advice. A few words will suffice, but let it be from 
 your own hand. If it shall be in the least consolatory, it will 
 give buoyancy to hope it will in part open the prospect of 
 
84 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 earthly elysium. A contrary presentiment weighs me down. 
 Alas ! is all the future to be shrouded in despondency ? I fear 
 I have already committed folly. Destroy this letter. 
 
 Farewell ! 
 
 JOHN LESLIE. 
 
 On one of the flaps is a P.S. as to some commissions, 
 with the following sentences : 
 
 Your brother's note has at this moment fallen into my hands. 
 It rends my heart. I had still some lingering hopes. I have 
 a thousand things to say, and your [sic] torn prematurely from 
 me. 
 
 How the " amorous tale " ended appears from 
 Leslie's next letter, which also gives us a glimpse of 
 the lady's attitude towards her lover during his visit to 
 Stoke in the preceding year. 
 
 John Leslie to T'om Wedgwood 
 
 (Address : COMMERSON'S HOTEL, FALMOUTH.) 
 
 No date. 
 
 Postmark: Feb. 21, 1800. 
 
 Each new incident raises my admiration of your character, 
 and makes me feel more intensely the pang of separation. In 
 your last letter you appear in a light peculiarly endearing. The 
 circumstances under which it was written, the indulgent and 
 friendly tone of admonition all affect me extremely. There is 
 a solemnity in the scene. It is a precious relict the last 
 perhaps I shall receive for many months. Yet it has dashed all 
 the gay visions of hope. I submit, whatever the effort may cost. 
 Here the matter shall rest. My spirits are now more composed 
 and I shall listen to the dictates of reason. Be assured that my 
 conduct shall during your absence give no ground of uneasiness 
 or suspicion. I will testify my devotion by observing a religious 
 silence. That rapturous attachment can never be extinguished, 
 
LESLIE A PROPOSAL 85 
 
 but I may hope that it will finally soften down into permanent 
 esteem. 
 
 What a disclosure the letter contains ! I am indeed 
 astonished. Nothing could have betrayed me but my em- 
 barrassed manner and fixed absent looks, circumstances which 
 I imagined would naturally be confounded with my ordinary 
 habits. Is it possible that I may have hurt inadvertently the 
 feelings of the tenderest, gentlest nymph on earth ? If I have, 
 I am heartily concerned for it. But my pardon is already 
 sealed. My reception at Stoke I shall never forget. On that 
 supposition, it evinced a superiority of mind which might call 
 forth admiration, as her other qualities inspire the most ardent 
 love. There were some little traits which can never be effaced 
 from my mind. But I will discourage all such reflections. 
 This is the last time I shall fatigue you with such a theme.* 
 
 The thoughts of your absence make me feel a blank in my 
 existence. Yes, my inestimable friend, we shall meet again; 
 the Atlantic shall not long part us. Tho' I opposed the 
 West India project, do not imagine that after your mind was 
 unalterably fixed that I would have declined to accompany 
 you. On several accounts you have made a better choice. 
 But should circumstances require any change of arrangement, 
 depend always on my services. I will fly to join you on any 
 spot of the globe. . . . 
 
 Pray, when your spirits will permit, get Koenig to write 
 out your metaphysical speculations. In case of accident, there 
 should be more than one copy. If one were transmitted to 
 me I would foster it with paternal care. 
 
 I may write again before you start. My prayers and wishes 
 will attend you on the voyage. Farewell. 
 
 * Sarah Wedgwood had many suitors, some quite in middle life, 
 but she died unmarried. A grand-niece who remembers her in her 
 old age tells me she never can have been beautiful. She was an able 
 and a very generous woman, spent little on herself, and gave away 
 nearly the whole of her fortune in charity. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE WEST INDIES A FAILURE 
 
 1800 
 
 ON one of the last days of February 1800, Tom 
 Wedgwood sailed for the West Indies, hoping that 
 some months in the tropics might better his health. 
 It was practically the first separation of the two 
 brothers, and how deeply the feelings of both were 
 stirred by it appears from a letter of Josiah written a 
 few days later. 
 
 Josiah Wedgwood to 'Tom Wedgwood 
 
 GUNVILLE, 
 
 February 28, 1800. 
 MY DEAR TOM, 
 
 I cannot resist the temptation of employing my first moment 
 of leisure to unburden my heart in writing to you. The dis- 
 tance that separates us, the affecting circumstances under which 
 we parted, our former inseparable life and perfect friendship, 
 unite to deepen the emotion with which I think of you, and 
 give an importance and solemnity that is new to my communi- 
 cation with you. I did not know till now how dearly I love 
 you, nor do you know with what deep regret I forbore to 
 accompany you. It was a subject I could not talk to you upon, 
 though I was perpetually desirous to make you acquainted with 
 all my feelings upon it. I could not without necessity leave 
 my wife and children, and I believed that I ought not, yet my 
 
THE WEST INDIES 87 
 
 resolution was not taken without a mixture of self-reproach. 
 But I repeat the promise I made to you at Falmouth. I have 
 not yet been able to think of you with dry eyes, but a little 
 time will harden me. It is not so necessary for me to see you, 
 as to know that you are well and happy. Nothing can be 
 more disinterested than the love I bear you. I know that my 
 wife and children could alone render me happy, but I see with 
 the most heartfelt concern that your admirable qualifications 
 are rendered ineffectual for your happiness and your fame by 
 your miserable health. But I have a full conviction that your 
 constitution is strong and elastic, and that your present 
 experiment bids fair to remove the derangement of your 
 machine. I look forward with hope and joy to our meeting 
 again, and I am sure the seeing you again well and vigorous 
 will be a moment of the purest happiness I can feel. 
 
 Perhaps this may be the last time I shall write to you in this 
 strain. If it should for a time revive your sorrow, it cannot 
 long injure your tranquillity to be told that I love you, esteem 
 you, and admire you, truly and deeply. 
 
 I took possession of this place this morning with very different 
 feelings from those I should have had if we had been together. 
 . . . The last waggon load from Upcott came about an hour 
 after me. . . . 
 
 This place will be exceedingly pleasant in summer. It is 
 now very cold with a frost and east wind. 
 
 I have written to Gregory Watt* to send me a copying 
 machine, that I may send duplicates by another packet, a 
 precaution you must not forget. I will send you more copying 
 paper. I shall curse the French if they take the packet bearing 
 your first letter. How anxiously will it be expected, and with 
 what emotion will it be opened and read. We must not expect 
 to hear from you in less than four months. 
 
 Very few of the letters I write afford me any pleasure, but I 
 
 * Son of the great inventor. He was an affectionate friend of 
 Tom and Josiah. Copying machines had lately been invented by 
 James Watt. 
 
88 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 foresee a great pleasure in writing to you all that comes, and 
 just as it comes. There is a pleasure in tender regret for the 
 absence and misfortunes of a person one loves, and corresponding 
 with that person is the complete fruition of it. I feel like 
 JEneas clasping the shade of Creusa. I call up your image, 
 but it is not substantial. 
 Farewell, dear Tom. 
 
 This letter was, so far as the existing Wedgwood 
 papers show, a unique outpouring of feeling on the 
 part of Josiah. The rest of his letters to his brother 
 contain only hints of the sorrow stirred by the con- 
 tinual spectacle of Tom's wrecked life, hardly ever an 
 approach to an expression of his deeper feelings. He 
 was inexpressive in writing as in speech, and his thus 
 breaking through the habitual reserve of years shows 
 how deeply touched he was at this critical moment. 
 His feeling towards his brother was a mixture of com- 
 passion, love and admiration. Tom was in truth the 
 great passion of his life. 
 
 Tom's letters from the West Indies contain little or 
 nothing that is of extra-personal interest, but they 
 have a pathetic significance as showing the depth of the 
 affection which united him to his family, and the 
 warmth of his gratitude for the never failing sympathy 
 which his sad condition evoked from all his brothers 
 and sisters. His first letter home is a sort of encyclical 
 to the family circle. He seems to have shrunk from 
 writing to any of them individually, feeling how much 
 he owed to all. 
 
THE WEST INDIES 89 
 
 'Tom Wedgwood to his family 
 
 ST. PIERRE, MARTINIQUE, 
 
 April $th, 1800. 
 
 [After referring to the voyage and the circumstances of his 
 arrival]. I staid two days at Barbadoes and gained strength 
 and spirits every moment. . . . The climate, the beauty of the 
 trees and shrubs, the tout ensemble, astonished and delighted us 
 all beyond our highest expectations. We came to this place 
 on the 3rd and found a paradise. I have been for some days 
 in a trance of enjoyment. I am perfectly at a loss how to 
 convey an idea of the exquisite beauty of the scenery. . . . 
 Reconvey me to-morrow by the same intolerable journey to 
 Europe, and I must consider myself as repaid by what I have 
 enjoyed, and by the materials I have laid in for future enjoy- 
 ment. . . . The near scenery is exquisite, little vallies at the 
 feet of mountains piled on each other in a noble succession, 
 every tree new to the eye, many loaded with brilliant flowers 
 and fruit. Another impression which has not abated is that of 
 a desire to have this astonishing scene disclosed more gradually. 
 The sight aches and the spirit sinks from unceasing excitement. 
 The mind, too full, keeps longing for a moment's respite, for 
 leisure to pursue the various channels, the little bye-streams of 
 those rapid and full currents of thought which pass through it 
 in all directions. 
 
 But I will not exhaust myself nor run the risk of disgusting 
 you, for you have not these scenes and feelings present to you 
 to enable you to sympathise in my most imperfect efforts at 
 expression. . . . 
 
 To illustrate we got here in the dark. I rose first in the 
 morning, put my head out of the window what a picture 
 then lay before me ! I called to King and we actually em- 
 braced each other. 
 
 I gain strength very rapidly. ... If I had no indigestion 
 and headache I should be in heaven. . . . 
 
 I cannot send this off without offering with tears of the 
 
90 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 purest love and gratitude, a simple declaration. Believe me 
 then, I am affected in the manner I ought to be by all your 
 kindnesses to me. I know, too, that I must too often have 
 seemed insensible to all their claims, but do not be deceived 
 into this cruel opinion. The languor of illness and a conflict 
 of uneasy sensations never blinded my observation, though it 
 prevented any expression of sentiment. But I have placed to 
 your credit a thousand tender services which your delicacy in 
 vain attempted to conceal from me. Nothing has more deeply 
 affected me than your mild forbearance with my petulancies 
 and caprices. 
 
 But I dare not now proceed in this subject. I dare not 
 indulge in the luxury of those feelings which begin to intro- 
 duce a disordered agitation. I must add however that I have 
 above made a most unfeigned tender of sentiment to a very 
 numerous band. Let no one who reads this imagine an exclu- 
 sion. Certainly some individuals have sacrificed more largely 
 to my health and comfort than others. But a single enquiry 
 expressed with interest I always consider as an offer and 
 earnest of a host of kind actions. . . . 
 
 I cannot write another word. 
 
 THOMAS WEDGWOOD. 
 
 The exhilaration produced in presence of the glories 
 of tropical scenery did not last long. He thinks at 
 first that he is gaining strength, but that soon turns 
 out to be an illusion ; the old pains and physical 
 troubles reappear, and he begins to plan for his return, 
 if there is no sign of real amendment. He tells next 
 to nothing as to what he sees or does. Writing 
 exhausts him, and he cannot waste his little strength 
 upon describing incidents of travel. And there is 
 hardly a word as to the social condition of the people 
 about him, and not a word as to slaves or slave holding. 
 
THE WEST INDIES 91 
 
 This is singular when we remember the general set of 
 his ideas, and that the agitation for abolishing the 
 trade by which these islands were supplied with slaves 
 had been going on for many years and all Wedg- 
 woods were keen abolitionists. But the ceaseless 
 struggle with bodily suffering absorbs him. He is 
 continually speculating on future plans, and as he 
 thinks of these he is always harassed by the thought 
 that his own miseries are spoiling the lives of those 
 who care for him. 
 
 The following letter would seem to be his answer to 
 that written by his brother after they parted. 
 
 fom Wedgwood to his brother Josiah 
 
 NEVIS, 
 
 May I3//5, 1800. 
 MY DEAREST FRIEND, 
 
 I cannot tell you the pleasure your letter gave me. It gave 
 me an assurance of what my conscience and judgment bade me 
 not to be too confident [of], your unabated esteem and affection. 
 . . . Your most welcome assurance brought with it everything 
 which was wanting to complete the charm of that intimate 
 connection which has so long and so happily subsisted between 
 us ... To the moment of our separation your tenderness 
 and affection were continually on the increase ; I was only 
 apprehensive that even your forbearance and pity might at 
 length be fatigued by the importunate and dismal intercourse of 
 a sick man. I have read your letter a dozen times over. It 
 has inspired me with an increased craving after health. I long 
 so ardently to contribute towards your happiness ... I cannot 
 endure the idea of being a thorn in your side. 
 
 You may judge how welcome your letter was to me when I 
 tell you that I read the receipt to dress a pig three times, merely 
 for the association with your hand-writing. You have never 
 
92 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 known to what a degree my attachment to you has long risen. 
 When you are with me, I imagine myself an exile from home, 
 longing, as I always do most burningly, for your society. I 
 then exultingly bless myself that you are present to me. . . . 
 You are my great repository, magazine, reservoir of agreeable 
 associations and lively feelings. You are for ever present to 
 my memory, and the chief consolation of absence and a most 
 tedious illness. I often cannot help yielding to the illusion of 
 our mutual affection being carried forward into a future and a 
 better existence. . . . Whenever those separations which we 
 both lament have been about to take place, I have always 
 contrived to spend every moment which remained to me in 
 your company. If you have been called from me for a few 
 hours I feel as if robbed of some vital energy, &c. &c., for 
 this strain is endless. Be for ever assured that you and your 
 wife are objects of my most perfect love and esteem your 
 children are most dear to me. Oh God ! that I had force to 
 display my own character to act, in any degree, as I feel. I 
 should not then be making professions. But I am so blasted 
 by my cruel Fates, so crippled and cramped in every energy of 
 mind and body, that with all those qualities for which you give 
 me credit, I am absolutely inferior to the veriest imbecile that 
 eats, drinks, and sleeps away life. But patience, patience I 
 am determined to live as long as Nature permits, I must there- 
 fore humbly submit and patiently bear the evils of existence 
 Farewell. 
 
 My birds are singing on all sides of me oranges by thou- 
 sands close to the house a supper on land-crabs in prospettc 
 and yet I crave for that desart spot, dear, dear Gunville. 
 
 His first letter home (supra, p. 89), had arrived in 
 England about June 4. Part of its contents must have 
 been communicated by Josiah to Coleridge, who writes 
 as follows : 
 
THE WEST INDIES 93 
 
 S. < T. Coleridge to Josiah Wedgwood 
 
 BRISTOL, 
 
 Thursday, June 12, 1800. 
 MY DEAR SIR, 
 
 Enclosed is 20 . . . 
 
 I had heard such pleasing accounts of your dear brother, 
 accounts exaggerated at second hand by the joy of the narrators, 
 that T. Wedgwood's own statement came on me as a dis- 
 appointment. Still, however, Broxham must have seen a great 
 difference or he could not have written as he did. God in 
 heaven bless him ! Your letter to me, that is, the account in 
 your letter, made the tears roll down Poole's face. . . . 
 
 Old Mrs. Poole is, I am afraid, dying. . . .* 
 
 The doubts as to how Tom Wedgwood was faring 
 were soon set at rest. Poole was surprised one evening 
 at Stowey by receiving the following note : 
 
 Tom Wedgwood to C T. Poole and S. T. Coleridge 
 
 BRIDGEWATER, 
 
 Tuesday, 6 (? clock. 
 
 (Probably June 24, 1800.) 
 MY DEAR FRIENDS, 
 
 It is with the utmost reluctance that I pass so near you 
 without a personal salutation. Accept this, however, such as 
 it is may it carry to Stowey as warm as it leaves my heart. 
 
 You are no doubt much surprised at my return. I have 
 soon convinced myself that a stay in the West Indies would 
 not benefit my health for many reasons which I cannot now 
 
 * The omitted sentences refer to Coleridge's fruitless house- 
 hunting about Porlock, and to his intention to try for a house in 
 the Lake country. 
 
94 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 enter upon. I am now hurrying to Cote, to inquire after my 
 friends ; and my fatigue, joined to anxiety, prevents my making 
 any round in my journey, or I would surely see you at Stowey. 
 Let me hear from you. It will delight me to have a good 
 account of you and yours, particularly your excellent mother. 
 
 Ever yours most cordially, 
 
 T. WEDGWOOD. 
 
 This must have been scribbled off while he was 
 changing horses at Bridgewater on his way from Fal- 
 mouth to Bristol. The meeting at Cote cannot have 
 been a happy one. The West Indies scheme, planned 
 with much thought and trouble, had failed. Yet he 
 had moments when he could fancy himself really re- 
 covering. Six weeks later we find him riding to 
 London from Christchurch, where he had been staying 
 with his brother Jos. 
 
 Writing from a roadside inn he says (August 15, 
 1800): 
 
 How often have I wished you jogging at my side, to enjoy 
 what I have done, of air and scenery, and to witness and sym- 
 pathise in my rapid progress in convalescence. But for the 
 many cruel disappointments already experienced, I might now 
 indulge a hope of regaining my lost health and strength. I 
 dare not cherish the viper idea. If they are restored to me, 
 God knows they will be welcome if not, I mean not to sink 
 lower from disappointment. I rode 5 hours yesterday and have 
 ridden, by n to-day, 28 miles without any fatigue. . . . Slept 
 in an alehouse last night never lay better. Avoid great inns 
 hot, dear, noisy. You'll hear of me by calling at the single 
 houses, and in the " pleasant villages." . . . 
 Believe me, 
 
 le plus devout des tres humains, 
 
 T. W. 
 
I 
 * 
 
A FAILURE 95 
 
 And this is followed by a light-hearted letter talking 
 of prospective shooting in the New Forest, and matters 
 incidental to starting life at Gunville. Possibly the 
 sea voyages and the stay in the tropics had made him 
 stronger for the time. During this autumn and the 
 succeeding winter he had continual alternations of 
 what seemed like recovery followed by heart-sickening 
 relapses. It was apparently in the latter part of the 
 year 1800 that he was making his photographic experi- 
 ments, and there can be little doubt that the persistent 
 recurrence of these periods of illness and suffering was 
 what prevented his following up his discovery. The 
 following extracts from letters of this time show his 
 variable condition : 
 
 'Tom Wedgwood to his brother Josiah 
 
 27 August, 1800. 
 [Travelling from London to Gunville.] 
 
 I am gradually fallen these last few days into the status quo 
 ante iter. Henceforth I never will entertain, or at least com- 
 municate to others, these sanguine anticipations of returning 
 health. 
 
 Tom to Josiah and others at Gunvillc 
 
 WHITE HART INN. 
 
 [Salisbury, November 12 or 13, 1800.] 
 MY DEAREST FRIENDS, 
 
 I cannot dismiss Samuel without a word to say that I am all 
 the better for the ride hither. ... I will write on my arrival 
 in town, and as soon after as I am encouraged to do so by any 
 favourable change in my health. I am secure at least from dis- 
 appointment, for I dare not cherish a hope on the subject. . . . 
 
96 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 Once more adieu ! It is in vain for me to repine at the cruel 
 persecution which has soon again forced me from all I hold dear 
 in life. In entering into new scenes I must strive to forget 
 what I leave behind me. , 
 
 Josiah Wedgwood to 'Tom Wedgwood 
 
 GUNVILLE, 
 
 November 13, 1800. 
 MY DEAR TOM, 
 
 ... It is useless to repine, and your separation from us was 
 evidently necessary, yet I cannot refrain from assuring you how 
 heartily I sympathise with you. My heart is full, and if it 
 would do either of us good I could cry like a child. But no 
 more of this. . . . 
 
 Josiah to 'Tom Wedgwood 
 
 GUNVILLE, 
 
 February 6, 1801. 
 MY DEAREST BROTHER, 
 
 Your letter has excited the most painful feelings in my heart, 
 and I know not what to write, for I have no other topic of con- 
 solation than the truest affection and the warmest sympathy, 
 and in your state of health and feeling that is nothing. . . . 
 I cannot deny that every failure renders your situation more 
 cheerless, but I cannot and will not give up my hopes that time 
 will ameliorate your fate. ... I will not despair of a brother 
 so dear to my heart. . . . 
 
 Josiah to Tom Wedgwood 
 
 i8/// February, 1801. 
 MY DEAR TOM, 
 
 ... I do not know what to think about your design of stay- 
 ing at home. ... I can conceive the efforts it must cost 
 you to refrain from giving yourself up to languor and despond- 
 
SOCIAL LIFE IN LONDON 97 
 
 ency. This consideration ought to reconcile you to the occa- 
 sional uneasiness that may be excited by our observing your 
 sufferings. 
 
 To a man in this condition any regular work was 
 of course impossible ; and yet in the early part of this 
 winter (1800-1801), he seems to have been able to see 
 a great deal of society of a friendly kind. He set up 
 a temporary abode in the building in York Street, 
 St. James's Square, in which were the London show- 
 rooms of the Etruria firm,* and there gave frequent 
 bachelor parties. Among the relations and friends 
 whom he was seeing at this time we find the names of 
 Mackintosh (then making his way at the bar and living 
 with his wife, Josiah's sister-in-law, in Serle Street, 
 Lincoln's Inn), Godwin, Leslie, the brothers John and 
 James Tobin, Gregory Watt (son of the great engineer), 
 Richard (" Conversation ") Sharp, and many more. 
 He was often, too, at a social club which had been 
 founded by Mackintosh, and met at a tavern in the 
 Strand. It had grown out of a dinner-party at 
 Mackintosh's house, at which Sharp, " Bobus " Smith 
 (brother of Sydney), Rogers, and John Allen of Cres- 
 selly were present, and Bobus had christened it the 
 " King of Clubs." Tom Campbell the poet describes 
 it, perhaps a little too magnificently, as a " gathering- 
 place of brilliant talkers, dedicated to the meetings 
 of the reigning wits of London," and a " lineal 
 
 * The building on the east side of the southern end of the street. 
 It afterwards became a chapel. Mr. Stopford Brooke preached there 
 for many years. 
 
 G 
 
98 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 descendant of the Johnson, Burke, and Goldsmith 
 society." * 
 
 About this time (November 1 800) an incident 
 occurred which threatened to bring a cloud over the 
 friendship between Poole and the Wedgwoods. This 
 was what may be called a quasi-proposal of marriage 
 made by Poole to Catharine Wedgwood, the elder of 
 the two unmarried sisters. After a visit to Gunville 
 he wrote to Josiah Wedgwood, saying : " I have ven- 
 tured to write to Miss Wedgwood to request her to 
 enter into a correspondence with me, by which she shall 
 know me as I am." The correspondence, he explains, 
 would be " merely a mutual communication of senti- 
 ments on such subjects as may occur to us if you do 
 not blame me you will be my friend, . . . and when I 
 say this I address the same to Mr. T. Wedgwood, on 
 whose unbounded affection shown to me I rely." This 
 of course practically amounted to a proposal, though 
 Poole seems to have persuaded himself it did not. 
 Josiah, writing to Tom, who had left Gunville, de- 
 scribes the answer he gave Poole as " friendly on my 
 part, not uncivil, but peremptory on C.'s, and C.'s 
 
 * By this he can only mean that it was a club of the old 
 eighteenth-century type, like the one founded by Reynolds. The 
 Johnsonian club exists still ; the "King of Clubs" lasted till 1824. 
 Here is a glimpse of one of its meetings from a letter of T. W. to 
 Jos. W., December 5, 1800 : "A very pleasant day on Saturday at 
 the club. But it was rather noisy owing to some uproarious visitors, 
 and, as Mackintosh says, afforded a very bad specimen of their 
 meetings. I had a little conversation with Sharp, B. Smith, and 
 Scarlett, but much less than I wished, my neighbour Pearson 
 engrossed me too much. Among the members then or later were 
 Lord Holland, Lord Lansdowne, Henry Brougham, Porson, Romilly, 
 Dumont (of Geneva), Ricardo, and Hallam. 
 
POOLE A PROPOSAL 99 
 
 refusal enforced by my approbation of its propriety." 
 It does not appear that Catharine wrote herself to 
 Poole. He having asked Josiah to help him, she would 
 naturally be glad to leave to her brother the disagree- 
 able task of sending an answer. 
 
 Poole accepted the rebuff in the most angelic spirit. 
 He explains, not very successfully, why he wrote as he 
 did ; he cannot quite see why his request was unreason- 
 able, but the answer is so decided that he takes it as 
 absolutely final. " I was stunned by it, though I do 
 not know why ; . . . I stood looking at it for an 
 hour. ... I submit to it, and assure you, from 
 its peremptory nature, that I am perfectly satisfied.'* 
 The refusal, it is clear, was Miss Wedgwood's, not 
 her brothers' doing. But it is also clear that Josiah 
 and Tom took it ill that Poole should have ventured 
 to think of marrying their sister. Josiah thought it 
 necessary why, it is not easy to see to " enforce " 
 her refusal by showing his approval of it. And Tom 
 writes to him : " I am concerned and surprised at 
 Poole's presumption." Tom, we may be sure, did 
 not say anything like this to Poole himself (for Poole 
 " heartily thanks him " for his letter on the subject) ; 
 but why should he think it a c< presumption " ? Ac- 
 cording to the ordinary ideas of social rank, there 
 was no such immense gap between Poole and the 
 Wedgwoods, sons and daughters of a man who had 
 started from a very modest position. Poole puts it 
 fairly when he says : " I knew that Miss W. was 
 among the heads of the class of society in which I filled 
 a middle station." If the brothers objected to the 
 courtship on the ground of difference of social rank 
 
TOO TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 it was an odd attitude to be taken up by philosophical 
 radicals bound by their creed to despise all such con- 
 ventional prejudices. But we need not attribute their 
 surprise and displeasure to what we now call "snobbism." 
 Another explanation is quite simple. All the accounts 
 of Poole represent him as a man of a decidedly rough 
 type. He was a farmer and a tanner, and had the 
 manners of his class, though far above it, and above most 
 men of any class, in knowledge and intelligence. One 
 of his relatives in a younger generation tells us (T. P. 
 ii. 312) that " his clownish exterior, and rough, im- 
 perious manner, with his very disagreeable voice, spoilt 
 by snuff, made a strange contrast with his great mental 
 cultivation and excess in sensibility and tenderness of 
 heart. I suppose," she adds, "in his republican 
 days he cultivated clownishness just as he left off 
 powder." This helps us to understand how Kitty was 
 quite decided against marrying him, and how her 
 brothers thought it out of the question. The letters 
 show he was not all surprised at their attitude. 
 " Though," he says, " I have not lost your friendship, 
 I cannot but be apprehensive that your affection for me 
 may be diminished by an action which you must with- 
 out doubt consider as a witless presumption" This 
 apprehension weighed much upon his mind, but the 
 attachment between him and them does not appear to 
 have been sensibly lessened ; though, naturally, there 
 remained for a time a certain awkwardness. This 
 appears when there is a question of his meeting Kitty 
 at Gunville a year or so later. His letters on the sub- 
 ject are excellent in taste, tone, and temper ; his 
 
POOLE A PROPOSAL' io* 
 
 
 
 language is somewhat apologetic, perhaps a little too 
 argumentative, modest, and yet dignified.^ 
 
 * Had Poole's overture led to a marriage, it would have been a 
 suitable one as regards ages. Poole was then thirty-five and Kitty 
 twenty-six. She was rich, but he was not poor. He was sufficiently 
 well off to be able to lead a life of leisure if he chose. There is 
 an interesting comment on the incident in a letter written nearly 
 half a century later by Fanny Allen, sister of Mrs. John and Mrs. 
 Josiah Wedgwood, who was at this time a girl of eighteen. " I have 
 been deep in the letters of the family for these ten days. Poor 
 Tom's letters are very melancholy and touching, and some of Jos's 
 answers very beautiful. What two men they were ! . . . Tom 
 Poole's letters are interesting ; I never cease regretting that Kitty 
 did not accept him. How different would have been her life to 
 that absurd and ridiculous attachment which bound her to Miss 
 
 M . Among the mass of letters his are among the most 
 
 affectionate, and from the most healthful mind." (F. Allen to S. E. 
 Wedgwood, daughter of Josiah, October 3, 1847 Darwin MSS.) 
 
 Miss M was a philanthropical lady of advanced views, an early 
 
 specimen of the "strong-minded" type. Fanny Allen was a clever 
 and capable old lady, but perhaps it should be added that she was an 
 inveterate match-maker, and so would be inclined, a priori, to take 
 the Poole side in the matter. Kitty Wedgwood died, unmarried, in 
 the year 1823. Family tradition represents her as an interesting 
 and able woman. She had the family taciturnity. Bessy Wedg- 
 wood (Mrs. Josiah) says, " the more I know her, the more I admire 
 her character." Dr. Robert Darwin, her brother-in-law, used to 
 say of her that she was the only woman he ever knew who thought 
 for herself in matters of religion. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 COLERIDGE AT GRETA HALL TRAVEL PLANS 
 
 1800 1802 
 
 IT was in July 1800 that Coleridge made his move to 
 Keswick, which became for a time his settled home, 
 and for the rest of this year he and the Wedgwoods 
 seem not to have met. His letters to Josiah during 
 this time include but slight references to Tom Wedg- 
 wood, but are interesting in other ways. 
 
 S. T. Coleridge to Josiah Wedgwood 
 
 Thursday, July 24, 1800. 
 
 MY DEAR SIR, 
 
 I found your letter on my arrival at Grasmere, namely, on 
 June 29, since which time to the present, with the exception 
 of the last few days, I have been more unwell than I have ever 
 been since I left school. For many days I was forced to keep 
 my bed, and when released from that worst incarceration, I 
 suffered most grievously from a brace of swollen Eyelids, and 
 a head into which on the least agitation the blood felt as rushing 
 in and flowing back again like the raking of the Tide on a 
 coast of loose stones. However, thank God ! I am now coming 
 about again. 
 
 That Tom receives such pleasure from natural scenery 
 strikes me as it does you ; the total incapability which I have 
 found in myself to associate any but the most languid feelings 
 
COLERIDGE AT KESWICK 103 
 
 with the God-like objects which have surrounded me lately, 
 and the nauseous efforts to impress my admiration into the 
 service of nature, has given me a sympathy with his former 
 state of health which I never before could have had. I wish 
 from the bottom of my soul that he may be enjoying similar 
 pleasures with those which I am now enjoying with all that 
 newness of sensation, that voluptuous correspondence of the 
 blood and flesh about me with breeze and sun-heat, which 
 makes convalescence more than repay me for disease. 
 
 I parted from Poole with pain and dejection. For him and 
 for myself in him. I should have given Stowey a decisive 
 preference ; it was likewise so conveniently situated that I was 
 in the way of almost all whom I love and esteem. But there 
 was no suitable house, and no prospect of a suitable house. 
 Add to this Poole's determination to spend a year or two on 
 the continent in case of a peace and his mother's death. God 
 in heaven bless her ! I am sure she will not live long. 
 
 This is the first day of my arrival at Keswick. My house 
 is roomy, situated on an eminence a furlong from the Town ; 
 before it an enormous Garden, more than two-thirds of which 
 is rented as a garden for sale articles, but the walks, &c., are 
 ours most completely. Behind the house are shrubberies, and 
 a declivity planted with flourishing trees of 15 years' growth or 
 so, at the bottom of which is a most delightful shaded walk by 
 the River Greta, a quarter of a mile in length. The room in 
 which I sit commands from one window the Bassenthwaite 
 Lake, woods, and mountains ; from the opposite, the Derwent- 
 water and fantastic mountains of Borrowdale ; and straight 
 before me is a wilderness of mountains, catching and streaming 
 lights or shadows at all times. Behind the house and entering 
 into all our views is Skiddaw. 
 
 My acquaintance here are pleasant, and at some distance is 
 Sir Guilfrid Lawson's seat with a very large and expensive 
 library, to which I have every reason to hope that I shall have 
 free access. But when I have been settled here a few days 
 longer, I will write you a minute account of my situation. 
 
io 4 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 Wordsworth lives 12 miles distant ; in about a year's time he 
 will probably settle at Keswick likewise. It is no small advan- 
 tage here that for two-thirds of the year we are in complete 
 retirement. The other third is alive and swarms with Tourists 
 of all shapes and sizes and characters. It is the very place I 
 would recommend to a novellist or farce-writer. Besides, at 
 that time of the year there is always hope that a friend may 
 be among the number, and miscellaneous crowd, whom this 
 place attracts. So much for Keswick at present. 
 
 Have you seen my translation of the Wallenstein ? It is a 
 dull heavy play ; but I entertain hopes, that you will think the 
 language for the greater part natural and good common-sense 
 English ; to which excellence if I can lay fair claim in any 
 work of poetry or prose, I shall be a very singular writer at 
 least. I am now working at my introduction to the life of 
 Lessing, which I trust will be in the press before Christmas ; 
 that is, the Introduction, which will be published first, I 
 believe. I shall write again in a few days. Respects to Mrs. 
 W. God bless you and 
 
 S. T. COLERIDGE. 
 
 S. < T. Coleridge to Josiah Wedgwood 
 
 KESWICK, 
 
 November i, 1800. 
 
 MY DEAR SIR, 
 
 I would fain believe that the experiment which your Brother 
 has made in the West Indies is not wholly a discouraging one. If 
 a warm climate did nothing but only prevented him from getting 
 worse, it surely evidenced some power ; and perhaps a climate 
 equally favourable in a country of more various interest, Italy 
 or the South of France, may tempt your Brother to make a 
 longer trial. If (disciplining myself into silent chearfulness) I 
 could be of any comfort to him by being his companion and 
 attendant for two or three months, on the supposition that he 
 should wish to travel and was at a loss for a companion more 
 
COLERIDGE AT KESWICK 105 
 
 fit, I would go with him with a willing affection. You will 
 easily see, my dear friend, that I say this only to increase the 
 range of your Brother's choice for even in chusing there is some 
 pleasure. 
 
 There happen frequently little odd coincidences in time, that 
 recall momentary faith in the notion of sympathies acting in 
 absence. I heard of your Brother's Return, for the first time, 
 on Monday last (the day on which your letter is dated) from 
 Stoddart. Had it rained on my naked skin I could not have 
 felt more sfrangely. The three or 400 miles that are between 
 us seemed converted into a moral distance ; and I knew that 
 the whole of this silence I was myself accountable for ; for I 
 ended my last letter by promising to follow it with a second and 
 longer one before you could answer the first. But immediately 
 on my arrival in this country I undertook to finish a poem which 
 I had begun, entitled " Christabel," for a second volume of the 
 Lyrical Ballads. I tried to perform my promise ; but the deep un- 
 utterable Disgust which I had suffered in the translation of that 
 accursed Wallenstein seemed to have stricken me with barrenness; 
 for I tried and tried, and nothing would come of it. I desisted 
 with a deeper dejection than I am willing to remember. The 
 wind from Skiddaw and Borrowdale was often as loud as 
 wind need be ; and many a walk in the clouds on the moun- 
 tains did I take ; but all would not do, till one day I dined out 
 at the house of a neighbouring clergyman and somehow or 
 other drank so much wine, that I found some effort and dexterity 
 requisite to balance myself on the hither edge of sobriety. The 
 next day my verse-making faculties returned to me, and I pro- 
 ceeded successfully ; till my poem grew so long and in Words- 
 worth's opinion so impressive, that he rejected it from his 
 volume as disproportionate both in size and merit, and as dis- 
 cordant in its character.* In the mean time I had gotten 
 
 * " Christabel " was first printed, unfinished (Parts I and 2 only), 
 in 1816. All his life, at intervals, Coleridge talked or dreamed 
 about completing it. Mr. Dykes Campbell, in a note of four pages 
 ("Poetical Works," 60 1, sqq.}, brings together, with a fulness of 
 
io6 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 myself entangled in the old Sorites of the old Sophist, Procrasti- 
 nation. I had suffered my necessary businesses to accumulate 
 so terribly, that I neglected to write to any one, till the Pain I 
 suffered from not writing made me waste as many hours in 
 dreaming about it as would have sufficed for the Letter-writing 
 of half a life. But there is something beside Time requisite 
 for the writing of a Letter, at least with me. My situation here 
 is indeed a delightful situation ; but I feel what I have lost 
 feel it deeply ; it recurs more often and more painfully than I 
 had anticipated ; indeed, so much so that I scarcely ever feel 
 myself impelled, that is to say, pleasurably impelled to write to 
 Poole. I used to feel myself more at home in his great windy 
 Parlour than in my own cottage. We were well suited to each 
 other my animal spirits corrected his inclinations to melan- 
 choly ; and there was something both in his understanding and 
 in his affections so healthy and manly, that my mind freshened 
 in his company, and my ideas and habits of thinking acquired 
 day after day more of substance and reality. Indeed, indeed, 
 my dear sir, with tears in my eyes, with all my heart and soul 
 I wish it were as easy for us to meet as it was when you lived 
 at Upcott. Yet when I revise the step I have taken, I know 
 not how I could have acted otherwise than I did. Everything 
 I promise myself in this country has answered far beyond my 
 expectations. The room in which I write commands six dis- 
 tinct Landscapes; the two Lakes, the Vale, the River, and 
 Mountains, and Mists, and Clouds and Sunshine, make endless 
 combinations, as if heaven and earth were for ever talking to 
 each other. Often when in a deep study, I have walked to 
 the window and remained there looking without seeing ; all at once 
 
 knowledge which was all his own, a mass of particulars as to the 
 wonderful poem, and much that was said and written by Coleridge 
 on the subject, including a " final utterance " quoted from Table 
 Talk under date July 1833 : u The reason for 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 execu- 
 tion of the idea, an extremely subtle and difficult one." 
 
