Romantic Chasms
Sir, – A recent article of Mr. Geoffrey Grigson’s draws attention to the possible connexion between the Gothic garden at Hafod and Coleridge’s Kubla Khan (Cornhill, Spring 1947); suggesting that Coleridge probably visited Hafod in July/August, 1794, and may have visited it again in May, 1798.
Another Gothic garden much nearer Stowey may also have played some part in forming the landscape of Kubla Khan. On April 15, 1798, Dorothy Wordsworth made the following entry in her Alfoxden journal:
“Set forward after breakfast to Crookham [apparently in a last vain attempt to renew the lease on Alfoxden]...Walked about the squire’s grounds. Quaint waterfalls about, about which Nature was very successfully striving to make beautiful what art had deformed – ruins, hermitages, &c., &c. In spite of all these things, the dell romantic and beautiful, though everywhere planted with unnaturalized trees. Happily, we cannot shape the huge hills, or carve out the valleys according to our fancy.” Three days later Dorothy “met Coleridge returned from his brother’s [i.e., from Ottery St. Mary]. On April 3 Coleridge had walked to Crookham with William and Dorothy, but there is no mention of “the squire’s grounds” on that occasion.
On the walking tour with Hucks in Wales, Coleridge wrote on July 15, 1794, a charmingly ironical comment upon the melancholy practice of playing flutes in ruins at night fall (Letters, ed. E. H. Coleridge: i, 80). On January 20, 1798, Coleridge finished reading Lewis’s The Castle Spectre (Letters i, 236, note) and wrote a review of it. It is not unlikely that Dorothy would repeat to her friend her observations upon the Crookham garden. There is no evidence that Coleridge visited the garden; and Dorothy’s journal entry suggests that it may have been her first visit. But the wording of the journal entry recalls the wording of Kubla Khan.
The late Professor Lowes traced the details of the “deep romantic chasm” to Bruce’s Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile. The coincidence of words in the passages quoted by Lowes makes an impressive case. But Coleridge was an exceptionally acute and sensitive observer of natural phenomena, and it would be surprising indeed if a landscape as distinct and vivid as that of Kubla Khan were not firmly rooted in direct observation. The language of “the deep romantic chasm” may indeed suggest Bruce. But that language has, I believe, crystallized around personal observation. Coleridge probably visited Hafod in 1794. Even if he did not see the Crookham garden he must have heard of it from Dorothy. The date of Dorothy’s entry is suggestive, especially if we accept Mr. Lawrence Hanson’s dating of the composition of Kubla Khan as May, 1798 (S. T. Coleridge: The Early Years. p. 259). Coleridge had cited Bruce’s Travels as early as 1796 (Coleridge’s Poems, ed. E. H. Coleridge. Oxford 1912: i, 119). I think that Dorothy’s remarks about Crookham recalled both Hafod and Bruce’s Travels. Purchas was the catalyst.
The squire may not have been able “to shape the huge hills, or carve out the valleys according to [his] fancy”; but Coleridge could when his subconscious mind was preparing a poem in a dream.