Indeed, the
fascinating
powers of opium are admitted even by medical
writers, who are its greatest enemies.
writers, who are its greatest enemies.
De Quincey - Confessions of an Opium Eater
CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER:
BEING AN EXTRACT FROM THE
LIFE OF A SCHOLAR.
_From the "London Magazine" for September_ 1821.
TO THE READER
I here present you, courteous reader, with the record of a remarkable
period in my life: according to my application of it, I trust that it
will prove not merely an interesting record, but in a considerable degree
useful and instructive. In _that_ hope it is that I have drawn it up;
and _that_ must be my apology for breaking through that delicate and
honourable reserve which, for the most part, restrains us from the public
exposure of our own errors and infirmities. Nothing, indeed, is more
revolting to English feelings than the spectacle of a human being
obtruding on our notice his moral ulcers or scars, and tearing away that
"decent drapery" which time or indulgence to human frailty may have drawn
over them; accordingly, the greater part of _our_ confessions (that is,
spontaneous and extra-judicial confessions) proceed from demireps,
adventurers, or swindlers: and for any such acts of gratuitous
self-humiliation from those who can be supposed in sympathy with the
decent and self-respecting part of society, we must look to French
literature, or to that part of the German which is tainted with the
spurious and defective sensibility of the French. All this I feel so
forcibly, and so nervously am I alive to reproach of this tendency, that
I have for many months hesitated about the propriety of allowing this or
any part of my narrative to come before the public eye until after my
death (when, for many reasons, the whole will be published); and it is
not without an anxious review of the reasons for and against this step
that I have at last concluded on taking it.
Guilt and misery shrink, by a natural instinct, from public notice: they
court privacy and solitude: and even in their choice of a grave will
sometimes sequester themselves from the general population of the
churchyard, as if declining to claim fellowship with the great family of
man, and wishing (in the affecting language of Mr. Wordsworth)
Humbly to express
A penitential loneliness.
It is well, upon the whole, and for the interest of us all, that it
should be so: nor would I willingly in my own person manifest a disregard
of such salutary feelings, nor in act or word do anything to weaken them;
but, on the one hand, as my self-accusation does not amount to a
confession of guilt, so, on the other, it is possible that, if it _did_,
the benefit resulting to others from the record of an experience
purchased at so heavy a price might compensate, by a vast overbalance,
for any violence done to the feelings I have noticed, and justify a
breach of the general rule. Infirmity and misery do not of necessity
imply guilt. They approach or recede from shades of that dark alliance,
in proportion to the probable motives and prospects of the offender, and
the palliations, known or secret, of the offence; in proportion as the
temptations to it were potent from the first, and the resistance to it,
in act or in effort, was earnest to the last. For my own part, without
breach of truth or modesty, I may affirm that my life has been, on the
whole, the life of a philosopher: from my birth I was made an
intellectual creature, and intellectual in the highest sense my pursuits
and pleasures have been, even from my schoolboy days. If opium-eating be
a sensual pleasure, and if I am bound to confess that I have indulged in
it to an excess not yet _recorded_ {1} of any other man, it is no less
true that I have struggled against this fascinating enthralment with a
religious zeal, and have at length accomplished what I never yet heard
attributed to any other man--have untwisted, almost to its final links,
the accursed chain which fettered me. Such a self-conquest may
reasonably be set off in counterbalance to any kind or degree of self-
indulgence. Not to insist that in my case the self-conquest was
unquestionable, the self-indulgence open to doubts of casuistry,
according as that name shall be extended to acts aiming at the bare
relief of pain, or shall be restricted to such as aim at the excitement
of positive pleasure.
Guilt, therefore, I do not acknowledge; and if I did, it is possible that
I might still resolve on the present act of confession in consideration
of the service which I may thereby render to the whole class of opium-
eaters. But who are they? Reader, I am sorry to say a very numerous
class indeed. Of this I became convinced some years ago by computing at
that time the number of those in one small class of English society (the
class of men distinguished for talents, or of eminent station) who were
known to me, directly or indirectly, as opium-eaters; such, for instance,
as the eloquent and benevolent ---, the late Dean of ---, Lord ---, Mr.
--- the philosopher, a late Under-Secretary of State (who described to me
the sensation which first drove him to the use of opium in the very same
words as the Dean of ---, viz. , "that he felt as though rats were gnawing
and abrading the coats of his stomach"), Mr. ---, and many others hardly
less known, whom it would be tedious to mention. Now, if one class,
comparatively so limited, could furnish so many scores of cases (and
_that_ within the knowledge of one single inquirer), it was a natural
inference that the entire population of England would furnish a
proportionable number. The soundness of this inference, however, I
doubted, until some facts became known to me which satisfied me that it
was not incorrect. I will mention two. (1) Three respectable London
druggists, in widely remote quarters of London, from whom I happened
lately to be purchasing small quantities of opium, assured me that the
number of _amateur_ opium-eaters (as I may term them) was at this time
immense; and that the difficulty of distinguishing those persons to whom
habit had rendered opium necessary from such as were purchasing it with a
view to suicide, occasioned them daily trouble and disputes. This
evidence respected London only. But (2)--which will possibly surprise
the reader more--some years ago, on passing through Manchester, I was
informed by several cotton manufacturers that their workpeople were
rapidly getting into the practice of opium-eating; so much so, that on a
Saturday afternoon the counters of the druggists were strewed with pills
of one, two, or three grains, in preparation for the known demand of the
evening. The immediate occasion of this practice was the lowness of
wages, which at that time would not allow them to indulge in ale or
spirits, and wages rising, it may be thought that this practice would
cease; but as I do not readily believe that any man having once tasted
the divine luxuries of opium will afterwards descend to the gross and
mortal enjoyments of alcohol, I take it for granted
That those eat now who never ate before;
And those who always ate, now eat the more.
Indeed, the fascinating powers of opium are admitted even by medical
writers, who are its greatest enemies. Thus, for instance, Awsiter,
apothecary to Greenwich Hospital, in his "Essay on the Effects of Opium"
(published in the year 1763), when attempting to explain why Mead had not
been sufficiently explicit on the properties, counteragents, &c. , of this
drug, expresses himself in the following mysterious terms ([Greek text]):
"Perhaps he thought the subject of too delicate a nature to be made
common; and as many people might then indiscriminately use it, it would
take from that necessary fear and caution which should prevent their
experiencing the extensive power of this drug, _for there are many
properties in it, if universally known, that would habituate the use, and
make it more in request with us than with Turks themselves_; the result
of which knowledge," he adds, "must prove a general misfortune. " In the
necessity of this conclusion I do not altogether concur; but upon that
point I shall have occasion to speak at the close of my Confessions,
where I shall present the reader with the _moral_ of my narrative.
