Reverend Derwent Coleridge
(1800-1883)
15 May 1862

Volume 6, page 310, sitting number 8110.

Born on 14 September 1800 at Keswick in Cumberland, Derwent Coleridge was the third son of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his wife Sarah née Fricker. He was named after nearby Derwent Water in the Lake District.

Following his education at St John’s College, Cambridge (BA 1824, MA 1829), he became a teacher in Plymouth. In 1826 he was ordained by the Bishop of Exeter and shortly after he was appointed master of the grammar school at Helston in Cornwall, where one of the pupils under his care was the future novelist Charles Kingsley.

Between 1841 and 1864 he was the first principal of St Mark’s College in Chelsea, founded with the aim of fostering loyalty to the Church of England and to the sovereign. Coleridge was a strong advocate of Latin in mental training, prizing its study above that of mathematics or physical science. He himself was something of a polyglot. Dean Stanley once called him the most accomplished linguist in England. He could read Cervantes and Alfieri as easily as Racine and Schiller, was well acquainted with Hungarian poetry and passionately fond of Welsh poetry. He could also read not only Arabic and Coptic, but also Zulu and Hawaiian.

His published works included The Scriptural Character of the English Church (1839)  and a life of his brother Hartley (1849). He also edited some of his father's works in conjunction with his sister.

In 1864 he became the Rector of Hanwell in Middlesex, a living he occupied until 1879, when he retired to Torquay. He died at Eldon Lodge, Torquay, aged 82, on 28 March 1883; he was survived by his wife, Mary Simpson née Pridham, and two children. He left an estate valued at £9063.

According to his obituary in John Bull (28 April 1883), ‘after Ignatius Loyala and George Fox, no man had shown such power to stamp an impression on men’s minds as he.’