THE GROVE, HIGHGATE 



of his biographers, " and wherever he appeared, whether in the 

 flowery fields, or woods of Highgate, old and young took off their 

 hats." 



Once a year he visited Ramsgate ; and on one occasion during 

 his sojourn with the Gillmans, he went abroad with the Words- 

 worths with Dorothy, and her brother William, his almost life- 

 long friend, who said of him : " The only truly wonderful man 

 I ever met was Coleridge." 



His friends learnt to identify him with the Grove, and Lamb 

 wrote mournfully after his death : " Never saw his likeness, nor 

 probably the world can see it again. I seem to love the house he 

 lived in more passionately than when he lived." 



The house was originally panelled throughout, and though it 

 was modernized sixty years ago, it has still a powder-closet, and a 

 fine carved staircase. It is, therefore, interesting, apart from its 

 association with the author of " Christabel " and " Kubla 

 Khan." And Coleridge loved it, for he went to it intending to 

 stay a few months, he remained over twenty years ! And having 

 in his youth sung of mystic Southerfi seas where 



" The Sun's rim dipped, the stars rushed out, 

 With one stride came the dark," 



throughout his middle -age and premature decline, he must have 

 watched from his window at Highgate, the sun's slow sinking, 

 the afterglow, and stealthy oncoming of night in our Northern 

 land. He was happy at the Grove, and he loved the garden well. 



Writing from Maiden to Mrs. Gillman in July, 1818, he com- 

 pares the fine gardens of a house at which he was a guest, with that 

 at the Grove. 



" To the right, a flower and fruit garden not without kitchenry. 

 To the left a kitchen garden, not without fruit and flowers ; and 

 both a perfect blaze of roses. Yet so capricious is our, at least, my 

 nature, that I feel I do not derive the fifth part of the delights 

 from this miscellany of Flora, flowers at every step, as from the 

 economized glasses and flower-pots at Highgate so tended and 

 worshipped by me, and each the gift of some kind friend or courteous 

 neighbour. I actually make up a flower-pot every night, in order 

 to imitate my Highgate pleasures." 



When at the cost of untold pain and humiliation, Coleridge 

 made his high resolve, at the eleventh hour, to seek to reinstate 



253 



