Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the great poet and critic, must have been desperate when he came to Reading in 1793. A young student at Cambridge, Coleridge was hard pressed by debts and other problems in the autumn of 1793, so he abandoned the University and volunteered to join the army as a private in the 15th Light Dragoons. Sworn in at the regimental headquarters in Reading, he was equipped with leather breeches, stable jacket, riding boots and a carbine, and began his military career mucking out the stables. He gave a false name, using his initials, as Silas Tomkyn Comberbache.

After two months training, during which he did guard duty at Reading Fair, he was seconded to Henley, where his main job was to nurse a fellow-soldier who had smallpox. But news of his whereabouts eventually reached Cambridge. In some accounts, Coleridge gave himself away by correcting a Greek quotation made by a fellow-officer; in another account, he revealed his identity by telling stories of the Peloponnesian War; in a third version, he pencilled lines from a Latin poem over his harness-peg. Whatever the truth, Coleridge’s friends rallied round and arranged his release from the army. After a payment of twenty-five guineas, he was finally discharged in April 1794. The Regimental Roll read: ‘discharged S.T. Comberbache, Insane, 10 April, 1794.’

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