A PICTURE OF GRETA HALE 107 
 
 the lake of Keswick and the fantastic mountains of Borrowdale 
 at the head of it have entered into my mind with a suddenness 
 as if I had been snatched out of Cheapside and placed for the 
 first time on the spot where I stood ; and that is a delightful 
 feeling, these Fits and Trances of Novelty received from a long 
 known Object. The river Greta flows behind our house, roar- 
 ing like an untamed son of the Hills ; then winds round and 
 glides away in the front, so that we live in a peninsula. But 
 besides this etherial eye feeding, we have very substantial con- 
 veniences. We are close to the town, where we have respect- 
 able and neighbourly acquaintance, and a sensible and truly 
 excellent medical man. Our garden is part of a large nursery 
 garden, which is the same to us and as private as if the whole 
 had been our own ; in this too we have delightful walks without 
 passing our garden gate. My landlord, who lives in the Sister 
 House (for the two Houses are built so as to look like one great 
 one), is a modest and kind man, of a singular character. By 
 the severest economy he has raised himself from a carrier into 
 the possession of a comfortable independence. He was always 
 very fond of reading, and has collected nearly 500 volumes, of 
 our most esteemed modern writers, such as Gibbon, Hume, 
 Johnson, &c. &c. His habits of economy and simplicity remain 
 with him, and yet so very disinterested a man I scarcely ever 
 knew. Lately, when I wished to settle with him about the 
 Rent of our House, he appeared much affected, told me that my 
 living near him, and the having so much of Hartley's* company 
 were so great comforts to him and his housekeeper, that he had 
 no children to provide for, and did not mean to marry ; and in 
 short, that he did not want any rent at all from me. This of course 
 I laughed him out of; but he absolutely refused to receive any 
 rent for the first half-year, under the pretext that the house was 
 not completely furnished. Hartley quite lives at the house, and 
 it is as you may suppose, no small joy to my wife to have a 
 
 * His eldest boy, now four years old. All accounts represent him 
 as a singularly charming child. 
 
io8 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 good affectionate motherly woman divided from her only by a wall. 
 Eighteen miles from our house lives Sir Guilfrid Lawson, who 
 has a princely library, chiefly of Natural History, a kind and 
 generous, but weak and ostentatious sort of man, who has been 
 abundantly civil to me. Among other raree shows, he keeps a 
 wild beast or two, with some eagles, &c. The master of the 
 beasts at the Exeter 'Change, sent him down a large Bear 
 with it a long letter of directions concerning the food, &c., of 
 the animal, and many solicitations respecting other agreeable 
 Quadrupeds which he was desirous to send the Baronet at a 
 moderate price, concluding in this manner: "And remain your 
 honour's most devoted humble servant, J.P. Permit me, Sir 
 Guilfrid, to send you a Buffalo and a Rhinoceros." As neat a 
 postscript as I ever heard the tradesmanlike coolness with which 
 these pretty little animals occurred to him just at the finishing 
 of his letter ! ! You will in the course of three weeks see the 
 Letters on the rise and condition of the German Boors. I found 
 it convenient to make up a volume out of my journeys, &c., in 
 North Germany; and the Letters (your name of course erased) 
 are in the Printer's Hands. I was so weary of transcribing and 
 composing^ that when I found those more carefully written than 
 the rest, I even sent them off as they were. 
 
 Poor Alfred ! I have not seen it in print. Charles Lamb 
 wrote me the following account of it : " I have just received 
 from Cottle a magnificent Copy of his Guinea Alfred ! Four 
 and 20 books, to read in the Dog Days. I got as far as the 
 mad monk the first day, and fainted. Mr. Cottle's Genius 
 strongly points him to the very simple Pastoral^ but his inclina- 
 tions divert him perpetually from his calling. He imitates 
 Southey as Rowe did Shakespeare, with his * Good morrow to 
 you, good Master Lieutenant ! ' Instead of c a man,' a woman/ 
 ' a daughter,' he constantly writes ' one, a man,' < one, a woman/ 
 * one, his daughter ' ; instead of ' the King,' * the Hero,' he 
 constantly writes " He, the King,' ' He, the Hero ' two 
 flowers of rhetoric palpably from the Joan. But Mr. Cottle 
 soars a higher pitch, and when he is original, it is in a most 
 
COLERIDGE AT KESWICK 109 
 
 original way indeed. His terrific scenes are indefatigable. 
 Serpents, Asps, Spiders, Ghosts, Dead Bodies, and Staircases 
 made of NOTHING, with Adders' Tongues for Bannisters 
 my God ! what a Brain he must have ! he puts as many Plums 
 in his Pudding as my Grandmother used to do ; and then his 
 emerging from Hell's Horrors into Light, and Treading of this 
 Earth for 23 Books together ! C. L." 
 
 My littlest one is a very stout boy indeed : he is christened 
 by the name of " Derwent" a sort of sneaking affection, you 
 see, for the poetical and the novellish which I disguise to 
 myself under the show that my Brothers had so many Children, 
 John's, James', George's, &c. &c., that a handsome Christian- 
 like name was not to be had except by encroaching on the 
 names of my little Nephews. If you are at Gunville at 
 Christmas, I hold out hopes to myself that I shall be able to 
 pass a week with you then. I mentioned to you at Upcott a 
 kind of comedy that I had committed to writing, in part. 
 This is in the wind. 
 
 Wordsworth's second volume of the Ly. Ball, will, I hope 
 and almost believe, afford you as unmingled pleasure as is in 
 the nature of a collection of very various poems to afford to one 
 individual mind. Sheridan has sent to him too, requesting him 
 to write a tragedy for Drury Lane. But W. will not be 
 diverted by anything from the prosecution of his great work. 
 
 I shall request permission to draw upon you shortly for 20^ ; 
 but if it be in the least inconvenient to you, I pray you, tell me 
 so ; for I can draw on Longman, who in less than a month will 
 owe me 6o., though I would rather not do it. 
 
 Southey's Thalaba, in twelve books, is going to the Press. 
 I hear his Madoc is to be nonum-in-annum'd. Besides these, I 
 have heard of four other Epic Poems all in Quarto ! A 
 happy age this for tossing off an Epic or two ! 
 
 Remember me with great affection to your Brother; and 
 present my kindest respects to Mrs. Wedgewood. Your late 
 Governess wanted one thing which, where there is health, is 
 I think indispensable to the moral character of a young person, 
 
no TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 a light and cheerful Heart. She interested me a good deal ; 
 she appears to me to have been injured by going out of the 
 common way without any of that imagination, which, if it be 
 a Jack O' Lan thorn to lead us out of that way, is however at 
 the same time a Torch to light us whither we are going. 
 
 A whole essay might be written on the danger of thinking 
 without Images. God bless you, my dear sir, and him who is 
 with grateful and affectionate esteem, 
 
 Yours ever, 
 
 S. T. COLERIDGE. 
 
 S. < T. Coleridge to Josiah Wedgwood 
 
 November 12, 1800. 
 
 [Postmark : KESWICK.] 
 MY DEAR SIR, 
 
 I received your kind letter, with the 20^. My eyes are in 
 such a state of inflammation that I might as well write blind- 
 fold ; they are so blood-red that I should make a very good 
 personification of Murder. I have had Leaches twice, and 
 have now a blister behind my right Ear. How I caught the 
 cold, in the first instance, I can scarcely guess ; but I improved 
 it to its present glorious state by taking long walks all the 
 mornings, spite of the wind, and writing late at night, while 
 my eyes were weak. 
 
 I have made some rather curious observations on the rising 
 up of Spectra in the eye, in its inflamed state, and their influence 
 on Ideas, &c., but I cannot see to make myself intelligible to 
 you. Present my kindest remembrance to Mrs. W. and your 
 brother. Pray did you ever pay any particular attention to the 
 first time of your little ones smiling and laughing ? Both I 
 and Mrs. C. have carefully watched our little one, and noted 
 down all the circumstances, &c., under which he smiled, and 
 under which he laughed, for the first six times ; nor have we 
 remitted our attention ; but I have not been able to derive the 
 least confirmation of Hartley's or Darwin's Theory. 
 
TRAVEL PLANS in 
 
 You say most truly, my dear sir, that a Pursuit is necessary. 
 Pursuit, I say, for even praiseworthy Employment, merely for 
 good, or general good, is not sufficient for happiness, is not fit 
 for man. 
 
 God bless you, my dear sir, and your sincerely affectionate 
 friend, 
 
 S. T. COLERIDGE. 
 
 P.S. I cannot at present make out how I stand in pecuniary 
 way ; but I believe that I have anticipated on the next year 
 to the amount of 30 or 40 pound, probably more. 
 
 A main interest of Tom Wedgwood's life was 
 metaphysical and psychological speculation, and he 
 seems to have been specially occupied with these sub- 
 jects in the year 1801. In March of that year he is 
 described as deep in " Time, Space, and Motion," and 
 later he was discussing his theories with Mackintosh 
 and making apparently some kind of effort to put them 
 in a definite shape. Of this there will be more to be 
 said in a later chapter. For the rest, his life in this 
 and the succeeding years might be described in words 
 we find him using to Poole : " I am just the same as 
 last Christmas, eternally racking my brains for some 
 plausible scheme of action, and subject every day to fits 
 of the greatest despondency." The " plausible schemes 
 of action " at home alternated with plans of travel 
 abroad which were equally failures. In July 1801, for 
 example, he crosses the Channel to begin a tour, but a 
 few weeks later he is feeling too depressed to go on, 
 and flies back to England. Again, in May 1 802, he 
 has been consulting Cline, with no effective result ; he 
 has a "loathing of going abroad," but is "unable to 
 
ii2 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 come to any practicable scheme of living in England." 
 He starts off on a tour which is to take him to Vienna 
 and then to Italy for the winter. At Paris he has a 
 pleasant time with Sharp and other friends. He 
 spends hours daily among the ancient marbles in the 
 Louvre, is enthusiastic about " a new Diana supposed 
 to be by the same hand as the Belvedere Apollo," and 
 about a young French Sculptor whose " manner is very 
 much that of Michael Angelo." Also he has dis- 
 covered, after infinite trouble, a delightful travelling 
 companion, a young musical composer, Acerbi. Then 
 comes the inevitable breakdown. " My strength and 
 spirits have entirely failed me, and I am forced home 
 by the same demon that drove me thence." * 
 
 A month or two later he is going to take a farm in 
 hand, near Gunville, and work it through a factotum, 
 " so that I shall have something going on about me. I 
 shall fit up a good room, . . . shall perhaps place 
 some companionable musical person there, and so spend 
 many hours a day with him. . . . But this is all a new 
 scheme, and judging of it by its predecessors, will be 
 extinct before this letter reaches you at Geneva." t 
 
 The time of closest intimacy between Tom Wedg- 
 wood and Coleridge was the latter part of this year, 
 1802. They were together continuously for more than 
 two months. It was a sad time in the life of Cole- 
 ridge. His estrangement from his wife was increasing, 
 
 * To Poole, June 27, 1802. 
 t To Poole, August 29, 1802. 
 
ENTRANCE TO EASTBURY PARK (1902) 
 
 r9t r VILLAGE OFcTARRANT GUNVILLE (1902) 
 
COLERIDGE'S TROUBLES 113 
 
 and so was his habit of opium-eating, which was to 
 bring him in a few years to that state which he himself 
 described as a " pitiable slavery." This had begun, 
 apparently, about a year earlier, and it was as yet hardly 
 known to his most intimate friends. The Words- 
 worths seem not to have been yet aware of it. To this 
 there is no open reference in his letters to the Wedg- 
 woods ; of the home trouble there is, alas ! too much. 
 The following letter would appear to refer to 
 one from Wedgwood mooting some scheme for their 
 travelling together. Such schemes, and the ceaseless 
 search for a companion for the sick man in his 
 wanderings, make up a great part of the Wedgwood 
 correspondence. 
 
 S. C T. Coleridge to 'Tom Wedgwood 
 
 (Address : EASTBURY, BLANDFORD.) 
 
 GRETA HALL, KESWICK, 
 
 October 20, 1802. 
 MY DEAR SIR, 
 
 This is my birthday, my thirtieth. It will not appear 
 wonderful to you therefore, when I tell you that before the 
 arrival of your letter I had been thinking with a great weight 
 of different feelings concerning you and your dear Brother. 
 For I have good reason to believe that I should not now have 
 been alive, if in addition to other miseries I had had immediate 
 poverty pressing upon me. I will never again remain silent so 
 long. It has not been altogether Indolence or my habit or 
 Procrastination which have kept me from writing, but an eager 
 wish, I may truly say a Thirst of Spirit, to have something 
 honourable to tell you of myself. At present I must be con- 
 tent to tell you something cheerful. My Health is very much 
 better. I am stronger in every respect, and am not injured by 
 study or the act of sitting at my writing Desk. But my eyes 
 
 H 
 
n 4 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 suffer if at any time I have been intemperate in the use 'of 
 Candle light. This account supposes another, namely, that my 
 mind is calm, and more at ease. My dear sir, when I was last 
 with you at Stowey, my heart was often full, and I could 
 scarcely keep from communicating to you the tale of my dis- 
 tresses, but how could I add to your depression, when you were 
 low ? Or how interrupt, or cast a shade on your good spirits, 
 that were so rare and so precious to you ? I found no comfort 
 except in the driest speculations. In the Ode to Dejection* 
 which you were pleased with, these lines, in the original, 
 followed the line " My shaping spirit of Imagination : " 
 
 " For not to think of what I needs must feel, 
 But to be still and patient, all I can, 
 And haply by abstruse Research to steal 
 From my own Nature all the natural man 
 
 * "Dejection, an Ode," was printed in the Morning Post of 
 
 October 4, 1802, where probably Wedgwood had just seen it. It 
 
 was written in the previous April. The passage referred to runs as 
 follows : 
 
 There was a time when, though my path was rough, 
 This joy within me dallied with distress, 
 And all misfortunes were but as the stuff 
 Whence Fancy made me dreams of happiness ; 
 For hope grew round me, like the twining vine, 
 And fruits, and foliage, not my own, seemed mine. 
 But now afflictions bow me down to earth ; 
 Nor care I that they rob me of my mirth ; 
 
 But oh ! each visitation 
 Suspends what Nature gave me at my birth 
 My shaping spirit of Imagination. 
 For not to think of what I needs must feel, &c. 
 
 " No sadder cry from the depths," says Mr. Dykes Campbell, 
 " was ever uttered, even by Coleridge. Health was gone, and with 
 it both the natural joy which had been his in rich abundance, and 
 that rarer kind which, as he tells us, dwells only with the pure. 
 Nor was this all, for he discovered that he had lost control of his 
 most precious endowment, his ' shaping spirit of imagination.' He 
 felt that poetically he was dead, and that if not dead spiritually, he 
 had lost his spiritual identity." 
 
COLERIDGE'S TROUBLES. 115 
 
 This was my sole resource, my only plan, 
 
 And that which suits a part infects the whole, 
 
 And now is almost grown the Temper* of my soul." 
 
 I give you these lines for the spirit and not for the poetry .t 
 
 But better days are arrived, and are still to come. I have 
 had visitations of Hope, that I may yet be something of which 
 those who love me may be proud. 
 
 I cannot write that without recalling dear Poole. I have 
 heard twice, and written twice, and I fear that by a strange 
 fatality, one of the Letters will have missed him. Leslie was 
 here some time ago. I was very much pleased with him. 
 
 And now I will tell you what I am doing. I dedicate three 
 days in the week to the Morning Post, and shall hereafter write, 
 for the far greater part, such things only as will be of as per- 
 manent interest as anything I can hope to write ; and you will 
 shortly see a little Essay of mine justifying the writing in a 
 Newspaper. 
 
 My comparison of the French with the Roman Empire was 
 very favourably received. The Poetry which I have sent has 
 been merely the emptying out of my Desk. The Epigrams 
 are wretched indeed, but they answered Stuart's purpose better 
 than better things. I ought not to have given any signature 
 to them whatsoever. I never dreamt of acknowledging either 
 them or the " Ode to the Rain.'* As to feeble expressions and 
 unpolished lines, there is the rub ! Indeed, my dear sir, I do 
 value your opinion very highly. I should think your judgment 
 on the sentiment, the imagery, the flow of a poem decisive ; at 
 least if it differed from my own, and after frequent considera- 
 
 * Mr. Dykes Campbell, quoting this letter (" Poetical Works," 
 p. 628), gives this word as " temple," misled, apparently, by one of 
 Cottle's silly alterations of what Coleridge wrote. In his print of 
 the poem (founded on the issue of 1829), it appears as "habit." 
 
 t Here follows an outpour on the subject of his home troubles. 
 
n6 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 tion mine remained different, it would leave me at least 
 perplexed. For you are a perfect electrometer in these things ; 
 but in point of poetic diction, i am not so well satisfied that 
 you do not require a certain aloofness from the language of real 
 life, which I think deadly to poetry. 
 
 Very shortly, however, I shall present you from the Press 
 with my opinions in full on the subject of Style both in prose 
 and verse ; and I am confident of one thing, that I shall con- 
 vince you that I have thought much and patiently on the 
 subject and that I understand the whole strength of my 
 Antagonist's Cause. For I am now busy on the subject, and 
 shall in a very few weeks go to Press with a volume on the 
 prose writings of Hall, Milton and Taylor ; and shall immedi- 
 ately follow it up with an Essay on the writings of Dr. Johnson 
 and Gibbon. And in these two volumes I flatter myself I shall 
 present a fair History of English Prose.* If my life and health 
 remain, and I do but write half as much and as regularly as I 
 have done during the last six weeks, these will be finished by 
 January next ; and I shall then put together my memorandum 
 book on the subject of Poetry. In both I have endeavoured 
 sedulously to state the Facts and the Differences clearly and 
 acutely ; and my reasons for the preference of one style and 
 another are secondary to this. Of this be assured, that I will 
 never give anything to the world in propria persona, in my 
 own name, which I have not tormented with the File. I 
 sometimes suspect that my foul copy would often appear to 
 general readers more polished than my fair copy. Many of the 
 feeble and colloquial expressions have been industriously sub- 
 stituted for others which struck me as artificial, and not standing 
 the test ; as being neither the language of passion, nor distinct 
 conceptions. 
 
 * All this, and what follows, as to literary work must be treated as 
 merely visionary. Confusion between things done and things which 
 he dreamed of doing was habitual with Coleridge. He " spawned 
 plans like a herring," as Southey tells him in a letter of about this 
 time (Southey's "Life," ii. 190). See D.C. p. 251, on such visions. 
 
TRAVEL PLANS 117 
 
 Dear sir, indulge me with looking still further on to my 
 literary life. I have since my twentieth year meditated an 
 heroic poem on the Siege of Jerusalem by Titus. This is the 
 Pride and the Stronghold of my Hope. But I never think of 
 it except in my best moods. The work, to which I dedicate 
 the ensuing years of my life, is one which highly pleased Leslie 
 in prospective, and my paper will not let me prattle to you 
 about it. I have written what you most wished me to write, 
 all about myself. 
 
 Our climate is inclement, and our houses not as compact as 
 they might be ; but it is a stirring climate, and the worse the 
 weather, the more unceasingly entertaining are my Study 
 Windows ; and the month that is to come is the Glory of the 
 year with us. A very warm Bedroom I can promise you, and 
 one that at the same time commands our finest Lake and 
 Mountain view. If Leslie could not go abroad with you, and 
 I could in any way mould my manners and habits to suit you, 
 I should of all things like to be your companion. Good nature, 
 an affectionate disposition, and so thorough a sympathy with 
 the nature of your complaint that I should feel no pain, not the 
 most momentary, at being told by you what your feelings 
 required at the time in which they required it this I should 
 bring with me. But I need not say that you may say to me, 
 " You don't suit me," without inflicting the least mortification. 
 Of course this letter is for your Brother as for you ; but I shall 
 write to him soon. God bless you, and 
 
 S. T. COLERIDGE. 
 
 In answer to this letter Tom Wedgwood must have 
 replied by a proposal that Coleridge should at once 
 join him, doubtless at Bristol. 
 
 Coleridge is evidently ready, if not anxious, to leave 
 his home, and he writes as if he thought his absence 
 would be a long one. 
 
n8 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 S. 'T. Coleridge to ^Tom Wedgwood 
 
 KESWICK, 
 
 Wednesday, Nov. 3, 1802. 
 DEAR WEDGWOOD, 
 
 It is now two hours since I received your letter ; and after 
 the necessary consultation, Mrs. Coleridge herself is fully of 
 opinion that to lose Time is merely to lose Spirits. Accord- 
 ingly, I have resolved not to look the children in the Face 
 (the parting from whom -is the only downright Bitter in the 
 thing), but to take a chaise to morning morning, half past four 
 for Penrith, and go to London by to-morrow's Mail. Of 
 course I shall be in London (God permitting) on Saturday 
 morning. I shall rest that day, and the next, and proceed to 
 Bristol by the Monday night's mail. At Bristol I will go to 
 Cote, and there wait your coming. If the family be not at 
 home, I shall beg a Bed at Dr. Beddoes's, or at least leave word 
 where I am. At all events, barring serious Illness, serious 
 Fractures, and the et cetera of serious Unforeseen;, I shall be at 
 Bristol, Tuesday, Noon, Nov. gth. 
 
 You are aware, that my whole knowledge of French does 
 not extend beyond the power of limping slowly, not without a 
 Dictionary Crutch, thro' an easy French Book : and that as 
 to Pronunciation, all my Organs of Speech, from the bottom 
 of the Larynx to the Edge of my Lips, are utterly and naturally 
 Anti-gallican. If only I shall have been any Comfort, any 
 Alleviation to you, I shall feel myself at ease ; and whether 
 you go abroad or no, while I remain with you, it will greatly 
 contribute to my comfort, if I know you will have no hesitation, 
 nor pain, in telling me what you wish me to do or not to do. 
 
 I regard it among the Blessings of my Life, that I have 
 never lived among men whom I regarded as my artificial 
 superiors : that all the respect I have at any time paid has 
 been wholly to supposed Goodness, or Talent. The con- 
 sequence has been that I have no alarms of Pride ; no cheval 
 de frise of Independence. I have always lived among equals. 
 
TRAVEL PLANS 11,9 
 
 
 
 It never occurs to me, even for a moment, that I am otherwise. 
 If I have quarrelled with men, it has been as Brothers or School- 
 fellows quarrel. How little any man can give me, or take 
 from me, save in matters of kindness and esteem, is not so 
 much a Thought, or Conviction with me, or even a distinct 
 Feeling, as it is my very Nature. Much as I dislike all formal 
 Declarations of this kind, I have deemed it well to say this. I 
 have as strong feelings of Gratitude as any man. Shame upon 
 me, if in the sickness and the sorrow which I have had, and 
 which have been kept unaggravated and supportable by your 
 kindness and your Brother's shame upon me if I did not feel 
 a kindness, not unmixed with reverence, towards you both. 
 But yet I never should have had my present Impulses to be 
 with you, and this confidence that I may become an occa- 
 sional comfort to you, if independently of all gratitude, I did not 
 thoroughly esteem you ; and if I did not appear to myself to 
 understand the nature of your sufferings ; and within the last 
 year, in some slight degree to have felt, myself, something of 
 the same. 
 
 Forgive me, my dear sir, if I have said too much. It is 
 better to write it than to say it ; and I am anxious in the 
 event of our travelling together that you should yourself be at 
 ease with me, even as you would with a younger Brother, to 
 whom from his childhood you had been in the habit of saying, 
 " Do this, Col." or "don't do that." 
 
 I have been writing fast, lest I should be too late for the 
 Post, forgetting that I am myself going with the Mail, and of 
 course had better send the letter from London with the 
 intelligence of my safe arrival there. Till then, all good be 
 
 with us. 
 
 S. T. COLERIDGE. 
 
 Penrith, Thursday morning. 
 
 If this letter reaches you without any further writing, you 
 will understand by it that all the places in the Mail are engaged, 
 and that I must wait a day but this will make no difference 
 in my arrival at Bristol. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 SOUTH WALES AND CRESSELLY WITH COLERIDGE 
 
 1802 
 
 THE two friends had made plans, apparently, for a 
 journey on the Continent, but these were adjourned. 
 Tom Wedgwood's schemes varied from day to day, 
 and the project of the moment was a tour in South 
 Wales. 
 
 'Tom Wedgwood to 'Tom Poole * 
 
 BATH, 
 
 Nov. ii, 1802. 
 MY DEAR FRIEND, 
 
 I received yours from Paris a day or two since. It is in 
 vain for me to seek for expressions to convey what I feel and 
 have long felt towards you for your unwearied attentions to 
 my comfort. Once for all, be assured that I am as much alive 
 to services like yours as human being can be. 
 
 I am now on my road to Cote House, where Coleridge, who 
 is like another comforting spirit to me, gives me the meeting 
 from the Bath. We then proceed to South Wales, where I shall 
 shoot for a fortnight or so, having sent a man and seven dogs 
 before me. Our plan is then to come and see how comfortable 
 we can make ourselves in your new house at Stowey. 
 * * * * * 
 
 For about three weeks, I was much better and stronger than I 
 * Wedgwood MSS., one of many letters given to Josiah by Poole. 
 
SOUTH WALES AND CRESSELLY 121 
 
 have been for some years and infinitely more cheerful. I 
 seconded this kindly effort of Nature by every possible exertion 
 of my own I lived in the fields shooting, walking, &c. I 
 took a farm and wholly abandoned myself to active and cheer- 
 ful prospects. In the midst of this occupation, as if by some 
 vile incantation, I was without warning suddenly tumbled into 
 the lowest condition, and left to contemplate the ruin of all 
 my projects like the visions of a dream so completely possessed 
 by languor and despondency that I was unable even to conceive 
 how it can ever have entered into my existence to cherish the 
 views and feelings which had so recently made up my whole 
 being. I am now a little recovered, but my mind is still shaken 
 and sore from its fall. Pray write to me at Cote House and 
 believe me ever most faithfully Yours, 
 
 T. W. 
 
 The journey into South Wales was mainly a visit to 
 Cresselly, the country house of John Bartlett Allen, 
 father of Tom's two sisters-in-law, Jane and Elizabeth 
 Wedgwood. On the way thither, Coleridge writes 
 thus to his wife : 
 
 S. T. Coleridge to his Wife 
 
 ST. CLEAR, CARMARTHEN, 
 
 1 6 Nov. 1802. 
 
 MY DEAR LOVE, 
 
 ***** 
 
 The inn, the Blue Boar y is the most comfortable little public 
 house I was ever in, Miss S. Wedgwood (Tom's youngest sister) 
 left us this morning for Cresselly, Mr. Allen's seat (the Miss 
 Wedgwood's father), fifteen miles from this place, and T. 
 Wedgwood is gone out cock-shooting, in high glee and spirits. 
 He is very much better than I expected to have found him ; 
 he says the thought of my coming, and my really coming so 
 immediately, has sent a new life into him. He will be out all 
 the mornings. The evenings we chat, discuss, or I read to 
 
122 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 him. To me he is a delightful and instructive companion. 
 He possesses the finest, the subtlest mind and taste I have ever 
 yet met with. His mind resembles that miniature in my 
 "Three Graves": 
 
 A small blue sun ! and it has got 
 
 A perfect glory too ! 
 Ten thousand hairs of colour'd light, 
 Make up a glory gay and bright, 
 
 Round that small orb so blue ! * 
 * * * * * 
 
 My dear love ! I have said nothing of Italy, for I am as 
 much in the dark as when I left Keswick, indeed much more : 
 For I now doubt very much whether we shall go or no. 
 [Then follows more as to the utter uncertainty of all Wedg- 
 wood's schemes of travel.] t 
 
 I must subscribe myself in haste (the mail is waiting) your 
 dear husband, 
 
 S. T. COLERIDGE. 
 
 A few days after this letter was written the travellers 
 
 * The exact point of the comparison of Tom Wedgwood's mind 
 to the " small blue sun " is not very evident. The quotation of the 
 context may make it clearer. The scene in the poem is an arbour- 
 like nook in a woody dell, wherein three people are resting and 
 talking on a sunny morning : 
 
 The sun peeps through the close thick leaves, 
 
 See, dearest Ellen ! See ! 
 'Tis in the leaves, a little sun, 
 
 No bigger than your *ee ; 
 A small blue sun ! and it has got 
 
 A perfect glory too ! 
 Ten thousand hairs of colour'd light," &c. 
 
 I imagine that the simile is meant to emphasise, as it were, his 
 underlining the words " subtlest" "finest" " A small blue sun " 
 became in later editions " a tiny sun." 
 
 t The whole letter is printed in Mr. E. H. Coleridge's selection 
 of S. T. C.'s letters, p. 410. It begins with an interesting comparison 
 between the Vale of Usk, " nineteen miles of delightful country," 
 and " our Vale of Keswick." 
 
SOUTH WALES AND CRESSELLY 123 
 
 were at Cresselly, and they remained there or in its 
 neighbourhood for about a month, Wedgwood taking 
 occasional trips for shooting, while Coleridge stayed 
 with the Aliens. Cresselly is a country house and 
 estate near Narbeth in Pembrokeshire, a few miles 
 inland from Tenby. 
 
 Writing to Poole on December 17, Coleridge tells 
 him that he is very happy here, and that they have 
 
 plenty of music and plenty of cream. For at Cresselly (I 
 mention it as a remarkable circumstance, it being the only 
 place I was ever at in which it was not otherwise) though they 
 have a dairy, and though they have plenty of milk, they are not 
 at all stingy of it. In all other houses where cows are kept, 
 you may drink six shillings worth of wine a day, and welcome, 
 but use three pennyworth of cream, and O Lord ! the feelings 
 of the household. 
 
 These sarcasms, according to a note put by Poole 
 on the letter, were aimed at the dairymaid at Stowey, 
 who thought Coleridge made too free with her clouted 
 cream, or at himself.*" 
 
 That Coleridge was happy at Cresselly is no wonder. 
 Besides the good cream, there was the good company 
 of the daughters of the house. The eldest of them, 
 who was the presiding lady (the squire's wife having 
 died long before), was Jessie Allen, then aged twenty- 
 five, a woman of rare intelligence and singularly beauti- 
 ful character, sympathetic, warm-hearted, responsive ; 
 in moral qualities the counterpart of her sister Bessy, 
 the universally beloved wife of Josiah Wedgwood. She 
 
 * T. P., ii. 101. 
 
i2 4 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 afterwards, in middle age, became the wife of Sismondi 
 the historian. The next sister, Emma, was a person of 
 more ordinary type, an affectionate and kindly woman. 
 The youngest of the group, Frances, always spoken of 
 as Fanny Allen, was in her twenty-first year. She 
 lived to be ninety-three, dying in 1875; and was 
 known to the multitudinous Wedgwood-Allen-Darwin 
 cousinhood of the next two generations as one of the 
 cleverest and most entertaining of old ladies. Her 
 talk, like her letters, was full of piquancy and point, 
 and in the early bloom of twenty-one she must have 
 been a very attractive creature. Through her, as it 
 happens, we have some slight reminiscences of this 
 visit of Tom Wedgwood and Coleridge to Cresselly. 
 In her old age, sixty-nine years later, she dictated to 
 her niece, Elizabeth Wedgwood, a few sentences of 
 " Recollections of Tom Wedgwood."* These run as 
 follows : 
 
 Fanny says there was a great charm in Uncle Tom's manner ; 
 it was gracious and elegant, but it was more the charm of his 
 character which made it so interesting. His ill health made 
 him felt to be apart, but in everything he said there was sym- 
 pathy and great sensibility, and from his not talking much he 
 was a very keen observer, and his fine taste was easily shocked. 
 But he judged calmly and sweetly. When he arrived at 
 Cresselly, they were all set down to dinner before Mr. Allen, 
 who was a great invalid, came in ; and Fanny says she never 
 can forget the beauty of his manner when he rose and took 
 
 * The paper is endorsed " written by Sarah Eliz. Wedgwood, 
 eldest daughter of J. W. of Maer, whilst staying with Miss F. Allen 
 at Tenby in Dec. 1871." It was found among Mrs. Charles Darwin's 
 papers. 
 
SOUTH WALES AND CRESSELLY 125 
 
 Mr. Allen's hand with so much respect and feeling. Mr. Allen 
 said afterwards he had never seen so fine a manner. After 
 T. W. left Cresselly he wrote a letter to Sarah * [Wedgwood] 
 speaking of them all with so much delicate affection and of his 
 feeling towards them as sisters, that Fanny regretted never to 
 have seen the letter again. 
 
 One day at Cresselly Mr. Coleridge was saying something 
 about the Ten Commandments which T. W. thought would 
 shock Mr. Allen, and he tapped him [Coleridge] on the arm 
 and took him out of the room and stopped him. 
 
 Once in London there was a party, and Uncle Tom among 
 them, to see a picture of Christ by Leonardo da Vinci. Dugald 
 Stewart was of the party, and said, " You are all looking at 
 that head I cannot keep my eyes from the head of Mr. 
 Wedgwood (who was looking intently at the picture) ; it is the 
 finest head I ever saw." t 
 
 Another day at Cresselly, Coleridge, who was fond of reading 
 MS. poems of Wordsworth's, asked Fanny whether she liked 
 poetry, and when she said she did, came and sat by her on the 
 sofa, and began to read the Leechgatherer. When he came to 
 the passage, now I believe omitted, about his skin being so old 
 and dry that the leeches wouldn't stick, it set Fanny a-laughing. 
 That frightened her, and she got into a convulsive fit of 
 laughter that shook Coleridge, who was sitting close to her, 
 looking very angry. He put up his MS., saying he ought to 
 ask her pardon, for perhaps to a person who had not genius 
 (Fanny cannot exactly remember the expression) the poem 
 might seem absurd. F. sat in a dreadful fright, everybody 
 looking amazed, Sarah looking angry ; and she almost expected 
 
 * Tom's sister, who had accompanied him and Coleridge into 
 South Wales. 
 
 t I find in a letter written by Fanny Allen to the same niece in 
 the fifties an allusion to the " effect that Tom's appearance and manner 
 had on Mackintosh's ' set,' as they were called, the winter he left for 
 India Sydney Smith was almost awed." Dugald Stewart (d. 1828) 
 was the Edinburgh Professor who had already become famous through 
 his writings on mental and moral philosophy. 
 
126 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 her father would turn her out of the room, but Uncle Tom 
 came to her rescue. " Well, Coleridge, one must confess that 
 it is not quite a 'subject for a poem." * Coleridge did not forgive 
 Fanny for some days, putting by his reading aloud if she came 
 in. But afterwards he was very good friends with her, and 
 one day in particular gave her all his history, saying, amongst 
 other things, " and there I had the misfortune to meet with my 
 wife." 
 
 The two friends seem to have lingered on at Cres- 
 selly in a state of complete indecision as to schemes 
 of further travel. " God knows what I can do," Tom 
 writes to his brother Josiah, " Coleridge is all kind- 
 ness to me, and in prodigious favour here. . . . He 
 takes great pains to make himself pleasant. He is 
 willing, indeed desirous, to accompany me to any part 
 of the globe." 
 
 Both men were eager to get into a warm climate. 
 Italy, Teneriffe, Madeira, were talked of in turn. 
 Then Tom imagines another scheme. " A Mr. Luff, 
 a friend of Coil's in the North, a young man, for- 
 merly of fashion, now in distress, with a pretty little 
 wife, five years married and no children ; he is mad 
 
 * The poem known in the Wordsworth household as the " Leech- 
 gatherer " was first published in 1 807, under the title " Resolution 
 and Independence." Neither in that nor any later edition is there 
 anything as to the old man's skin or the leeches not sticking. 
 Dorothy Wordsworth's diary shows that she made two copies of 
 the poem for Coleridge, one on May 9, 1802, and one on July 5, 
 1802. In this same year Coleridge sent Sir George Beaumont a 
 copy, presumably made from one of Dorothy's, it is not known 
 which ; but that copy does not contain the passage in question. 
 Knight's edition of the Poems, 1896, ii. 12.) Possibly it appeared 
 
 3 the copy made by Dorothy in May, and Coleridge may have 
 been reading from that. 
 
VISITING WORDSWORTH 127 
 
 after field sports, of the best possible dispositions I 
 think to form a trio for a year and run wild." 
 
 This plan takes them at once to the Lake country, 
 for Luff's abode is at Patterdale, and on Christmas 
 Eve we find them calling at Wordsworth's cottage at 
 Grasmere on their way to Keswick, which they reach 
 the same day.^ Of this passing visit to Wordsworth 
 I find a trace in a letter written by the poet to 
 Josiah Wedgwood after Tom's death. " When your 
 brother," he says, " entered the room where I am now 
 writing, about four years ago, I was quite heart-stricken ; 
 he was deplorably changed, which was painful to see ; 
 but his calm and dignified manner, united with his tall 
 person and beautiful face, produced in me an impression 
 of sublimity beyond what I ever experienced from the 
 appearance of any other human being." f 
 
 These remarkable expressions, used by a man not 
 given to extravagance of language, show that Wedg- 
 wood's personal appearance must have been excep- 
 tionally striking ; and they agree, it will be seen, with 
 Fanny Allen's anecdote as to his meeting with Dugald 
 Stewart and with her remarks as to his dignified bear- 
 ing when at Cresselly. 
 
 Tom's first letter from Coleridge's abode at Keswick 
 shows that he had again fallen back into a terrible depth 
 of despondency. 
 
 * Here Coleridge finds his new-born daughter, Sara, who had 
 appeared on the preceding day. 
 
 t Written in September 1806. The letter is given in a short 
 account of Tom's life which Josiah drew up for the information of 
 Mackintosh. In the words "deplorably changed" Wordsworth is 
 probably recalling Tom's visit to him at Alfoxden (anfe, p. 5 2). 
 
128 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 Tom Wedgwood to his brother Josiah 
 
 GRETA HALL, 
 
 25 Dec., 1802. 
 
 ... If that fail [a plan of settling in Wales, one of various 
 schemes for fighting his disease] I will neither distress myself 
 nor my friends by continuing a vain struggle with Nature, but 
 in complete resignation yield to her an existence which she 
 will not allow to be anything but a burden to myself, and a 
 perpetual source of anxiety to all around me. I feel a comfort 
 from this resolution which sustains me in my most gloomy 
 moments I see a termination of my sufferings. . . . For God's 
 sake understand me aright. I have for more than ten years 
 made every possible effort to recover my health and spirits. In 
 that time I have suffered more than I have ever told and more 
 than can easily be conceived. I am not at all advanced. My 
 patience is gone. I do not become inured to suffering, and I 
 am determined, after one or two more efforts, to relieve myself 
 from all further effort, and to minister such stimuli as shall 
 diminish the tediousness and misery of my life to a bearable 
 degree, and take my chance for the consequences. If for a 
 moment you could enter into my feelings, you would not be 
 inclined to controvert my resolve. Would to God I could 
 devote my life to your happiness, instead of thus for ever dis- 
 turbing it ! 
 
 This letter is headed " Read this by yourself," and is 
 marked " Private." Another following it is in the same 
 strain : 
 
 " . . . Shall I add that if the feelings of others were not 
 involved in my decision, I should instantly resort to that final 
 scheme which would bring immediate ease into my mind, by 
 calmly yielding to that power which has baffled as much fore- 
 sight, courage, and temperance as would have ensured a victory 
 in 99 cases in a hundred ? If I am to continue yet much 
 
NEARING DESPAIR 129 
 
 longer on this earth, I must at all events be separated from all 
 my best friends, the sensation which wrings my soul." 
 
