Memoirous

Samuel Taylor lived to age 61 in a time when this was considered a rip old age, but his entire life he was plagued with health problems. Namely mental illness. At the time bi-polar wasn’t a thing, yet Coleridge had all the symptoms. A bout with rheumatic fever in childhood eventually led to a dependence upon opium (laudanum) and alcohol. When touring Dove Cottage, William Wordsworth’s residence in the Lake District, Grasmere, for 8 years, also brought me back into the orbit of ST Coleridge, as he was a perpetual houseguest for those 8 years. I remembered while touring the cottage that Coleridge was pretty unstable, an eccentric creative genius. The guide made mention that often Coleridge would cry out in his sleep. Scream, shout, holler. The bedrooms were like little boxes, right next to each other. There wasn’t a lot of room to accommodate someone with night terrors. This would have had to have impacted the entire household. Yet, he was apparently welcomed. Throughout his l...