PRELIMINARY CONFESSIONS
These preliminary confessions, or introductory narrative of the youthful
adventures which laid the foundation of the writer's habit of
opium-eating in after-life, it has been judged proper to premise, for
three several reasons:
1. As forestalling that question, and giving it a satisfactory answer,
which else would painfully obtrude itself in the course of the Opium
Confessions--"How came any reasonable being to subject himself to such a
yoke of misery; voluntarily to incur a captivity so servile, and
knowingly to fetter himself with such a sevenfold chain? "--a question
which, if not somewhere plausibly resolved, could hardly fail, by the
indignation which it would be apt to raise as against an act of wanton
folly, to interfere with that degree of sympathy which is necessary in
any case to an author's purposes.
2. As furnishing a key to some parts of that tremendous scenery which
afterwards peopled the dreams of the Opium-eater.
3. As creating some previous interest of a personal sort in the
confessing subject, apart from the matter of the confessions, which
cannot fail to render the confessions themselves more interesting. If a
man "whose talk is of oxen" should become an opium-eater, the probability
is that (if he is not too dull to dream at all) he will dream about oxen;
whereas, in the case before him, the reader will find that the
Opium-eater boasteth himself to be a philosopher; and accordingly, that
the phantasmagoria of _his_ dreams (waking or sleeping, day-dreams or
night-dreams) is suitable to one who in that character
Humani nihil a se alienum putat.
For amongst the conditions which he deems indispensable to the sustaining
of any claim to the title of philosopher is not merely the possession of
a superb intellect in its _analytic_ functions (in which part of the
pretensions, however, England can for some generations show but few
claimants; at least, he is not aware of any known candidate for this
honour who can be styled emphatically _a subtle thinker_, with the
exception of _Samuel Taylor Coleridge_, and in a narrower department of
thought with the recent illustrious exception {2} of _David Ricardo_) but
also on such a constitution of the _moral_ faculties as shall give him an
inner eye and power of intuition for the vision and the mysteries of our
human nature: _that_ constitution of faculties, in short, which (amongst
all the generations of men that from the beginning of time have deployed
into life, as it were, upon this planet) our English poets have possessed
in the highest degree, and Scottish professors {3} in the lowest.
I have often been asked how I first came to be a regular opium-eater, and
have suffered, very unjustly, in the opinion of my acquaintance from
being reputed to have brought upon myself all the sufferings which I
shall have to record, by a long course of indulgence in this practice
purely for the sake of creating an artificial state of pleasurable
excitement. This, however, is a misrepresentation of my case. True it
is that for nearly ten years I did occasionally take opium for the sake
of the exquisite pleasure it gave me; but so long as I took it with this
view I was effectually protected from all material bad consequences by
the necessity of interposing long intervals between the several acts of
indulgence, in order to renew the pleasurable sensations. It was not for
the purpose of creating pleasure, but of mitigating pain in the severest
degree, that I first began to use opium as an article of daily diet. In
the twenty-eighth year of my age a most painful affection of the stomach,
which I had first experienced about ten years before, attacked me in
great strength. This affection had originally been caused by extremities
of hunger, suffered in my boyish days. During the season of hope and
redundant happiness which succeeded (that is, from eighteen to twenty-
four) it had slumbered; for the three following years it had revived at
intervals; and now, under unfavourable circumstances, from depression of
spirits, it attacked me with a violence that yielded to no remedies but
opium. As the youthful sufferings which first produced this derangement
of the stomach were interesting in themselves, and in the circumstances
that attended them, I shall here briefly retrace them.
My father died when I was about seven years old, and left me to the care
of four guardians. I was sent to various schools, great and small; and
was very early distinguished for my classical attainments, especially for
my knowledge of Greek. At thirteen I wrote Greek with ease; and at
fifteen my command of that language was so great that I not only composed
Greek verses in lyric metres, but could converse in Greek fluently and
without embarrassment--an accomplishment which I have not since met with
in any scholar of my times, and which in my case was owing to the
practice of daily reading off the newspapers into the best Greek I could
furnish _extempore_; for the necessity of ransacking my memory and
invention for all sorts and combinations of periphrastic expressions as
equivalents for modern ideas, images, relations of things, &c. , gave me a
compass of diction which would never have been called out by a dull
translation of moral essays, &c. "That boy," said one of my masters,
pointing the attention of a stranger to me, "that boy could harangue an
Athenian mob better than you and I could address an English one. " He who
honoured me with this eulogy was a scholar, "and a ripe and a good one,"
and of all my tutors was the only one whom I loved or reverenced.
Unfortunately for me (and, as I afterwards learned, to this worthy man's
great indignation), I was transferred to the care, first of a blockhead,
who was in a perpetual panic lest I should expose his ignorance; and
finally to that of a respectable scholar at the head of a great school on
an ancient foundation. This man had been appointed to his situation by
--- College, Oxford, and was a sound, well-built scholar, but (like most
men whom I have known from that college) coarse, clumsy, and inelegant. A
miserable contrast he presented, in my eyes, to the Etonian brilliancy of
my favourite master; and beside, he could not disguise from my hourly
notice the poverty and meagreness of his understanding. It is a bad
thing for a boy to be and to know himself far beyond his tutors, whether
in knowledge or in power of mind. This was the case, so far as regarded
knowledge at least, not with myself only, for the two boys, who jointly
with myself composed the first form, were better Grecians than the head-
master, though not more elegant scholars, nor at all more accustomed to
sacrifice to the Graces. When I first entered I remember that we read
Sophocles; and it was a constant matter of triumph to us, the learned
triumvirate of the first form, to see our "Archididascalus" (as he loved
to be called) conning our lessons before we went up, and laying a regular
train, with lexicon and grammar, for blowing up and blasting (as it were)
any difficulties he found in the choruses; whilst _we_ never condescended
to open our books until the moment of going up, and were generally
employed in writing epigrams upon his wig or some such important matter.
My two class-fellows were poor, and dependent for their future prospects
at the university on the recommendation of the head-master; but I, who
had a small patrimonial property, the income of which was sufficient to
support me at college, wished to be sent thither immediately. I made
earnest representations on the subject to my guardians, but all to no
purpose. One, who was more reasonable and had more knowledge of the
world than the rest, lived at a distance; two of the other three resigned
all their authority into the hands of the fourth; and this fourth, with
whom I had to negotiate, was a worthy man in his way, but haughty,
obstinate, and intolerant of all opposition to his will. After a certain
number of letters and personal interviews, I found that I had nothing to
hope for, not even a compromise of the matter, from my guardian.
Unconditional submission was what he demanded, and I prepared myself,
therefore, for other measures. Summer was now coming on with hasty
steps, and my seventeenth birthday was fast approaching, after which day
I had sworn within myself that I would no longer be numbered amongst
schoolboys. Money being what I chiefly wanted, I wrote to a woman of
high rank, who, though young herself, had known me from a child, and had
latterly treated me with great distinction, requesting that she would
"lend" me five guineas. For upwards of a week no answer came, and I was
beginning to despond, when at length a servant put into my hands a double
letter with a coronet on the seal. The letter was kind and obliging. The
fair writer was on the sea-coast, and in that way the delay had arisen;
she enclosed double of what I had asked, and good-naturedly hinted that
if I should _never_ repay her, it would not absolutely ruin her. Now,
then, I was prepared for my scheme. Ten guineas, added to about two
which I had remaining from my pocket-money, seemed to me sufficient for
an indefinite length of time; and at that happy age, if no _definite_
boundary can be assigned to one's power, the spirit of hope and pleasure
makes it virtually infinite.
