"The Night-mare Life-In-Death was she": Nautical Drawings in the Sketchbook of Richard Owen

Something I continue to love about working in Libraries and Archives is the way that, years after the objects and records we care for were created, we can continue to learn new things, both from them and about them.

At a recent tour our Archivist, Liz McGow picked out one of her favourite items in our collections, the Richard Owen sketchbook. It’s a fantastic little item full of satirical caricatures and observational pieces that delight audiences. Researcher Leah Demetriou FLS recently wrote a wonderful piece for the September 2024 issue of The Linnean (linked below) about the sketchbook and covered much of Owen’s life and career in relation to the sketchbook but, in working on the Domestic Archive and now the Archives of Nature Conservation, I hadn’t had much time to look at it myself. So, it likely came as some surprise to the team when I finally looked at the pictures after the tour, and said:

“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is the longest major poem written by English Romantic poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It is 143 stanzas long many of which consist of 4 lines but the structure is not consistent throughout, (one is even 9 lines long). Coleridge’s friend and fellow Romantic poet William Wordsworth wasn’t impressed by the piece at first, favouring a style that echoed the more casual way in which people spoke. He felt that the language and overall narration of the piece was inaccessible to the average person and, therefore, went against his ideas of Romanticism. Even Coleridge had his doubts, editing several times and attempting to drop it from publications of his work. Despite all of this it is one of his best known works and the often misquoted line “water, water, every where,/ nor any drop to drink” (121-122), has become a fairly common figure of speech.

The poem tells an epic story with no clear inspiration. The tale of an old man who stops a wedding guest (one of three), to tell him of a long trip he took as a younger man. This is the Ancient Mariner, the narrator of the tale and we take on the audience perspective as he describes his perilous journey. He was one of many sailors, fair weather leading them into unknown oceans. Eventually their ship becomes trapped, surrounded by ice, with no hope of finding a way out. They are, miraculously, rescued by the sight of an albatross who leads them to open waters but, despite this, the Mariner shoots down the albatross with his crossbow and, in so doing, seals his fate and the fates of all on board. The ship is beset by difficulties, the wind dies, leaving them floating helplessly, the sun blazes in the sky and the sailors are left to exposure and terrible thirst. The sublime power of nature leads to the death of every man on board except the Mariner who caused it, doomed to live on and to relate his story to as many people as possible until he may possibly be granted absolution. “The many men so beautiful, / And they all dead did lie! / And a million million slimy things / Liv’d on—and so did I” (236-239).

While many focus on the heavy religious symbolism of the poem (indeed it is almost impossible to perfom any kind of critical reading without touching on this), at its heart the poem is a parable, with the Mariner and the author impressing upon us that it is our responsibility as creatures with morality and power, to treat all of nature’s creations with respect and care or risk being reminded of our insignificance in the face of the full force of nature’s might.

The albatross itself is only a part player in the greater narrative although its death hangs ominously over the later stanzas. Its coming is treated as a good omen, bringing with it good winds and the promise of land. Perhaps, in part, chosen for the folk belief that albatrosses carried the souls of dead sailors, it is described as a “Christian Soul” (65) further accentuated by it seemingly perching to join the men for their evening prayers. This is what makes the eventual unprovoked murder of the albatross even more shocking. Critic Russell M. Hillier even goes so far as to say that, “The Mariner’s unthinking, unfeeling destructiveness, a senseless act of unwarranted and unprovoked aggression against a pacific creature that shows humans nothing but affection resonates with the conditions surrounding the persecution and crucifixion of Jesus.” The Albatross is hung from his neck as a sign of his great misdeed and only falls when he finally comes to understand, and find love for, of all nature, even the lowliest beast. And then, as if to compound this message, “It is only due to nature, such as the roaring winds, the horse-like ship, and the songs of the birds, that the mariner makes it back home.”*

Richard Owen’s illustrations of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” tell the story of the first two parts of the poem up until the albatross is hung from the Mariners neck. They are in ink and were created seperately from the book and then stuck into it at a later date. He vividly depicts the initial church scene. A castle and a church in the background. One man give out alms to three hunched figures in rags and the ominous lingering ship in the distance hints at the tale that is to come as the Mariner in the foreground begs one of three to stop and hear his tale. The finery of the three men are in stark contrast to the rags of the penitent Mariner. No specific historical time frame is given for either the poem or the choices Owen made in depicting his sailors but the costumes have a mock tudor feel with their doublets, hose and velvet feathered hats. However the styling of their hair is more reminiscent of the Jacobean or Caroline eras. This gives the images a timeless "historic" feel and draws us in to the story, all emphasised by our two characters, narrator and audience being center stage.

A second image shows the Mariner’s ship, an impressive square rigged barque, sailing away from the coast. A small kirk (far right with a cross on its roof) and an early form of lighthouse (a pyre on a platform to be built up, protected, lit and tended to by the keeper living in the house that can be seen pictured just behind it). Perhaps the church and the lighthouse are signals, portents of the Mariner turning from the light and love of God in his attack on His creations. Owen depicts the light wind carrying the ship away from home with quick strokes of ripples across the sea and rumbling waves, and the gulls that surround them could both be seen as a sign of fair travel or an omen of what will befall them.

The albatross may seem small against the ship in Owen's images and it is easily mistaken for a gull of some kind but especially in the image of the sailors caring for the bird one can see that it is easily at least half the size of the burly men clambering upon the ships rigging to call to it, thank it, and offer it prized bites of food. But the joyful and even playful expressions of the sailors in this image are immediately changed to shock and horror in the next image as the Mariner is depicted moments after having committed the murder. The albatross tumbles from the sky onto the deck as the helpless men look on. Owen also manages to capture the confusion of the moment. The Mariner looks almost nonchalant about his heinous action. Coleridge, as the narrator, never really explains why the Mariner shoots the albatross, perhaps the Mariner has forgotten, perhaps he himself doesn’t know.

The final image in Owen's selection shows the doomed men laying on the deck of their ship. The winds have died, the sun is blazing in the sky and they are surrounded by tin cups, desperate for drinkable water. The mariner sits in the foreground, slumped over and depicted in lines so heavy and black that the viewer can barely make out the albatross hung around his neck and cradled on his lap. It almost engulfs him as he cowers in his shame, surrounded by his dying crewmates. While several of the men hopefully look out into the distance clinging to the possibility of land, even though this is the last image we have on the subject, we know their fate. Just as we know the fate of the Mariner cursed to perform his tale and repeat its moral in perpetuity.

That moral, the Romantic calling to care for nature, to see even the most inconsequential creation as part of a great diverse kingdom is something that many Linnean Fellows have championed over the years and is a moral no less important in this time of climate crisis and mass natural devastation. It is, perhaps, worth considering if the albatross hangs around our own necks.

The manuscripts and archives at The Linnean Society will continue to reveal their many secrets long after I am gone, but this selection of drawings has rather perfectly brought together my English Literature and Archive degrees in an unexpected and joyful way, (despite the subject matter). Every researcher brings new ideas, perspectives and truths to the Linnean Collections and, perhaps for me, that might be the most awe-inspiring thing of all.