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Updated: June 26, 2025
Poole's account of his conversations, &c., in Prance, are very interesting and instructive. If your inclination lead you hither you would be very comfortable here. But I am ready at an hour's warning; ready in heart and mind, as well as in body and moveables. I am, dear Wedgewood, most truly yours, S. T. Coleridge. Thomas Wedgewood, Esq." "Stowey, Feb. 10, 1803. My dear Wedgewood,
He wrote lovingly of the place: "And now, beloved Stowey, I behold Thy Church-tower, and methinks, the four huge elms Clustering, which mark the mansion of my friend; And close behind them, hidden from my view, Is my own lovely cottage, where my babe And my babe's mother dwell in peace." Dorothea and I were not sure that Mrs. Coleridge enjoyed the cottage as much as he did.
Your ever affectionate friend. "Stowey, Sept. 1797. My very dear Cottle, Your illness afflicts me, and unless I receive a full account of you by Milton, I shall be very uneasy, so do not fail to write. Herbert Croft is in Exeter gaol! This is unlucky. Poor devil! He must now be unpeppered. We are all well. Wordsworth is well. Hartley sends a grin to you? He has another tooth!
Early, therefore, in the year 1797 Coleridge, accompanied by Charles Lloyd, removed to Nether Stowey in Somersetshire, where he occupied a cottage placed at his disposal by Mr. Poole. His first employment in his new abode appears to have been the preparation of the second edition of his poems. To the new edition were added the preface already quoted from, and a prose introduction to the sonnets.
The lover of Wordsworth who follows its deep umbrageous drive to the point where the house, the park around it, and the Quantocks above them suddenly break upon the view, sees to-day very much what Wordsworth's visitors saw when they trudged up from Stowey to commune with him in 1797.
Soon after the Ancient Mariner was written, and some time before the volume which was to contain it appeared, Coleridge quitted Stowey for Shrewsbury to undertake the duties of a Unitarian preacher in that town. This was in the month of January 1798, and it seems pretty certain, though exact dates are not to be ascertained, that he was back again at Stowey early in the month of February.
Coleridge repaired to his own calm retreat at Stowey, from which place he sent me the following letter. "Stowey, 1796. Dear Cottle, I write under great agony of mind, Charles Lloyd being very ill.
And thus these ignoramuses drove from their village, a greater ornament than will ever again be found amongst them. In order to continue the smile on the reader's countenance, I may be allowed to state a trifling circumstance, which at this moment forces itself on my recollection. A visit to Mr. Coleridge, at Stowey, in the year 1797, had been the means of my introduction to Mr. Wordsworth.
Thomas Poole of Stowey, with whom he had formed what was destined to be one of the longest and closest friendships of his life.
Coleridge reaching his new abode, I was gratified by receiving from him the following letter. "Stowey, 1796. My dear Cottle, We arrived safe. Our house is set to rights. We are all wife, bratling, and self, remarkably well. Mrs. Coleridge likes Stowey, and loves Thomas Poole and his mother, who love her.
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