 To these despairful utterances Josiah's answer was * : 
 
 Josiah Wedgwood to his brother 'Tom 
 
 ETRURIA, 
 
 Dec. 31, 1802. 
 MY DEAR TOM, 
 
 I got yours of the 25th only to-day. . . . Your situation 
 fills me with anguish, and I feel it with the more bitterness, 
 having no consolation to offer you, nor any expedient for your 
 relief to point out. Would to God you could show me how 
 I can alleviate your sufferings, for I love you with my heart 
 and soul. If the expression of your feelings afford you the 
 slightest relief, do not refrain from it from any apprehension of 
 giving me pain. I feel your pains, and shall think myself 
 despicable if ever I cease to feel them, but my temper is 
 cheerful, and I am in no danger of being permanently affected. 
 I do not wish you to exhaust yourself by writing long letters, 
 but I beg to hear often from you. 
 
 * This is a half-sheet bearing no signature. It may have been a 
 draft only. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 ULLESWATER TO GENEVA AND FLIGHT HOME 
 
 1803 
 
 THE new year found Tom in a pleasant resting-place, 
 the cottage of the Luffs at the head of Ulleswater, 
 " embarked," as he says,* " on a new scheme, not of any 
 great promise, but at any rate a temporary relief to a 
 most painful state of irresolution and despondency." 
 His description of his hosts shows them as good 
 affectionate people, doing anything they can to 
 make the sick man's life tolerable. Their cottage is 
 in a delightful spot, a hundred yards from the lake. 
 Behind it are the lower slopes of Helvellyn, in front 
 the great mass of Place Fell, rising on the opposite 
 side of the lake. The garden is washed by the 
 streamlet from Glen Ridding. He is only nine miles 
 away from the Wordsworths, whom he hopes to see 
 not seldom, for he already feels that the society of the 
 cottage " would be dull diet without occasional season- 
 ing " ; but there is a " tremendous mountain " [Grise- 
 dale Pass] between him and Dove Cottage. He is on 
 the " most cordial terms of intimacy and good under- 
 standing " with the Luffs. The lady is a " little being 
 of a simple but kindly nature, extremely limited in 
 
 * To Josiah Wedgwood, January I, 180 3. 
 
A RETREAT ON ULLESWATER 131 
 
 general information " but with " sense of the right 
 sort. Her steadiness of character has rescued her 
 husband from perdition." They are living in this 
 remote spot, partly for fishing and other sport, partly 
 because " Luff has still some debts, and does not wish 
 to have it much known where he is." * 
 
 Here Wedgwood thinks to fix himself, at least for a 
 time, after having persuaded these kind people, with 
 some difficulty, to let him share their housekeeping 
 expenses. But as the winter advances he craves for a 
 warmer climate, and is still planning schemes of southern 
 travel. If his strength permits he u may probably 
 induce Luff to go too, as a sporting companion, with 
 Coleridge for conversation." 
 
 Coleridge, writing to him from Greta Hall on 
 January 9, develops this wild scheme in his usual 
 optimistic fashion : 
 
 In some part of Italy or Sicily which we both liked, I would 
 look out for two houses. Wordsworth and his family would 
 take one, and I the other, and then you might have a home 
 either with me, or if you thought of Mr. and Mrs. Luff under 
 this modification, one of your own ; and in either case you 
 would have neighbours, and so return to England when the 
 home-sickness pressed heavy upon you, 
 
 and so on. We hear no more of this visionary project. 
 It is in the letter just mentioned t that Coleridge 
 gives an often-quoted and striking description of a 
 ride over Kirkstone Pass in the face of a furious 
 
 * They were familiar friends of Wordsworth and his sister. 
 
 t Printed in full in Mr. E. H. Coleridge's " Letters of S. T. C." 
 p. 417. It is the only one of the poet's letters to T. Wedgwood 
 which appears in that collection. 
 
132 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 storm, telling how at the top he met a man who had 
 dismounted, not being able to keep on his horse, and 
 who said to him with much feeling : " Oh ! Sir, it is a 
 perilous buffeting." Wedgwood's reply, asking why 
 he ventured to go on in the face of such weather, 
 evoked the following remarkable letter : 
 
 S. < T. Coleridge to Tom Wedgwood 
 
 [Address : C. LUFF'S, ESQ., GLENRIDDEN, ULLESWATER.] 
 
 Friday night, Jan. 14, 1803. 
 [No postmark : evidently sent from GRETA HALL, KESWICK.] 
 
 DEAR FRIEND, 
 
 I was glad at heart to receive your letter (which came to me 
 on Thursday morning), and still more gladdened by the reading 
 of it. The exceeding kindness which it breathed was literally 
 medicinal to me ; and I firmly believe, cured me of a nervous 
 rheumatism in my head and teeth. I daresay that you mixed 
 up the scolding and the affection, the acid and the oil, very 
 compleatly at Patterdale ; but by the time it came to Keswick, 
 the oil was atop. 
 
 You ask, in God's name, why I did not return when I saw 
 the state of the weather ? The true reason is simple, though 
 it may be somewhat strange the thought never once entered 
 my head. The cause of this I suppose to be that (I do not 
 remember it at least) I never once in my whole life turned 
 back in fear of the weather. Prudence is a plant, of which I 
 no doubt possess some valuable specimens, but they are always 
 in my hothouse, never out of the glasses, and least of all things 
 would endure the climate of the mountains. In simple earnest, 
 1 never find myself alone with the embracement of rocks and 
 hills, a traveller up an alpine road, but my spirit courses, drives, 
 and eddies, like a Leaf in Autumn ; a wild activity, of thoughts, 
 imaginations, feelings, and impulses of motion, rises up from 
 within me ; a sort of bottom-wind, that blows to no point of the 
 
COLERIDGE AMONG THE HILLS 133 
 
 compass, comes from I know not whence, but agitates the 
 whole of me ; my whole being is filled with waves that roll and 
 stumble, one this way, and one that way, like things that have 
 no common master. I think that my soul must have pre- 
 existed in the body of a Chamois-chaser ; the simple image of 
 the old object has been obliterated ; but the feelings, and im- 
 pulsive habits, and incipient actions are in me, and the old 
 scenery awakens them. The further I ascend from animated 
 Nature, from men, and cattle, and the common birds of the 
 woods and fields, the greater becomes in me the Intensity of 
 the feeling of life. Life seems to me then a universal spirit, 
 that neither has, nor can have, an opposite. " God is every- 
 where," I have exclaimed, "and works everywhere, and where 
 is there room for death ? " In these moments it has been my 
 creed, that Death exists only because Ideas exist ; that life is 
 limitless Sensation ; that Death is a child of the organic senses, 
 chiefly of the Sight ; that Feelings die by flowing into the 
 mould of the Intellect, and becoming ideas ; and that Ideas 
 passing forth into action reinstate themselves again in the world 
 of Life. And I do believe that truth lies enveloped in these 
 loose generalisations. I do not think it possible that any bodily 
 pains could eat out the love and joy, that is so substantially part 
 of me, towards hills, and rocks, and steep waters ; and I have 
 had some Trial. 
 
 On Tuesday I was uncommonly well all the morning, and 
 eat an excellent dinner ; but playing too long and too romp- 
 ingly with Hartley and Derwent, I was very unwell that even- 
 ing. On Wednesday I was well, and after dinner wrapped 
 myself up warm, and walked with Sarah Hutchinson* to 
 Lodore. I never beheld anything more impressive than the 
 wild outline of the black masses of mountain over Lodore [here 
 he gives a rough sketch of the mountain outline] to the Gorge 
 of Borrowdale, seen through the bare Twigs of a grove of 
 
 * Sister of Mrs. Wordsworth. Lodore is the cataract near the 
 Borrowdale end of Derwentwater. 
 
i 3 4 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 Birch Trees, through which the road passes ; and on emerging 
 from the grove a red planet (so very red that I never saw a star 
 so red, being clear and bright at the same time) stood on the 
 edge of the point where I have put an asterisk ; it seemed to 
 have sky behind it ; it started, as it were, from the Heaven, like 
 an eye-ball of Fire. I wished aloud for you to have been with 
 me at that moment. 
 
 The walk appeared to have done me good, but I had a 
 wretched Night; had shocking pains in my head, occiput, and 
 teeth, and found in the morning that I had two blood-shot eyes. 
 But almost immediately after the receipt and perusal of your 
 letter the pains left me, and I have bettered to this hour ; and 
 am now indeed as well as usual, saving that my left eye is very 
 much blood-shot. It is a sort of duty with me to be particular 
 respecting facts that relate to my health. I am myself not at 
 all dispirited. I have retained a good sound appetite through 
 the whole of it, without any craving after exhilarants or 
 narcotics ; and I have got well, as in a moment. Rapid 
 recovery is constitutional with me ; but the two former cir- 
 cumstances I can with certainty refer to the system of Diet, 
 abstinence from vegetables, wine, spirits, and beer, which I have 
 adopted by your advice. 
 
 I have no dread or anxiety respecting any fatigue which 
 either of us is likely to undergo, even in continental Travelling. 
 Many a healthy man would have been layed up with such a 
 Bout of thorough wet and intense cold at the same time as I 
 had at Kirkstone. Would to God that also for your sake I 
 were a stronger man j but I have strong wishes to be with you, 
 and love your society ; and receiving much comfort from you, 
 and believing that I receive likewise much improvement, I find 
 a delight (very great, my dear friend ! indeed it is), when I have 
 reason to imagine that I am in return an alleviation of your 
 destinies, and a comfort to you. I have no fears ; and am ready 
 to leave home at a two days' warning. For myself I should say 
 two hours ; but bustle and hurry might disorder Mrs. Coleridge, 
 She and the three children are quite well. 
 
SCHEMES OF JOINT TRAVEL 135 
 
 I grieve that there is a lowring in politics. The Moniteur 
 contains almost daily some bitter abuse of our ministers and 
 parliament, and in London there is great anxiety and omening. 
 I have dreaded war from the time that the disastrous fortunes 
 of the expedition of Saint Domingo,* under Le Clerc, was 
 known in France. t . . . 
 
 I remain, my dear Wedgewood, with most affectionate 
 esteem and grateful attachment, 
 
 Your sincere friend, 
 
 S. T. COLERIDGE. 
 
 A month later, Coleridge is with Poole at Stowey, 
 and Tom at Cote House. The scheme for their 
 travelling together forms the burden of several more 
 letters, but doubts and hesitations increase as the weeks 
 go on. 
 
 S. f. Coleridge to 'Tom Wedgwood 
 
 [Address : COTE HOUSE, BRISTOL.] 
 STOWEY, 
 
 Thursday night I : Feb. 10, 1803. 
 
 . . . You bid Poole not reply to your letter. Dear Friend, 
 I could not, if I had wished it. Only with regard to myself and 
 my accompanying you, let me say this much. My health is not 
 worse than it was in the North ; indeed it is much better. I 
 
 * The expedition sent by Buonaparte to enforce the re-establish- 
 ment of slavery in the island. Only about 2000 out of 35,000 lived 
 to return to France. It was then that Toussaint 1'Ouverture, 
 " most unhappy man of men," was seized and carried off to die in 
 a French dungeon. 
 
 t What follows is as to errands, shoppings, &c., with an invitation 
 to Greta Hall. 
 
 \ I think it needless to print another letter he writes on this same 
 date to Tom Wedgwood at Cote. It is without interest, except 
 that it refers to a request made by Coleridge to Captain John 
 Wordsworth (the poet's brother) to get from India some " bang " 
 for Wedgwood's use. 
 
136 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 have no fears. But if you feel that my health being what you 
 know it to be, the inconveniences of my being with you will 
 be greater than the advantages, feel no reluctance in telling me 
 so. It is so entirely an affair of spirits, that the conclusion must 
 be made by you, not in your reason, but purely in your Spirits 
 and Feelings. Sorry indeed should I be to know that you had 
 gone abroad with one to whom you were comparatively indif- 
 ferent. Sorry if there should be no one with you, who could 
 with fellow-feeling and general like-mindedness, yield you sym- 
 pathy in your sunshiny moments. Dear Wedgewood ! my 
 heart swells within me as it were. I have no other wish to ac- 
 company you than what arises immediately from my personal 
 attachment to you, and a deep sense in my own heart, that let 
 us be as dejected as we will, a week together cannot pass in which 
 a mind like yours would not feel the want of affection, or be 
 wholly torpid to its pleasurable influences. I cannot bear to 
 think of your going abroad with a mere travelling companion ; 
 with one at all influenced by salary, or personal conveniences. 
 You will not suspect me of flattering you, but indeed, dear 
 Wedgewood, you are too good and too valuable a man to deserve 
 to receive attendance from a hireling, even for a month together, 
 in your present state. 
 
 If I do not go with you, I shall stay in England only such 
 time as may be necessary for me to raise the travelling money, 
 and go immediately to the south of France. I shall probably 
 cross the Pyrenees to Bilboa, see the country of Biscay, and 
 cross the north of Spain to Perpignan, and so on to the north 
 of Italy, and pass my next winter at Nice. I have every 
 reason to believe that I can live, even as a traveller, as cheap 
 as I can in England. [Here are some lines as to a commission 
 of Josiah's for buying some malt.] 
 
 God bless you ! I will repeat no professions, even in the 
 subscription of a Letter. You know me, and that is my 
 serious simple wish that in everything respecting me you would 
 think altogether of yourself, and nothing of me ; and be assured 
 that no Resolve of yours, however suddenly adopted, or however 
 
HESITATIONS 137 
 
 nakedly communicated, will give me any pain, any at least 
 arising from my own Bearings. 
 
 Your's ever 
 
 S. T. COLERIDGE. 
 
 P.S. I have been so overwhelmed that I have said nothing 
 of Poole. What indeed can or ought I to say ? You know 
 what his feelings are, even to men whom he loves and esteems 
 far less than you. He is deeply affected . 
 
 Perhaps Leslie would accompany you. 
 
 S. 'T. Coleridge to 'Tom Wedgwood 
 
 [Address : COTE HOUSE, BRISTOL.] 
 POOLE'S, 
 
 Thursday , February 17, 1803. 
 MY DEAR WEDGEWOOD, 
 
 I do not know that I have anything to say that justifies me 
 in troubling you with the Postage and Perusal of this scrawl. 
 I received a short and kind letter from Josiah last night. He 
 is named the sheriff [of Dorset]. Poole, who has received a 
 very kind invitation from your Brother in a letter of last 
 Monday, and which was repeated in last night's letter, goes 
 with me, I hope, in the full persuasion that you will be there 
 before he is under the necessity of returning home. He has 
 settled both his might-have-been-lawsuits in a perfectly pleasant 
 way, exactly to his own wish. He bids me say, what there is 
 no occasion of saying, with what anxious affection his Thoughts 
 follow you. Poole is a very, very good man. I like even his 
 incorrigibility in little faults and deficiencies ; it looks like a 
 wise determination of Nature " to let well alone." 
 
 Are you not laying out a scheme which will throw your 
 Travelling in Italy into an unpleasant and unwholesome part 
 of the year? From all I can gather, you ought to leave this 
 country in the first days of April at the latest. But no doubt 
 you know these things better than I. If I do not go with you, 
 it is very probable that we shall meet somewhere or other ; at 
 
138 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 all events you will know where I am, and I can come to you 
 if you wish it. And if I go with you, there will be this 
 Advantage, that you may drop me where you like, if you should 
 meet any Frenchman, Italian, or Swiss, whom you liked, and 
 who would be pleasant and profitable to you. But this we can 
 discuss at Gunville. 
 
 As to Mackintosh, I never doubted that he means to fulfil 
 his engagements with you ; but he is one of those weak-moraled 
 men, with whom the meaning to do a thing means nothing.* 
 He promises with his whole Heart, but there is always a little 
 speck of cold felt at the core that transubstantiates the whole 
 resolve into a Lie, even in his own consciousness. But what I 
 most fear is that he will in some way or other embroider him- 
 self upon your Thoughts ; but you, no doubt, will see the 
 Proof Sheets, and will prevent this from extending to the injury 
 of your meaning. Would to Heaven it were done ! I may 
 with strictest truth say, that I have thirsted for its appearance. 
 
 I remain in comfortable Health. Warm rooms, an old 
 Friend, and Tranquillity, are specifics for my complaints. 
 With all my ups and downs I have a deal of joyous feeling, 
 that I would with gladness give a good part of to you, my 
 dear Friend ! God grant that Spring may come to you with 
 healing on her wings ! 
 
 My respectful remembrances to your Brother, and Mrs. J. 
 Wedge wood. 
 
 I desire Mrs. J. Wedgewood, when she writes to Crescelly, 
 to remember me with affection to Miss Allen, and Fanny and 
 Emma ; and to say how often I think with pleasure on them 
 and the weeks I passed in their society. When you come to 
 Gunville, please not to forget my Pens. Poole and I quarrel 
 once a day about them. 
 
 * This and what follows refers to Mackintosh's undertaking to 
 put into shape Wedgwood's philosophical speculations, a promise 
 which was not fulfilled. But that Coleridge of all men should com- 
 plain of any one else as being " one with whom the meaning to 
 do a thing means nothing" ! ! 
 
COLERIDGE A CRITICAL VIEW 139 
 
 God bless you, my dear Wedgewood ! 
 
 I remain with most affectionate esteem and regular attach- 
 ment and good wishes. 
 
 Your's ever, 
 
 S. T. COLERIDGE. 
 
 The messages to the Cresselly sisters, and allusions in 
 other letters, give the impression that Coleridge made 
 good friends among the Allen ladies. That Tom's 
 near relations, however, did not all sympathise with 
 him in his admiration for the poet is shown by a letter 
 from his sister Kitty which must have been written 
 about this time. It is interesting as giving a /cooJ 
 estimate of the man as he appeared to an intelligent, 
 though matter-of-fact bystander. Some of her 
 criticism was certainly of a kind not very easy to 
 answer. 
 
 Kitty Wedgwood to 'Tom Wedgwood 
 
 [No date endorsed COTE, 1803.] 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 We shall do everything to make your bed-room warm and 
 Mr. Coleridge's comfortable, though it cannot be smart, as he 
 must ascend to the tower. I don't know whether we shall 
 ever agree in our sentiments respecting this gentleman, but 
 I hope if we do not that we may agree to differ. I certainly 
 felt no scruples of conscience in joining the attack at Cresselly. 
 I have never seen enough of him to overcome the first dis- 
 agreeable impression of his accent and exterior. I confess, too, 
 that in what I have seen and heard of Mr. Coleridge there is 
 in my opinion too great a parade of superior feeling ; and an 
 excessive goodness and sensibility is put too forward, which 
 gives an appearance, at least, of conceit, and excites suspicion 
 that it is acting j as real sensibility never endeavours to excite 
 
140 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 notice. I will tell you sincerely my opinion of him, whether 
 it is well or ill founded. He appears to be an uncomfortable 
 husband, and very negligent, of the worldly interest at least, of 
 his children ; leaving them in case of his death to be provided 
 for by his friends is a scheme more worthy of his desultory 
 habits than of his talents. I think a sturdy independent spirit 
 is so very admirable that, to be extremely candid, I have never 
 recovered his so willingly consenting to be so much obliged to 
 even you. You see I have not much to say, but 'tis the im- 
 pression I have of his thinking himself much better than the 
 world in general that inclines one to look more closely into his 
 own life and conduct ; and as his judgments of others are not 
 inclined to the favourable side, he does not from his own 
 conduct claim lenity. 
 
 I am almost afraid to let you see this letter, but it does as 
 clearly as I can express contain my present opinion of Mr. 
 Coleridge. I think I am not so rivetted to this opinion but 
 that I can change, if upon seeing more of him he gives me 
 sufficient grounds. That I shall ever think him very agree- 
 able I do not imagine. I agree with you in some parts of 
 your character entirely, and of the others I cannot judge. I 
 think it would have been strange if he had not been very civil 
 and obliging at Cresselly where he was so hospitably received 
 I question whether Emma will celebrate his politeness* I 
 hope this subject is very interesting otherwise you will be 
 very much tired, but I was glad to state quite plainly and 
 sincerely my opinion. 
 
 At length the plan of joint travel, a hopeless one at 
 the best, for two sick men of such abnormal tempers as 
 Coleridge and Wedgwood, finally collapsed when, on 
 
 * I find nothing in the letters to explain this doubt. Emma 
 Allen was the one plain figure in the group, and though an intelli- 
 gent woman, was not nearly so agreeable as her sisters ; but one 
 would not like to think this made Coleridge less polite to her than 
 to the rest. What " the attack " was there is nothing to show. 
 
TO GENEVA AND FLIGHT HOME 141 
 
 the top of all other difficulties, came imminent threat- 
 enings of renewed war with France. But Tom found 
 a companion, an artist named Underwood, and on 
 March 25, 1803, crossed to Calais. At that moment 
 his countrymen were all flying home. A few days 
 previously Buonaparte had personally insulted Lord 
 Whitworth, our Ambassador, at an official reception at 
 the Tuiieries, and the general belief was that war was 
 inevitable. On April 16 we find Tom at Paris, and a 
 fortnight later he is at Geneva, planning moves to 
 warmer regions ; but, alas ! with scarce a hope of any 
 betterment. " Nothing," he says, " can be more hope- 
 less than my situation." He shrinks from returning, 
 and yet all other schemes seem impracticable. He tells 
 his brother his troubles, blaming himself for doing so. 
 " The repugnance I feel at again distressing you with 
 my almost hopeless case, believe me, is most extreme." 
 He lingered at Geneva very nearly too long, and only 
 just escaped being caught and made a detenu under 
 Buonaparte's iniquitous decree. On May 6, he is in 
 fear of " the Calais passage being shut." He must 
 have left a day or two later, and got to Paris just as 
 the English Ambassador was leaving it. He crossed 
 the Channel on the very day of the declaration of war, 
 May 16; and on the 22nd Buonaparte ordered the 
 arrest of all English residents and travellers. His 
 travelling companion, Underwood, who had stayed in 
 France with intent _to pursue his art studies, had the 
 bad luck to be caught,* and was a detenu for at least two 
 
 * Wedgwood did all he could to obtain his release, but without 
 avail, and sent him supplies of money. His letters give one an 
 
i 4 2 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 years, if not for another nine, till the end of the 
 
 war. 
 
 idea of the amount of undeserved suffering caused by the decree. 
 For a long time he was unable to learn whether his old mother was 
 dead or alive. It took about two months to get letters from England, 
 as they had to go round by Sweden. Without Wedgwood's help he 
 would have been nearly starved. The latest of his letters, a very 
 sad one, is dated April 3, 1805 (three months before Wedgwood's 
 death). The First Consul's abominable act, which was a violation 
 of all rules of war, made about ten thousand English families 
 miserable in this way. It is curious that the Whig pro-Buona- 
 partists should have forgotten all this when they inveighed against 
 the cruelty of keeping their hero at Longwood, where he was living 
 in one of the most delightful climates in the world, and with twelve 
 thousand a year wherewith to get himself any luxury he might 
 fancy. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 CONTINUED STRUGGLE FOR HEALTH INVASION 
 ALARMS AND VOLUNTEERING 
 
 - 1804 ;,-; 
 
 WEDGWOOD'S malady, whatever it was, had evidently 
 been advancing, and from 1 803 onwards to his death 
 two years later the burden of his letters to his brother 
 is an increasing hopelessness : " If I recrossed the 
 Channel it has only been to seize the last possibility 
 of staving off a little longer that termination which 
 nature seems determined to force upon me." But 
 he still kept struggling on. In the summer of this 
 year he was trying to make out something of a life 
 for himself in London. His main abode was the 
 house of the Wedgwood firm in York Street, St. 
 James's, but he was often at the chambers of John 
 Hensleigh Allen (brother-in-law of his two brothers) 
 in the Temple. In July he says : " I am almost living 
 with Tobin in Barnard's Inn " ; and later he is " messing 
 with Tobin " for a month. * 
 
 * This Tobin I understand to be John, the solicitor and dramatist, 
 brother to the James who was an intimate friend of Tom's, as he was 
 also of the Wordsworths. James was the " dear brother Jem " who 
 figures in the first edition of" We are seven," 
 
 " A simple child, dear brother Jem, 
 Who lightly draws its breath," &c. 
 See the Fenwick note to the poem, where Wordsworth tells how 
 
i 4 4 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 Among his chief associates at this time were two 
 new acquaintances with whom he quickly became in- 
 timate, Richard (" Conversation ") Sharp and Thomas 
 Campbell the poet. Every mention of Sharp shows 
 him as one of the most sympathetic and helpful of 
 friends " He is devoted to my service," " out-doing 
 all former kindnesses," &c. Campbell was then a 
 young man of twenty-six at the outset of his literary 
 career. " The Pleasures of Hope " had appeared in 
 1799. To him Tom Wedgwood was strongly attracted, 
 and the feeling was warmly returned. A letter of 
 Campbell's to his great friend Dr. Currie gives us a 
 curiously expressed record of the impression made 
 upon him by Wedgwood. After enlarging on a 
 singular kind of feeling which, when he is in a certain 
 mood, prevents his writing to Currie with perfect ease 
 and frankness, he says : 
 
 The mischief is, I respect you ; I am afraid of prattling to 
 you, and for fear of that I can say nothing. Worse than this, 
 I have another fault of true English temperament. When the 
 world crosses me ... or when I have a slight headache or 
 derangement of stomach, the duty of propriety^ and above all 
 in correspondence, stares me in the face like a gorgon. . . . 
 Every motion of my mind grows cramped and ungraceful. I 
 lose confidence in myself and the world. ... I thought this 
 malady of metempsychosis peculiar to one unhappy being. . . . 
 If I had observed symptoms of it in others, it was in some 
 bad characters whom I did not like myself for resembling. 
 But I found it lately, by the confession of a candid and worthy 
 man, in one who is more than my fellow-creature in this 
 failing, as he has it even worse than myself ; I have even been 
 
 James Tobin entreated him to cancel it " for if published it will 
 make you everlastingly ridiculous." 
 
CAMPBELL'S ACCOUNT OF HIM 145 
 
 reconciled to it from seeing it the concomitant of a mind 
 perhaps the finest I ever met with. The person I speak of is 
 Thorn. Wedgwood, the son of the potter, of whom you may 
 have heard, as he is known to literary people. We have been 
 sometime well acquainted ; and from finding him a man above 
 par, I was fond of his conversation. We met one day, both in 
 a cold and cramped metempsychosis, with bad health, and I 
 was crossed with my love affair ; and our conversation got 
 upon this subject. ... I cannot help noticing poor Wedgwood 
 a strange and wonderful being. Full of goodness, benevo- 
 lence, with a mind stored with ideas, with metaphysics the 
 most exquisitely fine I ever heard delivered, a man of wonder- 
 ful talents, a tact of taste acute beyond description with even 
 good nature and mild manners, he is not happy. I thought 
 till I saw him, that happiness was to be defeated by no other 
 circumstances than weakness, vice, or an uncommanded 
 temper.* 
 
 Still meditating foreign travel, Tom Wedgwood 
 tried to get Campbell to accompany him, but had to 
 give up the idea, as he found that Campbell was on the 
 point of marrying. He calls this " a cruel disappoint- 
 ment." He then thought of Hazlitt. The vivid 
 account of Hazlitt given by Coleridge in the follow- 
 ing letter was evidently an answer to some inquiry 
 made by Tom in this view.f 
 
 * Beattie's " Life of Campbell," i. 46. I know of nothing to 
 explain why Campbell should apply the Greek term for the trans- 
 migration of souls to the kind of mental malaise which he describes 
 as common to Tom Wedgwood and himself. 
 
 t William Hazlitt (b. 1778, d. 1830) was at this time twenty- 
 five years old, seven years younger than Tom Wedgwood. He was 
 trying portrait-painting for a livelihood, and had not yet done any 
 literary work. 
 
146 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 S. T. Coleridge to 'Tom Wedgwood 
 
 (At Mr. Allen's Chambers, Inner Temple.) 
 GRETA HALL, KESWICK, 
 
 September 16, Friday [1803]. 
 MY DEAR WEDGWOOD, 
 
 I reached home on yesterday noon, and it was not a Post 
 Day. William Hazlitt is a thinking, observant, original man, 
 of great power as a Painter of Character-Portraits, and far 
 more in the manner of the old Painters than any living Artist, 
 but the objects must be before him ; he has no imaginative 
 memory. So much for his Intellectuals. His manners are to 
 99 in 100 singularly repulsive ; brow-hanging, shoe-contem- 
 plative, strange. Sharp seemed to like him ; but Sharp saw 
 him only for half an hour, and that walking. He is, I verily 
 believe, kindly-natured ; is very fond of, attentive to, and 
 patient with children ; but he is jealous, gloomy, and of an 
 irritable Pride. With all this, there is much good in him. 
 He is disinterested ; an enthusiastic lover of the great men 
 who have been before us; he says things that are his own, 
 in a way of his own ; and though from habitual Shyness, and 
 the outside and bearskin at least, of misanthropy, he is strangely 
 confused and dark in his conversation, and delivers himself of 
 almost all his conceptions with a Forceps, yet he says more 
 than any man I ever knew (yourself only excepted) that is his 
 own in a way of his own ; and oftentimes when he has warmed 
 his mind, and the synovial juice has come out and spread over 
 his joints, he will gallop for half an hour together with real 
 eloquence. He sends well-headed and well-feathered Thoughts 
 straight forwards to the mark with a Twang of the Bow- 
 string. If you could recommend him as a portrait-painter, I 
 should be glad. To be your Companion he is, in my opinion, 
 utterly unfit. His own Health is fitful. 
 
 I have written, as I ought to do, to you most freely, into ex 
 corde ; you know me, both head and heart, and will make what 
 

 COLERIDGE'S HEALTH TROUBLES 147 
 
 deductions your reasons will dictate to you.* I can think of 
 no other person. What wonder ? For the last years I have 
 been shy of all mere acquaintance. 
 
 " To live beloved is all I need, 
 And when I love, I love indeed." 
 
 I never had any ambition ; and now, I trust, I have almost 
 as little vanity. 
 
 For 5 months past my mind has been strangely shut up. I 
 have taken the paper with the intention to write to you many 
 times ; but it has been all one blank Feeling, one blank idealess 
 Feeling. I had nothing to say, I could say nothing. How 
 dearly I love you, my very Dreams make known to me. I will 
 not trouble you with the gloomy tale of my Health. While I 
 am awake, by patience, employment, effort of mind, and walking, 
 I can keep the fiend at arm's length, but the Night is my Hell ! 
 sleep my tormenting Angel. Three nights out of four I fall 
 asleep struggling to lie awake ; and my frequent night-screams 
 have almost made me a nuisance in my own House. Dreams 
 with me are no Shadows, but the very substances and foot-thick 
 calamities of my Life. Beddoes, who has been to me ever a very 
 kind man, suspects that my stomach " brews vinegar." I am 
 careful of my Diet. The supercarbonated kals does me no 
 service, nor magnesia, neither have I any head-ach. But I am 
 grown hysterical. Meantime my looks and strength have 
 improved. I myself fully believe it to be either atonic, hypo- 
 chondriacal Gout, or a scrophulous affection of the Mesenteric 
 
 * Cottle's version of this sentence may be quoted to show what utter 
 nonsense his reckless editing makes of what Coleridge wrote : " I 
 have written as I ought to do : to you most freely. You know me, 
 both head and heart, and I will make what deductions your reasons 
 may dictate to me." A sentence a few lines higher up is similarly 
 travestied out of all recognition. Here Cottle, not understanding 
 Coleridge's odd anatomical metaphor, calmly cuts it out, and puts 
 in a patchwork of his own : " . . . When he has wearied his mind, 
 and the juice is come out, and spread over his spirits, he will gallop, 
 &c." 
 
148 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 Glands. In the hope of drawing the Gout, if Gout it should 
 be, into my feet, I walked, previously to my getting into the 
 Coach at Perth, 263 miles in eight Days, with no unpleasant 
 fatigue ; * and if I could do you any service by coming to 
 town, and there were no Coaches, I would undertake to be 
 with you, on foot, in 7 days. I must have strength some- 
 where ; my head is indefatigably strong ; my limbs too are 
 strong; but [here he launches into a wild description of his 
 bodily troubles.] 
 
 All my family are well. Southey, his wife, and Mrs. Lovell 
 are with us. He has lost his little girl, the unexpected gift of 
 a long marriage ; and stricken to the heart is come hither for 
 such poor comforts as my society can afford him. 
 
 To diversify this dusky letter, I will write an Epitaph, which 
 I composed in my sleep for myself, while dreaming that I was 
 dying. To the best of my recollection I have not altered a 
 word. Your's dear Wedgwood, and of all that are dear to 
 you at Gunville, gratefully and most affectionately, 
 
 S. T. COLERIDGE. 
 
 EPITAPH. 
 
 " Here sleeps at length poor Col. and without screaming, 
 Who died, as he had always liv'd, a dreaming : 
 Shot dead, while sleeping, by the Gout within, 
 Alone, and all unknown, at E'nbro' in an inn." 
 
 It was on Tuesday night last, at the Black Bull, Edinburgh. 
 
 Before Wedgwood received this letter he had put 
 aside, for a time at least, the scheme of travel which 
 prompted the inquiry about Hazlitt, and was immersed 
 
 * This alludes to his solitary wanderings in the Highlands after 
 leaving Wordsworth and his sister in the middle of the Scotch tour 
 described in Dorothy's delightful " Recollections." He left them 
 on the plea of being unwell, but the real reason must have been 
 that being with them interfered with his taking laudanum. 
 
A STRANGE EXPERIMENT 149 
 
 in another project, one of the oddest of the many 
 plans by which, when all regular doctoring had failed 
 to do anything for him, he sought to circumvent his 
 mysterious malady. The beginning and end of this 
 may be told in a few sentences from his letters to Poole 
 and to his brother. 
 
 "(n Sept. 1803) . . . going to take a house in town by the 
 week. My plan is to busy myself in the little practical con- 
 cerns of housekeeping. I have a friend who will be with me. 
 
 (17 Sept.) I am fairly embarked in my scheme, having 
 just made the beds and explained my intentions to Frederic, 
 and [with] a louis bribe to a discreet silence. His room is 
 now fitting up as my kitchen. I am going to York Street for 
 stores. At one I return to cook our dinner. If I can only 
 escape those horrible lownesses, I shall certainly adhere to this 
 new plan of life. As to making life pleasant on the whole, I 
 have no such expectation. I aim only at making it tolerable. 
 Send Frederic's flute by waggon. 
 
 (19 Sept.) I persevere in my plan have cooked two dinners 
 and made beds, &c. &c. . . I like the plan better than I expected, 
 and find that living with one person will furnish as much work 
 as I shall ever want, including washing and ironing. Aslet 
 certainly will not do for that person. His temper is bad. 
 
 (23 Sept.) I experienced a most cruel mortification yester- 
 day. After nine days steady perseverance, I found myself so 
 low and so languid that I was obliged to get Frederic to finish 
 the cooking of the dinner, washing, &c. Cooking I resign for 
 ever ; it deprives me of all stomach for my dinner. I am so 
 harassed by fever, tho' I have lived on fish for the last fortnight, 
 that I am afraid I must desist from labour for a while. I am 
 frightened at the prospect before me. 
 
 (28 Sept.) So extremely feeble I can't prosecute my labours, 
 which, when cookery is excluded, are indeed insufficient in 
 quantity. . . . 
 
150 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 And so he turns to other plans. He is " impatient to 
 quit London," and thinks at one time of getting some 
 additions made to a farmhouse near Gunville, where 
 Luff and his wife can come and companionise him ; 
 then of " running up a room " for himself with a 
 " minute Kitchen " on his Eastbury estate. 
 
 In the autumn of 1803 all England was in a ferment 
 in the expectation of a French invasion. Napoleon's 
 " Army of England " was encamped at Boulogne, with 
 the flotilla of transports ready to carry 100,000 men 
 across those few miles of sea at the first fair wind. 
 The country was fully roused, and able-bodied men of 
 all ranks were being enrolled as volunteers. Even 
 Tom Wedgwood, sick as he was, fancied at moments 
 that he might do some kind of service. " If it lasts," 
 he says (October 3), speaking of a slight improvement 
 in his health, " I seriously mean to offer myself for 
 garrison service on the coast, but last night I found 
 myself unable to get off my chair, and for the time 
 abandoned the idea of ramming a cannon." But he 
 could not rest without doing something towards the 
 defence of the country. " As my health," he wrote 
 to Poole, " will not allow me to serve in person, it is 
 my duty to serve by my purse. I have, therefore, 
 made an offer to Government to raise a Company of 
 volunteers and clothe 1 them at my expense." 
 
 Poole, then in London for his Poor Law work, 
 helped him to arrange this at the War Office. He 
 learnt that about Patterdale and the Lakes, where he 
 had stayed with the Luffs, the men were eager to 
 
"WEDGWOOD'S MOUNTAINEERS" 151 
 
 volunteer; but that money was wanted for the 'needful 
 expenses. He therefore, with LufFs aid, formed a 
 Company of eighty men from among the " statesmen " 
 of the district, clothing and arming them as riflemen. 
 The cost of doing this, including pay for twenty days 
 exercise, which he gave the men while they were 
 " supernumeraries," before Government allowed them 
 the regular pay of volunteers, came to about ^800. 
 Luff, who had been in the army, was put at their 
 head, and proved a most zealous organiser and com- 
 mander. The Company decided on taking the name 
 of its founder, and it was known as " Wedgwood's 
 Mountaineers." They " exercised through the first 
 winter," says Josiah Wedgwood, " often mid-leg deep 
 in snow, many of them walking ten miles to the field." 
 All the accounts go to show that they were a splendid 
 set of men. An inspecting officer tells them he shall 
 " report them as not only fit for immediate service, 
 but perfectly equal to being brigaded with any regi- 
 ment of the line, and to be sent on the most arduous 
 duty." That they were grateful for Wedgwood's 
 help is testified by a letter dated " Ulcatrow Moor," 
 signed by "John Sutton and John Robinson Lieu- 
 tenants," and addressed to " Charles Luff Esq., Captain 
 Wedgwood Loyal Mountaineers," wherein they request 
 him to " represent to our most worthy patron Mr. 
 Wedgwood our sincere and grateful acknowledgements 
 for the Honour, and in this county unexampled 
 favour, he has conferred on us, by putting us in a state 
 to serve our King and Country, where every Hand and 
 stout Heart should join ; but without this favour we 
 had been left, like too many others, unable though 
 
152 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 willing to join our brother Soldgers." In a letter of 
 Luff's to Tom Wedgwood we have an animated account 
 of a field-day held, in the next summer (May 1 804), 
 at and about Gowbarrow Park : 
 
 A very severe day it was, but an excellent dinner of Beef 
 and plumb pudding, to which 120 sat down, recruited their 
 exhausted strength. What would I not have given to have 
 had you on the spot ! [Wedgwood was ill in Dorsetshire.] 
 The gratitude of the men was unbounded. William Words- 
 worth dined with us on the lawn before the house,* and declared 
 it to be the most interesting day he ever witnessed, such as he 
 should long remember ; and said he almost envied you your 
 feelings on the occasion. 
 