It is a just remark of Dr. Johnson's (and, what cannot often be said of
his remarks, it is a very feeling one), that we never do anything
consciously for the last time (of things, that is, which we have long
been in the habit of doing) without sadness of heart. This truth I felt
deeply when I came to leave ---, a place which I did not love, and where
I had not been happy. On the evening before I left --- for ever, I
grieved when the ancient and lofty schoolroom resounded with the evening
service, performed for the last time in my hearing; and at night, when
the muster-roll of names was called over, and mine (as usual) was called
first, I stepped forward, and passing the head-master, who was standing
by, I bowed to him, and looked earnestly in his face, thinking to myself,
"He is old and infirm, and in this world I shall not see him again. " I
was right; I never _did_ see him again, nor ever shall. He looked at me
complacently, smiled good-naturedly, returned my salutation (or rather my
valediction), and we parted (though he knew it not) for ever. I could
not reverence him intellectually, but he had been uniformly kind to me,
and had allowed me many indulgences; and I grieved at the thought of the
mortification I should inflict upon him.
The morning came which was to launch me into the world, and from which my
whole succeeding life has in many important points taken its colouring. I
lodged in the head-master's house, and had been allowed from my first
entrance the indulgence of a private room, which I used both as a
sleeping-room and as a study. At half after three I rose, and gazed with
deep emotion at the ancient towers of ---, "drest in earliest light," and
beginning to crimson with the radiant lustre of a cloudless July morning.
I was firm and immovable in my purpose; but yet agitated by anticipation
of uncertain danger and troubles; and if I could have foreseen the
hurricane and perfect hail-storm of affliction which soon fell upon me,
well might I have been agitated. To this agitation the deep peace of the
morning presented an affecting contrast, and in some degree a medicine.
The silence was more profound than that of midnight; and to me the
silence of a summer morning is more touching than all other silence,
because, the light being broad and strong as that of noonday at other
seasons of the year, it seems to differ from perfect day chiefly because
man is not yet abroad; and thus the peace of nature and of the innocent
creatures of God seems to be secure and deep only so long as the presence
of man and his restless and unquiet spirit are not there to trouble its
sanctity. I dressed myself, took my hat and gloves, and lingered a
little in the room. For the last year and a half this room had been my
"pensive citadel": here I had read and studied through all the hours of
night, and though true it was that for the latter part of this time I,
who was framed for love and gentle affections, had lost my gaiety and
happiness during the strife and fever of contention with my guardian,
yet, on the other hand, as a boy so passionately fond of books, and
dedicated to intellectual pursuits, I could not fail to have enjoyed many
happy hours in the midst of general dejection. I wept as I looked round
on the chair, hearth, writing-table, and other familiar objects, knowing
too certainly that I looked upon them for the last time. Whilst I write
this it is eighteen years ago, and yet at this moment I see distinctly,
as if it were yesterday, the lineaments and expression of the object on
which I fixed my parting gaze. It was a picture of the lovely ---, which
hung over the mantelpiece, the eyes and mouth of which were so beautiful,
and the whole countenance so radiant with benignity and divine
tranquillity, that I had a thousand times laid down my pen or my book to
gather consolation from it, as a devotee from his patron saint. Whilst I
was yet gazing upon it the deep tones of --- clock proclaimed that it was
four o'clock. I went up to the picture, kissed it, and then gently
walked out and closed the door for ever!
* * * * *
So blended and intertwisted in this life are occasions of laughter and of
tears, that I cannot yet recall without smiling an incident which
occurred at that time, and which had nearly put a stop to the immediate
execution of my plan. I had a trunk of immense weight, for, besides my
clothes, it contained nearly all my library. The difficulty was to get
this removed to a carrier's: my room was at an aerial elevation in the
house, and (what was worse) the staircase which communicated with this
angle of the building was accessible only by a gallery, which passed the
head-master's chamber door. I was a favourite with all the servants, and
knowing that any of them would screen me and act confidentially, I
communicated my embarrassment to a groom of the head-master's. The groom
swore he would do anything I wished, and when the time arrived went
upstairs to bring the trunk down. This I feared was beyond the strength
of any one man; however, the groom was a man
Of Atlantean shoulders, fit to bear
The weight of mightiest monarchies;
and had a back as spacious as Salisbury Plain. Accordingly he persisted
in bringing down the trunk alone, whilst I stood waiting at the foot of
the last flight in anxiety for the event. For some time I heard him
descending with slow and firm steps; but unfortunately, from his
trepidation, as he drew near the dangerous quarter, within a few steps of
the gallery, his foot slipped, and the mighty burden falling from his
shoulders, gained such increase of impetus at each step of the descent,
that on reaching the bottom it trundled, or rather leaped, right across,
with the noise of twenty devils, against the very bedroom door of the
Archididascalus. My first thought was that all was lost, and that my
only chance for executing a retreat was to sacrifice my baggage. However,
on reflection I determined to abide the issue. The groom was in the
utmost alarm, both on his own account and on mine, but, in spite of this,
so irresistibly had the sense of the ludicrous in this unhappy
_contretemps_ taken possession of his fancy, that he sang out a long,
loud, and canorous peal of laughter, that might have wakened the Seven
Sleepers. At the sound of this resonant merriment, within the very ears
of insulted authority, I could not myself forbear joining in it; subdued
to this, not so much by the unhappy _etourderie_ of the trunk, as by the
effect it had upon the groom. We both expected, as a matter of course,
that Dr. --- would sally, out of his room, for in general, if but a mouse
stirred, he sprang out like a mastiff from his kennel. Strange to say,
however, on this occasion, when the noise of laughter had ceased, no
sound, or rustling even, was to be heard in the bedroom. Dr. --- had a
painful complaint, which, sometimes keeping him awake, made his sleep
perhaps, when it did come, the deeper. Gathering courage from the
silence, the groom hoisted his burden again, and accomplished the
remainder of his descent without accident. I waited until I saw the
trunk placed on a wheelbarrow and on its road to the carrier's; then,
"with Providence my guide," I set off on foot, carrying a small parcel
with some articles of dress under my arm; a favourite English poet in one
pocket, and a small 12mo volume, containing about nine plays of
Euripides, in the other.
It had been my intention originally to proceed to Westmoreland, both from
the love I bore to that country and on other personal accounts. Accident,
however, gave a different direction to my wanderings, and I bent my steps
towards North Wales.
After wandering about for some time in Denbighshire, Merionethshire, and
Carnarvonshire, I took lodgings in a small neat house in B---. Here I
might have stayed with great comfort for many weeks, for provisions were
cheap at B---, from the scarcity of other markets for the surplus produce
of a wide agricultural district. An accident, however, in which perhaps
no offence was designed, drove me out to wander again. I know not
whether my reader may have remarked, but I have often remarked, that the
proudest class of people in England (or at any rate the class whose pride
is most apparent) are the families of bishops. Noblemen and their
children carry about with them, in their very titles, a sufficient
notification of their rank. Nay, their very names (and this applies also
to the children of many untitled houses) are often, to the English ear,
adequate exponents of high birth or descent. Sackville, Manners,
Fitzroy, Paulet, Cavendish, and scores of others, tell their own tale.
