Angels and Absences: Child Deaths in the Nineteenth Century (18 page)

Read Angels and Absences: Child Deaths in the Nineteenth Century Online

Authors: Laurence Lerner

Tags: #History, #Modern, #19th Century, #Social Science, #Death & Dying, #test

 
Page 44
And such my infant's latest sigh!
Oh tell, rude stone! the passer by
That here the pretty babe doth lie,
Death sang to sleep with Lullaby.
Once again, Death is doing the child a good turn, but not, this time, for Christian reasons. There is no Christianity at all in this proto-Freudian poem about the satiety of the child removed from the breast, which Freud would later compare with sexual satiety (and which in its turn has often enough been compared to death). The parallel with the first epitaph consists in the wiliness of Death. The baptismal service and the bliss of being breast-fed both contain a promise of ensuing happiness, that of heaven in the first, of sleep in the second. Death hears the service, sees the infant, and in both cases fulfils the promise in a way we did not expect but cannot logically object to. He has played a benign trick on usor rather a trick that should be benign to the Christian, and will seem a bad joke to the this- worldly reader.
In neither of these poems is there any statement that living in the world is a danger from which the child has been released, as there is in the earliest of Coleridge's three child epitaphs:
Ere Sin could blight or Sorrow fade,
Death came with friendly care:
The opening Bud to Heaven conveyed
And bade it blossom
there
.
The promise that Death decides to grant immediately, which was textual in the first poem and physiological in the second, is now presented through the image of plucking (or transplanting) a flower, with, this time, an explicit mention of the dangers of living on. Though these dangers are not mentioned in the other two epitaphs, it would not be misreading to import them: it could even be claimed that they are clearly impliedwhy else would Death be doing a kindly act? (In the reversal I have proposed, where Death's motive is malevolent, the view of life as a vale of tears and danger is still implied: In that case, Death is not rescuing the infant, but cunningly exploiting the logic of such a view).
What Coleridge merely implies is spelled out at great length by Hemans: her poem is a celebration of Death's benign rescue. It too uses the
 
Page 45
image of a flower being transplanted, and as in Coleridge's epitaph the flower blooms only in infancy; she then develops the implication that it can go on blooming in Heaven. The image clearly springs from otherworldliness, the conviction that what happens in this world is of only minor or temporary importance; or, more strongly still, that life on earth is a corrupting experience, from which we should be glad to be rescued. If our true fulfillment lies in Heaven, then the sooner we get there the better: suicide needs to be forbidden to Christians because a true Christian ought naturally to desire to die as soon as possible. The child, too young to be tempted by suicide, was lucky to be given immediate access to Heaven, without having to sin in order to get there. And if this world is not merely a delay but actually a danger, then to dwell in it might diminish our chances of reaching Heaven at all. Hemans's poem does not quite say that; but it does say that if the child had lived, then its brightness would have been "stained with passion or with grief":
Now not a sullying breath can rise,
To dim thy glory in the skies.
These lines, if scrutinized, seem to say that there are degrees of being saved: that those unfortunate enough to live longer would have their glory "stained"presumably meaning either that they will be less glorious as angels or (more probably) that our memory of them will include the imperfections of being human as well as the fact that they are now in Heaven. The lines do not quite say that their chances of attaining Heaven will be diminished if they live onan opinion we shall encounter later.
Before we leave Coleridge, we ought to know that he did actually lose an infant son. So as well as exploring the implications of meaning that his epitaphs offer, we can relate them to the poet himself. Coleridge spent the winter of 17981799 in Germany, learning the language and collecting material for one of the many proposed books he never completed, a life of Lessing. He left his wife Sara and their two small sons in Nether Stowey, where their friends the Pooles kept an eye on her. While he was away, his infant son Berkeley was inoculated against smallpox, and the inoculation went wrong; he grew feverish, and the pustules began to appear on the skin by hundreds. Sara was distracted, especially since she herself caught a violent cold ("I was seized with a pain in my eye; it in a few hours became quite closedmy face and neck swollen, my head swimming")
5
, as well as
 
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finding that the pustules had broken out on her nipples. It looked as if the child would die: he recovered, then a month or so later was seized with a violent suffocation and fever, from which he did not recover, dying in February 1799. During this long trouble, Thomas Poole insisted that Coleridge should not be distracted from his studies. He urged Sara not to tell him of the child's illness (which meant that for a long time she did not write at all), and he himself wrote one deliberately misleading letter, assuring Coleridge that his family were well. Sara was not, however, able to stop herself writing a long truthful account in November, followed by another in December when Berkeley seemed to be recovering, in which she admits that Poole
insists
on my not telling you about the child until he is quite wellI am sorry I let my feelings escape me soBe assured, my dear, that I am as comfortable as my situation (with respect to the child) will admit, and that I am truly glad that you are not here to witness his sufferings, as you could not possibly do more for the boy than has been already done for him.
Coleridge eventually learned the news of Berkeley's death in a letter from Poole, written on March 15.
The contrasts revealed by this three-cornered correspondence are very sharp. Sara's letters are by far the most direct and matter-of-fact: they contain vivid and accurate descriptions of the child's symptoms, along with outpourings of how much she feels the need of her husband's presence during her troubles. These are sometimes very painful to read:
God almighty bless you my dear Samuel! Pray continue to cherish affection for us; and be assured that tho' I long to see you, I should be much hurt if you were to return before you had attained the end of your goingand I am very proud to hear that you are so forward in the languageand that you are so gay among the Ladies: you may give my respects to them and say that I am not at all jealous, for I
know
my dear Samuel in her affliction will not forget entirely, his most affectionate wife, Sara Coleridge. (Sara to Coleridge, 13 Dec. 1798)
Poole's letter informing Coleridge of Berkeley's death is well-meaning but reveals a very different worldview:
I have thus, my dear Col., informed you of the whole truth. It was long contrary to my opinion to let you know of the child's death before your arrival in England.

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