 We may imagine how the poet would be stirred by 
 that scene when we remember that it was he who, in 
 those memorable sonnets of 1 803, had given voice to 
 the emotions aroused by that great national crisis. 
 
 " No parleying now ! In Britain is one breath ; 
 We are all with you now from shore to shore ; 
 Ye Men of Kent, 'tis victory or death." 
 
 The Wedgwood letters of 1 803 reflect the anxieties 
 which must have disturbed hundreds of households, 
 especially those near the coasts, during that memorable 
 
 * The house here mentioned is presumably that known as "Lyulph's 
 Tower," on the beautiful slope just above that bit of the Ulleswater 
 shore which is familiar to all Wordsworth-lovers as the scene of the 
 Daffodils. 
 
 "The Wedgwood Mountaineers" continued to exist till long 
 after the fear of an invasion had passed away with the victory of 
 Trafalgar. Up till 1812 Josiah Wedgwood, as Tom's executor, 
 continued to provide Luff's captain's pay, and find money for other 
 expenses in connection with the corps. 
 
INVASION ALARMS 153 
 
 
 autumn. Tom, who is in London, and hears all kinds 
 
 of speculations as to when and where the French may 
 land, is naturally thinking of his mother and sisters 
 at Eastbury and his brother's family at Gunville, 
 only a few miles from the coast of Dorset. Jos has 
 " ordered a tilt for his wagon," in case of having to 
 move in bad weather, and is packing up some of the 
 most important things, but his old mother is averse to 
 moving, and Bess is unwilling to send the children 
 away. 
 
 'Tom Wedgwood to Josiah Wedgwood 
 
 TEMPLE, 
 
 Oct. 10, 1803. 
 DEAR Jos, 
 
 It seems to be the general opinion that the French will land 
 somewhere or other. Now your family is on the coast ; have 
 you anticipated deliberately all the circumstances immediately 
 arising from a landing in your neighbourhood ? I am afraid 
 there would be a great deal of distress, great difficulty of 
 removal. Your horses would be pressed for service. Might it 
 not be wise, in so awful a moment of danger, for your family 
 and my mother's to retire to the centre and most secure part 
 of the island ? Or at any rate, to make immediate and com- 
 plete arrangements for removal, such as packing valuables, etc., 
 and perhaps to occupy Cote House for the next critical month. 
 For as Pitt said at Margate : Expect the French every dark night. 
 Don't suppose that I write in a moment of excessive alarm ; I 
 have heard the subject a good deal canvassed lately, and I am 
 convinced that some of the stoutest hearts in the Island are 
 apprehensive about the event. I have made enquiries about the 
 measures of removal, and as far as I can foresee, there will be 
 amazing confusion the moment the landing of the French in 
 any neighbourhood is proclaimed. Sounding the alarm is no 
 doubt very unpleasant : but a balance must be struck. 
 
154 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 Tom's urgency was intelligible, considering that 
 Gunville was only some three or four hours' march 
 from Poole Harbour. Gloucestershire was a much 
 safer place for non-combatants. George III., we may 
 remember, had at this time made all arrangements for 
 the Queen and Princesses moving from Windsor, at 
 a few hours' notice, to the Palace of his friend Bishop 
 Hurd, at Worcester. Weekly rehearsals were going 
 on at Boulogne of the embarkation of the troops, and 
 Pitt, now Warden of the Cinque Ports, was " riding 
 up and down the coast of Kent " looking after the 
 3000 volunteers of the Walmer district. The prospect 
 of seeing the French on English soil was serious enough > 
 though some still maintain that the " Armee d'Angle- 
 terre " was more or less of a sham, and that Napoleon's 
 real object was a great move across the Rhine. * 
 
 Kitty Wedgwood to her brother 'Tom 
 
 EASTBURY, 
 
 Oct. [about iCth (?), 1803]. 
 
 * * * # * 
 
 We are just returned from Lymington, and I own I was 
 glad to be at home again without any alarm from the enemy. 
 The day after, we had a slight one, which seemed to arise from 
 the Blandford Volunteers being ordered to Poole. . . . We feel 
 quite unsettled from having a doubt whether we will not retire 
 
 * Which hardly agrees with Napoleon's having had a medal 
 struck with the legend : " Descents en Angleterre : frappe a Londres en 
 MDCCCIF" (A copy of this medal may be seen at Boulogne, and 
 Earl Stanhope has one at Chevening.) Some of the plans imagined 
 in France for transporting the troops seem to have been simply insane. 
 Mr. Rose's recent " Life of Napoleon " gives a picture of a new 
 kind of ship which, according to the figures given, would have a 
 deck area of many acres. 
 
EXPECTING THE FRENCH 155 
 
 into the interior for the winter. ... I really think that we 
 shall feel more anxiety thinking every morning that perhaps 
 Dorsetshire is all in confusion. What I most fear is that in 
 very bad weather we should really be obliged to go, and my 
 mother would perhaps suffer from want of accommodation on 
 the road ; besides, the hurry and confusion of the scene or even 
 travelling in very cold weather is a great risk for her. She is 
 not in the least alarmed, and I believe would dislike the thoughts 
 of removing ; but we shall certainly consider whether we had 
 not better. Jos will not be here in case of danger [being High 
 Sheriff of the county] and it would be one anxiety the less for 
 him. 
 
 Wedgwood to Josiah Wedgwood 
 
 TEMPLE, 
 
 Oct. 17, Monday, 1803. 
 DEAR Jos, 
 
 I am afraid I shall hardly get you a guinea, as Howorth does 
 not receive any in York St., nor can any be got at our bank.* 
 I had begun a little store before I received yours, and have yet 
 only amassed eight. I had no thoughts of your leaving the 
 county, and am very glad you are so well prepared for quitting 
 
 I sent the Birds to Mack's also as he has company to-day. 
 He says he shall begin Time and Space tomorrow, and has 
 invited me to join in the attack, which I totally declined 
 
 'Tom Wedgwood to Josiah Wedgwood 
 
 HENRIETTA ST., 
 
 Oct. 1 8, 1803. 
 
 I don't know what to say about their continuing in Dorset- 
 shire. I am afraid my mother's want of apprehension of 
 
 * John Wedgwood's bank in Pall Mall. Howorth is the cashier 
 at the York Street show-rooms. 
 t Seep. 157. 
 
156 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 danger is derived from a very inadequate consideration of it. 
 Mackintosh thinks a landing will certainly be effected, as the 
 attack will probably be made at many points. Now, as Kitty 
 says, a forced march in mid-winter happening when she may be 
 indisposed might be very distressing. I should think Cote 
 House tolerably secure, and [they] will much easier move 
 forward into the interior. 
 
 Pray prepare Bess and all about you for the horrors that are 
 almost inevitable. Bess writes with too much composure for a 
 woman who may, even probably, find herself a widow in a week. 
 My repugnance to inactivity increases with my strength ; but I 
 am still utterly unable to enter into any corps. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Howorth has a friend who has promised him 20 guineas 
 these shall be saved for you, and a few more he has collected. 
 What say you to a little bullion, or gold grains ? It is now at 
 .4 is. Sd. the ounce. I shall get a few ounces. 
 
 Tom's view prevailed, and before long his mother 
 and sisters moved to John's house at Cote, near Bristol. 
 There, too, we find Tom himself in November, reading 
 the second edition of Malthus on Population, and 
 corresponding with military people in London, and 
 with Lord Lowther the Lord Lieutenant of Westmore- 
 land, about his volunteer corps. Volunteering is the 
 great business of the moment. Jos is distracted 
 between his duties as Captain of a Staffordshire corps, 
 formed from the Etruria works, and as High Sheriff 
 of Dorset ; but as " there arc now 230,000 enrolled " 
 this was when the population of England was about 
 a fourth of its present amount he thinks there is " no 
 great necessity for more." 
 
A FAMILY GATHERING 157 
 
 The family event of that winter was the departure 
 of Mackintosh, with his wife and children, for India. 
 He had just been made Recorder of Bombay, and there 
 was a large muster in London of the Wedgwood-Allen 
 families, and of intimate friends, the Sydney Smiths, 
 the Horners, and many more, to bid them farewell. 
 Some time before this Mackintosh had agreed to write 
 an essay expounding Tom Wedgwood's philosophical 
 views, about which they had had much discussion, 
 orally and in writing, and the following letter, written 
 about two years before this time, would seem to imply 
 that he had made some kind of beginning of the task. 
 
 font Wedgwood to Sir James Mackintosh. 
 
 YORK STREET, 
 
 December nth, 1801. 
 DEAR MACKINTOSH, 
 
 If I was called upon to declare the action which required 
 the most good nature and self sacrifice and which originated in 
 the purest disinterestedness, I should not hesitate an instant to 
 cite your kind attempts to relieve me from my distressing per- 
 plexities. I cannot sufficiently admire the kindness of the offer 
 nor the unwearied patience of the execution. 
 
 I feel considerably embarrassed in proceeding with the subject 
 of my letter. Don't imagine that I feel any repugnance to 
 lying under so great an obligation to you ; but in employing 
 your time and talents, I am using a fund which is the peculiar 
 property of your family. You have already had the satisfaction 
 of a completely generous action ; it is my part to prevent 
 the interests of your family suffering from its consequences. 
 Take then without scruple in its behalf the retainer on the 
 other side. I cannot write more at present so extend your 
 good nature to giving me credit for wishing to treat your 
 
158 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 feelings with all possible tenderness, and believe me your ever 
 obliged and sincere friend, 
 
 THOS. WEDGWOOD. 
 
 Cheque for 100 sent herewith. 
 
 But Mackintosh's departure for India practically put 
 an end to this design ; though, as we see from the 
 following letter, he seems to have fancied that he 
 would be able to accomplish it in what he characteris- 
 tically calls the " long and undisturbed leisure " of his 
 judicial life at Bombay. 
 
 Sir James Mackintosh to Tom Wedgwood 
 
 17, DOVER STREET, 
 
 ibth Dec., 1803. 
 DEAR WEDGWOOD, 
 
 Will you have the patience to read beyond the first line when 
 I begin by telling you that our MS. is in the drawer of my library 
 table on board the Winchelsea, for the present inaccessible to 
 human hand or eye. 
 
 I began in November, not only with the most honest inten- 
 tion but with the most anxious and ardent wish, to execute our 
 project. I sat down at least ten mornings to do it. I was 
 constantly interrupted I was annoyed not merely by the bustle 
 of preparation but sometimes by anxieties of so painful a kind 
 that they left no quiet for Philosophy. Leisure I could com- 
 mand, but tranquillity, which I found equally necessary, was 
 not so easily to be had. It would not have been difficult to 
 have written something but I could not bring my conscience 
 to do injustice to speculations which I estimate so very highly. 
 Under these circumstances, after many ineffectual attempts I 
 resolved, at the risk of your displeasure, to send the MSS. on 
 board ship that I might apply the long and undisturbed leisure 
 
SENDING OFF THE MACKINTOSHES 159 
 
 of Bombay to the undertaking. I did this without consulting 
 you, because I was fearful that justly resenting my past in- 
 fidelity and distrusting my future faith you might have recalled 
 your MSS., which I should have very severely regretted. The 
 first moment after my books are placed on their shelves shall 
 be devoted to Time and Space. 
 
 They are in the same drawer and will share the same fate 
 with all the MSS. I have in the world on Metaphysics Morals 
 and Politics. When I have finished them I shall print a dozen 
 copies at Bombay for the sake of security and easy transmission 
 to Europe. 
 
 Great as my faults have been with respect to your philosophy, 
 they are still more in appearance than they are in reality, and 
 though I do not know whether with your present knowledge 
 you can forgive me, I think I should be certain of your pardon 
 if I could communicate to you the whole succession of incidents 
 which have frustrated my intention. 
 
 All here join in kindest good wishes to your party, and 
 I am 
 
 Dear Wedgwood 
 
 Your's most affectionately 
 
 JAMES MACKINTOSH. 
 
 Of the gathering of friends and relatives to see the 
 last of the Mackintoshes we have pleasant glimpses in 
 some lively letters of Fanny Allen to her sister Bessy 
 in the country. The merriment of Sydney Smith 
 helped to brighten the " sadness of farewells," and 
 we hear of amusing dinner-table discussions as to the 
 comparative virtues of the Allen sisters, and of his, 
 Sydney Smith's, final pronouncement on that interesting 
 point. 
 
i6o TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 Fanny */[llen to her sister "Bessy (Mrs. Josiah 
 
 II Jan. 1804. "Sydney Smith was in his highest spirits, 
 and pleased me particularly by talking of my sisters in the way 
 I wish to hear them talked of, as the very first of women. 
 ' 1 cannot tell you,' he told me, * how much I admire and 
 like all your sisters, but I think that Mrs. Jos Wedgwood 
 surpasses you all.' " 
 
 25 Jan. 1804. " I kept back [in the previous letter] part of 
 the good things he said of you. Mackintosh, Kitty, and I 
 dined with the Smiths on Sunday last, and I have scarcely ever 
 passed a merrier day. The company, as usual, were Sharp, 
 Rogers, Horner, and Boddington. . . . You were again the 
 subject of a very warm eulogium from more of the gentlemen 
 than S. S. It was a very humorous dispute I will not detail 
 it to you because of your unbelief. But Sydney put an end 
 to that part of it which treated of the different degrees of 
 dependence they could place in you and my other sisters in 
 case of any emergency, by declaring he would rely on your 
 kindness to nurse him during a fever, and Jenny's only in a 
 toothache. This was unanswerable and unanswered." 
 
 The beginning of another year found Tom Wedg- 
 wood still in a condition which seemed to be quickly 
 passing into a state of despair. His most frequent 
 mood, henceforward, is that reflected in the following 
 letters. 
 
 Tom Wedgwood to Josiah Wedgwood 
 
 COTE, 
 
 Jany. 10, 1804. 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 I have endured pangs and torments such as none can con- 
 ceive who have never been in like circumstances. These 
 nothing shall lead me to renew. As far as the coldest prudence 
 
A SCHEME OF SECLUSION 161 
 
 can procure me peace, I will have it. I am now endeavouring 
 to habituate myself to my near exit without dismay, to separate 
 all idea of melancholy and repugnance from an event which 
 may put an end to intolerable sensations, to suppress all regret 
 of the hopes and pleasures to which my qualifications, if I know 
 myself at all, might have been expected to lead me. Vanity 
 may influence my opinion, but I have no concealment with 
 you ; as far as I know other men and can examine myself, I 
 feel very certain that at the age of fifteen I held out more 
 promise, and united a greater variety of talent, a more ardent 
 longing after all that is beautiful and good, in morals, things, 
 and art, than any young man I have ever met with. That this 
 should all perish and come to nothing, I should regret in the 
 liveliest manner in another and I certainly do still more in 
 my own person. But I feel that I have now made every 
 possible effort to save myself, and I do not harass myself with 
 any further plans. I am interrupted this is a subject on 
 which I could write folios, but there is no harm in being 
 stopped. 
 
 'Tom Wedgwood to Josiah Wedgwood 
 
 COTE, 
 
 Jany. 23, 1804. 
 
 DEAR Jos, 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 I find myself every day more and more unable to combat 
 with my disorder, and I am convinced of the necessity o/ 
 keeping my room if not my bed. I cannot think of entering 
 on this melancholy scheme at this place it would entirely 
 destroy the comfort of the little society here. I propose 
 returning with you to Gunville, and making the North room 
 as noise-proof as we can. I need not expatiate to you on the 
 extreme repugnance I feel at introducing myself and all my 
 attendant gloom in the midst of a prosperous family like yours, 
 but it is my fate in this life to cast a gloom around me. The 
 pains I have taken and the sacrifices I have made to prevent it 
 
 L 
 
162 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 are the only consolation and excuse I have left. What other 
 
 alternative is left me ? 
 
 ***** 
 
 Though I cannot sit up, nor longer bear to be present a 
 lifeless unparticipating thing in living scenes yet I know from 
 several trials, that my sufferings in the seasoning to this self- 
 entombment, are to be very acute. There may be times, and 
 frequently, when I may require your company and patient 
 attendance. God only knows the horrors which low spirits 
 
 sometimes produce. At those times solitude is insupportable. 
 
 ***** 
 
 I feel that my plan has nothing definite if it had, I could 
 not bring myself to state it. It is an act of resignation to a 
 consuming disorder against which I have kept up a fight of 
 twelve years. I shall no longer think of health, but administer 
 every present comfort and I imagine this process will give 
 such an advantage to my implacable foe, that his complete 
 triumph and mine, no less a one, in his victory, must be hastened. 
 Perhaps you will send your horses from Bath the chaise will 
 meet you when you write to have it. My mother and sisters 
 bore the communication as I could wish with feeling and 
 composure. My kindest love to Bess. I stop because my 
 powers and paper are exhausted or I could converse with 
 you for a month without a stop. 
 
 These are terrible letters, for a man only in his 
 thirty-second year. Josiah's reply to them is, as 
 always, deeply sympathetic, though he can only 
 bid his brother struggle on. The one bright spot 
 in this story of a wrecked life is the unwearying 
 kindness with which the sick man's relatives and 
 friends strove to do all that was possible to mitigate 
 his sufferings. Outside his family, Poole, perhaps, 
 was the most devoted of his friends, always on the 
 alert to seek some way of cheering or helping him 
 
SYMPATHY OF FRIENDS 163 
 
 under the constant struggle. Coleridge's affection 
 for him must have been deep and lasting, whatever 
 we may think of the over-effusive manner of its 
 expression. And there are signs that from various 
 less intimate associates, Sharp, Campbell, and others, 
 he met with much real sympathy and kindness. 
 Josiah's devotion to his brother Tom was an absorbing 
 passion, and was Tom's greatest solace. "I find" 
 (he says to Josiah, Nov. 4, 1804), "that yourself and 
 Sally always move me most to think of a love more than 
 mortal, which cannot flourish in this chilling world, 
 and must survive it. Your deep affection, and Sally's 
 angelic kindness, give a certain value to life in its most 
 trying moments.*' In a letter of this year Sally had 
 said to him : " I have sometimes feared I must have 
 appeared insensible to your sufferings, when my 
 taciturnity has really been owing partly to the family 
 infirmity." The affectionate terms on which he stood 
 with Bessy Wedgwood are shown in the following 
 letter, while her reply is significant of the warm and 
 sympathetic nature which made her perhaps the best 
 beloved member of that united family : 
 
 Tom Wedgwood to Mrs. Josiah Wedgwood 
 
 COTE, 
 
 [Dated, in another hand, Feb. 17, 1804]. 
 MY DEAR BESS, 
 
 Pray come and stay as long as you can. Don't imagine 
 for a moment that you can ever be in my way. I look upon 
 you as no half-sister. I have even felt towards you as sister in 
 full, with all rights and privileges, and, also, with a claim on 
 you for duties and attentions as such. After ten years intimacy 
 
1 64 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 I am less inclined than ever to love you by halves. You must 
 not judge always of my feelings towards you by my manners 
 and exterior. These are under the control of sufferings greater 
 than you have ever imagined them and my temper is nearly 
 gone in the general wreck. I cannot now write more, nor is 
 there to you any occasion. Everybody finds you all kindness, 
 and the deficiencies in kindness and respect at times from me 
 have been forgotten and forgiven by you before I had either 
 forgotten or forgiven them myself. 
 
 Ever your's most affectly, 
 
 T. W. 
 
 Mrs. Josiah Wedgwood to Tom Wedgwood 
 
 GUNVILLE, 
 
 Feby. 20, 1804. 
 MY DEAR TOM, 
 
 I was more gratified than you can imagine by the few kind 
 lines I received from you yesterday, made doubly valuable by 
 the inconvenience (to use the lightest expression) with which 
 you write at present. It was impossible for a moment to doubt 
 of your kindness, but a real want of self-confidence makes it 
 soothing and delightful to me to receive so touching an assur- 
 ance of it, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I 
 cannot enter into the sympathy with which I consider your 
 sufferings, it is deep and sincere, nor would anything I think, 
 in this world, make me so happy as to see you restored to 
 health and enjoyment. I wished very much to have gone 
 with Jos to Cote, but I am deterred by the uncertainty I am 
 in as to poor Kitty's movements at Ryde,* as I believe the 
 wind is entirely against their sailing, and if it continues in a 
 settled point I should not wonder if she were to come here. 
 She has also been so very anxious to see some of us, that I am 
 afraid of putting it out of my power to go there if I find that 
 I cannot resist her affectionate entreaties. 
 
 * Lady Mackintosh is just sailing from Spithead for Bombay. 
 
BESSY WEDGWOOD 165 
 
 A sentence in a letter of Bessy Wedgwood to her 
 husband well shows the feeling which this warm- 
 hearted and unselfish woman had for her sorely 
 afflicted brother-in-law. Such an absorbing attach- 
 ment as that of Josiah to Tom might have made 
 some wives jealous, and she seems to have had a fear 
 it was, of course, quite groundless that Jos might 
 imagine this possibility in her case. " I am very glad/* 
 she says, " that you acquit me of all jealousy with 
 respect to dear Tom. I really deserve it, for there 
 are no sacrifices I would not make to be of any use to 
 him compatible with my other duties." * The situa- 
 tion had its difficulties, and it must have needed her 
 unalterable sweetness of character and tact to avoid 
 friction. Tom, for one thing, made the Gunville 
 nursery a field of philosophical study, observing 
 and recording the doings of its little inhabitants as 
 material for working out his various psychological 
 and educational theories. If little Bess was out of 
 temper, or Joe disobedient to his governess, he would 
 note the incident as illustrating some principle of child- 
 training, and perhaps propound a plan for correcting 
 the infant's evil tendencies, based on the principles of 
 Locke, Hartley, or Rousseau. An uncle given to these 
 pursuits must have been at times a troublesome guest, 
 and family tradition tells us that even the sweet- 
 tempered Bessie sometimes found Tom's frequent 
 incursions into her nursery embarrassing. 
 
 * Letter of September I, 1800 (Darwin MSS.). 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE LAST YEAR 
 1804 1805 
 
 COLERIDGE and Tom Wedgwood never met, apparently, 
 after their parting at PatterdaJe in January 1803. 
 Coleridge came to London in January 1804, bent 
 on making a voyage to a warm climate for the sake 
 of his health. He writes thus from the office in 
 Westminster where Poole was carrying on his statis- 
 tical poor-law work. 
 
 Coleridge to 'Tom Wedgwood 
 
 (Address : COTE HOUSE, BRISTOL.) 
 
 1 6, ABINGDON STREET, 
 
 WESTMINSTER, 
 
 Wednesday afternoon, 
 
 [25 Jan.] 1804. 
 
 MY DEAR FRIEND, 
 
 Some divines hold that with God to think and to create are 
 one and the same act. If to think and even to compose had 
 been the same as to write with me, I should have written as 
 much too much as I have now written too little. The whole 
 Truth of the matter is that I have been very, very ill ; your 
 letter remained four days unread, I was so ill. What effect 
 it had upon me I cannot express by words ; it lay under my 
 pillow day after day. I should have written 20 times, but 
 
COLERIDGE AND THE WORDSWORTHS 167 
 
 as it often and often happens with me, my heart was too full 
 and I had so much to say that I said nothing. I never received 
 a delight that lasted longer upon me, " brooded on my mind 
 and made it pregnant," than the six last sentences of your 
 Letter, which I cannot apologize for not having answered, for 
 I should be canting calumnies against myself, for for the last six 
 or seven weeks I have both thought and felt more concerning 
 you, and relatively to you, than of all other men put together. 
 Somehow or other, whatever plan I determined to adopt, my 
 fancy, good-natured Pandar of our wishes, always linked you 
 on to it ; or I made it your Plan, and linked myself on. 
 
 I left my home December 20, 1803, intending to stay a day 
 and a half at Grasmere, and then to walk to Kendal, whither I 
 had sent all my Cloaths and Viatica ; from thence to go to 
 London, and to see whether or no I could arrange my pecuniary 
 matters so as leaving Mrs. Coleridge all that was necessary to 
 her comforts, to go myself to Madeira, having a persuasion 
 strong as the life within me, that one winter spent in a really 
 warm, genial climate, would compleatly restore me. Words- 
 worth had, as I may truly say, forced on me a hundred Pound, 
 in the event of my going to Madeira ; and Stuart had kindly 
 offered to befriend me ; and during the days and affrightful 
 nights of my disease, when my Limbs were swoln and my 
 stomach refused to retain the food taken in in sorrow, then I 
 looked with pleasure on the scheme. But as soon as dry frosty 
 weather came, or the rains and damps passed off, and I was 
 filled with elastic Health from Crown to Sole, then the 
 Thought of the weight of pecuniary Obligation, having 
 hitherto given no positive proof that I was a fit moral object 
 of so much exertion from so many people, revisited me. 
 
 But I have broken off my story. I stayed at Grasmere a 
 month, f ths of the time bed-ridden ; and deeply do I feel the 
 enthusiastic kindness of Wordsworth's Wife and Sister, who 
 sate up by me, one or the other, in order to awaken me at the 
 first symptoms of distressful Feeling ; and even when they 
 went to rest, continued often and often to weep and watch for 
 
168 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 me even in their dreams. I left them, Saturday, Jan. 1 4th, and 
 have spent a very pleasant week at Dr. Crompton's, at Liver- 
 pool, and arrived at Poole's lodgings last night, at 8 o'clock. 
 
 Though my right hand is so much swoln that I can scarcely 
 keep my pen steady between my Thumb and Forefinger, yet 
 my Stomach is easy, and my Breathing comfortable ; and I am 
 eager to hope all good things of my health ; and that gained, 
 I have a cheering, and I trust prideless confidence that I shall 
 make an active perseverant use of the faculties and acquirements 
 that have been entrusted to my keeping, and a fair trial of their 
 Heighth, Depth, and Width. Indeed I look back on the last 
 four months with honest Pride, seeing how much I have done, 
 with what steady attachment of mind to the same subject, and 
 under what vexations and sorrows from without, and amid 
 what inward sufferings. So much of myself. When I know 
 more, I will tell you more. 
 
 I find you are still at Cote, and Poole tells me you talk of 
 Jamaica as a summer excursion. If it were not for the Voyage, 
 I would that you would go to Madeira, for from the Hour I 
 get on board the vessel to the time that I once more feel 
 England beneath my feet, I am as certain as past and unvary- 
 ing experience can make me, that I shall be in Health, in high 
 Health ; and then I am sure, not only that I should be a 
 comfort to you, but that I should be so without Diminution 
 of my activity or professional usefulness. Briefly, dear Wedg- 
 wood ! I truly and at heart love you, and of course it must add 
 to my deeper and moral happiness to be with you, if I can be 
 either assistance or alleviation. If I find myself so well that I 
 defer my Madeira Plan, I shall then go forthwith to Devon- 
 shire to see my aged mother once more before she dies, and 
 stay two or three months with my Brothers. But wherever I 
 am, I never suffer a day (except when I am travelling) to pass 
 without doing something. 
 
 Poole made me promise that I would leave one side for him, 
 and preciously I have remembered it. God bless him ! He 
 looks so worshipful in his office, among his Clerks, that it 
 
COLERIDGE BIDS HIM STILL HOPE 169 
 
 would give you a few minutes' good spirits at least to look 
 in upon him. I pray you as soon as you can command your 
 pen, give me half a score Lines, and now that I am loose^ say 
 whether or no I can be any good to you. 
 
 S. T. COLERIDGE. 
 
 This letter, I imagine, crossed one from Tom in 
 which he told Coleridge of his despairful resolve to 
 shut himself up at Gunville and to give up struggling 
 with his disease. This Coleridge answers in a strain 
 of passionate protest : 
 
 S. T. Coleridge to 'Tom Wedgwood 
 
 {Address: COTE HOUSE, BRISTOL.) 
 
 1 6 ABINGDON STREET, 
 
 WESTMINSTER, 
 
 Saturday, Jan. 28, 1804. 
 MY DEAR FRIEND, 
 
 It is idle for me to say to you, that my Heart and very soul 
 ache with the dull pain of one struck down and stunned. I 
 write to you, for my letter cannot give you unmixed Pain, and 
 I would fain say a few words to dissuade you. What good 
 can possibly come of your plan ? Will not the very chairs and 
 furniture of your room be shortly more, far more intolerable to 
 you than new and changing objects ! more insufferable Reflec- 
 tors of Pain and Wearisomeness of Spirit? Oh, most certainly 
 they will ! You must hope, my dearest Wedgwood ; you must 
 act as if you hoped ! Despair itself has but that advice to give 
 you. Have you ever thought of trying large doses of opium 
 in a hot climate, with a diet of grapes, and the fruits of the 
 climate ? 
 
 Is it impossible that by drinking freely you might at last 
 produce Gout, and that a violent Pain and Inflammations in 
 the extremities might produce new trains of motion and feeling 
 
170 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 in your stomach, and the organs connected with the stomach, 
 known and unknown ? Worse than what you have decreed 
 for yourself cannot well happen. Say but a word, and I will 
 come to you, will be with you, will go with you to Malta 
 to Madeira to Jamaica, or (of the climate of which and its 
 strange effects I have heard wonders, true or not) to Egypt. 
 
 At all events, and at the worst, even if you do attempt to 
 realize the scheme of going to and remaining at Gunville, for 
 God's sake, my dear dear friend ! do keep up a correspondence 
 with one or more ; or if it were possible for you, with several. 
 I know by a little what your sufferings are ; and that to shut the 
 eyes and stop up the ears is to give one's self up to storm and 
 darkness and the lurid forms and horrors of a Dream. Poole 
 goes off to-night, but I shall send this Letter by the Post. 
 
 I scarce know why it is a feeling I have and hardly under- 
 stand I could not endure to live if I had not a firm Faith 
 that the Life within you will pass forth out of the Furnace : 
 for that you have borne what you have borne, and so acted 
 beneath such Pressure, constitutes you an awful moral Being. 
 I am not ashamed to pray aloud for you. 
 
 Your most affectionate Friend, 
 
 S. T. COLERIDGE. 
 
 Poole will call on you some time before Dinner on Monday, 
 for an hour, unless he hear from you a wish to the contrary, 
 addressed to him at Mr. King's, No. 12 RedclifFe Parade. 
 
 Eight weeks after this Coleridge was leaving England 
 for Malta. Two or three days before his departure 
 he writes thus : 
 
 S. ?*. Coleridge to 'Tom Wedgwood 
 
 [No date: Postmark 24 Mch, 1804.] 
 MY DEAR FRIEND, 
 
 Though fearful of breaking in upon you, after what you have 
 written to me, I could net have left England without having 
 
COLERIDGE'S LAST WORDS TO HIM 171 
 
 written both to you and your Brother. I received your 
 letter at the very moment I received a note from Sharp inform- 
 ing [me] that I must instantly secure a place in the Ports- 
 mouth Mail for Tuesday, and if I could not, that I must do so 
 in the Light Coach for Tuesday early morning. 
 
 I am agitated by many things, and only write now because 
 you desired an answer by return of Post. I have been dan- 
 gerously ill, but the illness is going about, and not connected 
 with my immediate ill health, however it may be with my 
 general Constitution. It was the cholera morbus. But for a 
 series of the merest accidents I should have been seized in the 
 Streets, in a bitter East wind with cold rain ; at all events have 
 walked through it struggling with the seizure it was Sunday 
 night and have suffered it at Tobin's, Tobin sleeping out at 
 Woolwich, no fire, no wine or spirit, or medicine of any kind, 
 and no human Being within call. But luckily perhaps the 
 occasion would better suit the word providentially Tuffin 
 took me home with him. After the first painful Fit 
 
 [Here he describes the attack.] 
 
 ***** 
 
 But however this is rather a History of the past than of the 
 present. I have now only enough for memento, and already 
 on Wednesday I considered myself in clear sunshine, out of 
 the Shadow of the Wings of the Destroying Angel. What 
 else relates to myself I will write on Monday. 
 
 Would to heaven you were going with me to Malta, if it 
 were not for the voyage ! For all other things I could make 
 the passage with an unwavering mind, not without chearings 
 of Hope. Let me mention one thing. Lord Cadogan was 
 brought to absolute Despair and Hatred of Life by a Stomach 
 Complaint, being now an old man. The symptoms, as stated 
 to me, were strikingly like yours, considering the enormous 
 difference of the two characters ; the same flitting Fevers, dire 
 costiveness with Diarrhoea, Dejection, compelled Changes, &c. 
 He was advised to reduce lean Beef to a pure jelly by Papin's 
 digester, with as little water as would secure it from burning, 
 
172 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 and of this to take half a wine glass from 10 to 14 times a day ; 
 this and nothing else. He did so. Sir George Beaumont saw 
 within a few weeks a letter from Lord C. to Lord St. Asaph, 
 in which he states the circumstance, his perseverance in it, 
 rapid amelioration, and final recovery. " I am now," he says, 
 " in real good Health ; as good, and in as chearful spirits as 
 ever I was when a young man." Mingay, the medical man ot 
 Thetford, was his attendant. I could give you all particulars. 
 May God bless you, even here, 
 
 S. T. COLERIDGE. 
 
 This is the latest letter of Coleridge among the 
 Wedgwood papers. He did not return to England 
 till after Tom Wedgwood's death. When in Malta 
 he wrote but little to any friends or relations, and 
 probably not at all to Tom or his brother. 
 
 The rest of the year 1804 shows no lightening of 
 the gloom which is the dominant note of Tom Wedg- 
 wood's letters. He was now resorting to opium as a 
 relief from his sufferings, but to what extent or how 
 continuously he took it is not clear. " The quantity 
 not exceeding four grains often proves," he says^ 
 " wholly insufficient to produce any tolerable ex- 
 hilaration." At times the language in which he 
 describes his sufferings (to his brother Josiah) is such 
 as might well suggest a doubt of his complete sanity, 
 as when he says " the nature of my miseries is too 
 shocking for communication " ; but the tone of other 
 letters dealing with affairs of ordinary life shows, I 
 think, that there was no definitely mental disturbance. 
 A frequent topic in the family correspondence of this 
 time was " the disordered state of John's affairs." 
 John had not the faculty of keeping his expenditure 
 
JOHN LESLIE'S BOOK 173 
 
 within his income, and his chronic state of embar- 
 rassment was a constant source of anxiety to his 
 brothers and sisters. In a letter of May 1804, to 
 Josiah, Tom discusses this matter, and does so in a 
 thoroughly rational way. It is the letter of a man in 
 complete command of his faculties. He proposes to 
 lend his brother " some thousands," in order to " bring 
 his affairs completely round." He thinks John " should 
 abandon Cote, and perhaps might be induced to live 
 at Etruria." " Jane has given up all hope of his ever 
 regulating his expenditure." * 
 
 It was at this time Leslie brought out the book 
 embodying the results of the investigations which the 
 annuity given him by Tom Wedgwood had enabled him 
 to carry on for some seven years past at his home in 
 Fifeshire. It appeared under the title of " An Inquiry 
 into Heat and Electricity," and it established his 
 position as a natural philosopher. In a letter of 
 March (1804) he had sent Wedgwood a draft of the 
 dedication, written in his usual portentously ornate 
 style, asking, " What alteration do you wish ? " This 
 inquiry seems to have remained unanswered, as in 
 another letter Leslie alludes to Wedgwood's having, 
 " with uncommon delicacy," declined to read the draft. 
 In the dedication as printed, he refers vaguely to being 
 under obligation to Wedgwood, but does not mention 
 the annuity or make any allusion to money help.f 
 
 * John Wedgwood gave up Cote House shortly after this. He 
 had a great love of planting and gardening, and was the founder, or 
 had most to do with the founding, of the Royal Horticultural 
 Society. His name appears still on the Society's papers. He died 
 in the year 1844. 
 
 t Nor, strange to say, is there a word about it in the Memoir 
 
174 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 As the year (1804) went on he was again, notwith- 
 standing all previous disappointments, making plans of 
 travel ; and this always involved finding a travelling 
 companion. The discovering of a suitable person was 
 a matter of infinite trouble, the difficulties always 
 attending companionship in travel being aggravated 
 in this case by his sad condition, and his more or less 
 fastidious tastes. He was a great lover of music, and 
 himself a player on the violin and flute. He generally 
 tried to find some one who was accomplished in that 
 art, while having enough knowledge and intelligence 
 to afford the chance of rational conversation. So the 
 problem was a complicated one. At one time he seems 
 to have thought of getting a lady to travel with him. 
 This idea, however, the discreet Josiah did not think 
 one to be encouraged. 
 
 Josiah to Tom Wedgwood 
 
 (Address: COTE HOUSE, BRISTOL.) 
 
 MAER,* 
 
 July 19, 1804. 
 MY DEAR TOM, 
 
 Susan [Darwin, their sister] does not at present recollect 
 any female at all likely to answer your purpose except a young 
 woman that has lived as nurse and companion with Miss 
 
 (Edinb., 1838) by Macvey Napier, who knew Leslie intimately, and 
 " had the advantage " (he says) " of all the information possessed by 
 the family." Napier represents him (p. 14 of the Memoir) as living 
 during these years on the fruits of his own work, which shows that 
 the biographer knew nothing of the annuity, though it was the thing 
 that had determined Leslie's career. 
 
 * A country house a few miles from the Potteries, which Josiah 
 had lately bought, and which ultimately became the home of his 
 family till the death of his widow in 1 846. 
 
SEEKING A TRAVEL-COMPANION 175 
 
 Pannell, and has in that situation learnt French and some 
 other accomplishments. She has left Miss P. on some quarrel, 
 but Miss P. is endeavouring to get her again. If she should 
 not go to Miss P. I imagine she would not be likely to consent 
 to accompany you, as indeed I think no young person can 
 with safety do. Her brothers are bringing up to the Church ; 
 she left Miss P. on account of some slight, real or supposed ; 
 and I should suppose she or her family would be very scrupulous 
 as to appearances and character. I will make what enquiry I 
 can, and I understand that you mean male or female. As to 
 Dugard [a doctor at Shrewsbury] I believe there is no chance 
 of his quitting his present prospects. 
 
 Would not a change of place be useful to you now ? Susan 
 will in all probability leave us in a week and we can keep the 
 house tolerably quiet and give you a quiet bedroom. My 
 mother remains very well. Susan as usual. All unite in love 
 to Jane and you. 
 