Such persons, therefore, find everywhere a due sense of their claims
already established, except among those who are ignorant of the world by
virtue of their own obscurity: "Not to know _them_, argues one's self
unknown. " Their manners take a suitable tone and colouring, and for once
they find it necessary to impress a sense of their consequence upon
others, they meet with a thousand occasions for moderating and tempering
this sense by acts of courteous condescension. With the families of
bishops it is otherwise: with them, it is all uphill work to make known
their pretensions; for the proportion of the episcopal bench taken from
noble families is not at any time very large, and the succession to these
dignities is so rapid that the public ear seldom has time to become
familiar with them, unless where they are connected with some literary
reputation. Hence it is that the children of bishops carry about with
them an austere and repulsive air, indicative of claims not generally
acknowledged, a sort of _noli me tangere_ manner, nervously apprehensive
of too familiar approach, and shrinking with the sensitiveness of a gouty
man from all contact with the [Greek text]. Doubtless, a powerful
understanding, or unusual goodness of nature, will preserve a man from
such weakness, but in general the truth of my representation will be
acknowledged; pride, if not of deeper root in such families, appears at
least more upon the surface of their manners. This spirit of manners
naturally communicates itself to their domestics and other dependants.
Now, my landlady had been a lady's maid or a nurse in the family of the
Bishop of ---, and had but lately married away and "settled" (as such
people express it) for life. In a little town like B---, merely to have
lived in the bishop's family conferred some distinction; and my good
landlady had rather more than her share of the pride I have noticed on
that score. What "my lord" said and what "my lord" did, how useful he
was in Parliament and how indispensable at Oxford, formed the daily
burden of her talk. All this I bore very well, for I was too
good-natured to laugh in anybody's face, and I could make an ample
allowance for the garrulity of an old servant. Of necessity, however, I
must have appeared in her eyes very inadequately impressed with the
bishop's importance, and, perhaps to punish me for my indifference, or
possibly by accident, she one day repeated to me a conversation in which
I was indirectly a party concerned. She had been to the palace to pay
her respects to the family, and, dinner being over, was summoned into the
dining-room. In giving an account of her household economy she happened
to mention that she had let her apartments. Thereupon the good bishop
(it seemed) had taken occasion to caution her as to her selection of
inmates, "for," said he, "you must recollect, Betty, that this place is
in the high road to the Head; so that multitudes of Irish swindlers
running away from their debts into England, and of English swindlers
running away from their debts to the Isle of Man, are likely to take this
place in their route. " This advice certainly was not without reasonable
grounds, but rather fitted to be stored up for Mrs. Betty's private
meditations than specially reported to me. What followed, however, was
somewhat worse. "Oh, my lord," answered my landlady (according to her
own representation of the matter), "I really don't think this young
gentleman is a swindler, because ---" "You don't _think_ me a swindler? "
said I, interrupting her, in a tumult of indignation: "for the future I
shall spare you the trouble of thinking about it. " And without delay I
prepared for my departure. Some concessions the good woman seemed
disposed to make; but a harsh and contemptuous expression, which I fear
that I applied to the learned dignitary himself, roused her indignation
in turn, and reconciliation then became impossible. I was indeed greatly
irritated at the bishop's having suggested any grounds of suspicion,
however remotely, against a person whom he had never seen; and I thought
of letting him know my mind in Greek, which, at the same time that it
would furnish some presumption that I was no swindler, would also (I
hoped) compel the bishop to reply in the same language; in which case I
doubted not to make it appear that if I was not so rich as his lordship,
I was a far better Grecian. Calmer thoughts, however, drove this boyish
design out of my mind; for I considered that the bishop was in the right
to counsel an old servant; that he could not have designed that his
advice should be reported to me; and that the same coarseness of mind
which had led Mrs. Betty to repeat the advice at all, might have coloured
it in a way more agreeable to her own style of thinking than to the
actual expressions of the worthy bishop.
I left the lodgings the very same hour, and this turned out a very
unfortunate occurrence for me, because, living henceforward at inns, I
was drained of my money very rapidly. In a fortnight I was reduced to
short allowance; that is, I could allow myself only one meal a day. From
the keen appetite produced by constant exercise and mountain air, acting
on a youthful stomach, I soon began to suffer greatly on this slender
regimen, for the single meal which I could venture to order was coffee or
tea. Even this, however, was at length withdrawn; and afterwards, so
long as I remained in Wales, I subsisted either on blackberries, hips,
haws, &c. , or on the casual hospitalities which I now and then received
in return for such little services as I had an opportunity of rendering.
Sometimes I wrote letters of business for cottagers who happened to have
relatives in Liverpool or in London; more often I wrote love-letters to
their sweethearts for young women who had lived as servants at Shrewsbury
or other towns on the English border. On all such occasions I gave great
satisfaction to my humble friends, and was generally treated with
hospitality; and once in particular, near the village of Llan-y-styndw
(or some such name), in a sequestered part of Merionethshire, I was
entertained for upwards of three days by a family of young people with an
affectionate and fraternal kindness that left an impression upon my heart
not yet impaired. The family consisted at that time of four sisters and
three brothers, all grown up, and all remarkable for elegance and
delicacy of manners. So much beauty, and so much native good breeding
and refinement, I do not remember to have seen before or since in any
cottage, except once or twice in Westmoreland and Devonshire. They spoke
English, an accomplishment not often met with in so many members of one
family, especially in villages remote from the high road. Here I wrote,
on my first introduction, a letter about prize-money, for one of the
brothers, who had served on board an English man-of-war; and, more
privately, two love-letters for two of the sisters. They were both
interesting-looking girls, and one of uncommon loveliness. In the midst
of their confusion and blushes, whilst dictating, or rather giving me
general instructions, it did not require any great penetration to
discover that what they wished was that their letters should be as kind
as was consistent with proper maidenly pride. I contrived so to temper
my expressions as to reconcile the gratification of both feelings; and
they were as much pleased with the way in which I had expressed their
thoughts as (in their simplicity) they were astonished at my having so
readily discovered them. The reception one meets with from the women of
a family generally determines the tenor of one's whole entertainment. In
this case I had discharged my confidential duties as secretary so much to
the general satisfaction, perhaps also amusing them with my conversation,
that I was pressed to stay with a cordiality which I had little
inclination to resist. I slept with the brothers, the only unoccupied
bed standing in the apartment of the young women; but in all other points
they treated me with a respect not usually paid to purses as light as
mine--as if my scholarship were sufficient evidence that I was of "gentle
blood. " Thus I lived with them for three days and great part of a
fourth; and, from the undiminished kindness which they continued to show
me, I believe I might have stayed with them up to this time, if their
power had corresponded with their wishes. On the last morning, however,
I perceived upon their countenances, as they sate at breakfast, the
expression of some unpleasant communication which was at hand; and soon
after, one of the brothers explained to me that their parents had gone,
the day before my arrival, to an annual meeting of Methodists, held at
Carnarvon, and were that day expected to return; "and if they should not
be so civil as they ought to be," he begged, on the part of all the young
people, that I would not take it amiss. The parents returned with
churlish faces, and "_Dym Sassenach_" (_no English_) in answer to all my
addresses. I saw how matters stood; and so, taking an affectionate leave
of my kind and interesting young hosts, I went my way; for, though they
spoke warmly to their parents in my behalf, and often excused the manner
of the old people by saying it was "only their way," yet I easily
understood that my talent for writing love-letters would do as little to
recommend me with two grave sexagenarian Welsh Methodists as my Greek
sapphics or alcaics; and what had been hospitality when offered to me
with the gracious courtesy of my young friends, would become charity when
connected with the harsh demeanour of these old people. Certainly, Mr.
