William Gilbert and Esoteric Romanticism Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- List of Figures and Illustrations
- Introduction
- Part One William Gilbert in Romantic Culture
- 1 A Magus of the 1790s: William Gilbert in Bristol and London
- 2 Bristol and the First Romantics
- 3 ‘With no unholy madness’: Gilbert and Coleridge
- 4 ‘My astrological friend’: Gilbert and Southey
- 5 The Calenture: Gilbert and Wordsworth
- Part Two The Hurricane
- Part Three Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - A Magus of the 1790s: William Gilbert in Bristol and London
from Part One - William Gilbert in Romantic Culture
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- List of Figures and Illustrations
- Introduction
- Part One William Gilbert in Romantic Culture
- 1 A Magus of the 1790s: William Gilbert in Bristol and London
- 2 Bristol and the First Romantics
- 3 ‘With no unholy madness’: Gilbert and Coleridge
- 4 ‘My astrological friend’: Gilbert and Southey
- 5 The Calenture: Gilbert and Wordsworth
- Part Two The Hurricane
- Part Three Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
MR. WILLIAM GILBERT will teach Astrology and Spirit, with the nature and use of Talismans, on the following scheme:
First Class of Pupils.—One hundred and fifty pounds per annum; or, one hundred guineas down.
The lowest.—Twenty pounds per annum; or, fifteen guineas down.
(CM, I: p. 400)1788–89 Henderson's Asylum
William Gilbert's first appearance in Bristol took place six years before Coleridge was to burst in, tanned, shaggy-haired and travel-stained, after a walking tour of Wales, to meet up with Robert Southey and inaugurate Bristol's Romantic era. In 1788, Coleridge's future publisher, Joseph Cottle, barely eighteen years old, was at home with his elder brother, when John Henderson, their ex-schoolteacher, called in accompanied by Gilbert, whom he introduced as ‘the Young Counsellor’. Henderson and Gilbert had walked the four miles into the city from a run-down Elizabethan grange, then being used as a mental asylum, outside the village of Hanham. John Henderson was the son of the asylum's owner, and Gilbert was a patient in his charge. Cottle recalled this meeting in his memoirs written some fifty years later:
I spent an afternoon with them, not readily to be forgotten. Many and great talkers have I known, but Wm. Gilbert, at this time, exceeded them all. His brain seemed to be in a state of boiling effervescence, and his tongue, with inconceivable rapidity, passed from subject to subject, but with an incoherence that was to me, at least, marvellous. For two hours he poured forth a verbal torrent, which was only suspended by sheer physical exhaustion.
(CER, II: p. 314)Gilbert's confinement in the asylum had begun towards the end of that summer of 1788.
He had become unbalanced after losing a legal case in Portsmouth, which, according to Cottle, was to be a first step towards establishing himself professionally in England as a counsellor at law (a legal role falling short of barrister).
While at his lodgings, he interpreted the words of Christ personally, ‘Sell all thou hast and distribute to the poor’ […], and, therefore, one morning he tumbled everything he had in his room, through the window, into the street, that the poor might help themselves; bed, bolsters, blankets, sheets, chairs.[…] Two or three other extravagances convinced his friends that confinement was indispensable, and they placed him in Mr. Richard Henderson's Asylum, at Hanham, near Bristol.
(CER, II: pp. 325, 314)- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- William Gilbert and Esoteric RomanticismA Contextual Study and Annotated Edition of ‘The Hurricane’, pp. 17 - 41Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2018