 Your affectionate, 
 
 J. W. 
 
 P.S. The Etruria were inspected with the Hanley and Lane 
 End Volunteers yesterday who have been on permanent duty. 
 I think we are in no respect worse than them, and in steady 
 orderly conduct and keeping our arms in order very far their 
 superiors. Col. Broughton said he had seen no volunteers 
 with their arms so well taken care of as ours. 
 
 Nothing more was heard, apparently, of the lady- 
 companion scheme. During the most of this year 
 Tom divided his time between Gunville, Eastbury, and 
 Cote ; but in the first days of October he set off for 
 Westmoreland to stay with the Luffs, partly that he 
 might see how his corps of "Loyal Volunteers" was 
 getting on with its training. When there " he wrote " 
 (says his brother) " an address to the Company, pointing 
 
1ST 
 
 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 out the advantages and necessity of strict discipline, 
 but was too ill to speak it to them, and Captain Luff 
 had to read it for him." On this visit to Patterdale 
 he is again smitten with the beauty of the lovely land 
 of lakes and mountains, and has dreams of making it 
 his place of abode. " This country is heavenly beau- 
 tiful, I would buy here if I could have a day's health 
 a week." 
 
 One of the sweetest nooks in that delightful region 
 is a little farm, called Bleawick, close to the head of 
 Ulleswater ; a homestead surrounded by a few acres of 
 pasture sloping to the water's edge, sheltered from east 
 winds by the overhanging mass of Place Fell, and 
 looking across at Glen Ridding and the crests of 
 Helvellyn. This little place, which is as charming 
 now as it must have been in 1804, was then for sale, 
 and Tom seems to have tried to buy it. He writes to 
 Jos (November 5) putting to him a case of conscience. 
 A friend is after it, " but while he is shilly-shallying, 
 other purchasers may carry it off." Is he bound, he 
 asks, to let Mr. A. go on with the negotiation without 
 having a try for it himself? The project, however, 
 came to nothing. Meanwhile, he found the home of 
 the kind Luffs a welcome retreat, and he was generous 
 in helping them in their poverty. He lent them, which 
 must have meant giving them, several hundred pounds. 
 QThis is but one of many instances which occur in 
 the letters testifying to his liberality in assisting friends 
 and others in trouble. Basil Montagu and Godwin 
 were among those whom he helped. In one of his 
 letters to Godwin he prefaces a gift of ^100 by some 
 admirable reasons for not giving it : 
 
HELPING GODWIN 177 
 
 tL 
 
 I have no opinion of the good, upon the whole, resulting 
 from great facility in the opulent in yielding to requests of the 
 needy. I have no doubt that it is best that every one should 
 anticipate with certainty the pinch and pressure of distress 
 from indulging in indolence, or even from misfortune. It is 
 this, certainly, which quickens the little wit that man is 
 ordinarily endowed with and calls out all his energies. And 
 were it removed by the idea that the rich held funds for the 
 distressed, I am convinced that not only half the industry of 
 the country would be destroyed, but also that misfortunes 
 would be doubled in quantity. I confess to you I have always 
 a doubt of the value of any donation or loan at the same 
 
 time - /^j^^mg^ ' 
 
 But after this exposition of perfectly sound principles, 
 which we may guess would not particularly please the 
 philosopher, he explains how strong is his natural 
 desire to give relief to suffering, and how in Godwin's 
 case he can't resist the impulse, and so he sends him 
 the hundred pounds.^} 
 
 '{Another friend whom we find him helping more 
 than once was Campbell, the poet. A letter from him 
 appealing for a loan of jioo discloses a singular excuse 
 for the request. A lady who had lent Campbell ^100, 
 and " is since mad," is publishing accounts of his 
 "baseness, dishonesty, and ingratitude," calumnies 
 which it is "not easy for him to refute," the debt 
 being real. So he asks Wedgwood for ^100 to relieve 
 him from this objectionable woman. "This letter," 
 he says, " is, I must own, a thunderbolt of indelicacy," 
 a phrase which is explained by his alluding to a note 
 
 * Letter of April 25, 1804: Kegan Paul's "Godwin," ii. 125. 
 A year later (K. P., ii. 141) we find another "loan " in progress. 
 
 M 
 
178 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 for 100 which Wedgwood him sent him a year 
 previously. Wedgwood lent him the money. But 
 Campbell was not a borrower of the Godwin type, 
 and three months later he repaid it " with a heart full 
 of gratitude.^j 
 
 It was in July 1805, that Tom Wedgwood's poor 
 broken life came to an end. It had been long appa- 
 rent that his struggle for health was a hopeless one. 
 But he never gave it up. He again planned a voyage 
 to the West Indies, had secured a companion, was on 
 the point of leaving Gunville to embark, when the 
 mortal stroke came, suddenly and painlessly. Here is 
 the letter in which his affectionate sister-in-law sent the 
 news to her relatives at Cresselly. 
 
 Mrs. Jos. Wedgwood to her sister Emma Allen 
 
 GUNVILLE, 
 
 Wednesday, July 10, 1805. 
 
 MY DEAR EMMA, 
 
 John [their brother] arrived yesterday to carry away our 
 Fan from me, which is a great damper to the pleasure his 
 company always gives me. [Here she breaks off.] 
 
 Friday ye I2th. I was writing to you on Wednesday morn- 
 ing, when all the agreeable feelings with which I sat down to 
 the employment, were cruelly dampt by the sad intelligence 
 that poor Tom was so ill that there was no hope of his re- 
 covery. He had not been worse than usual, and we thought 
 him rather better, from the custom he had taken up of going 
 out every day with Jos in the gig ; but on Monday I think he 
 got a little chilled, which brought on much internal pain, and 
 left him weak. On Tuesday night Joe parted with him with 
 an engagement as usual to go and breakfast at Wood Gates, 
 
A PAINLESS END 179 
 
 but at midnight he rang his bell, and told his servant to give 
 him something, for he was very weak, but not ill. He told 
 him also to come in in two hours time, and see how he was, 
 and to call Jos at 5. The servant did so, and found him as he 
 thought sleeping, but in fact he was then without any sign of 
 sense except that he still breathed. When Jos came he also 
 thought him sleeping, and sat down an hour and half beside 
 him, before he discovered that he was not ; when he did he 
 became alarmed and sent for Dr. Crawford, who immediately 
 said he was dying. He continued in that state, his head quietly 
 reposing on his arm, till seven in the evening, when he expired 
 without seeming to have suffered the least pain. What a day 
 for poor Jos, watching him dying for 12 hours. They have 
 all had such a preparation for this stroke by the long suffer- 
 ings he has undergone, that it ought only to be now 
 considered as a relief, though it is grievous just at the 
 time; but I quite feel it a blessing to us and to him that 
 he died now, before he went aboard-ship, rather than to 
 have suffered all the pain of parting and then perhaps to 
 have sunk under the first attack of seasickness, which I now 
 suppose would certainly have been the case. We have pre- 
 vailed on his mother and sisters to come down here, till 
 they go to Staffordshire, which they now mean to do as 
 soon as they can. On Tuesday will be the Funeral, and we 
 wish them to go before that, as we are so near the Church. 
 He is to be buried in the Vault belonging to this place. He has 
 left his fortune equally between all his brothers and sisters, and 
 he has left a discretionary fund in Jos's hands to supply the 
 generous purposes that his death would otherwise have cut short, 
 to assist a great number who have often felt his bounty before. 
 He has also left a Memorandum with Jos that Edward Drewe * 
 
 * Caroline Allen, a sister of Mrs. Jos. and Mrs. John Wedgwood,, 
 married Edward Drewe, Rector of Broadhembury, near Honiton. 
 One of her daughters (Georgina) married Baron Alderson, and was 
 the mother of the late Marchioness of Salisbury ; another was wife 
 of the first Lord Gifford. 
 
i8o TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 is to have ^20, Caroline ^20 as a remembrance from him, and 
 each of their daughters a hundred a piece. This Caroline does 
 not yet know, as I did not hear it till to-day ; but I am more 
 gratified at it than I can express, as I know it will give Caroline 
 so much pleasure to have been remembered by him. Indeed 
 the more I think of him the more his character rises in my 
 opinion ; he really was too good for this world. Such a crowd 
 of feelings and remembrances fill my mind while I am recalling 
 all his past kindnesses to me and mine, and to all his acquaint- 
 ance, that I feel myself quite unfit to make his panegyric, but 
 I trust my children will ever remember him with veneration 
 as an honour to the family to which he belonged. I have been 
 writing to Kitty Mackintosh, as the fleet is not yet sailed, and 
 to others; and I feel nervous and shaken, so if I write in- 
 coherently you must excuse it. 
 
 Ever yours, 
 
 E. W. 
 
 Such a death could be thought of by his friends 
 only as a happy release. Twenty years of childhood 
 and youth, and fourteen of struggle with disease, 
 made up the whole of his life of thirty-four years. 
 Though he himself never quite despaired, there could 
 have been no real hope of betterment. The struggle 
 might conceivably have been prolonged, but we cannot 
 imagine him regaining the power of effective work. 
 " As to your poor brother's death," wrote Sydney 
 Smith to Jos Wedgwood, " it is difficult to know 
 in what light to consider it. It is painful to lose 
 such a man, but who would have wished to pre- 
 serve him at such a price of misery and pain ? He 
 will not easily be forgotten. I know no man who 
 appears to have made such an impression upon his 
 friends." 
 
HIS CHARACTER BY COLERIDGE 181 
 
 A few years after Tom Wedgwood's death, a re- 
 markable description of his character and powers, but 
 without a mention of his name, was appended by 
 Coleridge to one of his Essays in "The Friend." 
 The passage is as follows it has no formal heading 
 or introduction : 
 
 A lady once asked me if I believed in ghosts and apparitions. 
 I answered with truth and simplicity : No, madam ! I have 
 seen far too many myself. I have indeed a whole memorandum 
 book filled with records of these phaenomena, many of them 
 interesting as facts and data for psychology, and affording some 
 valuable materials for a theory of perception and its dependence 
 on the memory and imagination. In omnem actum perceptions 
 imagmatio influit efficienter ; says Wolff". But he is no more, 
 who would have realised this idea : who had already established 
 the foundations and the law of the theory ; and for whom I 
 had so often found a pleasure and a comfort, even during the 
 wretched and restless nights of sickness, in watching and in- 
 stantly recording these experiences of the world within us, of 
 the gemma natura y qua fit et facit, et creat et creatur ! He is 
 gone, my friend; my munificent co-patron, and not less 
 the benefactor of my intellect ! He who, beyond all other 
 men known to me, added a fine and ever-wakeful sense of 
 beauty to the most patient accuracy in experimental philosophy 
 and the profounder researches of metaphysical science ; he who 
 united all the play and spring of fancy with the subtlest dis- 
 crimination and an inexorable judgment; and who controlled 
 an almost painful exquisiteness of taste by a warmth of heart, 
 which in the practical relations of life made allowances for 
 faults as quickly as the moral taste detected them ; a warmth 
 of heart, which was indeed noble and pre-eminent, for alas! 
 the genial feelings of health contributed no spark toward it. 
 Of these qualities I may speak, for they belonged to all man- 
 kind. The higher virtues, that were blessings to his friends, 
 and the still higher that resided in and for his own soul, are 
 
182 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 themes for the energies of solitude, for the awfulness of prayer ! 
 virtues exercised in the barrenness and desolation of his animal 
 being; while he thirsted with the full stream at his lips, and 
 yet with unwearied goodness poured out so all around him, 
 like the master of a feast among his kindred in the day of 
 his own gladness ! Were it but for the remembrance of him 
 alone and of his lot here below, the disbelief in a future state 
 would sadden the earth around me, and blight the very grass in 
 the field.* 
 
 Part of the thought that inspired these moving 
 words is to be found in a letter of Coleridge, written 
 some years earlier, to his and Wedgwood's friend 
 Richard Sharp : 
 
 Of our common friends, my dear Sir, I flatter myself that 
 you and I should agree in fixing on T. Wedgwood and on 
 Wordsworth as genuine Philosophers, for I have often said (and 
 no wonder, since not a day passes but the conviction of the 
 truth of it is renewed in me, and with this conviction the 
 
 * " The Friend," vol. i. p. 24.9 (ed. 1818). In this reprint the name 
 of Wedgwood is not given ; and I suppose it was not in the original. 
 It appears in a footnote in the edition of 1850, vol. i. p. 190. " The 
 Friend " first appeared in June 1809, and was described in its title as 
 "A Literary, Moral, and Political Paper, excluding Personal and 
 Party Politics and the Events of the Day. Conducted by S. T. Cole- 
 ridge, of Grasmere, Westmoreland. Price, each number One Shilling. 
 Penrith : Printed and Published by J. Brown and will be delivered 
 free of expense by post throughout the kingdom to Subscribers." It 
 ceased to appear in 1810. Its early death was not surprising. Cole- 
 ridge and J. Brown lived 28 miles apart, with Kirkstone Pass between 
 them. The proofs travelled to and fro, sometimes by the weekly 
 post, sometimes by the carrier, and sometimes by a casual post-chaise. 
 Coleridge was habitually late with his " copy," and the interval 
 between the issues varied from one to seven weeks. But the 
 papers published in this absurd fashion contained some of his most 
 characteristic utterances; and in its book form "The Friend" 
 had, as the century went on, a lasting influence on the thought of 
 the time. 
 
CHARACTER BY COLERIDGE 183 
 
 accompanying esteem and love), often have I said that 
 T. Wedgwood's faults impress me with veneration for his 
 moral and intellectual character more than almost any other 
 man's virtues; for under circumstances like this, to have a 
 fault only in that degree is, I doubt not, in the eye of God, to 
 possess a high virtue. Who does not prize the retreat of 
 Moreau more than all the straw-blaze of Napoleon's vic- 
 tories ? And then to make it (as Wedgwood really does) a 
 sort of crime even to think of his faults by so many virtues 
 retained, cultivated and preserved in growth and blossom, 
 n a climate where now the gusts so rise and eddy, that 
 deeply rooted must that be which is not snatched up and 
 made a plaything of by them and, now, " the parching air 
 burns frore." 
 
 W. Wordsworth does not excite that almost painfully pro- 
 found moral admiration which the sense of the exceeding 
 difficulty of a given virtue can alone call forth, and which, 
 therefore, I feel exclusively towards T. Wedgwood.* 
 
 Another expression of Coleridge's feeling as to his 
 dead friend appears in a letter written in 1 809, about 
 four years later, to Sir Humphrey Davy, just after he 
 had heard of the death of Beddoes. After expressing 
 his deep attachment to Beddoes and the emotion with 
 which he heard of his death, he says, "The death of 
 T. Wedgwood pulled hard at my heart ; I am sure no 
 week of my life almost I might have said scarce a 
 day [has passed] in which I have not been made either 
 sad or thoughtful by the recollection. . . . There are 
 two things which I exceedingly wished, and in both 
 
 * Letters of S. T. C., p. 448. An estimate of Wordsworth's 
 character follows. " The parching air burns frore," is from Mil- 
 ton's description of the icy region of Hell in " Paradise Lost," 
 Book ii. 
 
184 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 have been disappointed : to have written the Life and 
 prepared the Psychological Remains of my revered 
 friend and benefactor, T. W. : and to have been in- 
 trusted with the biography, etc., of Dr. B." * 
 
 * " Fragmentary Remains, &c., of Sir H. Davy," by John Davy, 
 M.D., 1858, pp. 108, no. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 THE PHOTOGRAPHIC WORK 
 
 OF Wedgwood's photographic work we know hardly 
 any more than is discoverable from the " Account " in 
 the Journal of the Royal Institution for 1802. 
 
 It was evidently only an episode in his life. In his 
 letters I find no allusion to it ; nor do I find anything 
 in his handwriting relating to his experiments in physics, 
 save only the " Memorandum " of 1792 as to his giving 
 up experimenting (ante, p. 21). But in a letter of 
 November 18, 1800, written by Leslie in London to 
 Wedgwood at Gunville, there is a sentence which 
 presumably refers to the photographic work. "A 
 few days ago I left at York Street an object-glass and 
 some thin cylinders for the solar microscope, and half 
 a dozen bits of painted glass which will, I think, suit 
 you. I have more pieces, which you may have at any 
 time." This makes it probable that Wedgwood's 
 photographic experiments, in which coloured glasses 
 and the microscope were used, were going on at about 
 that time ; and various letters show that he came to 
 town on November 17, 1800, and stayed there till 
 December 8 or later. Another little piece of evidence, 
 however, points to photographic work some ten years 
 earlier than that. During the discussions of 18645 
 on what were called the " Early Photographs " (see 
 
186 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 Appendix C.), there was produced at a meeting of 
 the Photographic Society a letter, written by James 
 Watt, apparently in 1 7 90 or 1 7 9 1 , to Josiah Wedgwood, 
 and beginning with the following words : " Dear Sir, 
 I thank you for your instructions as to the Silver 
 Pictures, about which, when at home, I will make some 
 experiments." (The rest of the letter is about a mill 
 at Etruria.) This letter has the date " Thursday" 
 only, but it is described as having been " docketed 
 by Josiah Wedgwood, Jan. 1790," which date Mr. 
 Hensleigh Wedgwood, the owner of the letter, after- 
 wards corrected to 1791.* Tom Wedgwood was 
 certainly working at questions of light and heat 
 during the years preceding 1792, and as nitrate of 
 silver was used in his later experiments we can hardly 
 avoid the inference that the "silver pictures" men- 
 tioned by Watt were early photographic attempts. 
 These pictures would naturally excite interest in the 
 Wedgwood circle, and Watt, an intimate family friend, 
 had probably asked for information about them. The 
 question, however, of the exact date of the experi- 
 ments is of no special interest, there being no doubt 
 
 * It is not known where this letter of Watt's now is. I quote it 
 from the Report in the Photographic Journal of the meeting of the 
 Society, January 5, 1864. It was obtained by Dr. Diamond, the 
 Secretary, from the late Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood (son of Josiah), but 
 Dr. Diamond appears not to have returned it. The theory which it 
 was produced to support having been clearly disproved, there would be 
 no special reason for preserving it. There seems to have been some 
 doubt as to its date, for Miss Meteyard (" Group of Englishmen," 
 p. 130) describes it as "docketed 1799." If this was the date, it 
 must have been addressed to the younger Josiah, the father having 
 died 1795. If written in 1790 or 1791 it might have been addressed 
 either to the old or to the young Josiah, but more probably to the 
 father. 
 
THE PHOTOGRAPHIC WORK 187 
 
 as to the date of the first announcement of the process 
 to the world. 
 
 This was made in a paper of June 1802, printed in 
 the first volume of the " Journals of the Royal Insti- 
 tution." No name is appended to it, but as Humphrey 
 Davy, then a young man of twenty-three, was at the 
 time Assistant Editor of the Journal, and as the 
 * Account " was included, after his death, in the 
 collected edition of his works, we may take it to 
 have been written by him. 
 
 Presumably the experiments were made in the 
 Laboratory of the "Royal Institution." The Insti- 
 tution had been founded three years previously, and 
 it occupied from the first the building in Albemarle 
 Street which is still its home. Josiah Wedgwood 
 (Tom's brother) was one of the first "Proprietors," 
 subscribing a hundred guineas to its funds. Davy 
 became "Assistant Lecturer" there early in 1802. 
 The Wedgwoods had known him when he was an 
 apothecary's apprentice at Penzance, and Tom must 
 have seen much of him when he was employed by 
 Dr. Beddoes in the " Pneumatic Institute " at Bristol. 
 
 The second volume of Davy's collected works, 
 <edited by his brother (9 vols., 1839-40) is, so far 
 .as I know, the only book in which the paper has been 
 reprinted, and the original volume of Journals is to be 
 found in but few libraries. The " Account " has thus 
 been virtually inaccessible to ordinary readers, and one 
 of the motives which prompted the compilation of 
 this Memoir was the wish to put within the reach of 
 .all who are interested in the origins of photography 
 the only authentic record of what appears to have been 
 
188 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 the first essay in the Art. It is to be found at p. 171 
 of the first volume of the Journals, and is usually said 
 to have been published in June 1802, but no dates are 
 appended to the various papers and reports contained 
 in the volume. A sentence in the preface says : " The 
 first three sheets were published under Count Rumford's 
 direction. Dr. Young was the editor of the next four ; 
 and the subsequent parts have been conducted jointly 
 by Dr. Young and Mr. Davy." * The title-page of 
 the volume is as follows : 
 
 JOURNALS 
 
 OF 
 
 THE ROYAL INSTITUTION 
 
 VOLUME I. 
 
 LONDON. 
 
 Sold at the house of the Institution, Albemarle 
 
 Street; by Cadell & Davies, Strand; 
 
 Johnson, St. Paul's Churchyard ; Longman and 
 
 Rees, and H. D. Symonds, Paternoster Row. 
 
 1802. 
 
 From the Press of the Royal Institution of Great 
 Britain : W. Savage, Printer. 
 
 * Fragmentary extracts from the " Account " are, of course, to be 
 found in many books relating to the history of Photography, but 
 when these are examined it becomes evident that they are generally 
 quotations from quotations, that the authors have not seen the com- 
 plete "Account," and are often only further abridging previous 
 abridgments. The longest extract I have met with is in Robert 
 Hunt's "Researches on Light," 1844. The whole was reprinted 
 (since this was written) in Photography for May 1902. 
 
DAVY'S "ACCOUNT" 189 
 
 
 
 An Account of a method of copying Paintings upon Qlass y 
 and of making Profiles, by the agency of Light upon 
 Nitrate of Silver. Invented by T. WEDGWOOD, 
 With Observations by H. 
 
 White paper, or white leather, moistened with 
 solution of nitrate of silver, undergoes no change 
 when kept in a dark place ; but on being exposed to 
 the daylight, it speedily changes colour, and after 
 passing through different shades of grey and brown, 
 becomes at length nearly black. 
 
 The alterations of colour take place more speedily in 
 proportion as the light is more intense. In the direct 
 beams of the sun, two or three minutes are sufficient 
 to produce the full effect. In the shade, several hours 
 are required, and light transmitted through different 
 coloured glasses acts upon it with different degrees of 
 intensity. Thus it is found that red rays, or the 
 common sunbeams passed through red glass, have very 
 little action upon it : Yellow and green are more 
 efficacious, but blue and violet light produce the most 
 decided and powerful effects.* 
 
 * The facts above mentioned are analogous to those observed long 
 ago by Scheele, and confirmed by Senebier. Scheele found, that in 
 the prismatic spectrum, the effect produced by the red rays upon 
 silver muriate was very faint, and scarcely to be perceived ; whilst 
 it was speedily blackened by the violet rays. Senebier states, that 
 the time required to darken silver muriate by the red rays, is 20 
 minutes, by the orange 1 2, by the yellow 5 minutes and 30 seconds, 
 
190 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 The consideration of these facts enables us readily to 
 understand the method by which the outlines and shades 
 of paintings on glass may be copied, or profiles of 
 figures procured, by the agency of light. When a 
 white surface, covered with solution of nitrate of silver, 
 is placed behind a painting on glass exposed to the 
 solar light, the rays transmitted through the differently- 
 painted surfaces produce distinct tints of brown or 
 black, sensibly differing in intensity according to the 
 shades of the picture, and where the light is unaltered, 
 the colour of the nitrate becomes deepest. 
 
 When the shadow of any figure is thrown upon the 
 prepared surface, the part concealed by it remains white, 
 and the other parts speedily become dark. 
 
 For copying paintings on glass, the solution should 
 be applied on leather ; and in this case it is more readily 
 acted upon than when paper is used. 
 
 After the colour has been fixed upon the leather 
 
 by the green 37 seconds, by the blue 29 seconds, and by the violet 
 only 15 seconds. " Senebier sur la Lumiere," vol. iii. p. 199. 
 
 Some new experiments have been lately made in relation to this 
 subject, in consequence of the discoveries of Dr. Herschel concern- 
 ing the invisible heatmaking rays existing in the solar beams, by 
 Dr. Ritter and Bockmann in Germany, and Dr. Wollaston in 
 England. 
 
 It has been ascertained, by experiment upon the prismatic spectrum, 
 that no effects are produced upon the muriate of silver by the 
 invisible heatmaking rays which exist on the red side, and which 
 are least refrangible, though it is powerfully and distinctly affected 
 in a space beyond the violet rays out of the visible boundary. See 
 "Annalen der Physik, siebenter Band," 527. D. 
 
DAVY'S "ACCOUNT" 191 
 
 or paper, it cannot be removed by the application of 
 water, or water and soap, and it is in a high degree 
 permanent. 
 
 The copy of a painting, or the profile, immediately 
 after being taken, must be kept in some obscure place. 
 It may indeed be examined in the shade, but in this 
 case the exposure should be only for a few minutes ; 
 by the light of candles and lamps, as commonly 
 employed, it is not sensibly affected. 
 
 No attempts that have been made to prevent the 
 uncoloured part of the copy or profile from being 
 acted upon by light have as yet been successful. They 
 have been covered with a thin coating of fine varnish, 
 but this has not destroyed their susceptibility of 
 becoming coloured ; and even after repeated washings, 
 sufficient of the active part of the saline matter will 
 still adhere to the white parts of the leather or paper, 
 to cause them to become dark when exposed to the 
 rays of the sun. 
 
 Besides the applications of this method of copying 
 that has just been mentioned, there are many others. 
 And it will be useful for making delineations of all 
 such objects as are possessed of a texture partly opaque 
 and partly transparent. The woody fibres of leaves, 
 and the wings of insects, may be pretty accurately re- 
 presented by means of it, and in this case, it is only 
 necessary to cause the direct solar light to pass through 
 them, and to receive the shadows upon prepared leather. 
 
192 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 When the solar rays are passed through a print and 
 thrown upon prepared paper, the unshaded parts are 
 slowly copied ; but the lights transmitted by the shaded 
 parts are seldom so definite as to form a distinct 
 resemblance of them by producing different intensities 
 of colour. 
 
 The images formed by means of a camera obscura 
 have been found too faint to produce, in any moderate 
 time, an effect upon the nitrate of silver. To copy 
 these images was the first object of Mr. Wedgwood in 
 his researches on the subject, and for this purpose he 
 first used the nitrate of silver, which was mentioned to 
 him by a friend, as a substance very sensible to the 
 influence of light ; but all his numerous experiments 
 as to their primary end proved unsuccessful. 
 
 In following these processes, I have found, that the 
 images of small objects, produced by means of the 
 solar microscope, may be copied without difficulty on 
 prepared paper. This will probably be a useful ap- 
 plication of the method ; that it may be employed 
 successfully, however, it is necessary that the paper be 
 placed at but a small distance from the lens. 
 
 With regard to the preparation of the solution, I 
 have found the best proportions those of i part of 
 nitrate to about 10 parts of water. In this case, the 
 quantity of the salt applied to the leather or paper will 
 be sufficient to enable it to become tinged, without 
 affecting its composition, or injuring its texture. 
 
DAVY'S "ACCOUNT" 193 
 
 In comparing the effects produced by light upon 
 muriate of silver with those produced upon the 
 nitrate, it seemed evident that the muriate was the 
 most susceptible, and both were more readily acted 
 upon when moist than when dry, a fact long ago known. 
 Even in the twilight, the colour of moist muriate of 
 silver spread upon paper slowly changed from white to 
 faint violet ; though under similar circumstances no 
 immediate alteration was produced upon the nitrate. 
 
 The nitrate, however, from its solubility in water, 
 possesses an advantage over the muriate : though leather 
 or paper may, without much difficulty, be impregnated 
 with the last substance, either by diffusing it through 
 water, and applying it in this form, or by immersing 
 paper moistened with the solution of the nitrate in very 
 diluted muriatic acid. 
 
 To those persons not acquainted with the properties 
 of the salts containing oxide of silver, it may be useful 
 to state that they produce a stain of some permanence, 
 even when momentarily applied to the skin, and in 
 employing them for moistening paper or leather, it is 
 necessary to use a pencil of hair, or a brush. 
 
 From the impossibility of removing, by washing, the 
 colouring matter of the salts from the parts of the 
 surface of the copy which have not been exposed to 
 light, it is probable that, both in the case of the nitrate 
 and the muriate of silver, a portion of the metallic acid 
 abandons its acid to enter into union with the animal 
 
194 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 or vegetable substance, so as to form with it an insoluble 
 compound. And, supposing that this happens, it is not 
 improbable, but that substances may be found capable of 
 destroying this compound, either by simple or com- 
 plicated affinities. Some experiments on this subject 
 have been imagined, and an account of the results of 
 them may possibly appear in a future number of the 
 Journals. Nothing but a method of preventing the 
 unshaded parts of the delineation from being coloured 
 by exposure to the day is wanting, to render the process 
 as useful as it is elegant. 
 
 Such is Davy's account. Considered as a piece of 
 exposition, it is clear, but dull, dry, and rigid. It reads 
 as if the writer were trying to say as little as possible, 
 beyond the conveying of the main fact. It is plain 
 that Davy, whatever may have been his scientific apti- 
 tudes, was destitute of the scientific imagination. He 
 was describing something which, so far as he knew, 
 and so far as we know, had never before happened. 
 Up to that moment every picture produced by man 
 had been made by the human hand, guided by the 
 human eye. - But here was a picture, or a sort of 
 picture, a representation of an object, which had come 
 into existence by the spontaneous action of natural 
 forces, by a chemical change produced by the action 
 of light. Obviously, one might say, this was a fact 
 behind which lay wonderful possibilities. But to Davy, 
 apparently, no such thought occurred. Now we do 
 not, of course, expect that the discoverer of a hitherto 
 
PHOTOGRAPHIC WORK 195 
 
 unknown fact should foresee all that is to result from 
 it. When Oersted noticed (in 1819) that a magnetic 
 needle on his table was deflected by an electric current, 
 he had probably no idea that the quivering of that 
 needle meant that some forty years later people would 
 be sending instantaneous messages from Copenhagen 
 to the Antipodes. But one might suppose that to a 
 scientific mind like Davy's it would be self-evident that 
 when an entirely new use of one of the forces of 
 nature is discovered some important results are pretty 
 sure to follow. He failed, however, to make that 
 inference. In the title of his paper he suggests two 
 uses only to which the new process may be applied, 
 the making of profiles, and the copying of glass- 
 paintings. As the making of profiles could interest 
 but few people, and only glass-painters could find a 
 use for copying such paintings, he could hardly have 
 chosen a title less likely to arouse attention.* And it 
 is odd that he did not notice the awkward ambiguity 
 of the phrase, which many people would read as meaning 
 the making of copies, on glass, of oil paintings or 
 other paintings. The oversight was probably due to 
 haste, but when taken along with the general tone of 
 the paper, it is significant. Had he felt any real 
 interest in the matter, or thought there was any value 
 
 * This title always reminds me of Mr. Dick in " David Copper- 
 field." Mrs. Crupp had told him his room at Hungerford market was 
 not big enough to swing a cat in. " But you know Trotwood, I 
 don't want to swing a cat, I never do swing a cat. Therefore, what 
 does that signify to me ? " A reader might have said to Davy : " I 
 don't want to copy paintings on glass, so what does that signify to 
 me?" 
 
196 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 in the "invention" he would surely have given a few 
 moments' thought to the words which he put at the 
 head of his report. 
 
 It is possible, of course, that Wedgwood himself 
 may not have attached any special importance to the 
 experiments, or perceived what great possibilities were 
 opened up by his partial success. But whether this 
 was so it is impossible to say ; as not a word of any 
 writing of his on the subject is extant, and we know 
 nothing of the exact circumstances under which the 
 account was drawn up. He was out of England when 
 it appeared in print, and had been constantly moving 
 about since November 1800, the date when Leslie 
 was getting him the coloured glasses, &c. I am inclined 
 to believe that there was probably no time between that 
 date and his departure from England, early in 1802, 
 in which he could have been working at the subject. 
 Probably he left the whole matter, after his experiments 
 of November 1 800, in Davy's hands. In any case, it 
 was utterly impossible for him, broken as he was by 
 disease, to pursue the subject himself. 
 
 It may seem at first sight strange that the appear- 
 ance of this Account by Davy should not have stimu- 
 lated some one conversant with chemistry to attack 
 the problem of finding a means of " preventing the 
 unshaded parts of the delineation from being coloured 
 by exposure to the day" i.e., of "fixing" the image 
 of the object on the paper. But this is not so surprising 
 when we discover what the " Journal " was. It was not 
 a periodical published in the ordinary way, but a little 
 paper printed from time to time to let the subscribers 
 to the infant institution know what was being done 
 
PHOTOGRAPHIC WORK 197 
 
 there. It was not announced as appearing at any 
 stated periods, but was to be issued " as often at least 
 as once a fortnight." This announcement, however, 
 was not acted upon. The first number came out in 
 April 1 800, but the next not till fourteen months later, 
 and the " Journal " did not live beyond a first volume.* 
 There is nothing to show that Davy's account was ever 
 read at any meeting ; and the print of it would have 
 been read, apparently, if read at all, only by the small 
 circle of members and subscribers to the institution, 
 of whom, we may be pretty sure, only a small 
 minority can have been scientific people. For the 
 Royal Institution was in its early years something 
 quite different from what it afterwards became. It 
 was founded in 1799 by Count Rumford, in co-opera- 
 tion with a "Society for Bettering the Condition of 
 the Poor," with the object of providing a place for the 
 exhibition of models of mechanical inventions, and for 
 teaching " the applications of science to the common 
 purposes of life." The chief things exhibited in the 
 " Repository " appear to have been improved cooking 
 appliances, roasters, fireballs, economical grates, brewers' 
 boilers, laundry fittings, ventilators, models of cottages, 
 &c. Thus Davy's paper cannot be said to have been 
 "published," in any effective sense, in the year 1802. 
 Wedgwood was at the time out of the country, and 
 under these circumstances it is no wonder that the 
 record of his first steps towards the creation of a wholly 
 new art should have escaped general notice. 
 
 * " The Royal Institution, its founders and first professors," by 
 Dr. Bence Jones, 1871. 
 
198 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 That Davy did not seriously tackle the problem of 
 fixing the pictures is, I think, evident from the closing 
 sentences of the Account. He contented himself, it 
 would seem, with "imagining some experiments" on the 
 subject, the result of which might " possibly " be 
 reported at a future day. Dr. Davy, when he included 
 the Account in the complete edition of his brother's 
 works (18341840), added a note saying "recently 
 this method of delineation has been futher cultivated, 
 especially by Mr. Talbot in this country," but said 
 nothing as to Sir Humphrey having done or written 
 anything more as to the silver pictures of 1802. The 
 discoveries of Daguerre and Talbot were then attract- 
 ing much attention. Dr. Davy was referring to Talbot's 
 " Photogenic Drawing " (which was described in the 
 Athenaeum of February 9, 1839), and if he had known 
 anything of further researches by his brother in the 
 same direction he would certainly have mentioned 
 them. Indeed a note on p. 14 of Dr. Davy's "Frag- 
 mentary Remains, &c., of Sir H. D." (1858) makes it 
 certain that Sir H. did nothing more than is shown 
 in the Account. 
 
 Sir William Abney, in his article on photography in 
 the " Encyclopaedia Britannica," after describing the 
 Wedgwood process as reported by Davy, says : 
 
 " In this method of preparing the paper lies the germ of the silver 
 printing processes which are practised at the present time 
 (1884), and it was only by the recent spread of chemical know- 
 ledge that the hiatus was filled up, when hyposulphate of soda, 
 discovered by Chaussier in 1799, or three years before Wedg- 
 wood published his paper, was used for making the print 
 permanent. " 
 
PHOTOGRAPHIC WORK 199 
 
 Mr. Jerome Harrison, in his account of fixing pro- 
 cesses, writes as follows : * 
 
 "The only thing deplored by Wedgwood and Davy in 1802 
 was their inability to discover any satisfactory solvent for the 
 salts of silver the muriate (or, as we should now call it, the 
 chloride) and the nitrate which they employed." 
 
 Mr. Harrison would here seem to imply that Wedgwood 
 and Davy were really working together at the problem 
 in 1802. But I see nothing to show that this was so. 
 I think it is evident that Davy gave the question no 
 serious attention. We do not know when he drew up 
 the Account, or when the experiments were made. 
 He does not describe them ; he merely states their 
 result, and the language of the Account, all through, 
 rather suggests that he is telling an old story. I 
 incline to think that when he printed it he probably 
 had already dismissed the subject from his mind, as 
 one of no particular interest, which it certainly would 
 have been, if it had involved nothing more important 
 than the copying of glass-paintings. 
 
 "In 1819," continues Mr. Jerome Harrison, "Sir John 
 Herschel pointed out (in the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal) 
 the ready solubility of silver salts in the alkaline hyposulphates. 
 From this time the problem of photography was solved ; but, 
 unfortunately, Niepce, Daguerre, and Talbot seem to have 
 known nothing of the work already done by Davy and by 
 Herschel. In 1839 Daguerre fixed his iodised silver plates by 
 washing them either with ammonia or with a strong solution 
 of common salt. At the same time, too, Talbot used common 
 salt, and also solutions of bromide of potassium and iodide of 
 
 * "History of Photography " (Trubner 1888), p. 89. 
 
200 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 potassium. Immediately Herschel heard of Daguerre's and 
 Talbot's successes in photography (in January 1839), he 
 remembered the substance whose solvent power for silver salts 
 he had announced in 1819 (hyposulphate of soda), and the 
 directions which he gives for its use, in a valuable paper read 
 before the Royal Society on February 20, 1840, have ever 
 since formed the foundation of our ordinary method of fixing 
 photographs on paper." 
 
 From these statements of expert authorities I infer 
 that if Davy had tried seriously to find a " fixing " 
 process, there was nothing to hinder his soon dis- 
 covering one. And this appears to be the view taken 
 by Dr. Eder in his account of Wedgwood's work. 
 