Shelley is right in his notions about old age: unless powerfully
counteracted by all sorts of opposite agencies, it is a miserable
corrupter and blighter to the genial charities of the human heart.
Soon after this I contrived, by means which I must omit for want of room,
to transfer myself to London. And now began the latter and fiercer stage
of my long sufferings; without using a disproportionate expression I
might say, of my agony. For I now suffered, for upwards of sixteen
weeks, the physical anguish of hunger in. I various degrees of
intensity, but as bitter perhaps as ever any human being can have
suffered who has survived it would not needlessly harass my reader's
feelings by a detail of all that I endured; for extremities such as
these, under any circumstances of heaviest misconduct or guilt, cannot be
contemplated, even in description, without a rueful pity that is painful
to the natural goodness of the human heart. Let it suffice, at least on
this occasion, to say that a few fragments of bread from the breakfast-
table of one individual (who supposed me to be ill, but did not know of
my being in utter want), and these at uncertain intervals, constituted my
whole support. During the former part of my sufferings (that is,
generally in Wales, and always for the first two months in London) I was
houseless, and very seldom slept under a roof. To this constant
exposure to the open air I ascribe it mainly that I did not sink under my
torments. Latterly, however, when colder and more inclement weather came
on, and when, from the length of my sufferings, I had begun to sink into
a more languishing condition, it was no doubt fortunate for me that the
same person to whose breakfast-table I had access, allowed me to sleep in
a large unoccupied house of which he was tenant. Unoccupied I call it,
for there was no household or establishment in it; nor any furniture,
indeed, except a table and a few chairs. But I found, on taking
possession of my new quarters, that the house already contained one
single inmate, a poor friendless child, apparently ten years old; but she
seemed hunger-bitten, and sufferings of that sort often make children
look older than they are. From this forlorn child I learned that she had
slept and lived there alone for some time before I came; and great joy
the poor creature expressed when she found that I was in future to be her
companion through the hours of darkness. The house was large, and, from
the want of furniture, the noise of the rats made a prodigious echoing on
the spacious staircase and hall; and amidst the real fleshly ills of cold
and, I fear, hunger, the forsaken child had found leisure to suffer still
more (it appeared) from the self-created one of ghosts. I promised her
protection against all ghosts whatsoever, but alas! I could offer her no
other assistance. We lay upon the floor, with a bundle of cursed law
papers for a pillow, but with no other covering than a sort of large
horseman's cloak; afterwards, however, we discovered in a garret an old
sofa-cover, a small piece of rug, and some fragments of other articles,
which added a little to our warmth. The poor child crept close to me for
warmth, and for security against her ghostly enemies. When I was not
more than usually ill I took her into my arms, so that in general she was
tolerably warm, and often slept when I could not, for during the last two
months of my sufferings I slept much in daytime, and was apt to fall into
transient dosings at all hours. But my sleep distressed me more than my
watching, for beside the tumultuousness of my dreams (which were only not
so awful as those which I shall have to describe hereafter as produced by
opium), my sleep was never more than what is called _dog-sleep_; so that
I could hear myself moaning, and was often, as it seemed to me, awakened
suddenly by my own voice; and about this time a hideous sensation began
to haunt me as soon as I fell into a slumber, which has since returned
upon me at different periods of my life--viz. , a sort of twitching (I
know not where, but apparently about the region of the stomach) which
compelled me violently to throw out my feet for the sake of relieving it.
This sensation coming on as soon as I began to sleep, and the effort to
relieve it constantly awaking me, at length I slept only from exhaustion;
and from increasing weakness (as I said before) I was constantly falling
asleep and constantly awaking. Meantime, the master of the house
sometimes came in upon us suddenly, and very early; sometimes not till
ten o'clock, sometimes not at all. He was in constant fear of bailiffs.
Improving on the plan of Cromwell, every night he slept in a different
quarter of London; and I observed that he never failed to examine through
a private window the appearance of those who knocked at the door before
he would allow it to be opened. He breaksfasted alone; indeed, his tea
equipage would hardly have admitted of his hazarding an invitation to a
second person, any more than the quantity of esculent _materiel_, which
for the most part was little more than a roll or a few biscuits which he
had bought on his road from the place where he had slept. Or, if he
_had_ asked a party--as I once learnedly and facetiously observed to
him--the several members of it must have _stood_ in the relation to each
other (not _sate_ in any relation whatever) of succession, as the
metaphysicians have it, and not of a coexistence; in the relation of the
parts of time, and not of the parts of space. During his breakfast I
generally contrived a reason for lounging in, and, with an air of as much
indifference as I could assume, took up such fragments as he had left;
sometimes, indeed, there were none at all. In doing this I committed no
robbery except upon the man himself, who was thus obliged (I believe) now
and then to send out at noon for an extra biscuit; for as to the poor
child, _she_ was never admitted into his study (if I may give that name
to his chief depository of parchments, law writings, &c. ); that room was
to her the Bluebeard room of the house, being regularly locked on his
departure to dinner, about six o'clock, which usually was his final
departure for the night. Whether this child were an illegitimate
daughter of Mr. ---, or only a servant, I could not ascertain; she did
not herself know; but certainly she was treated altogether as a menial
servant. No sooner did Mr.
Indeed, the fascinating powers of opium are admitted even by medical
writers, who are its greatest enemies. Thus, for instance, Awsiter,
apothecary to Greenwich Hospital, in his "Essay on the Effects of Opium"
(published in the year 1763), when attempting to explain why Mead had not
been sufficiently explicit on the properties, counteragents, &c. , of this
drug, expresses himself in the following mysterious terms ([Greek text]):
"Perhaps he thought the subject of too delicate a nature to be made
common; and as many people might then indiscriminately use it, it would
take from that necessary fear and caution which should prevent their
experiencing the extensive power of this drug, _for there are many
properties in it, if universally known, that would habituate the use, and
make it more in request with us than with Turks themselves_; the result
of which knowledge," he adds, "must prove a general misfortune. " In the
necessity of this conclusion I do not altogether concur; but upon that
point I shall have occasion to speak at the close of my Confessions,
where I shall present the reader with the _moral_ of my narrative.
