26 SEPTEMBER 1931, Page 9

Incongruities

S. T. C.—II

BY E. M. FORSTER.

HE went by coach from Cambridge to London, got off at Holborn, bought a ticket for the Irish Lottery (not yet illegal), composed a poem on it beginning-

Promptress of unnumber'd sighs, 0 snatch that circling bandage from thine eyes,

—sent the poem to the Morning Chronicle, went to the King's Mews, and enlisted.

An old schoolfellow was the first to find out what had happened ; then it got round to the family ; and as soon as his- brothers started writing to him he fell to pieces. He rushed at once from heroics to morbidity (" Mine is a sensibility gangrened with inward corruption "), to mawkishness (" Alas my poor mother ! "—whom he did not like), to self-abasement (" Oh, my wayward soul ! I have been a fool even to madness ! "), to solemn fudge (" In a mind which vice has not utterly divested of sen- sibility, few occurrences can inflict a more acute pang than the receiving proofs of tenderness and love where only resentment and reproach were expected and de- served "), and finally to a deprecating and uneasy gaiety. But his troubles were not at an end. He had to be got out of the Dragoons, and it proved to be less easy than getting in ; and he had to be got back into Cambridge, if Cambridge would receive him.

His brothers, one of whom held a commission, got in touch with the War Office, and, so far as we know, it is through this channel that he was released. But he never was very truthful, and in after years he used to tell dramatic tales. They centre round one of his own officers, a Captain Ogle. According to one of these tales, he was standing sentry outside a ballroom when Captain Ogle, who was passing in with another officer, quoted two lines in Greek, and ascribed them to Euripides. " I hope your honour will excuse me," said Trooper Comberbacke, " but the lines you have repeated are not quite accurately cited ; moreover, instead of being in Euripides they will be found in the second antistrophe of the Oedipus of Sophocles." In another version, it is through Latin that he attracts the Captain's attention ; he wrote up some pathetic lines in the stable where he had failed to groom his horse. At this point Miss Mitford, authoress of " Our Village," takes up the thread. Captain Ogle's father and Miss Mitford's father were friends. They were at dinner at Reading and Captain Ogle was with them. To amuse them he told them of the scholar-trooper and his yearnings for release, but says Miss Mitford, " kind and clever as Captain Ogle was, he was so indolent a man that without a flapper the matter might have slept in his hands till the Greek Kalends." The company exerted themselves. The difficulty was to find a substitute, for troopers were scarce. One of the servants who was waiting at the table was called, and agreed to serve for a suitable honorarium. The matter was fixed up there and then, and so grateful was Comberbacke that in after years he looked through two of Miss Mitford's works, entitled, Christina and Blanch, and gave her good advice, which was, however, of no use to her, she feared.

As release approached, he became more and more schoolboyish and hysterical. He was afraid of annoying his brothers further, particularly George the clergyman, and now asks advice on every detail. Should he, or should he not, order new clothes ?

" They are gone irrevocably. My shirts, which I have with me, are, all but one, worn to rags, mere rags ; their texture was ill adapted to the labour of the stables . . . I have ordered therefore a pair of breeches, which will be nineteen shillings, a waistcoat at twelve shillings, a pair of shoes at seven shillings and four pence. Besides these I must have a hat. Have I done wrong in ordering these things ? I have so seldom acted right that in every step I take of my own accord I tremble lest I should be wrong. I forgot in the above account to mention a flannel waistcoat ; it will be six shillings. The military dress is almost oppressively warm, and so very ill as I am at present I think it imprudent to hazard cold."

Besides the clothes, there is a terrible confession about some books : lie sold books that were worth forty shillings for fourteen ; lie will do all he can to buy them back. Monover, should he write a contrite letter to Dr. Pearce, the Master of his college, imploring to be taken back, or would it show truer humility if he remained dumb ? His brothers seem to have behaved decently—it cost them at least forty guineas to buy his discharge ; and the college authorities were sympathetic and made no difficulties in receiving him. Some censure had to be administered, and, consequently, the Register of Jesus, Cambridge, contains the famous entry : " 1794 Apr. : Coleridge admonitus est per magistrum in praesentia sociorum." And now you know who Comberbacke is if you did not know it before.

As soon as Comberbacke felt himself Coleridge again, he began to perk up. He had really been treated most leniently, but " Dr. Pearce behaved with great asperity," he complains, and has confined him to college for a month and ordered him to translate the works of Demetrius Phalereus. " All the fellows tried to persuade the Master to leniency, but in vain." Then he turns cheeky : " With- out the least affectation, I applaud his conduct and think nothing of it. The confinement is nothing. I have the field and grove of the College to walk in, and what can I wish more ? What do I wish more ? Nothing. The Demetrius is dry." He gets up at 5.0 a.m. ; he has dropped all his old acquaintances ; he is finishing a Greek Ode ; really, his brother need not worry about him any more.

The rooms he occupied at Jesus' are still to be seen. They are in the front court, on the ground floor—charming rooms—and Malthus, if one seeks for a contrast, once occupied the rooms opposite. It is natural to assume that after his military career he would settle quietly down. But it is dangerous to assume anything about Coleridge. If life is a lesson, he never learnt it. He did not settle down to his Demetrius, he did not proceed to his degree, and in the autumn of that same year the College register contains a second Latin entry, to the effect that Coleridge went away and did not return.

He had disgraced himself irretrieVably, and three years later he wrote the Ancient Maiiner.