 " Wedgwood and Davy had forgotten, or not known, 
 Scheele's important discovery that white chloride of silver is 
 completely dissolved in ammonia, but that when darkened by 
 light it leaves behind a deposit of silver, which is much to be 
 wondered at, considering how widely disseminated were 
 Scheele's writings, of which there was also an English transla- 
 tion. By this a means would have been given of fixing the 
 chloride of silver pictures.* 
 
 Dr. Schiendel makes a similar observation : 
 
 <c It must appear highly remarkable that a chemist of Davy's 
 rank should not have been acquainted with Scheele's weighty 
 discovery that chloride of silver dissolves in ammonia, and that 
 Wedgwood had at his command, in that discovery, a very easily 
 procurable means of making his pictures permanent." t 
 
 * " Geschichte der Photochemie und Photographic." Dr. Joseph 
 Maria Eder (Halle a. S. 1891). 
 
 t "Geschichte der Photographic," 1891, p. 19. I find it, how- 
 ever, difficult to suppose that Wedgwood can have overlooked any 
 material point in Scheele's researches. They are referred to in the 
 Account, and in a letter to Godwin on philosophical subjects (Jan. 14, 
 
PHOTOGRAPHIC WORK 201 
 
 The whole story seems to show that in getting Davy's 
 collaboration Wedgwood made an unlucky mistake. 
 The " Account " being practically a record of failure 
 in the critical point as to fixing the pictures, Davy's 
 eminence as a chemist for he had already made a 
 name, though only at the beginning of his career 
 would make such failure, or apparent failure, all the 
 more discouraging to future investigators. That in 
 one instance it had this effect appears from a remark 
 made by Fox-Talbot in 1839 when describing his own 
 work.* He there relates how Davy's announcement 
 of what seemed a complete failure had discouraged a 
 scientific friend of his from pursuing the matter ; adding 
 that it would have perhaps led himself to consider the 
 attempt as hopeless, if he had not, fortunately, before 
 he read the " Account," discovered a method of fixing 
 the image. Dr. Eder makes a like remark, though he 
 is in error, as I believe, as to the extent of Davy's 
 efforts, when he says : " The want of any result 
 from the experiments deterred his (Davy's) contem- 
 poraries from attempting the solution of a problem on 
 which a scientific man of the first rank had wrecked 
 himself (gescheitert war) ; and thus many years passed 
 before the fixing of silver pictures was discovered." 
 
 If these views are sound, we may apparently infer 
 that if Davy had had some little imagination, and had 
 taken any reasonable amount of pains in following up 
 
 1797) we find him saying: "This talent" [for philosophical investi- 
 gation], " if I have it in any degree, I attribute to a spirit of accurate 
 analysis acquired from the writings of Scheele and Bergmann, and 
 practised in the operations of the laboratory." 
 ^ Jan. 1839, P- I 44 
 
202 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 Wedgwood's footsteps, photography would probably 
 have come into existence as a practical art some thirty- 
 five years before the time of Daguerre and Talbot. 
 
 A question of some interest in regard to these later 
 inventors is, Was any of their work prompted by a 
 knowledge of Wedgwood's imperfect results ? On 
 this point we have little or no positive evidence, but 
 what we do know seems to make it unlikely that they 
 were aware of Wedgwood's work. The first recorded 
 effective photography was undoubtedly that achieved 
 by Nicephore Niepce, who, at least as early as 1816, 
 thirteen years before the time when he entered into his 
 partnership with Daguerre, was taking, by means of a 
 camera, pictures of outdoor scenes pictures which 
 might be called " permanent," as compared with the 
 evanescent products of Wedgwood's experiments. The 
 fullest account of his work^ gives no hint of his having 
 derived his ideas from any predecessor, and the cir- 
 cumstances were such as to make it extremely unlikely 
 that he had ever read Davy's ' ' Memoir " of 1 802. He 
 was not a professed chemist or savant^ and was living 
 the quietest of lives at Chalon-sur-Saone, some hundreds 
 of miles from Paris. It was in 1813 that he began 
 
 * Namely, the series of private letters to his brother Claude Niepce 
 given in the biography entitled, " La verit'e sur I' invention de la photo- 
 graphy : Nicephore Niepce, sa vie, &c." par Victor Fouque. Chalon- 
 sur-Saone, 1867. M. Fouque's narrative, which certainly seems to 
 be borne out by the documents he prints, purports to show that 
 Niepce was the real inventor of the art, having accomplished the 
 most decisive steps before he entered into the partnership under 
 which he and Daguerre agreed to " pool " their knowledge and their 
 results ; and that it was only by a series of dishonest measures that 
 Daguerre contrived to secure to himself the credit of the discovery, 
 and get the art called (for a time) by his own name. 
 
PHOTOGRAPHIC WORK 203 
 
 trying to apply to lithography (then a new art in France) 
 the alterative power of sunlight ; and we know how 
 slight was the intercourse between England and France 
 during all that war-time. Daguerre's ideas on photo- 
 graphy were mainly derived from Nipce. Arago's 
 Report of 1839 on " Daguerrotypie," though it 
 mentions Davy's " Memoir " as the earliest announce- 
 ment of a photographic process, gives no hint of this 
 having been known to Daguerre. There is thus no 
 reason to think that either of the two first French 
 photographers took anything from Wedgwood. 
 
 Fox-Talbot knew of Wedgwood's experiments, but 
 not, apparently, until after he had himself found a 
 method of fixing the image.* 
 
 But though Wedgwood's attempts to produce 
 permanent light-pictures failed to stimulate his 
 contemporaries to pursue the subject, one of his 
 conclusions, at least, seems to have led to an important 
 result nearly forty years later, just at the critical time 
 when the art was reaching the stage of unqualified 
 success. After the publication, in 1839, of the processes 
 of Talbot and of Daguerre, the advance of photo- 
 graphy much depended on the question how it might 
 be possible to shorten the time of exposure necessary 
 to secure a picture. In 1841 Talbot patented his 
 a Calotype " process, which reduced the time of exposure 
 
 * Ante, p. 20 1. The soundness of Fox-Talbot's claim, however, 
 to be an original inventor has been disputed. Werge (" Evolution of 
 Photography," pp. 14, 101) holds to the view that his process, as first 
 announced, did not go beyond Wedgwood's, and that he must have 
 seen Davy's " Memoir." Of the merits of this controversy I know 
 nothing, but the reasons given by Werge for doubting Talbot's 
 statement do not seem to me to have much weight. 
 
204 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 to two or three minutes. This was effected by brushing 
 over the sensitive paper with a mixture of gallic acid 
 and nitrate of silver. But in this system, says Mr. 
 Jerome Harrison,* "it is tolerably certain that Talbot 
 had been anticipated by the Rev. J. B. Reade." This 
 was established in a trial (Talbot v. Laroche) arising 
 from an attempt to upset Taibot's patent on the ground 
 of " previous discovery." Now Reade's use of the gallic 
 acid had arisen from his noticing Davy's statement that 
 in Wedgwood's process leather was found to be more 
 readily acted upon than paper. In order to repeat 
 Wedgwood's experiment, he had borrowed a pair of 
 light coloured kid gloves from his wife. She, however, 
 objected to lend him a second pair ; " and this " (here 
 I quote his own words) " led me to say, ' Then I will 
 tan paper." Reade was at this time (1837) taking 
 photographs of objects by the solar microscope, and 
 employing an artist to copy the images on the screen. 
 To avoid the continued expense of this copying, 
 
 "I fell back,"t he says, "but without any sanguine expecta- 
 tions, upon the photographic process adopted by Wedgwood. 
 My fortunate inability to replenish the stock of leather induced 
 me to apply the tannin solution to paper, and thus I had the 
 pleasure of succeeding where Talbot acknowledged that he 
 failed. . . . My old friend, Mr. Andrew Ross, told Mr. Talbot 
 how first of all, by means of the solar microscope, I threw the 
 image of the object on prepared paper, and then, while the 
 
 * "A History of Photography " (1887), pp. 30, sqq. 
 
 t I am abbreviating here his rather rambling account as given 
 by Mr. Werge. Reade, a country clergyman, was an amateur 
 astronomer and microscopist. He died in 1870. (Werge, pp. 15, 
 16, 90.) 
 
PHOTOGRAPHIC WORK 205 
 
 paper was yet wet, washed it over with the infusion 'of galls, 
 when a sufficiently dense negation was quickly obtained. In 
 the trial (Talbot v. Laroche) Mr. Talbot in his cross-examina- 
 tion, and in an almost breathless court, acknowledged that he 
 had received this information from Ross." 
 
 This essential detail in Talbot's process thus seems 
 to have come to him, through Reade and Ross, from 
 T. Wedgwood. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 HIS METAPHYSICS AND PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 I WILL not here attempt any estimate of Tom Wedg- 
 wood's character. His letters reflect clearly enough 
 its moral side, his temper and disposition, but, as the 
 reader will have seen, they tell little or nothing as to 
 his intellectual interests. Pre-occupied as he necessarily 
 was with the ever urgent question of his bodily health, 
 it is hardly strange that, to his nearest and dearest 
 friends, he could write of hardly anything else. When 
 the great question for every day was whether it was or 
 was not to be passed in misery, any free play of thought 
 on things less personal was scarcely to be looked for. 
 If we had his letters to Coleridge, they might give us a 
 completer knowledge of his mind ; but none of these, 
 so far as I know, are extant. 
 
 His first serious efforts, as has been shown, were in 
 the direction of physical science, and I imagine that if 
 he had had ordinary health his best work would have 
 been of that kind. Sir Humphrey Davy's remarkable 
 words: " His opinions were to me a secret treasure, 
 and often enabled me to think rightly when otherwise 
 perhaps I should have thought wrongly," presumably 
 referred to their interchange of ideas on physical 
 problems. But the main drift of his thoughts, after 
 ill-health had forced him to give up experimenting in 
 
SUPPOSED "DISCOVERIES" 207 
 
 the laboratory, was in another direction, as is shown by 
 the mass of writing which he left behind him. This is, 
 for the most part, a chaotic heap of rough MSS., dealing 
 wholly with one group of subjects, namely, metaphysical 
 and psychological speculation, with excursions into edu- 
 cational and social questions. It seems to have been 
 mainly his talk on these subjects that gave his friends and 
 acquaintances such a high opinion of his powers. And if 
 we are to accept the judgment of Mackintosh, who was 
 then (and is still) thought an authority on the subject, 
 there must have been something distinctively original in 
 his handling of some of the most time-honoured meta- 
 physical problems.^ Mackintosh undertook to be the 
 editor of his philosophical speculations, " or," he says, 
 " as I would rather call them, discoveries," and he 
 took with him to India, as we have seen, various MSS. 
 of Tom's, intending to draw up, as he had promised, 
 an exposition of his views. 
 
 After Tom's death (in the next year) Mackintosh 
 renewed his promise to Josiah Wedgwood, and it was 
 then settled that the publication should include a 
 Memoir by Coleridge, towards which Poole, Sharp, 
 and others were to assist. But this project came wholly 
 to naught. Whether Mackintosh seriously attempted 
 to do his part is not quite clear. It was hardly possible, 
 
 * Josiah, telling Poole (in 1800) of his brother's discussions with 
 Mackintosh, writes : " The subjects cleared are no less than Time, 
 Space, and Motion ; and Mackintosh and Sharp think a meta- 
 physical revolution likely to follow." Coleridge, who never liked 
 Mackintosh, receives this news with chilling caution. He thinks it 
 likely Tom has fallen upon some valuable truth, but has "many 
 reasons for being exceedingly suspicious of supposed discoveries in 
 Metaphysics." (T. P., ii. 28-30.) 
 
208 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 and if possible would have been scarcely decent, that 
 the judge of an important court at Bombay should 
 find time for dissertations on subtle metaphysical 
 questions " time," " space," and the everlasting con- 
 troversy between Intuitionists and Empiricists. So the 
 promise good-naturedly but not wisely made was never 
 redeemed. Nor was anything ever heard of Coleridge's 
 Memoir, save in the way of belated excuses and 
 apologies, with a confused story of papers of his having 
 been lost at Malta or thrown overboard from the ship 
 which was carrying them home. 
 
 Tom Wedgwood's speculations in psychology led 
 him on to theories about education. " Child-study " 
 was one of his constant interests, stimulated perhaps 
 by his having subjects of observation always at hand in 
 Josiah's young family. His views hereon, as on human 
 affairs generally, are largely Rousseauistic. The om- 
 nipotence of education, philosophically guided, in the 
 formation of character is taken for granted ; inheritance 
 and congenital character are ignored ; he puts no limit 
 to what may be achieved by appropriate training. Here 
 we have the perfectibilism of Godwin and the pre- 
 French-Revolution philosophers. The great engine of 
 child-management is the Hartleian doctrine of the 
 " association of ideas." This he applies more to the 
 play of the emotions than to purely mental phenomena. 
 We come here and there on entertaining illustrations 
 of the method. They are explained with the utmost 
 seriousness ; for though Erasmus Darwin, when Tom 
 Wedgwood was staying with him at the age of eight 
 years, wrote to his father of the boy's " humour," 
 I have not detected the smallest sign of that quality in 
 
CHILD-STUDY 209 
 
 
 
 the mature philosopher. His methods remind us of 
 those of another child of the Revolution, Thomas 
 Day, once so well known in English nurseries by his 
 " Sandford and Merton." Day, in order to cultivate 
 presence of mind in the two orphan girls whom he set 
 about training with the view of choosing one of them 
 for a wife, used to drop hot sealing-wax on their 
 bare arms, or suddenly fire pistols at their petticoats. 
 Wedgwood, in the course of a disquisition on the same 
 virtue, suggests a similar method of teaching children 
 "how men elude danger and inconvenience by address." 
 " The parent might invite the attack of a fierce bull, 
 stand with perfect composure until the animal be 
 within two or three paces of him, then suddenly open 
 an umbrella, hold his hat before his face, or somehow 
 contrive to amuse and terrify the foe, whilst his child, 
 on the other side of the stile, shall witness his intrepidity, 
 and by degrees practise the same feat himself in company 
 with his parent." This recipe is awkwardly vague on 
 the critical point how the parent, while on the bull's 
 side of the stile, is to " amuse or terrify the foe," 
 but Wedgwood kindly provides, for the benefit, no 
 doubt, of less heroic spirits, a less trying variant of 
 the same procedure, in which " a raging turkey cock " 
 does duty for the bull ; and he explains at some 
 length the rationale of the effect produced on the 
 bull's or the turkey cock's mind by the parent's 
 manoeuvres. 
 
 Richard Sharp was a remarkably acute critic and 
 much given to philosophical speculation, but what the 
 discoveries were from which he " thought a revolution 
 in metaphysics likely to follow," is a question which I, 
 
 o 
 
TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 though I have looked through the box full of Tom's 
 MSS. which has been kept as a family relic for nearly a 
 century, am quite unable to answer. And I doubt 
 whether the best equipped and most industrious of 
 experts in these high matters would be able to extract 
 from them much definite metaphysical doctrine. They 
 are mostly rough note-books and fragmentary essays, or 
 bits of essays, many of them evidently jotted down in a 
 travelling carriage. What they most clearly show is, that 
 Wedgwood had an acute and penetrating mind, and de- 
 lighted in the minute analysis of mental and psychical 
 processes. The same perseverance which kept him try- 
 ing for six months to hang a thermometer in vacuo here 
 appears in the laborious minuteness with which he dissects 
 little every-day experiences of memory and association. 
 He believed, apparently, that through such minute 
 analysis lies the road, if any road there be, to dis- 
 covering what is the exact process by which we arrive 
 at a belief in the existence of an external world ; and 
 how emotion, thought, and will (if there be such a 
 thing), are related to the primary facts of sensation. 
 To many people speculation of this kind, the laborious 
 attempt to discover by thinking what thinking /V, seems 
 something like an eye's trying to look into itself. But 
 however that may be, it does not seem to me likely 
 that any exposition of Tom Wedgwood's metaphysical 
 views, outgrowths of the thought of more than a 
 century ago, could now have any other than a historical 
 interest. In metaphysics, as in other matters, " much 
 has happened since then." To note one point only, 
 Englishmen then had no knowledge of the course 
 of philosophical speculation in Germany. Coleridge's 
 
METAPHYSICS 211 
 
 influence as the " interpreter of Germany to- Eng- 
 land "* had not begun. Kant's " Critic of Pure Reason " 
 appeared in 1781, but as late as about 1816, we find 
 Dugald Stewart could only read it in a Latin transla- 
 lation, and " abandoned the undertaking in despair." 
 I see nothing to show that Wedgwood read or knew 
 German (though he travelled in the country for some 
 weeks or more in 1796). (Mackintosh knew nothing 
 of it till 1804, when he took some lessons from his 
 children's German governess on his voyage to Bombay.) 
 Another thing which would necessarily, I conceive, 
 make Wedgwood's discussion of mental phenomena 
 out of date is the immense advance since made in our 
 knowledge of the physiology of the brain and nervous 
 system. Not till some five years after his death did 
 Sir Charles Bell's great discovery of the distinction be- 
 tween sensory and motor nerves become known to the 
 world, t 
 
 For a substantially similar reason his lucubrations 
 
 * Sir L. Stephen. 
 
 t The only bit, so far as I know, of Wedgwood's metaphysical 
 work which has been printed, is a short article in the third volume 
 (1817) of the "Journal of Science and the Arts" (edited at the 
 Royal Institution), entitled "An Enquiry into the origin of our 
 notion of distance, drawn up from notes left by the late Thomas 
 Wedgwood, Esq." This, as its vague title shows, is not actually of 
 Wedgwood's writing. It is a recast of a MS. essay bearing nearly 
 the same title, with additions taken from another MS. called an 
 " Essay on Vision," some portions being paraphrases of Wedgwood's 
 words or additions by the editor. I have not discovered who edited 
 or arranged this paper. Might it possibly have been done by 
 Mackintosh ? If so one can understand his not wishing to put his 
 name to a very partial attempt to redeem the promise made so many 
 years previously. The paper deals with the Berkleyan theory of 
 vision, but I have not sufficient knowledge of this thorny subject to 
 venture on a summary of the arguments. It was reprinted in Miss 
 Meteyard's "Group of Englishmen," 1871. 
 
212 TOM WEDGWOOD 
 
 on education, and matters touching politics and 
 sociology (to use a modern phrase), could scarcely 
 have any interest for a reader of the twentieth cen- 
 tury. How long, or how closely, he held to his early 
 Godwinian creed is not clear ; but in turning over his 
 MSS. one perceives that his mind is still moving within 
 that same order of ideas. We have the familiar de- 
 nunciation of the tyranny of custom and convention, 
 and appeals to the " simplicity of nature," with the 
 underlying Rousseauistic implication that the evils of 
 the world, in fact, all its modern polity and civilisation, 
 have come about by way of corruption and depravation 
 of a primitive ideal. The now dominant conception 
 of Evolution has taught us to treat that view of the 
 past not merely as the fantastic vision which probably 
 most of our grandfathers saw it to be, but as a com- 
 pletely topsy-turvy view of the history of the race. 
 
 A biographer of Tom Wedgwood, however, when 
 touching the matter of evolution, cannot help remem- 
 bering that there were links, though only of a personal 
 kind, between him and the genesis of that doctrine. 
 He was often exchanging ideas with old Erasmus 
 Darwin, his sister's father-in-law, in whose specula- 
 tions (as his grandson was careful to point out) there 
 were foreshadowings of evolution ; but we have no 
 reason to think that when reading " Zoonomia," or the 
 notes to the " Botanic Garden," he saw in them any 
 special significance of this kind. It was not till 1809, 
 three and a half years after his death, that there 
 appeared, in his sister's nursery at Shrewsbury, the 
 baby out of whose little brain there was to come, 
 fifty years later, the book which did most to establish 
 
A LINK WITH "EVOLUTION" 213 
 
 the order of ideas now increasingly dominant in all 
 regions of thought ideas, the growth of which has 
 quietly relegated to the domain of history the systems 
 of many more notable philosophers than Tom Wedg- 
 wood.* 
 
 * Charles Darwin, Tom's nephew, was born Feb. 12, 1809. 
 " The Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection," appeared 
 in Nov. 1859. It is hardly possible to say when the idea of Evolu- 
 tion first began to make an impression on the general world of 
 thought. " In Memoriam " will serve to remind posterity that it 
 was in the air some time before Darwin's work became known. 
 Old people remember the excitement produced, perhaps more in 
 religious than in scientific circles, by the " Vestiges of Creation " in 
 1 844, which was the work, not of a man of science, but of a clever 
 " litterateur." In the Life of Tennyson there is a noticeable 
 letter in which he asks his publisher to get him that book, saying : 
 " It seems to contain many speculations with which I have been 
 familiar for years, and on which I have written more than one 
 poem." A reader in the future, not having in mind the dates, 
 might naturally think some pages of " In Memoriam " must have 
 been written after the " Origin," but it was not so. The wonderful 
 stanzas beginning: 
 
 " Contemplate all this work of time, 
 The giant labouring in his youth," 
 
 and ending with 
 
 " Move upward, working out the beast, 
 And let the ape and tiger die," 
 
 as well as the earlier section, " ' So careful of the type ? ' but no," 
 must have taken shape between 1833 and (about) 1840. Darwin 
 was at that time quite unknown except to a few naturalists and 
 private friends. He and Tennyson were at Cambridge together, but 
 did not know each other till the sixties. 
 
APPENDICES 
 
AN ALLEGED DISCOVERY OF 
 PHOTOGRAPHY IN 1727 
 
 I CALL Wedgwood the first photographer (adopting a phrase 
 used by more than one writer) because he was, so far as we 
 know, the first person who conceived and put in practice the 
 idea of using the agency of light to obtain a representation of an 
 object ; while to call him the inventor of photography would 
 be inaccurate, inasmuch as he did not fully succeed in his 
 attempt. But two writers of high authority (already mentioned 
 in these pages), Dr. Eder and Herr Schiendel, give the title of 
 u inventor of photography " to John Hermann Schulze, a 
 German university professor who died many years before 
 Wedgwood was born. This they do on the strength of a 
 Memoir by Schulze, describing an experiment whereby he 
 accidentally discovered the darkening effect of light upon silver- 
 salt in or previously to the year 1727. This Memoir, however, 
 shows, not that Schulze did anything or thought of anything to 
 which the word "photographic" can properly be applied, but 
 only that he observed (and was possibly the first to observe) a 
 fact which about a century later became the groundwork of 
 photographic processes. 
 
 As Schulze tells his story in an entertaining way, and 
 extracts might give a misleading idea of his drift, I subjoin a 
 translation of the entire Memoir.* 
 
 * A paper on this question, including the translation here given 
 was read by me in October 1898 at a " Technical Meeting" of the 
 
218 APPENDIX A 
 
 It is to be found in the Transactions of the " Caesarean 
 Academy " for the year 1727. The full title of the volume is, 
 " Acta Physico-Medica Academics C&sarete Leopoldino-Carolin&j 
 Nature Curiosorum exhibentia Ephemerides^ sive Observationes 
 Historias et Experimenta celeberrimis Germanic et exterarum 
 regionum viris habita et communicata" Norimbergae : An. 
 MDCCXXVII. 
 
 John Hermann Schulze, born at Kolditz in Saxony in 1687, 
 was a man of considerable note in his time, chiefly as a linguist 
 and philologist, and as a historian of ancient medicine. He was 
 professor of anatomy, and also of Greek and Arabic, at the 
 University of Altdorf in Franconia, and afterwards became 
 professor of Eloquence and Antiquities at Halle. He died in 
 1744. 
 
 "AN OBSERVATION BY MASTER DOCTOR 
 JOHN HENRY SCHULZE. SCOTOPHORUS DIS- 
 COVERED INSTEAD OF PHOSPHORUS, OR A 
 CURIOUS EXPERIMENT ON THE EFFECT OF 
 THE SUN'S RAYS." (OBSERVATIO CCXXXIII.) 
 
 We often discover by accident what we should hardly have 
 found out by intention or design. In this way, while looking 
 for and working at one thing, I discovered something I could 
 not have hoped for. Whether in communicating the whole 
 story to other inquisitive people, and leaving it to their further 
 discussion, I am doing what is worth the trouble, the benevolent 
 reader will judge for himself. Fair judges will pardon the 
 freedom of my title. My only reason for calling my experi- 
 ment " scotophoric " is to indicate the darkening effect which 
 it showed me. While the " Bologna stone " receives light from 
 the sun's rays, this mixture of mine is darkened by the sun and 
 
 Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain (see the Photographic 
 Journal of November 30, 1898). In the discussion which then 
 followed the views expressed by members present agreed with mine. 
 
SCHULZE'S WORD-PATTERNS 219 
 
 takes a dusky colour. But I think that the true cause of this 
 darkening is no less deserving of investigation by the natural 
 philosopher than is that of the light which emanates from any 
 of the class of phosphorescents. 
 
 It is about two years ago that, while reading various things 
 about phosphorescents, I bethought myself of examining the 
 " Baldwin process." * I happened then to have at hand some 
 aqua forth containing a very small quantity of silver particles, 
 say about as much as is wanted to make the preparation suitable 
 for separating gold from silver. I was using this aqua forth for 
 saturating chalk with it, as one has to do in the Baldwin experi- 
 ment. I was doing this at an open window, into which the 
 sun was at the time shining very brightly. I was surprised to 
 see that the colour of the surface changed to a dark red, inclin- 
 ing to violet. But I was more surprised to see that the part 
 of the dish not touched by the sun's rays did not at all show that 
 colour. 
 
 Seeing this, and considering that it deserved further examina- 
 tion, I put aside the Baldwin experiment, and applied myself to 
 this (as it were) darkness-making experiment, in order to get an 
 explanation of the change of colour. Doubting what plan to 
 follow, I divided the saturated chalk into two parts, one of which 
 I put into a round oblong glass of the kind we commonly use 
 in dispensing liquid medicines. And in order to get the thick 
 mixture more conveniently into the bottle I began to pour in 
 more aqua forth. But as the aqua forth made too much ebulli- 
 tion and began to dissolve the chalk, I added some water to 
 check this action. I then put the glass in a place exposed to 
 the sun's rays. Scarcely a few minutes elapsed when I saw that 
 the glass, on the side touched by the sun, showed a similar 
 colour, namely, dark red verging towards blue. The rest of 
 the mixture I left in the dish exposed to the sun's rays and to 
 light until it dried, and noticed the coloured surface remaining 
 
 * Baldwin was the discoverer, about 1677, of a kind of phos- 
 phorus, afterwards called by his name, different from the " Bolognian." 
 It was made by dissolving chalk in aqua for tis. 
 
220 APPENDIX A 
 
 so for several days until the stuff was used up in further 
 experiments. 
 
 I showed the discovery to friends who visited me, in order 
 to learn their opinions. Some appeared to think the darkened 
 colour was due to heat. To ascertain therefore whether the 
 effect arose from heat, we tried various tests. First we put the 
 glass close enough to a bright fire to make it pretty hot, but 
 in such a position that the part which had not been reached by 
 the sun's rays, and which had none of the colour, fronted 
 the fire. That caused no change of colour, though the 
 glass had become so hot that the hand could hardly bear to 
 touch it. 
 
 This is sufficient proof that nothing here was due to heat, so 
 I pass over the other experiments made to this end. But in 
 order to see more clearly, and show others, that the dark colour 
 was induced by the sun's light, not his heat, I shook up the 
 glass, thus mixing up the chalk sediment and the fluid at 
 the top, so completely as to remove all difference of colour. 
 Dividing the liquor (if I may so call the mixture) in this state, 
 I decided to put one bottleful of it in a dark place not ex- 
 posed to sunlight, and kept another for fresh experiments. I 
 accordingly put [the former] in the sun, tying a thin thread 
 from the mouth to the bottom of the bottle, so as to divide 
 the side exposed to the sun in about the middle, and left it 
 for some hours in a very hot sun, not to be touched or dis- 
 turbed by any one. When the thread was removed we were 
 delighted to perceive that the part which it had covered showed 
 the same colour as the back of the bottle which no ray of 
 the sun had reached. We tried the same experiment with 
 the same result with horsehair, with human hair, and with an 
 extremely thin silver wire ; so that there was no doubt that 
 the change of colour depended wholly on the sun's light, 
 and that heat, even the sun's heat, had had nothing to do 
 with it. 
 
 I further instituted experiments in a contrary sense, that is to 
 say, whenever I wished to repeat the experiment, I mixed up 
 
SCHULZE'S WORD-PATTERNS 221 
 
 the fluid so as to make it of uniform colour, and covered the 
 greater part of the glass with opaque bodies, leaving a small part 
 of it freely accessible to the light. I thus several times wrote 
 words or entire sentences on paper, and after carefully cutting 
 out with a sharp knife the ink-marked parts, stuck the paper, 
 perforated in this way, on the glass by means of wax. Before 
 long the sun's rays, on the side on which they had touched the 
 glass through the apertures in the paper, wrote the words or 
 sentences so accurately and distinctly on the chalk sediment, that 
 many people curious in such matters, but ignorant of the nature 
 of the experiment, were led to attribute the result to all kinds of 
 artifices. 
 
 I said that I had kept the dried portion of the saturated chalk. 
 This also, I found, quickly changed its colour whenever it was 
 exposed freely to the sun, and in such a way that nothing could 
 be attributed to the heat, but that the whole change was attri- 
 butable solely to the light. I mentioned also that I put another 
 bottle of the same material in a dark place. That, whenever 
 I looked at it, kept the same whitish colour, not showing 
 in any part even a trace of change of colour. Just as I have 
 often found a solution of silver made with aqua forth does 
 not get dark in a quite dark place, while when exposed to the 
 sun a dark red colour is induced, verging afterwards towards 
 blue. 
 
 I saw that it remained to investigate the cause of the effects 
 described. But I was under the belief that all the results 
 depended on chalk and aqua forth being mixed together, and so 
 began theorising on the effect of light operating on those 
 substances ; for it had wholly escaped me that the aqua forth 
 which I had employed had been altered, or, as we commonly 
 say, " precipitated," by some few particles of silver. It was a 
 happy chance, therefore, that it occurred to me to repeat the 
 same experiments afresh. I had at hand some very penetrating 
 fuming spirit of nitre, such as is used in preparing oil of vitriol. 
 This, in order that it should not quite dissolve the chalk, I 
 diluted with a good deal of water, and thus began to saturate 
 
222 APPENDIX A 
 
 the chalk. But, though I did this in the brightest sunlight, I 
 could not in the least see the remarkable change of colour before 
 observed. I therefore tried the process with aqua forth as sold 
 in the chemists' shops. The result was the same as I observed 
 to follow with the spirit of nitre, and not what I expected. 
 Whence it came into my mind to remember that the aquafortis 
 I had first used had produced the phenomena by reason of the 
 particles of silver in it. 
 
 Now, therefore, following up the matter more closely, I 
 dissolve a portion of silver in aqua fortis, weaken the solution 
 with water, and saturate the chalk as before. The same phe- 
 nomena made their appearance, but the colour now showed it- 
 self far more distinctly as a larger quantity of silver particles 
 were immersed in the saturating fluid. I remember, in fact, 
 that when I repeated the experiment with aqua fortis charged 
 with a sufficient quantity of silver to form a complete solution, 
 the result was that even the parts of the glass not reached by the 
 direct rays of the sun soon took a distinctly blackish hue from 
 the reflected rays. I exposed the same solution, but diluted 
 with water and with no admixture of chalk, in a window open 
 to the sun's rays, and found that the dark colour was equally 
 produced in the fluid. 
 
 To make the more sure that the effect described was due to 
 the sun's light, I put a bottleful of the mixture in such a position 
 that it received the sun's rays reflected from a plane mirror, and 
 soon discovered that all the results followed under this condition 
 just as well as if I had put it to catch the sun directly. I found 
 at the same time that, to make the experiment with proper 
 precautions, the mixture in the bottle must be so placed as not 
 to have behind it any object which can reflect the sun's rays. 
 I remember I put a glass (of the mixture) at night in a window 
 which did not get the sun till the afternoon. But there was a 
 house opposite, which had lately been covered with a coat of 
 quite white plaster, and this refracted the morning light vividly 
 into my room. I looked at the bottle in the morning and 
 detected the usual colour. After this I often placed it so as to 
 
SCHULZE'S WORD-PATTERNS 223 
 
 front a brightly sunlit wall, while no part of it was touched im- 
 mediately by any direct ray. I found that it showed the usual 
 colour, though more slowly than when the light came from the 
 mirror. 
 
 My use of powdered chalk was only accidental, since, as I have 
 said, my intention was to prepare some Baldwin's phosphorus. 
 But I think it makes no difference if one prefers to substitute 
 for the chalk some other white substance, such as hartshorn, 
 white magnesia, &c. I have myself used ceruss of lead in 
 the same experiment with nearly the same success. But this 
 seemed inconvenient, as the ceruss both sticks more firmly to 
 the sides of the bottle, and is slower in gravitating to the 
 bottom, and after remaining still a long time mixes less easily 
 with the fluid a thing which it should do [easily] in order that 
 the induced colour may be removed for the purpose of fresh 
 experiments. 
 
 If any one desires to see the effect produced in a few moments, 
 he should concentrate the sun's rays on a bottle full of the 
 mixture by means of a burning-glass ; taking care, however, 
 not to put the bottle exactly in the focus, but a little away 
 from it. In this way he will see that even in a moment 
 the colour of the mixture in the bottle will be distinctly 
 darkened. 
 
 This is a summary account of a frequently repeated experi- 
 ment. I should add something as to the cause of the phe- 
 nomenon if I could satisfy myself with regard to it. We may 
 at any rate take it as demonstrated that the effect of solar light 
 and heat is different from any that can be looked for from a 
 kitchen fire. I have further thought that this experiment of 
 mine might also have a use in helping the testing of minerals or 
 metals, in case one wishes to ascertain whether they include any 
 portion of silver ; for these phenomena have so far not been 
 observed to hold in the case of any other metal or mineral when 
 similarly treated. Nor do I despair of its being possible that 
 the experiment should lead the curious investigators of nature to 
 other useful results. On which account I have not hesitated 
 
224 APPENDIX A 
 
 publicly to submit it to the further examination of those more 
 learned than myself. 
 
 It seems strange that any one reading this should take it as 
 showing that Schulze was the " discoverer of photography." It is 
 clear that he found out for himself the fact that silver-salt is 
 darkened by sunlight ; but there is not a word in his paper which 
 suggests that he had any idea of using this fact so as to get a 
 picture or representation of an object, which is of course the 
 essential idea of photography. Only one practical suggestion 
 occurs to him, the possibility, namely, of the discovery being 
 used to test the presence of silver in an alloy. 
 
 Dr. Eder, after describing what Schulze did, quotes in the 
 original Latin the passage describing the cutting out of the 
 paper patterns, and proceeds : " From this account it un- 
 questionably appears that Schulze had not only a thorough 
 knowledge of the sensitiveness to light of silver-salt as early as 
 1727, but that he also applied it to copying written characters 
 (Schriftziige zu copiren) by means of sunlight. Accordingly 
 Schulze, a German, must be designated the discoverer of photo- 
 graphy (Erfinder der 'Photographic}^ though he has never once 
 been so called, a fact which may be attributed to the difficulty of 
 getting access to the original sources of information." * 
 
 From this it would seem that Dr. Eder rests his view mainly 
 on what he calls Schulze's " copying of written characters." 
 But surely it is straining Schulze's account to say that when he 
 cut out words on a piece of paper, and stuck the paper on the 
 bottle, he was u copying " writings. He had already satisfied 
 himself that the light darkened the mixture, by the device of the 
 thread, and by covering up part of the bottle. The artifice of 
 cutting out the words was simply a more vivid and amusing 
 
 * " Geschichte der Photochemie und Photographic." Dr. Josef 
 Maria Eder. Halle, 1891. Dr. Eder had already published the sub- 
 stance of this part of his history in Photographische Correspondenz 
 for January 1881, No. 207. 
 
SCHULZE'S WORD-PATTERNS 225 
 
 way of showing the same fact. If he had had any idea of 
 applying it to the copying of anything whatever, he would have 
 said so. Evidently no such thought occurred to him. The 
 device of the cut-out words amused him and amused his friends, 
 as a bit of " natural magic." From his lively account we can 
 picture the scene they are astonished at the mysterious 
 writing, seen Inside the glass ; he gives the bottle a shake, and 
 the writing vanishes! No wonder that, in the year 1727, 
 the multi curiosi made wild guesses as to how the trick was 
 done. Dr. Eder has fallen into the mistake not a very un- 
 common one of reading an old story by the light of current 
 ideas. He sees photography in what was only photochemistry. 
 Priestley, who described Schulze's experiment in a few clear 
 sentences (" History and Present State of Discoveries relating 
 to Vison, Light, and Colours," 1772), and who evidently wrote 
 with the memoir before him, treats it simply as a demonstration 
 of the fact that the silver in the mixture was the cause of the 
 change of colour. 
 
 Probably to this notice by Priestley is due the appearance of 
 Schulze's experiment with the paper word-patterns in a book, 
 apparently popular more than a century ago, entitled " Rational 
 Recreations, in which the principles of numbers and Natural 
 Philosophy are elucidated by a series of easy, entertaining and 
 interesting experiments, &c.," by W. Hooper, M.D. (1774). 
 Schulze's name is not mentioned, but " Recreation xliii " 
 (vol. iv. p. 143) runs as follows : " Writing on glass by the rays 
 of the sun. Dissolve chalk in aqua forth to the consistence of 
 milk, and add to that a strong dissolution of silver. Keep this 
 liquor in a glass decanter well stopped, then cut out from a paper 
 the letters you would have appear, and paste the paper on the 
 decanter, which you are to place in the sun, in such a manner 
 that its rays may pass through the spaces cut out of the paper, 
 and fall on the surface of the liquor. The part of the glass 
 through which the rays pass will turn black, and that under the 
 paper will remain white. You must observe not to move the 
 bottle during the time of the operation." 
 
 p 
 
226 APPENDIX A 
 
 Herr Schiendl ("Geschichte der Photographic," Wien, &c., 
 1891 ) is even more determined than Dr. Eder to prove that Pro- 
 fessor Schulze was the first photographer. " I entirely agree," he 
 says, "with Dr. Eder's view that Schulze especially may be 
 considered the discoverer of photography, for no one before him 
 knew the effect of light (as such) on silver-salts, and he was 
 without dispute the first who made use of the operation of light 
 to produce light-pictures, evanescent though they were, by means 
 of silver-salts through patterns (negatives)."* 
 
 Herr Schiendl here gives two reasons for his view, but it is the 
 latter, doubtless, on which he really relies. He can hardly 
 mean that Schulze's discovery of the <c light-sensitiveness of 
 silver-salt " in itself made him the discoverer of photography, 
 for that would imply that the discoverer of a fact is also the dis- 
 coverer of whatever the knowledge of that fact may ultimately 
 lead to. On this principle we might give the discoverer of 
 photography to Porta, who invented the camera obscura three 
 centuries ago ; or, with equal reason, to whoever first noticed 
 the fading of a curtain under sunlight. Substantially, Herr 
 Schiendl's point is that Schulze " made use of the operation of 
 light to produce light-pictures." But surely he did not do this. 
 He clearly had no thought of producing a picture. His proce- 
 dure was the converse of what is represented. He did not use 
 the operation of light to produce the image of the word- 
 pattern, but used the image of the word-pattern to show the 
 operation of light. When he has got the image, or "negative," 
 as Herr Schiendl calls it, by a startling anticipation of the 
 language of a century later, he has no thought of preserving or 
 repeating it. All he does is to destroy it. He shakes the 
 bottle and it vanishes. 
 