PRELIMINARY CONFESSIONS
These preliminary confessions, or introductory narrative of the youthful
adventures which laid the foundation of the writer's habit of
opium-eating in after-life, it has been judged proper to premise, for
three several reasons:
1. As forestalling that question, and giving it a satisfactory answer,
which else would painfully obtrude itself in the course of the Opium
Confessions--"How came any reasonable being to subject himself to such a
yoke of misery; voluntarily to incur a captivity so servile, and
knowingly to fetter himself with such a sevenfold chain? "--a question
which, if not somewhere plausibly resolved, could hardly fail, by the
indignation which it would be apt to raise as against an act of wanton
folly, to interfere with that degree of sympathy which is necessary in
any case to an author's purposes.
2. As furnishing a key to some parts of that tremendous scenery which
afterwards peopled the dreams of the Opium-eater.
3. As creating some previous interest of a personal sort in the
confessing subject, apart from the matter of the confessions, which
cannot fail to render the confessions themselves more interesting. If a
man "whose talk is of oxen" should become an opium-eater, the probability
is that (if he is not too dull to dream at all) he will dream about oxen;
whereas, in the case before him, the reader will find that the
Opium-eater boasteth himself to be a philosopher; and accordingly, that
the phantasmagoria of _his_ dreams (waking or sleeping, day-dreams or
night-dreams) is suitable to one who in that character
Humani nihil a se alienum putat.
For amongst the conditions which he deems indispensable to the sustaining
of any claim to the title of philosopher is not merely the possession of
a superb intellect in its _analytic_ functions (in which part of the
pretensions, however, England can for some generations show but few
claimants; at least, he is not aware of any known candidate for this
honour who can be styled emphatically _a subtle thinker_, with the
exception of _Samuel Taylor Coleridge_, and in a narrower department of
thought with the recent illustrious exception {2} of _David Ricardo_) but
also on such a constitution of the _moral_ faculties as shall give him an
inner eye and power of intuition for the vision and the mysteries of our
human nature: _that_ constitution of faculties, in short, which (amongst
all the generations of men that from the beginning of time have deployed
into life, as it were, upon this planet) our English poets have possessed
in the highest degree, and Scottish professors {3} in the lowest.
I have often been asked how I first came to be a regular opium-eater, and
have suffered, very unjustly, in the opinion of my acquaintance from
being reputed to have brought upon myself all the sufferings which I
shall have to record, by a long course of indulgence in this practice
purely for the sake of creating an artificial state of pleasurable
excitement. This, however, is a misrepresentation of my case. True it
is that for nearly ten years I did occasionally take opium for the sake
of the exquisite pleasure it gave me; but so long as I took it with this
view I was effectually protected from all material bad consequences by
the necessity of interposing long intervals between the several acts of
indulgence, in order to renew the pleasurable sensations. It was not for
the purpose of creating pleasure, but of mitigating pain in the severest
degree, that I first began to use opium as an article of daily diet. In
the twenty-eighth year of my age a most painful affection of the stomach,
which I had first experienced about ten years before, attacked me in
great strength. This affection had originally been caused by extremities
of hunger, suffered in my boyish days. During the season of hope and
redundant happiness which succeeded (that is, from eighteen to twenty-
four) it had slumbered; for the three following years it had revived at
intervals; and now, under unfavourable circumstances, from depression of
spirits, it attacked me with a violence that yielded to no remedies but
opium. As the youthful sufferings which first produced this derangement
of the stomach were interesting in themselves, and in the circumstances
that attended them, I shall here briefly retrace them.
My father died when I was about seven years old, and left me to the care
of four guardians. I was sent to various schools, great and small; and
was very early distinguished for my classical attainments, especially for
my knowledge of Greek. At thirteen I wrote Greek with ease; and at
fifteen my command of that language was so great that I not only composed
Greek verses in lyric metres, but could converse in Greek fluently and
without embarrassment--an accomplishment which I have not since met with
in any scholar of my times, and which in my case was owing to the
practice of daily reading off the newspapers into the best Greek I could
furnish _extempore_; for the necessity of ransacking my memory and
invention for all sorts and combinations of periphrastic expressions as
equivalents for modern ideas, images, relations of things, &c. , gave me a
compass of diction which would never have been called out by a dull
translation of moral essays, &c. "That boy," said one of my masters,
pointing the attention of a stranger to me, "that boy could harangue an
Athenian mob better than you and I could address an English one. " He who
honoured me with this eulogy was a scholar, "and a ripe and a good one,"
and of all my tutors was the only one whom I loved or reverenced.
Unfortunately for me (and, as I afterwards learned, to this worthy man's
great indignation), I was transferred to the care, first of a blockhead,
who was in a perpetual panic lest I should expose his ignorance; and
finally to that of a respectable scholar at the head of a great school on
an ancient foundation. This man had been appointed to his situation by
--- College, Oxford, and was a sound, well-built scholar, but (like most
men whom I have known from that college) coarse, clumsy, and inelegant. A
miserable contrast he presented, in my eyes, to the Etonian brilliancy of
my favourite master; and beside, he could not disguise from my hourly
notice the poverty and meagreness of his understanding. It is a bad
thing for a boy to be and to know himself far beyond his tutors, whether
in knowledge or in power of mind. This was the case, so far as regarded
knowledge at least, not with myself only, for the two boys, who jointly
with myself composed the first form, were better Grecians than the head-
master, though not more elegant scholars, nor at all more accustomed to
sacrifice to the Graces. When I first entered I remember that we read
Sophocles; and it was a constant matter of triumph to us, the learned
triumvirate of the first form, to see our "Archididascalus" (as he loved
to be called) conning our lessons before we went up, and laying a regular
train, with lexicon and grammar, for blowing up and blasting (as it were)
any difficulties he found in the choruses; whilst _we_ never condescended
to open our books until the moment of going up, and were generally
employed in writing epigrams upon his wig or some such important matter.
My two class-fellows were poor, and dependent for their future prospects
at the university on the recommendation of the head-master; but I, who
had a small patrimonial property, the income of which was sufficient to
support me at college, wished to be sent thither immediately. I made
earnest representations on the subject to my guardians, but all to no
purpose. One, who was more reasonable and had more knowledge of the
world than the rest, lived at a distance; two of the other three resigned
all their authority into the hands of the fourth; and this fourth, with
whom I had to negotiate, was a worthy man in his way, but haughty,
obstinate, and intolerant of all opposition to his will. After a certain
number of letters and personal interviews, I found that I had nothing to
hope for, not even a compromise of the matter, from my guardian.
