Anna Vardill

Among the audiences of one of Henry Crabb Robinson's frequent recitations of "Christabel" was Anna Vardill. Robinson records in his diary on 19 December 1814 that he "...took tea with the Flaxmans and read to them and Miss Vardel Coleridge's Christabel, with which they were all delighted."(1) On the evidence of Robinson's diary and an analysis of Vardill's writing style, Donald H. Reiman persuasively argues that the author of a continuation of "Christabel" is Vardill. Reiman, however, incorrectly believes that he is the first to argue for the authorship of "V" as Vardill.(2) His 1975 article is predated by William Axon and Ernest Hartley Coleridge, who argue in 1908 that Vardill was the author of "Christobell, A Gothic Tale" in the European Magazine.(3)

Curiously, Vardill's continuation appeared 13 months before the first printing of Coleridge's poem, leading Reiman to dub it a "sequel pre-emptive." It appears in the April 1815 issue of the European Magazine and is noteworthy for the earnestness of its attempt to adhere to the tone, diction, metre and plot of "Christabel." Vardill attached to her "Christobell" the following short preface: "written as a sequel to a beautiful legend of a fair lady and her father, deceived by a witch in the guise of a noble knight's daughter."(4) But some of her details are incorrect: the "one red" leaf in Part I of "Christabel" is "yellow" in "Christobell." Inexplicably, Vardill also introduces the Arthurian figure of Merlin. Stanzas one to four exemplify the melodramatic histrionics and metrical clumsiness of Vardill's efforts to continue "Christabel":

	Whence comes the wavering light which falls
	On Langdale's lonely Chapel-walls?
	The noble mother of Christobell
	Lies in that lone and drear Chapelle;
5	And ev'ry dawn, ere the sun has shone,
	A tear and a flow'r are on that stone:
	But the tear is dry, the flower is dead,
	And the night-wind blows on her silent bed.

	A stranger treads o'er the holy mound:
10	Thrice it has breath'd a moaning sound!
	He has lifted thrice his mighty wand;
	He has touch'd the stone with his right hand:
	The light which round the chapel streams,
	Bright on his beard of silver gleams;
15	But shines not on his muffl'd brow,
	Which mortal eye must never know!

	The noble mother of Christobell
	Is waken'd by the mighty spell;
	She seems but as if a wizard's arms
20	Awhile had wrapp'd her in his cell;
	As if his cold and earthly touch
	Had blighted her beauteous lips too much;
	But now returning beauty warms
	Her lips, and her kindling cheek so well,
25	She looks like the lovely Christobell.

	Lady, lady! who was she,
	That met thy child by the old-oak tree?
	When not a breeze was heard to sigh,
	And the yellow leaf wav'd not which hung so high?
30	She told that men of blood
	Lur'd her to the lonely wood?
	She who slept by thy daughter's side,
	While the grey dog moan'd and the owlet cried?
	Is that lady, of soft and sober mien,
35	Sir Roland's true daughter Geraldine?(5)

It is debatable whether or not Coleridge knew of Vardill's "Christobell" before his own "Christabel" appeared. In an 1834 piece in Fraser's Magazine, John Abraham Heraud suggests that Coleridge himself may have authored the piece--as though Coleridge was testing the possible reception of "Christabel":

In number LXVII of the European Magazine, dated April, 1815, [the] literary curiosity [Christobell] exists, and must have been written by Coleridge himself, or by somebody who heard him recite it, as it contains lines, and references to lines, that occur in the first part, and offers a key for the solutions of its enigmas.

Heraud does not stand firm in his belief that Coleridge wrote Christobell, noting that the inconsistencies between the Vardill piece and "Christabel" argue against the "authenticity" of such an attribution--as evinced in the awkward end rhyme of lines 34 and 35, "mien" and "Geraldine." Moreover, he recounts a brief anecdote that suggests Coleridge was aware of the circumstances of the continuation of "Christabel":

A friend of ours, in company with another gentleman, paid a visit to Coleridge to get at the fact relative to this conclusion [Vardill's Christobell]. 'By-the-bye,' answered Coleridge, 'that is a curious circumstance,--I'll tell you all about it,--' and then digressed into some other topic....(6)

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Notes

1. Books and Their Writers, 3 vols. (London: J.M. Dent and Sons, 1938), 1: 157. (back)
2. "Christobell; or, The Case of the Sequel Pre-emptive" Wordsworth Circle 4 (1975), 286. (back)
3. William Axon, "Anna Jane Vardill Niven, the Authoress of 'Christobell,' The Sequel to Coleridge's 'Christabel.' With a bibliography. With an Additional Note on 'Christabel' by Ernest Hartley Coleridge" Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature 28 (1908), 85-88. See also Richard Haven, "Anna Vardill Niven's 'Christobell': An Addendum" Wordsworth Circle 7 (1976): 117-18. (back)
4. Walter Hamilton, "Christabel." Parodies of the Works of English and American Authors 6 vols. (Hildesheim: Olms, 1970), 5: 135. (back)
5. Reiman, "Christobell," 283. (back)
6. John Abraham Heraud, "Reminiscences of Coleridge, Biographical, Philosophical, Poetical, and Critical" Fraser's Magazine 10 (October 1834), 393. See too, Richard Haven, 117-18. (back)