The Poet Who Invented "Climbing"!

 

Quite by chance, lockdown coincided with the broadcast of a series of recorded readings of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's epic poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. I remember listening to it, the same time each day, as we worked out how to live in the new confinement. It is an inclusive, immersive work of audio and visual art in the 21st century curated by Sarah Chapman who, if I remember well*, is an academic based in Sussex. I first came across her a few years ago because she had organised a shared reading of Freud's Civilisation and Its Discontents at the Freud Museum. 

Anyway, the point here is that the Rime of the Ancient Mariner was first published in 1798, which is four years before his epic climb of Scawfell (as it was spelled then). I think it was this activity that invested the term "climbing" with its modern connotations. Before, it was not a "thing." If you read the account of it as gleaned by Marina Morpurgo, who has consulted his letters and diaries, you will, I am sure, gasp at his audacity, wit, fortitude, and, crucially, his luck (tho perhaps not his household ethics)! Coleridge simply seized the broom one day, left its twigs scattered across the kitchen floor, and strode up the hill with his nightcap in his backpack plus pens, an inkwell and paper, thanks to which we know about this pioneering, hair-raising journey.

* Turns out that I didn't remember well, it was Sara Jane Bailles who organised the marathon reading of Freud' C&D at the museum. Two thoughts, the signifiers 'reading aloud' and 'Sara' with or without an 'h' are not sufficient to anchor truth to memory. But they are enough to link together two great events worth remembering.