Private Lives of the Ancient Mariner by Molly Lefebure

Author:Molly Lefebure
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Coleridge, psychology, domestic life, family, children, opium, depression, narcissism, letters, diaries, poems, dysfuntion, cruelty, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Sara Coleridge, Wordsworth, Southey, Hartley Coleridge, Derwent Coleridge
Publisher: The Lutterworth Press
Published: 2014-06-11T00:00:00+00:00

20. The Vale of Elysium

Let us, before Coleridge and his family take up residence there, look a little more closely at this idyllic spot which STC had earlier, in one of his prophetic moments, envisaged as an ideal dwelling place for Hartley; a land of

. . . lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags

Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds.

Historically Keswick owed its prosperity to the woollen trade and mining, the western fells surrounding it being rich in minerals. The driving force of the old Lakeland industries was water; water descending the fell sides in cascades or leaping bounding brooks or becks as they are always called in the Old Norse language which has played such a large part in Cumbria speech. A waterfall of any size or description is always termed a force. Some are famous cascades, such as Aira Force or Scale Force while others are little waterfalls in the becks, (Coleridge loved to talk of cateracts as opposed to kittyracts). Before modern plumbing brought running water into domiciles, Cumbrians either had to draw water from wells or carry it home from the nearest beck. In order to save time, local housewives were in the habit of placing a large jug under the nearest handy force. Hartley loved to see these jugs and called the little waterfalls under which they stood ‘Jug Forces’. In this way, the Lake District for him became the land of Jug Forces, which became transposed into Jugforcia; and as Jugforcia expanded in Hartley’s imagination into an important realm or state, of which he was the head as well as the inventor, Jugforcia became Ejuxria (perhaps Robert Southey had something to do with this?) The woollen trade, mills and miners still flourished when the Coleridges went to live there, but a new industry, one hitherto unknown and unthought of, was in the making: tourism. By the 1780s Keswick was increasingly becoming a centre for the Picturesque Tourists, or Lakers, as they were popularly called. A particularly enterprising Keswickian, one Peter Crosthwaite, a local man who had served for several years in the navy of the East India Company, upon his return home to Keswick plunged without hesitation into what today would be termed the promotion of Keswick as a centre for Picturesque Tourism. He produced and sold maps, and Eolian harps (or lutes, as they were sometimes called) and opened a highly successful museum of local curiosities and antiquities: a boon for visitors marooned in Keswick on a wet day – a not uncommon occurrence. Two further schemes were particularly close to his heart. One was the construction of a pony road up Latrigg to facilitate the progress of tourist parties making the ascent of Skiddaw on horseback (horses and guides to be provided by associates of Crosthwaite); the second scheme was to have a recognised and acclaimed ‘Crosthwaite’s viewing-station’, or landscape observatory, to vie with the seven Derwent Water stations recommended by Thomas West’s celebrated Guide to the Lakes (first published in 1778 and already a runaway best seller).

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