Why Coleridge loved to be beside the seaside in 1801

The manuscript of the poem, On Revisiting the Seaside, written in Scarborough by the famous poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, is going under the hammer in London next week.

Coleridge wrote the poem in 1801 while he was visiting William Wordsworth’s brother-in-law, Thomas Hutchinson, who ran a farm at Gallow Hill, near to the seaside town.

The poem is signed at the end with the explanation, “After bathing in the Sea at Scarborough in company with T. Hutchinson Aug 1801.”

The poem was published a month later under the more formal title, On Revisiting the Sea-Shore, After Long Absence, Under Strong Medical Recommendation Not To Bathe.

Before making the trip, Coleridge had hurt his left knee. Instead of using the local enclosed salt-water baths, as advised, he chose to swim in the open sea.

He wrote at the time, “I bathed regularly, frolicked in the Billows, and did me a proper deal of good’.

During the trip, he also spent a great deal of time with his host’s sister, Sara (“Asra”) Hutchinson, with whom he was deeply in love.

The manuscript is up for auction as part of the sale of the Roy Davids Collection of Papers and Portraits in London on March 29.

Experts say the manuscript is estimated to sell at between £3,000 and £4,000.

Coleridge, who was born in 1772 and died in 1834, is regarded as one of the great figures of English romantic poetry.