 But Herr Schiendl cannot get rid of modern photographic 
 ideas. He would seem even to suggest that Schulze tried to 
 " fix " the image. For in a later page, referring to the sun- 
 
 * " Stencil-patterns " may perhaps represent Herr Schiendl's 
 meaning. His words are " urn mittelst Silbersalzen durch Schab- 
 lonen (Negative) Lichtbilder, wenn auch vergangliche, herzustellen." 
 
SCHULZE'S WORD-PATTERNS 227 
 
 pictures taken by Thomas Wedgwood, he says : " Schulze 
 similarly produced silhouettes in 1727* on a light-sensitive 
 silver-salt, and could not fix them, any more than Davy and 
 Wedgwood." 
 
 Now not only does Schulze give no hint of trying to "fix" 
 the image, but the form of the experiment shows that he could 
 not have had any such idea. The image was on the surface of 
 a liquid or semi-liquid substance " the liquor," as he calls it 
 and any disturbance of the stuff at once dissipated the dis- 
 colouration. One is inclined to ask, can Herr Schiendl have read 
 the whole memoir, or only some misleading summary of it ? It 
 is difficult to account for the almost angry language (emphasised 
 by large type) with which he ends the chapter: "The priority, 
 then, of discovery in getting light-pictures from silver-salts 
 belongs indisputably to Schulze, and only an intentional mis- 
 understanding and ignoring of the above adduced facts made it 
 possible to throw doubt on his claim." 
 
 In spite of these strong words the extent of Schulze's work 
 is clear. He certainly made a remarkable discovery, namely, 
 the darkening effect of light upon silver-salts, and he did this 
 about half a century before the time of Scheele, who is usually 
 said to have first made known the fact. But more than this 
 he did not do. Seventy years had to pass before Thomas 
 Wedgwood tried to get light-pictures, and did get them, though 
 he failed to fix them j while more than a century elapsed from 
 the time of Schulze's Observation^ before Niepce, Daguerre, and 
 Talbot created the art in a practical sense. 
 
 * Printed " 1737" (evidently in error). 
 
B 
 
 THE STORY OF PROFESSOR CHARLES'S 
 SILHOUETTES 
 
 IN many accounts of the origin of photography we find 
 reference to a Professor Charles of Paris, who is said to have 
 taken some kind of shadow-pictures or silhouettes of his pupils, 
 as a lecture-room experiment, at some time about the beginning 
 of the last century. The story is very vague, resting only on 
 tradition, and it has been generally put aside by English writers 
 as mythical or unimportant. But French writers treat it more 
 seriously, and it has some interest, as being apparently (if true and 
 assigned to a true date) the only trace of anything that can be 
 represented as photographic work before the time of Wedgwood. 
 I cannot find that any writer on the history of photography has 
 examined it with care, and I will here put together such 
 information about it as I have been able to collect. 
 
 First, as to who and what Charles was. There are notices 
 of him in the " Biographic Universelle " (Michaud, Paris, 
 vol. lx., 1836), in the " Biographic des Contemporains " 
 (Levrault, Paris, 1834), and in the " Nouvelle Biographic 
 Universelle" (F. Didot, vol. ix., 1854). His career is also 
 described in an " Eloge Historique " delivered before the 
 French Academy on July 16, 1828, by Baron Fourier, the 
 mathematician, then Perpetual Secretary of the Academy. This 
 is the fullest of the biographical accounts I have found, and 
 from it, mainly, I take the following summary : 
 
 , 
 
CHARLES'S SILHOUETTES 229 
 
 Jacques Alexandre Cesar Charles was born at Beaugency, 
 November 12, 1746. He first distinguished himself in literary 
 studies, then cultivated music and the fine arts. He had for a 
 long time a modest clerkship in the Office of the Ministry of 
 Finance. This post being suppressed, he retired with a fair 
 pension and thus got the free disposal of his time. It was when 
 Franklin's discoveries in electricity were astonishing the world. 
 Charles took up natural science, and soon became a successful 
 public lecturer on physics. His lectures, given in the Louvre, 
 drew large and brilliant audiences, and he " had the same 
 success for thirty years." He was celebrated for his striking 
 experiments ; he " aimed at exciting attention by the grandeur 
 and intensity of his results " ; in microscopical experiments he 
 used enormous enlargements ; in lectures on electricity "il 
 foudroyait un animal." Among his hearers were Volta and 
 Franklin. Then came (1783) the Montgolfiers' discovery of 
 ballooning. Charles took a leading part in the early ascents, 
 and it was he who suggested using hydrogen gas to fill the 
 balloon (the method still practised), as an improvement on the 
 Montgolfiers' plan of heating atmospheric air. Fourier gives 
 details of his ascents. He must have been a man of enterprise 
 and courage, for he was actually the first man who ventured to 
 ascend, alone, in a free balloon.* One day he had a curious 
 experience. A man came to see him who professed to have made 
 discoveries in physics and to have proved that certain theories 
 of Sir Isaac Newton were wrong. Charles and his visitor got 
 into a lively discussion ; the visitor became angry, and in a fit 
 of rage drew a sword and rushed at the Professor. Charles was 
 unarmed, but seized his assailant, threw him down and broke 
 his sword. The man fainted and had to be carried home. This 
 fiery person was Marat, afterwards the terrible revolutionary 
 leader. On the famous August 10, 1792, the Tuileries were 
 invaded by the Paris mob, who found their way to Charles's 
 laboratory. He was surrounded by a raging multitude, but 
 
 * See article Aerostation in " Encyc. Brit." 
 
2 3 o APPENDIX B 
 
 saved himself by telling them he was the Charles of the 
 balloon ascents, pointing to the car which hung from the 
 ceiling. 
 
 Fourier says he cannot give a full enumeration of Charles's 
 many researches. He mentions his " Megascope " and his im- 
 portant experiments on the dilatation of gas. It is by the result 
 of these (" Charles's law ") that his name is still known to 
 students of physics. " To get an idea," says Fourier, " of his 
 work and talents, one should consult the many reports in which 
 he took part." He was " Librarian of the Royal Institute," at 
 what time Fourier does not say. The " Biog. Univ." says he 
 became member of the Academy in 1795, "and then Librarian 
 of the Society." The " Nouvelle Biog. Univ." gives 1 785 as the 
 date of his becoming a member of the Academy. The same 
 notice says that he wrote very little, and that in Biot's " Trair.6 
 de Physique Expe>imentale " nearly all his work (presque tous 
 ses travaux) had been transmitted to us. This article mentions 
 various observations of his as to electricity, gases, lightning- 
 conductors, optics, acoustics, &c., but has no reference to the 
 silhouettes, nor can I find in the above work of Biot any allusion 
 to Charles in connection with the effect of light on chemicals. 
 
 The " Biog. des Contemporains " (1834) says he wrote little 
 about science " quelques memoires imprimesdans les recueils de 
 1' Academic des Sciences," and some mathematical articles in the 
 " Encyclopedic Methodique," are his only works ; also, that he 
 gave courses of lectures in physics at the Louvre up to the time of 
 the Revolution (" jusqu'a 1'epoque de la Revolution "). None 
 of the above notices refer to the silhouettes. The earliest 
 mention of these which I have found is that by Arago, in the 
 famous discourse given before the French Academy of Sciences 
 in 1839, on the occasion when, as representative of the scientific 
 commission which had recommended the national grants to 
 Daguerre and to Isidore Niepce, he gave to the world the 
 particulars of the Daguerre-Niepce method. In this address, 
 after referring to previous speculations and discoveries bearing 
 on the subject, Porta's " camera obscura," the attempts of the 
 
CHARLES'S SILHOUETTES 231 
 
 alchymists, &c., Arago says (I italicise in this and other quotations 
 the more important phrases) : 
 
 " Ces applications de la si curieuse propriet6 du chlorure 
 d'argent, decouverte par les anciens alchymistes, semblaient 
 devoir s'etre presentees d'elles-me'mes et de bonne heure ; mais 
 ce n'est pas ainsi que precede 1'esprit humain. II nous faudra 
 descendre jusqu'aux premieres annees du dix-neuvieme siecle pour 
 trouver les premieres traces de Tart photographique. Alors 
 Charles, notre compatriote, se servira, dans ses discours, d'un 
 papier enduit pour engendrer des silhouettes a Vaide de Faction 
 lumineuse. Charles est mart sans decrire la preparation dont il 
 faisait usage ; et comme, sous peine de tomber dans le plus in- 
 extricable confusion, 1'historien des sciences ne doit s'appuyer 
 que sur des documents imprimis, authentiques, il est de toute 
 justice de faire remonter les premieres lineaments du nouvel art 
 a un Memoire de Wedgwood" and he goes on to describe and 
 quote from the account of Wedgwood's discovery published in 
 the Journal of the Royal Institution for June 1802. 
 
 A later allusion to Charles is found in a tract by Arago, entitled 
 " Le Daguerreotypie," printed in vol. vii. of his complete 
 works. This is apparently a reprint of a former publication, 
 but no date or title-page is given to show when the original 
 appeared. From internal evidence, I infer it to have been 
 written at some date near 1850. It is an account of the dis- 
 coveries of Niepce and Daguerre. In a chapter entitled, 
 " Examen de quelques reclamations de priorite*," he discusses the 
 priority-claim made by Fox Talbot, and in this he says : u La 
 premiere idee de fixer les images de la chambre obscure ou du 
 microscope solaire sur certaines substances chimiques, n'appartient 
 ni a M. Daguerre ni a M. Talbot. M. Charles, de 1'Academie 
 des Sciences, qui faisait des silhouettes dans ses cours publics, 
 a precede M. Wedgwood. Les premiers essais de M. Nie"pce 
 pour perfectionner le precede de M. Charles ou de M. Wedg- 
 wood sont de 1814." In section xv. of this tract Arago 
 says : " Je me suis attache, dans cette notice, a demontrer que 
 la photographic est une invention compltement franaise," 
 
232 APPENDIX B 
 
 adding that Talbot has undeniably the credit of a large share in 
 the invention of processes for taking photographs on paper. 
 This variation by Arago of his earlier account is singular. In 
 1839 he pat Charles's experiments in the first years of the last 
 century, and gave no hint of his using the camera. One would 
 like to know what led him afterwards to say Charles " preceded 
 Wedgwood," which must mean did his experiments before 
 1802, the date of publication of Wedgwood's discovery. One 
 cannot help noticing that the latter statement is in a paper the 
 declared object of which was to show that photography was 
 wholly a French invention. It would have been more satis- 
 factory if he had given some indication of the actual date, 
 instead of the loose phrase, " preceded Wedgwood." But this 
 later account, apart from any question of the date of the experi- 
 ment, gives a wholly new turn to the story. It would seem to 
 imply that Charles used both the camera and the solar micro- 
 scope, and also that he tried to " fix " his pictures. The earlier 
 statement merely says he used a prepared paper to make sil- 
 houettes. Now, if the "silhouette" of the tradition means, as 
 surely it must, a shadow-picture thrown on the paper by the 
 head of the sitter,* Charles could not have used a camera. For 
 with the camera, as we all know, it is not the interception 
 of light, but the light proceeding from the object, that produces 
 the image. On this point Arago's later version seems to be 
 quite unintelligible. And if the tradition he mentioned in 
 1839 included anything as to the use of a camera, or as to 
 " fixing the image," it was surely most strange that he should 
 then have said nothing as to these important details. The 
 Charles story may be said now to rest upon Arago's state- 
 ments as to the tradition existing in his time, and it is un- 
 lucky that these statements were so lacking in precision. That 
 Arago could be careless even when he was specially bound to 
 be accurate, for his business in 1839 was to set forth the grounds 
 for a grant of public money, is shown by his confusing Tom 
 
 * See quotation, infra, from M. Tissandier. 
 
CHARLES'S SILHOUETTES 233 
 
 Wedgwood with his father, the potter. If he had looked at the 
 " Biographic Universelle," it would have told him that Josiah, 
 the father, had died seven years before the date of the Memoir 
 from which he was quoting. 
 
 Blanquart-Evrard's " Traite de Photographic sur Papier " 
 (Paris, 1851) has an introductory sketch of the history of 
 photography by George Ville. In this we read : 
 
 " La photographic est une decouverte franfaise." ..." Elle 
 est Pceuvre de deux hommes (Nie"pce et Daguerre)." . . . 
 " L'idee de mettre a profit la propriete que possede la chlorure 
 d'argent de noircir a la lumiere, pour copier des dessins, et fixer 
 f image de la chambre noire^ n'est pas venue pour la premiere fois 
 a MM. Niepce et Daguerre. Deja, Charles, physicien francais, 
 Pemployait dans les cours qu'il faisait au Louvre, il y a plus 
 cTiin demi-siede (this would mean before 1 80 1), pour produiredes 
 silhouettes au moyen de la lumiere. Wedgwood, le Palissy de 
 PAngleterre, Pavait employe de son cote pour copier des 
 vitraux d'eglise, et Sir H. Davy, pour fixer Pi mage de la 
 chambre noire." The time here indicated agrees with that 
 mentioned by Arago in 1839, while the phraseology and the 
 blunder as to the two Wedgwoods suggest that the writer is 
 virtually copying from Arago's later account. 
 
 But the mention of chloride of silver does not accord with 
 Arago's statement that Charles left no record of his method. 
 
 In a later book of M. Blanquart-Evrard, " La Photographic, 
 ses origines, ses transformations" (Lille, 1870), we find yet a 
 new account of Charles. Here, after mentioning Scheele's 
 researches on the operations of light (1777), the writer says : 
 " ^uelques annees plus tard, vers 1780, le Professeur Charles a 
 excut, dans son cours public a Paris, le portrait en silhouette 
 de ses eleves." ..." Vers le me*me temps, mais un peu plus 
 tard, un industriel Anglais, Wedgwood [again confusion of son 
 and father], obtenait de son cot de pareils resultats ; " and he 
 refers to Davy's Memoir of 1802. This is the earliest mention 
 I have found of 1780 as the date of Charles's experiments. No 
 authority is quoted for it. 
 
234 APPENDIX B 
 
 In "La Photographic," by Mayer and Pierson (Paris, 1862), 
 Charles is mentioned in connection with Wedgwood. 
 <c Charles, le professeur populaire, obtenait rapidement dans ses 
 seances un grand nombre de silhouettes tracers en noir sur un 
 papier enduit, pour eprouver Faction lumineuse^ mais il mourut 
 sans faire connaitre le secret de sa preparation." It is added 
 that "La couleur violacee pourrait faire croire a I'emploi de 
 Piode. L'inge"nieux Wedgwood cherche aussi a utiliser cette 
 singuliere propriete que possede la nitrate d'argent, etc." This 
 account agrees with Arago's early version of the tradition, 
 ignoring the later amplifications, but the addition of the sur- 
 mise as to iodine is new. This substance was not discovered 
 till well on in the nineteenth century. 
 
 The story of the silhouettes is set out at greater length in a 
 book entitled " A History and Handbook of Photography," 
 translated from the French of Gaston Tissandier, and edited by 
 J. Thomson, F.R.G.S. (London : Sampson Low, 1876).* 
 " About the year 1780, Professor Charles, the inventor of the 
 hydrogen gas balloon, made the first use of the dark room for 
 attempting to produce rudimentary photographs. By means 
 of a strong solar ray, he projected a shadow of the head of one 
 of his pupils on to a sheet of white paper which had previously 
 been soaked in a solution of chloride of silver. Under the 
 influence of the light it was not long in becoming black in the 
 parts exposed, remaining white on that portion of the sheet 
 which had been shaded, and then giving a faithful silhouette of 
 the person's head in white on a black ground." A picture of 
 the supposed scene in the lecture-room is given, which (says a 
 footnote) u is based on the rather vague and incomplete ac- 
 counts which were given of it at the time of its exhibition 
 by Professor Charles." The picture represents a room, in one 
 wall of which is a circular hole about a foot in diameter, through 
 which streams horizontally a cylinder-shaped beam of light of 
 
 * I do not find the original book in the British Museum, and 
 therefore quote from the translation. 
 
CHARLES'S SILHOUETTES 235 
 
 the same diameter, so as to illuminate a screen. (This state of 
 things would imply either that the sun was on the horizon or 
 that a mirror was used.) Part of the light is intercepted by 
 the head of a sitting figure, thus throwing a shadow on the 
 illuminated disk. " The sheet of paper was passed from hand 
 to hand . . . but soon the light blackened it, and the profile 
 disappeared little by little as though blotted with ink. Pro- 
 fessor Charles also reproduced, roughly, it is true, some engrav- 
 ings which he placed on a sensitised paper. The details of this 
 experiment are, however, for the most part, wanting in the 
 historical documents relating to his works. Wedgwood, a 
 clever English scientist, made a similar experiment to Pro- 
 fessor Charles ; he projected the image of the dark room on to 
 a sheet of paper similarly sensitised, and obtained a rough pic- 
 ture, which could only be preserved in the dark. In 1802 
 Wedgwood and Sir H. Davy published a remarkable treatise 
 on the reproduction of objects by light."* There is a great air 
 of particularity about this account, but it gives no authority 
 for the additions made to the tradition reported by Arago, 
 namely, the mention of the chemical used and the alleged 
 reproduction of engravings. It is difficult, moreover, to under- 
 stand M. Tissandier's account of what was done. He says 
 Charles made use of the dark room to produce his rudimentary 
 photographs. " Chambre obscure" (dark room) is the usual 
 French equivalent of " camera obscura." The experiment is 
 pictured as made in a darkened room, but the process is not 
 that of the camera. And one naturally asks, What or where 
 are the " historical documents relating to Charles's works," and 
 the " incomplete accounts given at the time ? " These 
 phrases are virtually a confession that the story is a tradition 
 only ; for if M. Tissandier had known of such accounts, how- 
 ever incomplete, he surely would have quoted or referred to 
 
 * The words, "published a remarkable treatise, &c." are absurdly 
 inapplicable to Davy's dry little report in four or five pages, of 
 Wedgwood's experiment. We may be pretty sure M. Tissandier 
 never saw the " treatise." 
 
236 APPENDIX B 
 
 them, instead of giving pages of hypothetical description. What 
 he says as to Wedgwood is so hopelessly wrong that we cannot 
 attach any weight to what he says about Charles. He repre- 
 sents Wedgwood as obtaining a rough picture by means of a 
 camera, while we know Wedgwood failed to get any image 
 from the camera. It is significant that in a later edition of the 
 same book (1878) the translator and editor, in a chapter added 
 by himself, says : "The story of the heliographic researches of 
 Charles is altogether too vague and improbable to be taken into 
 serious account." 
 
 Fabre's " Traite Encyclopdique de la Photographic " (Paris, 
 1889) says : "En 1780 le physicien Charles, dans ses cours du 
 Louvre, dessinait les silhouettes sur papier recouvert de chlorure 
 d'argent." This is a book which quotes authorities, and a 
 footnote here mentions Blanquart-Evrard's book, " La Photo- 
 graphic, ses origines, etc. Lille, 1870," as to which see above. 
 
 Schiendl, in his "Geschichte der Photographic," 1891, gives 
 1780 as the date when Charles took his silhouettes " prepared 
 with chloride of silver," but the authority he quotes is Fabre's 
 book just mentioned, adding that Fabre's authority is Blanquart- 
 Evrard's book, "La Photographic, etc., 1870," quoted above. 
 This seems to show that neither Herr Schiendl, whose book 
 indicates very wide research, nor Fabre, had found any earlier or 
 better authority for the date 1780, or for the mention of chloride 
 of silver, than the statement of Blanquart-Evrard. 
 
 Dr. Eder, in his important " History of Photochemistry and 
 Photography "(Halle, 1891), quotes Arago's statement of 1839^ 
 but his verdict is, " The statement that Charles obtained 
 silhouettes independently of, or before, Wedgwood is without 
 foundation (entbehrt jeder Begrundung)." He points out the 
 vagueness of Arago's phrase, "first years of the I9th century," 
 and suggests that Charles, who was a member and librarian of 
 the Academy of Sciences, and lived till 1823, may well have read 
 the account of Wedgwood's experiments, published in 1802, and 
 have taken from it the idea of the experiment shown to his 
 class. 
 
CHARLES'S SILHOUETTES 237 
 
 The English writers on Photography whom I have consulted 
 treat the story of the silhouettes as of no account, as being 
 purely traditional, but we cannot expect English books to tell 
 us much in a case in which evidence could be looked for only 
 from France. Robert Hunt, in his " Researches on Heat and 
 Light," a work of authority in its time (1844), a time very near 
 that of the discussions of 1839 on the beginnings of Photography, 
 notices Charles thus : " This " (the account of Wedgwood's 
 work published in 1802) " was certainly the first published account 
 of any attempt to produce images by the decomposing power of light. 
 It does, indeed, appear that, nearly about the same time, 
 M. Charles in his lectures at Paris proposed to make use of a 
 prepared paper to produce black profiles by the action of light, 
 but he died without disclosing the preparation which he 
 employed ; indeed, his countryman, the Abb Moigno, admits 
 that Charles ' left no authentic document to attest his 
 discovery.' " 
 
 Mr. W. Jerome Harrison, in his " History of Photography," 
 mentions the story of the silhouettes, but adds, " This statement 
 is a mere tradition, and the best authorities have considered it 
 * too vague and improbable to be taken into serious account.' " 
 
 This review seems to show that no better authority for the 
 story of the silhouettes has been brought forward than the state- 
 ment of Arago in 1839, and that the only discoverable authority 
 for the date 1780 is a statement given, without any supporting 
 evidence, by M. Blanquart-Evrard. It must be remembered 
 that Arago, whether he was accurate or not, had exceptional 
 opportunities of knowing what was to be known on the matter. 
 He was a foremost figure in the French scientific world. As 
 Secretary of the Academy of Sciences he had at his command 
 the Academy records, and we may presume that he had looked 
 to see what they showed upon this subject. He not only says 
 he knew of no record left by Charles, but asserts that Charles 
 left none. He must have known Charles personally, and was 
 writing only sixteen years after his death. It seems very im- 
 probable that any valid evidence should have been in existence 
 
238 APPENDIX B 
 
 for the date 1780, or for the accounts of the chemical used, and 
 that this evidence should have been unknown to him. That 
 Charles was lecturing "vers 1780" may be taken as probable, if 
 not certain. His connection with the balloon ascents, and the 
 adventure with Marat, point to a date before 1789. But if he 
 lectured for thirty years (as Fourier asserts), the date of the 
 lecturing would not show anything as to the date of the 
 silhouette experiments ; while it is easy to understand that an 
 oral tradition might confuse one date with the other. If this 
 point were worth further investigation, possibly a search among 
 pre-revolution French newspapers might yield some evidence. 
 
 But, supposing the story of the silhouettes to be true, the 
 question remains, has it any significance in regard to the history 
 of photography ? Was the experiment photographic, that is, 
 photographic in intent ? There is nothing to show that it was. 
 It is much more simple to regard it as done only " pour 
 e"prouver," as MM. Mayer et Pierson say, " Faction lumineuse." 
 It was a way of making pupils seize the already well-known 
 fact that light has a darkening effect on certain substances. 
 Charles, we know, took pains to get vivid illustrations, and this 
 was just the kind of experiment to stick in the memory of an 
 audience. It is, of course, possible that, after showing them the 
 silhouettes, he went on to tell them that some means might 
 conceivably be found of stopping the after-action of light on the 
 space which remained white, and that if this could be done the 
 silhouette would remain as a permanent profile portrait. If he 
 said anything like this, and if he actually tried to get a "fixing" 
 process, he was to that extent a photographer. If not, the idea 
 of photography was not there ; it was only an illustration of a 
 known fact in photochemistry. But our most trustworthy 
 report of the tradition gives no hint of his trying to fix the sil- 
 houette, or of his using the camera. This last point is im- 
 portant, for if Charles had had in his mind the possibility of 
 getting pictures of objects, he could hardly have failed to think 
 of the camera, the familiar picture-making machine. If he told 
 his class that what he showed them was a first step towards 
 
CHARLES'S SILHOUETTES 239 
 
 actually getting portraits by the mere operation of light it is 
 difficult to imagine how an idea so new, so startling, so interest- 
 ing to the common world, put forward by a man who was, qufi. 
 lecturer, the Tyndall or Faraday of the Paris of his time, could 
 have made so little stir as not to be noticed in any record of his 
 life, or leave any trace beyond the vague tradition known to us. 
 These considerations add force to Dr. Eder's supposition that 
 the experiment was shown after 1802, and was suggested by a 
 reading of the Davy Memoir. The volume containing that 
 Memoir may well have been sent to the Paris Academy, of 
 which Charles was (at some time) the Librarian. Arago 
 evidently had it before him in 1839. 
 
 It is, of course, perfectly easy to account for the existence or 
 the tradition without supposing that the experiment had any 
 photographic meaning. For, on the announcement to the 
 world in 1839 of Daguerre's method of applying the decompo- 
 sing power of light to the making of pictures, nothing would 
 be more likely than that people who had witnessed or heard of 
 Charles's illustration of that fundamental fact should be reminded 
 of his experiment, and should see in it, by the light of later 
 knowledge, a significance which he himself had not given it. 
 
 My conclusions on the matter are these : from the nature of 
 the case they can but be put in the language of proba- 
 bilities : 
 
 1. The story of the silhouettes has probably a foundation in 
 fact, though no record has been produced, contemporary or 
 other, to show when the experiments were made, what was 
 their object, or what method and materials were employed. 
 
 2. The assignment of the early date, 1780, would appear to 
 rest on the unsupported statement of one author, writing nearly 
 a century after that time. 
 
 3. There is no good reason for supposing that the experi- 
 ments, if made, were photographic in character or intentio^ 
 and it is not at all probable that they were so. 
 
 4. Assuming that they might have been photographic in 
 character, no evidence has been adduced to refute the supposition 
 
2 4 o APPENDIX B 
 
 that they were prompted by the account published in 1802 of 
 Thomas Wedgwood's work. 
 
 Thus there seems to be no solid ground for treating the 
 story as relevant to the history of photography. It will probably 
 remain an unverified tradition, as it is hardly likely that any one 
 will think it worth while to search for documentary evidence 
 of its truth. 
 
A MYTHICAL ACCOUNT OF T. WEDG- 
 WOOD'S PHOTOGRAPHIC WORK 
 
 THE story which, as mentioned in the preface, was put forward 
 by Miss Meteyard in her book, called " A Group of English- 
 men" (1872), and which has confused the true story of 
 Wedgwood's work by representing that he did what he certainly 
 did not do, is in effect the same as had, some years earlier, made 
 a stir among English photographers, and had been then proved 
 to be a myth. It was known as the " story of the early photo- 
 graphs," and was discussed at many meetings of photographers, 
 of which reports may be found in the Photographic News and 
 Photographic Journal of the years 1863 and 1864. 
 
 Miss Meteyard maintains that two photographs on paper, of 
 which she gives engravings, one called a "Breakfast Table 
 Scene," in her "Life of Josiah Wedgwood" (vol. ii. 585), and 
 another called " A Savoyard Piper," which she makes the 
 frontispiece of the " Group of Englishmen," were done by him 
 in the years 1791-93. This is, of course, absolutely impossible 
 in face of two facts clearly set forth by Davy in the paper of 
 1802 : First, that all Wedgwood's pictures faded away after a 
 short exposure to light ; secondly, that images formed by means 
 of a camera obscura " were found too faint to produce in any 
 moderate time an effect upon the nitrate of silver." The 
 " Breakfast Table " picture must obviously have been made by 
 means of a camera, and according to Miss Meteyard it was 
 
 Q 
 
242 APPENDIX C 
 
 permanent enough to be copied by an engraver some seventy 
 years after it was taken. There is nothing in the engraving of 
 the " Savoyard Paper " to show that it was taken from a photo- 
 graph, but if it was, the photograph could not have been 
 Wedgwood's. 
 
 In the discussions of 1863 an attempt was made to show that 
 the art had been invented, in the full sense of the term, about 
 1790-1800, or about forty or fifty years before the era of 
 Niepce, Daguerre, and Talbot. It was said that, in clearing 
 out some rooms at Messrs. Boulton and Watt's works at Soho, 
 near Birmingham, there had been discovered two views on 
 metal plates, showing a house at Soho, which views could be 
 proved to have been taken before 1791 ; and that a camera had 
 also been found whereby such pictures had been or might have 
 been taken. There had been found also certain large coloured 
 pictures of about the same date, which were copies of well- 
 known paintings, evidently not done by hand, and these, too, 
 were said to be photographic. All these various pictures were 
 shown at meetings of the Photographic Society. The story 
 was evidently put forward in good faith and at first was widely 
 believed. The Saturday Review discussed it at length, and 
 spoke of the " chain of evidence " as " nearly complete." But 
 before long the so-called evidence proved to be worthless. The 
 big coloured pictures, though the method of their production 
 was a puzzle, were certainly not photographic. The two 
 views of the house at Soho were admitted to be daguerreotypes, 
 but the evidence for the early date went to pieces when care- 
 fully examined. As to the two alleged Wedgwoodian photos, 
 no proof of date or authorship was offered beyond Miss 
 Meteyard's statement that she had evidence to show they were 
 Wedgwood's ; which evidence, it was said, would appear in the 
 forthcoming life of his father. At the meeting of the Society on 
 November 3, 1863, there was read a letter from her saying: 
 " You may with safety put Wedgwood's experiments in 
 1790-1791," &c. At a later meeting, however (January 5, 
 1864), the secretary showed an old photograph belonging to 
 
A MYTHICAL STORY 243 
 
 himself, done by Mr. Fox Talbot about 1841, which corre- 
 sponded exactly with that entitled by Miss Meteyard " The 
 Breakfast Table at Etruria Hall, 1791." As this photograph 
 showed a collection of twenty or thirty separate objects, cups 
 and saucers, spoons, teapot, &c., disposed about a table, the 
 existence of two views of the scene, exactly similar and yet ot 
 independent origin, would have been simply impossible. This 
 evidence was confirmed by a letter from Mr. Fox Talbot, 
 saying that he had taken the view at Lacock Abbey (where he 
 lived), and that, no doubt, copies would be found there. These 
 copies have since been found * as also has the negative. 
 No attempt was made to disprove the attribution of this 
 picture to Mr. Talbot, nor was the origin of the " Savoyard 
 Piper " explained. 
 
 The " story of the early photographs " was thus completely 
 disposed of in 1864. But in 1866 it reappeared in Miss 
 Meteyard's " Life of Josiah Wedgwood." She there described 
 " The Breakfast Table " as an " Early Photograph by Thomas 
 Wedgwood (Mayer Collection)," but of the promised evidence 
 of authenticity there was not a word, not even a word to 
 suggest that the origin of the picture had been questioned. 
 Five years later, in 1871, she brought out her "Group of 
 Englishmen." And again in that volume the exploded story 
 was still more emphatically reasserted. An engraving of " The 
 Savoyard Piper " there figures as the frontispiece, and is called a 
 " facsimile of the earliest known heliotype, or sun-picture, 
 taken by the Inventor of Photography, Thomas Wedgwood, 
 1791-93." But again no evidence is offered. We are only 
 told that a Mr. Mayer derived it from an undoubted source," 
 that " many of these c heliotypes ' were, it is said, scattered at 
 one time about the Potteries " ; that its " authenticity is 
 undoubted," and that as the earliest known specimen of photo- 
 graphy it is " considered to be of great value." It is curious 
 that in both the volumes containing these statements there are 
 
 * I have seen one of them, kindly sent me by Mr. Fox Talbot's 
 son. R. B. L. 
 
244 APPENDIX C 
 
 allusions which show that the authoress knew of the discussions 
 of 1863-64. She alludes (Life, ii. 5) to the "Soho pictures," 
 and in the " Group of Englishmen " the " Savoyard Piper " is 
 mentioned as having been " shown at a meeting of the Photo- 
 graphic Society." It is not easy to imagine how she could have 
 put the story into her books without taking the trouble to 
 ascertain the issue of the discussions to which she herself had 
 contributed materials. Such carelessness is nearly inconceiv- 
 able ; and yet one shrinks from supposing her to have been 
 simply mendacious. 
 
 It may be worth while to mention here another theory which 
 has found its way into books about Photography, and which was 
 also started by Miss Meteyard. It purports to connect 
 Daguerre's discovery with Tom Wedgwood's silver pictures, 
 and turns on a guess that one Dominique Daguerre, a Paris 
 shopkeeper or trader, who was (undoubtedly) old Josiah 
 Wedgwood's agent, may have been the father of Louis 
 Daguerre, the inventor of the Daguerreotype process. The 
 guess is based entirely on the coincidence that the inventor and 
 the agent had the same surname. Her "chain of evidence" is 
 as follows : Daguerre, the agent, was once or oftener in London. 
 " There is reason to think indeed there is a tradition to the 
 effect that he visited Etruria, as was customary with most 
 foreigners, and whilst there he probably witnessed some of 
 T.Wedgwood's experiments on light and heat" (G. of E.,p. 50). 
 In a later page (157) this guess or probability appears as a fact: 
 " Daguerre's son, who was with him in his visits to Etruria in 
 1791 and 1793, was about 20 or 21 years old in 1802. If he 
 inherited his father's tastes, we may reasonably conclude that he 
 was one and the same with the M. Daguerre who in 1824 
 improved the heliotype process .... and he may have 
 been led to these researches either through memory of what he 
 had seen or heard of T. Wedgwood's experiments." 
 
 This theory, which rests, as Miss M.'s words show, only on a 
 series of guesses, is at once disposed of by the fact that Daguerre, 
 the inventor, was born in 1787. If, therefore, he was the 
 
A MYTHICAL STORY 245 
 
 agent's son who "probably" heard of or saw Wedgwood's 
 experiments in 1791 or 1793, he had developed a taste for 
 physical science, and accompanied his father on business tours, 
 when a babe of four or six years old ! and if in 1802 the agent's 
 son was "20 or 21 years of age," he must have been born in 
 1781 or 1782, or at least five years before the inventor. The 
 biographical dictionaries do not give Louis Daguerre's parentage, 
 but in a book written by M. Mentienne, Mayor of the place 
 (Bry) where he died, what is said about his father could hardly 
 apply to a Paris shopkeeper. The father was a rural functionary, 
 " huissier of the bailliage of Cormeilles," and afterwards (1792) 
 moved to Orleans, where he was employed on the crown 
 domains.* 
 
 * "La Decouverte de la Photographic en 1839." Paris, 1892. 
 
D 
 
 ON SOME NOTICES OF TOM WEDGWOOD 
 IN HISTORIES OF PHOTOGRAPHY 
 
 I GIVE here, by way of supplement to my account of 
 Wedgwood's Photographic work, some notes on what is said 
 about him by well-known writers on the subject. The earliest 
 (known to me) of such notices, that by Arago (1839), has 
 already been mentioned. 
 
 Dr. Eder, in his important History,* says : " The invention 
 of photography on paper and leather by Wedgwood dates from 
 the year 1802 [referring to Davy's Memoir of that year]. 
 Many authors give this year as that of the invention of photo- 
 graphy generally, which I, having regard to Schulze (1727), 
 cannot admit." (As to Schulze, see Appendix A.) Dr. Eder 
 points out that the work described in the Davy Memoir (which 
 he summarises) should not be attributed, as it is by some writers, 
 to Wedgwood and Davy, the latter having only described 
 Wedgwood's experiments and furnished an Appendix. He 
 considers Arago to have been wrong when, in his memoir laid 
 before the French Academy in 1839, "he proclaimed these two 
 men as the inventors of photography," though he (Dr. Eder) 
 places them " in the rank of those enquirers in the province of 
 
 * "Geschichte der Photochemie und Photographic von Alterthume 
 bis in die Gegenwart," von Dr. Josef Maria Eder, Direktor der K. K. 
 Lehr und Versuchsanstalt fur Photographic in Wien, &c. &c. 
 Halle, a S. Wilhelm Krapp, 1891. 
 
APPENDIX D 247 
 
 photo-chemistry who develop facts already known in a more or 
 less new direction with more or less deep research (welche schon 
 bekannte Thatsachen in einer mehr oder weniger tiefen 
 Vorstudium weiter ausbildeten)." These last words seem to be 
 a fair description of Wedgwood's work, but surely they are 
 equivalent to saying that he was an inventor, though he left his 
 invention incomplete ; for do not most inventions nearly all, 
 perhaps consist in the application of known facts to new 
 purposes ? 
 
 Dr. Eder mentions that Wedgwood's experiments became 
 known in Germany in 1803, and from a reference made by Herr 
 Schiendel I gather that Davy's account appeared in Gilbert's 
 " Annalen " as early as 181 1. 
 
 In Herr Schiendel's History * the notice of Wedgwood 
 begins as follows: "In the year 1802 Wedgwood appears to 
 have received a suggestion from a scientific society existing in 
 Birmingham that called itself the * Lunatic Society,' for making 
 an attempt to copy pictures and drawings on glass, and to pro- 
 duce silhouettes in the same manner." (Im Jahre 1802, scheint 
 Wedgwood von einer in Birmingham existirenden wissenschaft- 
 lichen Gesellschaft, die sich * Lunatic Society ' nannte, die Anre- 
 gung erhalten zu haben, Versuchte anzustellen, Gemalde und 
 Zeichnungen mittelst Silbersalzen auf Glas zu copiren und auf 
 ahnliche Weise Silhouetten zu erzeugen.) Herr Schiendel 
 does not quote any authority for this story, and I know of 
 no foundation for it. Dr. Eder also alludes to it, but doubt- 
 fully. He refers in a note (p. 60) to the tale of the "early 
 photographs" current in 1863 and 1864, whence I conjecture 
 that the supposed intervention of the society was part of that 
 myth. 
 
 The word " Lunatic," which Herr Schiendel naturally thinks 
 an odd epithet to be applied to men like Watt and Priestley, 
 should be " Lunar." The reference is to a group of private 
 friends, living about Birmingham and in the neighbouring 
 
 * " Geschichte der Photographic," von C. Schiendel. Wien, 
 Hartlebeas, 1891. 
 
248 APPENDIX D 
 
 counties, who were in the habit of spending a day together 
 once a month at one or other of their houses in succession. 
 Among them were James Watt, Boulton, Captain Keir the 
 chemist, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, Priestley, Samuel Galton, 
 Dr. Withering the botanist, and one or two more. Herschell 
 the astronomer, Edgeworth, Sir Joseph Banks, and others are 
 mentioned as having been occasional visitors. The meetings 
 were held at or near the full moon, doubtless in view of the 
 considerable distances which some of the party had to ride or 
 drive, whence came the word " Lunar." * I do not know of 
 anything to connect the Society with Tom Wedgwood (who 
 was from thirty to forty years younger than most of the group), 
 except the facts that most, if not all, were friends of his father, 
 and that Tom corresponded with Priestley and Keir about his 
 experiments on heat and light. Whatever be the origin of the 
 story, it has a very apocryphal look. No one who knew the 
 facts could have described the " Lunar " friends as a " Scientific 
 Society existing in Birmingham," and the statement that the 
 Society prompted Wedgwood to an attempt trying to " copy 
 pictures on glass" an attempt which he did not make, must 
 surely have arisen from a mis-reading of the ambiguous title of 
 Davy's " account." 
 
