Reflections on the Lovely Lady Christabel

Lorrie Millington: Lady Christabel (1983)

 

 

I.

 

I have to admit, my knowledge of the English Romantic poet Coleridge is fairly limited; I know he was pals with Wordsworth; I know he helped introduce the English-speaking world to German idealism; and I know he was fond of opium. 

 

If pushed, I suppose I would also admit to knowing he was an influential literary critic and dreamed at one time of establishing an egalitarian community on pantisocratic lines. 

 

Oh, and I know of course that he's the author of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798) and Kubla Khan (completed in 1797, but not published until 1816). 

 

However, it's the long narrative poem Christabel that fascinates me at the moment and which I would like to briefly reflect on here ... 

 

II.

 

Christabel consists of two parts; the first writen in 1797 and the second in 1800. [1]

 

The story concerns a central female character - Christabel - who one day goes into the woods to pray by a large oak tree. There, she encounters a strange young woman named Geraldine, who claims to have been abducted from her home by men on horseback. 

Sympathetic to Geraldine's plight, she takes her home with her and they spend the night together, sharing a bed (this despite a number of supernatural signs that Christabel might have been well-advised to take as warnings). 

Whilst Christabel remains somewhat enchanted by Geraldine, she gradually begins to realise the latter's malign (possibly inhuman) nature. Her father, however, is completely enthralled by the latter and orders a grand procession to celebrate her rescue.

 

Somewhat frustratingly, that's where the (unfinished) poem stops; it appears that Coleridge couldn't quite make up his mind about how to end it.    

 

III.

 

This poem appeals to me for its queer gothic character, founded upon a number of perverse and supernatural elements, and I'm not surprised to learn that Shelley and Byron were both obsessed with Christabel. If it gave the former nightmares, the latter was delighted by its sapphic undertones (the relationship between Christabel and Geraldine is implicitly sexual).   

 

Other writers who have fallen under the poem's spell include Edgar Allan Poe [2], Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu [3], Renée Vivien [4], and A.S. Byatt, who names a fictional romantic poet Christabel in her award-winning novel Possession (1990).  

 

Unsurprisingly, Christabel also became favourite reading amongst feminists; the suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst, for example, named her daughter in honour of the poem's eponymous heroine (though she might have been more appropriately named Geraldine in my view) [5].   

 

 

IV.

Finally, a brief note on the image used to illustrate this post ...

Initially, I was going to reproduce Julia Margaret Cameron's 1866 photograph named after Coleridge's poem and depicting the titular character [6]. 

But then I remembered that in an old photo album kept in a box in the attic, I still had a picture sent to me by the artist, model, dancer, and writer Lorrie Millington [7] over forty years ago, of a mannequin named Lady Christabel with whom she shared a house in Leeds. 

 

In the summer of 1984, I began writing a 20,000 word novella entitled 'The Girl in the Mystery Castle', about Miss Millington and her relationship with the lovely Lady Christabel and it has always been my intention to one day complete this tale.

 

However, as this now seems very unlikely, I have decided to share the photo here ...

 

If one looks closely enough, one will see that Christabel is wearing a wig that has been braided pirate style and has an Apache war stripe painted across her nose, the reason being that Lorrie and I were both Ant People back in the early-mid '80s.   

 

Notes

 

[1] Coleridge planned on adding three further parts, but these were never completed. The work was published in a pamphlet in 1816, alongside Kubla Khan and another poem, The Pains of Sleep (written 1803). Christabel can be read on the Poetry Foundation website: click here. 

 

[2] Poe's poem 'The Sleeper' (1831) is said to be inspired by Christabel. It can be read on the Poetry Foundation website: click here.

 

[3] Le Fanu based the character of Mircalla, the Countess Karnstein, on Geraldine. See my post of 13 April 2020 on the topic of vampiric lesbianism in which I discuss Le Fanu's novella Carmilla (1872): click here.  

[4] Vivien's 1904 novel L'Etre Double, a lesbian romance, was also inspired by Coleridge's poem Christabel. See my post of 9 October 2013 in praise of sapphic decadence in which I discuss the work of Renée Vivien: click here.

 

[5] I'm not a fan of the militant idealism and the terrorist tactics advocated by Pankhurst, which invariably collapse into the black hole of fascism. See the post dated 17 February 2024 on suffragettes and the BUF: click here. 

 

[6] For more details and to view the photograph, please visit the Met Museum website: click here. And for a post dated 23 June 2023 written with reference to Cameron's photography, click here.  

 

[7] For a post dated 18 April 2015 written in memory of Lorrie Millington, click here.