Down to the Sunless Sea explores the time Coleridge spent in
Gibraltar, Malta, Sicily and mainland Italy, where he had planned to
recover his health, escape the clutches of opium and gain inspiration
from the landscape; however, the reality would prove very different.
After his short sojourn in Gibraltar, Coleridge arrived in Malta, where
he became acquainted with the British Governor, Alexander Ball. He
settled into Maltese life, initially taking on the role of acting
Under-Secretary. Travelling to Sicily, Coleridge embraced the island's
landscapes but was shaken to find the opium poppy was an important local
crop. The Mediterranean would not prove the solution to his addiction.
He visited the Consul, G. F. Leckie, and was invited to stay with him at
a house on the site of Timoleon's Greek villa. The poet visited the
antiquities of Syracuse and at the opera house encountered the soprano,
Anna-Cecilia Bertozzi, nearly succumbing to her charms. Back in Malta,
he was offered rooms in the Treasury building (now the Casino Maltese)
and took up the post of Public Secretary. Legal pronouncements in
Italian bear Coleridge's signature. Leaving behind these matters of
state, he drifted through the Italian peninsula, engaging with a coterie
of artistic ex-pats when in Rome. His listless, half-hearted, and
financially embarrassed attempts at the Grand Tour included a narrow
escape from French troops. Coleridge's Mediterranean sojourn impacted on
his life and writing, not to mention his health, which saw a marked
decline, leading to his final years in Highgate under the roof of a
friendly doctor. Down to the Sunless Sea is a literary reflection on the fact that the sun-filled Mediterranean was not the tonic he had first imagined.