 Herr Schiendel refers to the account as published after 
 Wedgwood's death, a mistake which I suppose arises from his 
 confusing the photographer with his father, the potter, who had 
 died in 1795. Like Dr. Eder, he insists that Schulze was the 
 real inventor of Photography, a view which I think is con- 
 clusively refuted by Schulze's own Memoir (Appendix A). He 
 refers, as does Dr. Eder, to Beccarius and Scheele as "prede- 
 cessors " of Wedgwood and Davy a vague phrase, which 
 might lead readers to suppose that these earlier physicists aimed 
 at turning the facts they were investigating to some graphic use. 
 This, as far as I can ascertain, was not the case. Priestley, in 
 
 * A lively account of the " Lunar Meetings " is given in the 
 autobiography of Mrs. Schimmelpenninck, a daughter of Samuel 
 Gallon. 
 
APPENDIX D 249 
 
 his "History and Present State of Discoveries relating to 
 Vision, Light, and Colours" (1772), gives an account of the 
 observations of Beccarius,* Scheele, Schulze, and others, but says 
 nothing to show that any of their experiments were directed 
 towards obtaining a representation of an object. Dr. Eder 
 writes (p. 62) : "Schulze and Beccarius showed that, by 
 patterns applied to opaque substances, writings and drawings 
 can be copied on chloride of silver exposed to light " (dass man 
 durch aufgelegte Schablonen aus undurchsichtigen Stoffen, 
 Schriften und Zeichnungen auf Chlorsilber im Lichte copiren 
 kann). But on referring to the Commentaries of the Bolog- 
 nese Academy, which Dr. Eder quotes as his authority as far as 
 relates to Beccarius (with date 1757), I find nothing there to 
 fit such a description of his work. The experiments described 
 relate to the effect of light on various substances, and the one 
 in which its darkening effect on luna cornea is shown is very 
 like Schulze's " Observation," including the artifice of sticking 
 a piece of black paper on the side of the glass : but I find 
 nowhere a word as to copying either patterns, or writings, or 
 engravings, or anything else.t 
 
 I notice this apparent error of Dr. Eder's because, occurring 
 in a work of high authority, it has probably misled other writers. 
 In many of the histories of photography, especially the more 
 popular books, one meets with loose statements as to the earlier 
 physicists whose observations prepared the way for the art, with- 
 out any attempt to distinguish between photochemical and photo- 
 graphic experiments. I find, for instance, in one of these 
 
 * James Bartholomew Beccaria of Bologna, not, as Dr. Eder and 
 Herr Schiendel call him, John Baptist Beccaria, Professor of Physics 
 at Turin. 
 
 t Vol. iv. of the "Commentaries" (pp. 84-87) has an account of 
 experiments by Beccarius and Bonzi on the effects of light on various 
 substances. The heading is " De vi quam ipsa per se lux habet non 
 colores modo, sed etiam texturam rerum salvis interdum coloribus, 
 immutandi." These " Commentaries " include a number of tracts 
 or papers by different writers or editors. The only one I find by 
 Beccarius himself is one on phosphorescents : " De quam plurimis 
 phosphoris nunc primum detectis." Tom 2, pars altera, p. 136. 
 
250 APPENDIX D 
 
 popular histories (after an account of the invention of the 
 camera obscura) a chapter beginning: "Nothing further appears 
 to have been done in photography until T. Wedgwood, a son 
 of the famous potter, took up the subject" These last words are 
 wholly misleading. Before Wedgwood " the subject " did not 
 exist, no one, so far as we yet know, having thrown out the 
 idea of making a picture by means of light. 
 
AS TO WEDGWOOD'S DISCOVERY (p. 19) 
 OF THE FACT THAT SOLID BODIES 
 HAVE THE SAME TEMPERATURE AT 
 THE POINT OF INCANDESCENCE 
 
 I HAVE not succeeded in finding any definite statement as to 
 when, or through whom, this fact first became known. A 
 paper by Professor Draper, of New York, printed in the 
 Philosophical Magazine for 1847 ( vo ^ 3> P- 345)? contains 
 expressions which seem to imply his belief that Thomas 
 Wedgwood was in effect the discoverer of the law, whereof that 
 paper was apparently intended to give a complete proof. 
 Draper describes its objects thus : 
 
 1. To determine the point of incandescence of platinum and 
 to prove that different bodies become red hot at the same 
 temperature. 
 
 2. To determine the colour of the rays emitted by luminous 
 bodies at different temperatures. 
 
 3. To determine the relation between the brilliance of the 
 light and the temperature. 
 
 After describing some experiments which led him to put the 
 temperature of incandescence at 977, he says: "Against the 
 No. 977 it may also be objected that antimony melts at a 
 much lower temperature and yet emits light before it fuses. If 
 this statement were true it would lead us to believe that all 
 
252 APPENDIX E 
 
 bodies have not the same point of incandescence. But I think 
 the experiments of Mr. Wedgwood on gold and earthenware are 
 decisive on that point ; and moreover, I have reason to believe 
 that the melting-point of antimony is much higher than is com- 
 monly supposed." 
 
 In his preamble, Draper says : " Sir I. Newton fixed the 
 temperature at which bodies become self-luminous at 635, Sir 
 H. Davy at 812, Mr. Wedgwood at 947, Mr. Daniel at 900." 
 Draper seems to be here confusing the two Wedgwoods, father 
 and son. It was Josiah, the father, who, in a paper on his 
 "Pyrometer," in the Phil. Trans, for 1784, gave a table of 
 comparative temperatures, one entry wherein is " red heat 
 fully visible in the dark 947." If he had meant by this that 
 all bodies become luminous at that temperature, his son certainly 
 would not have used the language we find in his paper of eight 
 years later. I have not discovered where it is that Newton 
 makes the statement Draper ascribes to him. It is not in his 
 "Scala graduum caloris" given in the Phil. Trans, for 1701. 
 
 A paper by Professor Kirchhoff in *Pogg. *<fnn. y vol. 109, 
 translated in Phil. Mag. for July 1860, on the relation between 
 the radiating and absorbing powers of different bodies for light 
 and heat, gives a more general treatment of the subject, 
 extending, so far as I understand it, the law indicated by 
 T. Wedgwood, and applying high mathematics to the problem. 
 One of KirchhofPs conclusions is thus expressed : " It follows 
 that all bodies, when their temperature is gradually raised, begin 
 to emit waves of the same length at the same temperature, and 
 therefore become red hot at the same temperature, emit yellow 
 rays at the same temperature, &c." 
 
 From all that I can learn on the matter, I infer that we may 
 regard T. Wedgwood as the discoverer of this curious and 
 important physical law. 
 
PRIESTLEY IN AMERICA (P. 28) 
 
 PRIESTLEY'S move to America was in 1794, just at the time 
 when Coleridge, Lovell, and Southey were hatching the famous 
 Pantisocracy scheme which was to " realize the age of reason " 
 on the banks of the Susquehanna. They were hoping the 
 philosopher would join them, but he set up his household gods 
 at Northumberland, a little town or village in Pennsylvania. 
 
 " Lo ! Priestley there, patriot and saint and sage, 
 Him, full of years from his loved native land, 
 Statesmen bloodstained and priests idolatrous, 
 By dark lies maddening the blind multitude, 
 Drove with vain hate." 
 
 (Religious Musings.) 
 
 This is Coleridge's fiery account of Priestley's exile, written 
 in 1794, when he was in the white heat of his young revolu- 
 tionary fervour. But it is curious, when we turn to Priestley's 
 letters to his neighbours at Northumberland, to find him 
 enlarging on the rancorous vehemence with which he was 
 maligned and attacked in that land of freedom. Pennsylvania, 
 equally with Warwickshire, had its " priests idolatrous," who 
 "maddened the blind multitude" against the " saint and sage." 
 u At a Baptist Chapel," we read, " the minister burst out and 
 bade the people beware, for c a Priestley had entered the land' ; 
 then, crouching in a worshipping attitude, exclaimed, * Oh ! 
 Lamb of God, how they would pluck Thee from Thy 
 Throne.'" (Life by Rutt, ii. 263.) 
 
THE COLERIDGE ANNUITY ITS AFTER- 
 HISTORY 
 
 A CIRCUMSTANCE in the after-history of the annuity has been 
 made the subject of speculation and criticism by various writers, 
 for which reason I think it well to notice it here, though it 
 occurred some years after T. Wedgwood's death. He be- 
 queathed to Coleridge an annuity of 75 a year, being one hair 
 of the 150.! No part of the annuity had previously been settled 
 legally upon him. Mr. Dykes Campbell's statement that Tom's 
 half had been so settled is an error. This is clearly shown by 
 the language of the will. Moreover, there was no mode in which 
 such a promise could have been made legally enforceable, in the 
 absence of what lawyers call a " valuable consideration." This 
 fact had been ascertained by T. W. in the case of the annuity 
 which he gave to Leslie, and that promise was therefore embodied 
 in a simple letter, which left it binding in honour though not in 
 law. Josiah Wedgwood, indeed, in his letter of January 1798, 
 alludes to " securing " the annuity to Coleridge, but by this he 
 can only have meant arranging for its payment through a bank 
 or otherwise. The brothers cannot have forgotten what passed 
 in the Leslie case about a year previously. 
 
 Thus, after T. W.'s death, Coleridge received 75 a year 
 from Tom's executors up to the time of his death in 1834. 
 But at some time near the end of 1812 Josiah ceased paying 
 the 75 a year which he had theretofore been paying on his own 
 
APPENDIX G 255 
 
 account. It is not known what reasons led him to do this, 
 or what, if anything, passed between him and Coleridge 
 on the subject. Nothing has transpired to suggest that 
 Coleridge ever made any objection or remonstrance. A long 
 and effusive letter of his to Poole (Feb. 13, 1813 : Letters, p. 
 611) is not only free from any trace of resentment or com- 
 plaint, but overflows with expression of love and gratitude towards 
 Josiah. 
 
 Josiah's act has been criticised as having the appearance of 
 a breach of the promise made in the letter of January 1798 
 (p. 55). That view, however, rests on a strained interpreta- 
 tion of the language of the letter an interpretation incon- 
 sistent with the essential facts of the case. " Without any 
 condition annexed to it " was an unlucky phrase ; for it said, or 
 seemed to say, what the writer could not mean, while it did not 
 say what he did mean. The brothers could not have meant to 
 promise that, under any conceivable circumstances, whatever 
 Coleridge should do or not do, should be or not be, they would 
 give him ^150 a year for life. Such a promise would have been 
 merely senseless. The annuity was given for a purpose, and the 
 purpose necessarily made a condition, vague, but substantial. It 
 was not annexed to the promise, but it was inseparably bound 
 up with the transaction. Hazlitt, who was with Coleridge 
 when he accepted the offer, describes it in the words " devote 
 himself to the study of poetry and philosophy," and " to dissuade 
 him from abandoning poetry and philosophy for the ministry." 
 And nobody has ever read the story otherwise. Coleridge, in 
 accepting the offer, was in fact undertaking to occupy himself in 
 work of that kind, or at any rate in intellectual work of some kind. 
 By taking the annuity he undertook to carry out its purpose, as 
 really as the Wedgwoods undertook to give him the money. 
 When Josiah wrote " no condition annexed " he simply meant 
 to say, " We do not stipulate that you must write so many pages 
 per annum of poetry, or such and such philosophical essays ; we 
 shall not prescribe any specific task ; we wish you to be free to 
 do the work you think best worth doing ; you will best judge 
 
256 APPENDIX G 
 
 how to work and what to work at." To read the words " with 
 no condition annexed " as equivalent to " under all or any con- 
 ceivable circumstances " is to make the promise absurd. Cole- 
 ridge was about to become a Unitarian preacher. He might 
 have taken orders and become Bishop of Durham, with twenty 
 or thirty thousand a year. Or he might have turned out a 
 wholly depraved character, might have forged the Wedgwoods 
 names on bills of exchange, or become an irreclaimable profligate. 
 Will any one say that in any of such cases the brothers would 
 be bound in honour to go on paying him ^150 a year for life 
 because they did not " annex the condition" that he should 
 not become a bishop, or a convict, or a debauchee ? But we 
 do not know that the obligation he undertook was not some- 
 thing of a specific kind. For we have not before us all that 
 passed between him and the brothers in January 1798. The 
 most important sentence in Josiah's letter begins : "After what 
 my brother Thomas has written : : . " That imports Tom's 
 letter into the offer : but what his brother Thomas had 
 written we do not know, nor do we know what Coleridge 
 wrote in accepting the offer. It is possible that these lost 
 letters might give some clearer indication of what the brothers 
 hoped or expected him to do. At all events, without them we 
 do not know all that passed in 1798, any more than we know 
 what passed in 1812. 
 
 No one can now say exactly what prompted Josiah's action at 
 the latter date. But we may, I think, assume that his view on 
 the question of honour and obligation was that above expressed. 
 If he had thought himself bound in honour to go on paying he 
 would certainly have done so. He was not only a man of 
 presumed probity and honour, but a man who, during the 
 whole of a long life, was conspicuous for his large-minded 
 generosity. Remembering what Charles Darwin wrote about 
 him (" the very type of an upright man I do not believe that 
 any power upon earth would have made him swerve an inch 
 from what he considered the right course ") we may dismiss 
 the suspicion that his act was prompted by any mean or petty 
 
APPENDIX G 257 
 
 motive. In view of Coleridge's utter failure, during' all the 
 fourteen years elapsed since 1798, to make his life in any degree 
 consonant with the obligation cast on him by the annuity, he 
 must have felt himself free to consider the question afresh. In 
 going on with the payment was he doing good or harm ? His 
 brother's moiety was irrevocably given as from 1805 ; but that 
 did not forbid his considering the matter afresh so far as it con- 
 cerned his own action. Indeed he was bound so to do. That 
 he did consider it carefully is certain ; for we know, though 
 the fact comes to us only by oral tradition, that when one of his 
 sons, long afterwards, asked him why the payment ceased, he 
 replied : " I had ample reason for what I did," and would say 
 no more. He was the most reticent of men, and would 
 naturally hate to talk about that most miserable time in 
 Coleridge's life. What those words meant will be for ever a 
 secret. He probably knew much which we shall never know. 
 With such a man as Coleridge, and a man in such a state, no 
 imaginable possibility would be unbelievable. But I should not 
 myself read the words as implying any specific misdoing on his 
 part. A simpler explanation is more obvious. The most 
 essential fact in the case appears clearly in a letter of Southey to 
 Cottle, 1 7th April 1814. (This was a year or more after the 
 withdrawal, but Southey's statements evidently apply to the 
 immediately preceding years.) He is pointing out the futility 
 of a proposal made by Cottle to collect funds for giving 
 Coleridge 150 a year. "No part of Coleridge's embarrass- 
 ment arises from his wife and children, except that he has 
 insured his life for .1000 and pays the premium. He never 
 writes to them, and never opens a letter from them. . . . 
 Perhaps you are not aware of the costliness of this drug. In 
 the quantity which C. takes, it would consume more than the 
 whole which you propose to raise. A frightful consumption of 
 spirits is added. Proposals after proposals have been made to 
 him by the booksellers, and he repeatedly closed with them. 
 He is at this moment as capable of exertion as I am, and would 
 be paid as well for whatever he might be pleased to do. There 
 
 R 
 
258 APPENDIX G 
 
 are two Reviews the ' Quarterly ' and the ' Eclectic,' in both 
 of which he might have employment at ten guineas a sheet. 
 As to the former I could obtain it for him ; in the latter they 
 are urgently desirous of his assistance. He promises and does 
 nothing. . . . Nothing is wanting to make him easy in 
 circumstances and happy in himself but to leave off opium, and 
 direct a certain portion of his time to the discharge of his duties. 
 Four hours a day would suffice."* 
 
 " My case," wrote Coleridge himself, " is a species of mad- 
 ness, only that it is a derangement, an utter impotence of the 
 volition, and not of the intellectual faculties." (To Cottle, 
 26th April, 1814.) 
 
 This had been his state for some years. In February 1810 
 we find Josiah writing to Poole : " It seems the ' Friend ' is at 
 an end. I fear Col. is a lost man . . . I see the wreck of 
 genius with tender concern, but without hope." Similarly 
 Wordsworth (March 1808): "He has no voluntary power of 
 mind whatsoever, nor is he capable of acting under any con- 
 straint of duty or moral obligation." 
 
 Evidently this terrible condition, a " madness " or paralysis 
 of the will and moral sense, was not to be mended by a money 
 subsidy. If the "pitiable slavery to opium" could be ended 
 there would be no lack of money. But the subsidy was only 
 aggravating the evil, by making it easier for him to indulge in 
 the pernicious drug, easier to acquiesce in the slavery. Josiah 
 Wedgwood must have known the facts, and who can say that 
 they did not justify his conclusion ? We must not forget that, 
 at that time, the wreck of Coleridge's life must have seemed to 
 every one final and irrevocable ; though only about three years 
 later there came the turning-point; when he summoned up 
 courage to seek for protection from himself, and at length, by 
 wonderful good fortune, found himself in that haven of rest, 
 under the care of the Gillmans, which made the last eighteen 
 years of his life comparatively happy. 
 
 * Cottle's "Reminiscences, 1848," p. 37. Another letter of 
 Southey's to the same effect is quoted by Dykes Campbell, p. 204. 
 
APPENDIX G 259 
 
 Mr. Dykes Campbell's treatment of this incident (f>. 192 of 
 his book) seems to me I write it with regret, remembering 
 what we owe to him rather lacking in the care and judgment 
 which are generally so conspicuous in his work. I have noticed 
 above the mistake of fact upon which it partly rests. He also 
 remarks that " Mrs. Coleridge was the sufferer by the with- 
 drawal, for the whole (of the annuity) had been for many years 
 at her disposal." This may be true, but it hardly touches the 
 main question Josiah had to decide. Any regular aid he gave 
 the wife evidently went to remove, pro tanto^ one of the 
 husband's chief inducements to exertion. It may be said > 
 indeed, that a man in his then condition would not be 
 influenced by any such notice. But this is answered by the fact 
 that he did afterwards make the effort which led to his recovery i 
 and who can say that he was not helped thereto by what 
 Josiah did ? 
 
H 
 
 T. WEDGWOOD'S WILL 
 
 THE following is a summary made from the copy Probate at 
 Somerset House : 
 
 Will dated 13 June 1805. Proved 4 Jan. 1806. 
 
 Executors : Josiah Wedgwood, of Gunville, and Dr. Robert 
 Waring Darwin, of Shrewsbury. 
 
 The main disposition is the gift of Residue to his two 
 brothers, John and Josiah, and his three sisters, Susan Darwin, 
 Catharine, and Sarah, in fifths. 
 
 There are a number of small legacies to servants and to 
 village people at Gunville. 
 
 Bequest of furniture at Eastbury to his mother, and of plate 
 to Catharine and Sarah : his watch and seals to his nephew, 
 Josiah, son of his brother Josiah. 
 
 Bequest of annuity for life of 150 to John Leslie (to be 
 ^250 in case of his marriage), conditionally on his not having 
 from other sources more than ^200 a year ; or ^300 if married. 
 
 Power to buy an annuity for him. 
 
 Bequest of annuity for life of 75 to " Samuel Taylor 
 Coleridge, now or late of Stowey, near Bridgwater, gentle- 
 man," to be paid half-yearly, clear of all deductions except in- 
 come tax, with power to the executors to purchase an annuity 
 for him ; he not to have power to sell, assign, or mortgage it. 
 
 After this there is the following special bequest : " Whereas 
 there are several persons to whom I have given assurance of 
 
APPENDIX H 261 
 
 pecuniary assistance towards their maintenance so long as the 
 same shall be necessary and there may after my decease appear 
 claims for pecuniary remunerations and advances which said 
 several persons and the circumstances giving rise to such claims 
 are well known to my said brother Josiah Wedgwood, I do 
 therefore give and bequeath unto my said brother Josiah Wedg- 
 wood the sum of five thousand pounds Upon trust to assist such 
 persons and satisfy such claims according to his own discretion." 
 
A NOTE ON THE VALUE OF PHOTO- 
 GRAPHY TO THE WORLD 
 
 IF some competent person would take the pains to sum up the 
 multifarious uses now made of photography, the hundred ways 
 in which it aids study, research, and work of various kinds, 
 scientific, artistic, social, legal, and many more, such a list 
 would give us some measure of the importance of the art to the 
 world. But it would be a task demanding an almost encyclo- 
 paedic knowledge of modern activities. To take one illustra- 
 tion only, the use of the camera in observatories seems to be 
 daily disclosing fresh wonders in stellar astronomy, wonders 
 which no human eye, however laboriously applied to the eye- 
 piece of a telescope, could ever have discovered. A quite 
 different aspect of the question may we not, perhaps, say 
 a higher ? certainly one too often forgotten is vividly set 
 forth in some words of John Richard Green, the historian, 
 which I will make the epilogue to this little book. They are 
 words which would have pleased the sympathetic soul of Tom 
 Wedgwood. Green was, it may be remembered, for many 
 years a hardworking clergyman in a very poor district of East 
 London. He is giving a sketch of the noble work of Edward 
 Denison in that region (" Stray Studies," p. 13) : 
 
 " What do you look on as the greatest boon that has been 
 conferred on the poorer classes in later years ? " said a friend to 
 
APPENDIX I 263 
 
 me one day, after expatiating on the rival claims of schools, 
 missions, shoeblack brigades, and a host of other philanthropic 
 efforts for their assistance. I am afraid I sank in his estimation 
 when I answered, " sixpenny photographs." But any one who 
 knows what the worth of family affection is among the lower 
 classes, and who has seen the array of little portraits stuck over 
 a labourer's fireplace, still gathering together into one the 
 "home" that life is always parting the boy that has "gone 
 to Canada," the girl " out at service," the little one with the 
 golden hair that sleeps under the daisies, the old grandfather in 
 the country will perhaps feel with me that in counteracting 
 the tendencies, social and industrial, which every day are 
 sapping the healthier family affections, the sixpenny photograph 
 is doing more for the poor than all the philanthropists in the 
 world. 
 
INDEX 
 
 ABNEY, Sir W. de W., K.C.B., 198. 
 
 Alderson, Georgina Lady, 1 7977. 
 
 tl Alfred," Cottle's epic poem, 108. 
 
 Allen, Catherine, see Mackintosh, Catherine. 
 
 Allen, Elizabeth, see Wedgwood, Elizabeth. 
 
 Allen, Fanny (1781-1875), sister of T. W.'s sisters-in-law, her "Re- 
 collections," 1 24 ; her view of Poole's proposal for Kitty Wedg- 
 wood, ioi#. ; scene with Coleridge at Cresselly, 124, 125. 
 
 Allen, Jane, see Wedgwood, Jane. 
 
 Annuity given by J. and T. Wedgwood to Coleridge, 55, 399 ; 
 Wordsworth's description of it, 59 ; parallel, or partly parallel 
 cases, 59, 59. ; an immediate result, 61 ; incident in its later 
 history, 254, 599. 
 
 Arago, Fran9ois (1786-1853), 231, 232, 233, 237. 
 
 BANKS, Sir Joseph, P.R.S. (1741-1820), 17. 
 
 Beddoes, Dr. Thomas (1760-1808), 33 ; the Pneumatic Institute, 
 
 34, 599; his medical theories, living with cows, &c., 35 ; his 
 
 death, 183. 
 
 Thomas Lovell (1803-1849), 330. 
 
 Beethoven, 59^., 6on. 
 
 Bell, Sir Charles, 211. 
 
 Blacklock, Dr. (1721-1791), blind poet, 7, jn. 
 
 Blanquart-Evrard, 233, 236, 237. 
 
 Boddington, friend of Mackintosh, 160. 
 
 Bull, use of, in child training, 209. 
 
 CAMPBELL, Thomas (1744-1844), poet ; at the King of Clubs, 97 ; 
 his account of T. W., 144, 145, 163. 
 
266 INDEX 
 
 Charles, J. A. C. (1746-1823), of Paris, supposed photographer, 229 ; 
 his silhouettes variously described, 231-239; summary of dis- 
 cussion, 239. 
 
 Chisolm, Alexander, T. W.'s teacher in Chemistry, &c., 5-7; ad- 
 vises as to his studies, 8. 
 
 Coleridge, Sara, the poet's wife, 121, 126. 
 
 Sara, the poet's daughter, i2/. 
 
 S. T. (1772-1834) first acquaintance with T. W., 49; 
 
 his fantastic scheme of life, 53 ; offered an annuity by the 
 Wedgwoods, 54^.; accepts it, 57 ; a first result, his stay at 
 Gottingen, 61 ; interpreter of Germany to England, 6in. ; J. S. 
 Mill's estimate of him, 63 ; Carlyle's -satire, 64*7. ; on Malthus, 
 69; life in London, 74, 79; life at Keswick, 102-110; 
 " Christabel," 105, io6. ; "accursed Wallenstein," 105; es- 
 tranged from his wife, 112, 114; with T. W. in S. Wales and 
 at Cresselly, 121-126; reading "The Leechgatherer," 125 ; 
 cream and music, 123 ; at Keswick with T. W., 129 ; his feel- 
 ings when among the hills, 132, 133 ; Kitty Wedgwood's 
 criticism of his character, 139 ; his character of Hazlitt, 146 ; 
 sick at Grasmere, the Wordsworths' goodness to him, 167 ; 
 leaving for Malta, 170 ; last letter to T. W., 172 ; hearing of 
 Beddoes' death, 183 ; "The Friend," 180,181. 
 
 Letters of: to T.Wedgwood, 74, 77, 113, 118, 132, 135, 
 
 137, 146, 166, 169, 170; to Josiah Wedgwood, 68, 93, 102, 
 
 104, no ; to Poole, 120 ; to his wife, 121. 
 Cote House, abode of John Wedgwood, 42 
 Cottle, Joseph (1770-1853), printer and early friend of Coleridge : 
 
 his mutilation of Coleridge's letters, xii., xiii. ; Lamb's amusing 
 
 description of his Epic, 108, 109, 
 Cows, living with, a medical regime, 36. 
 Crompton, Dr., 168. 
 
 DAGUERRE, Dominique, agent of Josiah Wedgwood, 244. 
 
 Louis (1789-1 85 1 ), inventor of Daguerrotypie, 202, 2020. ; 
 
 a fanciful theory about him, 244. 
 
 Darwin, Charles (1809-1882), T. W.'s nephew, 212, 213, 213*. ; 
 his admiration for his uncle Josiah Wedgwood, 41. 
 - Mrs. Charles (1808-1896), T. W.'s niece, 420. 
 
 Erasmus, physician and poet (1731-1802), father-in-law of 
 
 T. W.'s sister Susannah, 6, 212. 
 
INDEX 267 
 
 Darwin, Robert Waring, physician (1766-1848), husband of T.W.'s 
 
 sister Susannah, 40, 42, loin. 
 Davy, Sir Humphry, famous chemist (1778-1829), 37, 187; his 
 
 lack of imagination, 194; his "Account "of T.W.'s photography, 
 
 189 sqq. ; circumstances of its so-called publication, 196-197 ; 
 
 his slackness in the matter, 198, 200, 201. 
 
 Dr. John, brother of Sir H. D., 198. 
 
 Day, Thomas (1748-1789), 209. 
 
 De Quincey (1785-1859) ; his half-mythical account of T. W., 36 ; 
 
 description of T. Poole, 50. 
 
 Derwentwater, scenery about, described by Coleridge, 103-110. 
 Dick, Mr. ("David Copperfield "), 1950. 
 Drewe, Caroline, sister of T. W.'s sisters-in-law, 179. 
 her daughters, 1 790. 
 
 EDER, Dr., writer on photography, 217, 224^., 236, 239-246, 247. 
 Edgeworth, Maria, 420. 
 
 R. Lovell, 6. 
 
 Edinburgh University, in 1786-1788, the Wedgwoods' experiences, 
 7-10. 
 
 FRANCE in 1792 : T. W. in Paris, 25. 
 
 GERMAN, begun to be studied in England, 211. 
 language and philosophy unknown to T. W., 211. 
 
 Godwin, William (1756-1836), author of " Political Justice," 290. ; 
 gets money from T. W., declines a copying machine, 29, 30 ; 
 he and T. W. agree best at a distance, 3 1 ; correcting T. W.'s 
 English, 31 ; in London, 97 ; helped by T. W., 177. 
 
 Greta Hall, Coleridge's abode at Keswick ; set Coleridge. 
 
 HARRISON, Mr. Jerome, 199, 
 
 Hazlitt, William (1778-1830), 57, 1450., 146. 
 
 Horner, Francis (1778-1817), 160. 
 
 Hunt, Robert, 237. 
 
 Hutchinson, Sarah, Wordsworth's sister-in-law, 133. 
 
 INOCULATION, T. W.'s efforts to spread the practice, 44. 
 Invasion, alarms of, 1803-1804, 150 sqq. 
 
 KANT, 211. 
 
268 INDEX 
 
 Keir, James, chemist, 6, 19. 
 "King of Clubs," 97. 
 
 LA FAYETTE, 25. 
 
 Lawson, Sir G., Coleridge's neighbour, 103 ; offered a buffalo and 
 rhinoceros, 108. 
 
 Leslie (Sir) John (1766-- 183 2) physicist, 1 1 ; at Etruria to instruct 
 the Wedgwoods, 11-16; his grand epistolary style, 11-15 > 
 has an annuity from T. W., 46, 47 ; offers marriage to Sarah 
 Wedgwood, 80 sqq. ; his book on Heat, 173. 
 
 Lodore, scenery about, described by Coleridge, 133. 
 
 Lowther, Lord, 156. 
 
 Lunar, miscalled " lunatic," meetings, 247. 
 
 Luff, Charles, and his wife, 126, 175. 
 
 MACKINTOSH, Sir James (1765-1 832), brother-in-law of T. W.'s sisters- 
 in-law, 43 ; lecturing, 80 ; founds the " King of Clubs," 97 ; 
 discussing metaphysics with T. W., 1 1 1 ; promises to edit his 
 philosophical work, 157-159, 207, 208 ; goes to India, a "send- 
 off" by family and friends, 157 ; learning German, 211, 537*. ; 
 possibly editor of an essay by T. W., 21 in. 
 Catherine, Lady, sister of T. W.'s sisters-in-law, 43, 160. 
 
 Mayer and Pierson, MM., 234. 
 
 Meteyard, Eliza : her life of Josiah Wedgwood, 6n. ; mythical account 
 of T. W.'s photography, 241 sqq. 
 
 NAPIER, Macvey, biographer of Leslie, 1740. 
 
 Napoleon, his seizure of English travellers, 141; threatened invasion, 
 
 154, 154*. 
 Niepce, Nicphore, the first successful photographer, 202, 2O2., 227. 
 
 CERSTED, his discovery, 195. 
 
 POOLE, Thomas (1765-1837), 49 ; described by De Quincey, 50 ; 
 the link between Coleridge and the Wedgwoods, 51; his action 
 as to the Coleridge annuity, 57 ; sorrow at failure to get the 
 Wedgwoods to settle in Somerset, 67 ; seeking to marry Kitty 
 Wedgwood, 98 ; close attachment to T. W., 67, 68. 
 
 Priestley, Joseph (1733-1804), the famous chemist, 6 ; helping T. W. 
 in his investigations, 19 ; settles in America, 28, 253 ; his 
 account of Schulze's word-pattern experiment, 225. 
 
INDEX 269 
 
 READE, J. B., photographer, 204, 205. 
 Rogers, Samuel, poet (1763-1855), 97. 
 
 " Royal Institution of Great Britain " : Wedgwood's light-pictures 
 done in its laboratory, 187 ; its early history, 187, 197. 
 
 SALISBURY, The late Marchioness of, 179. 
 
 Sandford, Mrs. H. : her memoir of T. Poole, 49. 
 
 Schiendel, Dr., writer on photography, 217, 226, 236. 
 
 Schulze, Hermann (1687-1744), described as the inventor of pho- 
 
 tography, 218-227. 
 Sharp, Richard (1759-1834), known as "Conversation Sharp," 17, 
 
 1 8, 97, 163 ; his view of T. W.'s metaphysics, 209. 
 Smith, Robert or " Bobus," 97. 
 Smith, Sydney, 157 ; on the comparative virtues of the Allen sisters, 
 
 159, 1 60. 
 
 Stewart, Dugald, 125, 125^. 
 Switzerland, T. W.'s tour in, 45. 
 
 TALBOT, W. H. Fox (1800-1871), his photographic discovery, 203, 
 2O3//. ; a point in his process obtained indirectly from T. W t) 
 204, 205 ; author of a photograph falsely attributed to 
 T. W., ,43. 
 
 Tennyson, " In Memoriam" and Evolution, 213^. 
 
 Tissandier, G., 234, 235. 
 
 Tobin, James, friend of Wordsworth, 520.; 97, 143;*. 
 - John, 
 
 UNDERWOOD, T. W.'s travelling companion, 140. 
 
 VOLUNTEERING in 1803-1804 : 150 sqq. ; at Etruria, 156 ; " Wedg- 
 wood's Mountaineers," 152. 
 
 WATT, Gregory, 97. 
 
 Watt, James (1736-1819), 6, 73 ; letter as to T. W.'s light-pictures 
 186. 
 
 Wedgwood, Bessy : see Wedgwood, Elizabeth. 
 - Catharine ("Kitty") T. W.'s sister (1774-1823), 40; 
 loiw., 160 ; her view of Coleridge's character, 139. 
 - Elizabeth ( Bessy "), born Allen, wife of T. W.'s brother 
 Josiah (1764-1846), 40 ; her character, 42 ; T. W.'s affection 
 for her, 162-164 5 T. W. in her nursery, 165. 
 
270 INDEX 
 
 Wedgwood, Hensleigh, (1803-1891) nephew of T. W., i86. 
 
 Jane, born Allen (1771-1836), wife of T. W.'s brother 
 
 John, 40, 42. 
 
 John (1766-1844), T. W.'s eldest brother, 2, 3, 40 ; a bad 
 
 financier, leaves Cote, 173 ; founder of Horticultural Society, 
 
 173*. 
 
 Josiah (1730-1795), father of T. W., 6, 6n. 
 
 Josiah, (1769-1843), T. W.'s elder brother, 7 sqq., 10; his 
 
 close union with Tom, 41 ; his character, Charles Darwin's 
 account, 41 ; offer of 100 to Coleridge, 54 ; offer of annuity 
 to Coleridge, 54 sqq. ; Sheriff of Dorset during the invasion 
 alarms, 153 ; his action as to Coleridge in 1812, 254 sqq. 
 
 - Josiah, Tom's nephew (1795-1880), 165. 
 
 Sarah (17 -1815), Tom's mother, 153-156. 
 
 Sarah (1776-1856), Tom's sister, 40-43 ; sought in marriage 
 
 by Leslie, 80, sqq. ; her last years, 85^.; her "angelic kind- 
 ness," 163. 
 
 - Sarah Elizabeth (1793-1880), daughter of Tom's brother 
 Josiah : records Fanny Allen's recollections of T. W., 124 ; as 
 a baby, 165. 
 
 Susannah (1765-1817), Tom's eldest sister, wife of Dr. R. 
 
 Darwin ; 40, 212. 
 
 Tom (1771-1 805) : birth and boyhood, I -6; a letter eet. 12, 
 
 2 ; offers to manage his father's pools, 4 ; at Edinb. Univ., 7-10 ; 
 working at the Pottery, 10,27; at Natural Philosophy, 10; 
 earnest views of Life, 13; working at physics, 17 sqq. ; heat 
 and light, Roy. Soc. papers, 17 sqq. and 251, 252; experiments 
 in vacuo, 21-23 ; has to give up experimenting, 21 ; wretched 
 health, 23, 24, and passim; in Paris, 1792, 25; thinks of 
 America, 28; inhaling laughing-gas, 37; butcher's shop story, 
 36, 37; preaching inoculation, 44; gives annuity to Leslie, 46, 
 47 ; acquaintance with Poole and Coleridge, 49 ; and with 
 Wordsworth, 5 1 ; search for place of abode, 64-67 ; settles in 
 Dorset, 72 ; voyage to W. Indies, brothers' first separation, 86 ; 
 letter from Martinique to his family, 89 ; return from W. 
 Indies, 93; temporarily better, 94, 95; London Life, 97; 
 metaphysics, in ; foreign tour, in ; to Paris, 1892, 112; in 
 S. Wales with Coleridge, 121; at Cresselly, 124; seeing 
 Wordsworth at Grasmere, gives Wordsworth an impression of 
 "sublimity," 127 ; terrible despondency, 128 ; to Geneva and 
 
INDEX 271 
 
 flight home, narrowly escapes being detenu, 14?; forms a 
 Volunteer corps, 151; near despair, 1 60; trying housework, 
 146 ; scheme of seclusion, 161 ; at his worst, completely sane, 
 172 ; difficulties as to travel-companion, 173 ; to Ulleswater 
 and the Luffs, 175 ; thinks of buying a place there, 176 ; help- 
 ing friends, 176, 177 ; a painless end, 179. 
 
 various estimates of his character : by Coleridge, in " The 
 
 Friend," 181 ; by Coleridge in letters, 122, 182; by Campbell, 
 144, 145 ; by Sydney Smith, 180; by Wordsworth, 127 ; Fanny 
 Allen, 124; Bessy Wedgwood, 180. 
 
 his photographic work; date doubtful, 20, 186, 187; 
 
 described by Davy, 187, 189-194; the so-called publication of 
 Davy's Account, 195, 197; his process the germ of present- 
 day processes, 198; mythical story of his work, 241-245. 
 
 his Psychology and Metaphysics ; Pref., 207, 2070., 210 ; 
 
 Rousseauism, 208 ; child-training methods, 209 ; Enquiry into 
 notion of distance, 21 in. ; his Sociology pre-Darwinian, a 
 personal link with Evolution, 212, 213. 
 
 Wordsworth William (1770-1850) : T. W.'s first acquaintance with 
 him, 52 ; his feeling as to the annuity to Coleridge, 59; his 
 legacy from Raisley Calvert, 59;^"The Leechgatherer " read 
 by Coleridge at Cresselly, 1 25 ; his impression of T. W.'s personal 
 appearance, 127; with " Wedgwood Mountaineers," 152; 
 "Lyrical Ballads," 52. 
 
 Dorothy (1771-1855), 49-52. 
 
 Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON &* Co. 
 London &* Edinburgh 
 
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