Unconditional submission was what he demanded, and I prepared myself,
therefore, for other measures. Summer was now coming on with hasty
steps, and my seventeenth birthday was fast approaching, after which day
I had sworn within myself that I would no longer be numbered amongst
schoolboys. Money being what I chiefly wanted, I wrote to a woman of
high rank, who, though young herself, had known me from a child, and had
latterly treated me with great distinction, requesting that she would
"lend" me five guineas. For upwards of a week no answer came, and I was
beginning to despond, when at length a servant put into my hands a double
letter with a coronet on the seal. The letter was kind and obliging. The
fair writer was on the sea-coast, and in that way the delay had arisen;
she enclosed double of what I had asked, and good-naturedly hinted that
if I should _never_ repay her, it would not absolutely ruin her. Now,
then, I was prepared for my scheme. Ten guineas, added to about two
which I had remaining from my pocket-money, seemed to me sufficient for
an indefinite length of time; and at that happy age, if no _definite_
boundary can be assigned to one's power, the spirit of hope and pleasure
makes it virtually infinite.
It is a just remark of Dr. Johnson's (and, what cannot often be said of
his remarks, it is a very feeling one), that we never do anything
consciously for the last time (of things, that is, which we have long
been in the habit of doing) without sadness of heart. This truth I felt
deeply when I came to leave ---, a place which I did not love, and where
I had not been happy. On the evening before I left --- for ever, I
grieved when the ancient and lofty schoolroom resounded with the evening
service, performed for the last time in my hearing; and at night, when
the muster-roll of names was called over, and mine (as usual) was called
first, I stepped forward, and passing the head-master, who was standing
by, I bowed to him, and looked earnestly in his face, thinking to myself,
"He is old and infirm, and in this world I shall not see him again. " I
was right; I never _did_ see him again, nor ever shall. He looked at me
complacently, smiled good-naturedly, returned my salutation (or rather my
valediction), and we parted (though he knew it not) for ever. I could
not reverence him intellectually, but he had been uniformly kind to me,
and had allowed me many indulgences; and I grieved at the thought of the
mortification I should inflict upon him.
The morning came which was to launch me into the world, and from which my
whole succeeding life has in many important points taken its colouring. I
lodged in the head-master's house, and had been allowed from my first
entrance the indulgence of a private room, which I used both as a
sleeping-room and as a study. At half after three I rose, and gazed with
deep emotion at the ancient towers of ---, "drest in earliest light," and
beginning to crimson with the radiant lustre of a cloudless July morning.
I was firm and immovable in my purpose; but yet agitated by anticipation
of uncertain danger and troubles; and if I could have foreseen the
hurricane and perfect hail-storm of affliction which soon fell upon me,
well might I have been agitated. To this agitation the deep peace of the
morning presented an affecting contrast, and in some degree a medicine.
The silence was more profound than that of midnight; and to me the
silence of a summer morning is more touching than all other silence,
because, the light being broad and strong as that of noonday at other
seasons of the year, it seems to differ from perfect day chiefly because
man is not yet abroad; and thus the peace of nature and of the innocent
creatures of God seems to be secure and deep only so long as the presence
of man and his restless and unquiet spirit are not there to trouble its
sanctity. I dressed myself, took my hat and gloves, and lingered a
little in the room. For the last year and a half this room had been my
"pensive citadel": here I had read and studied through all the hours of
night, and though true it was that for the latter part of this time I,
who was framed for love and gentle affections, had lost my gaiety and
happiness during the strife and fever of contention with my guardian,
yet, on the other hand, as a boy so passionately fond of books, and
dedicated to intellectual pursuits, I could not fail to have enjoyed many
happy hours in the midst of general dejection. I wept as I looked round
on the chair, hearth, writing-table, and other familiar objects, knowing
too certainly that I looked upon them for the last time. Whilst I write
this it is eighteen years ago, and yet at this moment I see distinctly,
as if it were yesterday, the lineaments and expression of the object on
which I fixed my parting gaze. It was a picture of the lovely ---, which
hung over the mantelpiece, the eyes and mouth of which were so beautiful,
and the whole countenance so radiant with benignity and divine
tranquillity, that I had a thousand times laid down my pen or my book to
gather consolation from it, as a devotee from his patron saint. Whilst I
was yet gazing upon it the deep tones of --- clock proclaimed that it was
four o'clock. I went up to the picture, kissed it, and then gently
walked out and closed the door for ever!
* * * * *
So blended and intertwisted in this life are occasions of laughter and of
tears, that I cannot yet recall without smiling an incident which
occurred at that time, and which had nearly put a stop to the immediate
execution of my plan. I had a trunk of immense weight, for, besides my
clothes, it contained nearly all my library. The difficulty was to get
this removed to a carrier's: my room was at an aerial elevation in the
house, and (what was worse) the staircase which communicated with this
angle of the building was accessible only by a gallery, which passed the
head-master's chamber door. I was a favourite with all the servants, and
knowing that any of them would screen me and act confidentially, I
communicated my embarrassment to a groom of the head-master's. The groom
swore he would do anything I wished, and when the time arrived went
upstairs to bring the trunk down. This I feared was beyond the strength
of any one man; however, the groom was a man
Of Atlantean shoulders, fit to bear
The weight of mightiest monarchies;
and had a back as spacious as Salisbury Plain. Accordingly he persisted
in bringing down the trunk alone, whilst I stood waiting at the foot of
the last flight in anxiety for the event. For some time I heard him
descending with slow and firm steps; but unfortunately, from his
trepidation, as he drew near the dangerous quarter, within a few steps of
the gallery, his foot slipped, and the mighty burden falling from his
shoulders, gained such increase of impetus at each step of the descent,
that on reaching the bottom it trundled, or rather leaped, right across,
with the noise of twenty devils, against the very bedroom door of the
Archididascalus. My first thought was that all was lost, and that my
only chance for executing a retreat was to sacrifice my baggage. However,
on reflection I determined to abide the issue. The groom was in the
utmost alarm, both on his own account and on mine, but, in spite of this,
so irresistibly had the sense of the ludicrous in this unhappy
_contretemps_ taken possession of his fancy, that he sang out a long,
loud, and canorous peal of laughter, that might have wakened the Seven
Sleepers. At the sound of this resonant merriment, within the very ears
of insulted authority, I could not myself forbear joining in it; subdued
to this, not so much by the unhappy _etourderie_ of the trunk, as by the
effect it had upon the groom. We both expected, as a matter of course,
that Dr. --- would sally, out of his room, for in general, if but a mouse
stirred, he sprang out like a mastiff from his kennel. Strange to say,
however, on this occasion, when the noise of laughter had ceased, no
sound, or rustling even, was to be heard in the bedroom. Dr. --- had a
painful complaint, which, sometimes keeping him awake, made his sleep
perhaps, when it did come, the deeper. Gathering courage from the
silence, the groom hoisted his burden again, and accomplished the
remainder of his descent without accident. I waited until I saw the
trunk placed on a wheelbarrow and on its road to the carrier's; then,
"with Providence my guide," I set off on foot, carrying a small parcel
with some articles of dress under my arm; a favourite English poet in one
pocket, and a small 12mo volume, containing about nine plays of
Euripides, in the other.
It had been my intention originally to proceed to Westmoreland, both from
the love I bore to that country and on other personal accounts. Accident,
however, gave a different direction to my wanderings, and I bent my steps
towards North Wales.
After wandering about for some time in Denbighshire, Merionethshire, and
Carnarvonshire, I took lodgings in a small neat house in B---. Here I
might have stayed with great comfort for many weeks, for provisions were
cheap at B---, from the scarcity of other markets for the surplus produce
of a wide agricultural district. An accident, however, in which perhaps
no offence was designed, drove me out to wander again. I know not
whether my reader may have remarked, but I have often remarked, that the
proudest class of people in England (or at any rate the class whose pride
is most apparent) are the families of bishops. Noblemen and their
children carry about with them, in their very titles, a sufficient
notification of their rank. Nay, their very names (and this applies also
to the children of many untitled houses) are often, to the English ear,
adequate exponents of high birth or descent. Sackville, Manners,
Fitzroy, Paulet, Cavendish, and scores of others, tell their own tale.
Such persons, therefore, find everywhere a due sense of their claims
already established, except among those who are ignorant of the world by
virtue of their own obscurity: "Not to know _them_, argues one's self
unknown. " Their manners take a suitable tone and colouring, and for once
they find it necessary to impress a sense of their consequence upon
others, they meet with a thousand occasions for moderating and tempering
this sense by acts of courteous condescension. With the families of
bishops it is otherwise: with them, it is all uphill work to make known
their pretensions; for the proportion of the episcopal bench taken from
noble families is not at any time very large, and the succession to these
dignities is so rapid that the public ear seldom has time to become
familiar with them, unless where they are connected with some literary
reputation. Hence it is that the children of bishops carry about with
them an austere and repulsive air, indicative of claims not generally
acknowledged, a sort of _noli me tangere_ manner, nervously apprehensive
of too familiar approach, and shrinking with the sensitiveness of a gouty
man from all contact with the [Greek text]. Doubtless, a powerful
understanding, or unusual goodness of nature, will preserve a man from
such weakness, but in general the truth of my representation will be
acknowledged; pride, if not of deeper root in such families, appears at
least more upon the surface of their manners. This spirit of manners
naturally communicates itself to their domestics and other dependants.
Now, my landlady had been a lady's maid or a nurse in the family of the
Bishop of ---, and had but lately married away and "settled" (as such
people express it) for life. In a little town like B---, merely to have
lived in the bishop's family conferred some distinction; and my good
landlady had rather more than her share of the pride I have noticed on
that score. What "my lord" said and what "my lord" did, how useful he
was in Parliament and how indispensable at Oxford, formed the daily
burden of her talk. All this I bore very well, for I was too
good-natured to laugh in anybody's face, and I could make an ample
allowance for the garrulity of an old servant. Of necessity, however, I
must have appeared in her eyes very inadequately impressed with the
bishop's importance, and, perhaps to punish me for my indifference, or
possibly by accident, she one day repeated to me a conversation in which
I was indirectly a party concerned. She had been to the palace to pay
her respects to the family, and, dinner being over, was summoned into the
dining-room. In giving an account of her household economy she happened
to mention that she had let her apartments. Thereupon the good bishop
(it seemed) had taken occasion to caution her as to her selection of
inmates, "for," said he, "you must recollect, Betty, that this place is
in the high road to the Head; so that multitudes of Irish swindlers
running away from their debts into England, and of English swindlers
running away from their debts to the Isle of Man, are likely to take this
place in their route. " This advice certainly was not without reasonable
grounds, but rather fitted to be stored up for Mrs. Betty's private
meditations than specially reported to me. What followed, however, was
somewhat worse. "Oh, my lord," answered my landlady (according to her
own representation of the matter), "I really don't think this young
gentleman is a swindler, because ---" "You don't _think_ me a swindler? "
said I, interrupting her, in a tumult of indignation: "for the future I
shall spare you the trouble of thinking about it. " And without delay I
prepared for my departure. Some concessions the good woman seemed
disposed to make; but a harsh and contemptuous expression, which I fear
that I applied to the learned dignitary himself, roused her indignation
in turn, and reconciliation then became impossible. I was indeed greatly
irritated at the bishop's having suggested any grounds of suspicion,
however remotely, against a person whom he had never seen; and I thought
of letting him know my mind in Greek, which, at the same time that it
would furnish some presumption that I was no swindler, would also (I
hoped) compel the bishop to reply in the same language; in which case I
doubted not to make it appear that if I was not so rich as his lordship,
I was a far better Grecian. Calmer thoughts, however, drove this boyish
design out of my mind; for I considered that the bishop was in the right
to counsel an old servant; that he could not have designed that his
advice should be reported to me; and that the same coarseness of mind
which had led Mrs. Betty to repeat the advice at all, might have coloured
it in a way more agreeable to her own style of thinking than to the
actual expressions of the worthy bishop.
I left the lodgings the very same hour, and this turned out a very
unfortunate occurrence for me, because, living henceforward at inns, I
was drained of my money very rapidly. In a fortnight I was reduced to
short allowance; that is, I could allow myself only one meal a day. From
the keen appetite produced by constant exercise and mountain air, acting
on a youthful stomach, I soon began to suffer greatly on this slender
regimen, for the single meal which I could venture to order was coffee or
tea. Even this, however, was at length withdrawn; and afterwards, so
long as I remained in Wales, I subsisted either on blackberries, hips,
haws, &c. , or on the casual hospitalities which I now and then received
in return for such little services as I had an opportunity of rendering.
Sometimes I wrote letters of business for cottagers who happened to have
relatives in Liverpool or in London; more often I wrote love-letters to
their sweethearts for young women who had lived as servants at Shrewsbury
or other towns on the English border. On all such occasions I gave great
satisfaction to my humble friends, and was generally treated with
hospitality; and once in particular, near the village of Llan-y-styndw
(or some such name), in a sequestered part of Merionethshire, I was
entertained for upwards of three days by a family of young people with an
affectionate and fraternal kindness that left an impression upon my heart
not yet impaired. The family consisted at that time of four sisters and
three brothers, all grown up, and all remarkable for elegance and
delicacy of manners. So much beauty, and so much native good breeding
and refinement, I do not remember to have seen before or since in any
cottage, except once or twice in Westmoreland and Devonshire. They spoke
English, an accomplishment not often met with in so many members of one
family, especially in villages remote from the high road. Here I wrote,
on my first introduction, a letter about prize-money, for one of the
brothers, who had served on board an English man-of-war; and, more
privately, two love-letters for two of the sisters. They were both
interesting-looking girls, and one of uncommon loveliness. In the midst
of their confusion and blushes, whilst dictating, or rather giving me
general instructions, it did not require any great penetration to
discover that what they wished was that their letters should be as kind
as was consistent with proper maidenly pride. I contrived so to temper
my expressions as to reconcile the gratification of both feelings; and
they were as much pleased with the way in which I had expressed their
thoughts as (in their simplicity) they were astonished at my having so
readily discovered them. The reception one meets with from the women of
a family generally determines the tenor of one's whole entertainment. In
this case I had discharged my confidential duties as secretary so much to
the general satisfaction, perhaps also amusing them with my conversation,
that I was pressed to stay with a cordiality which I had little
inclination to resist. I slept with the brothers, the only unoccupied
bed standing in the apartment of the young women; but in all other points
they treated me with a respect not usually paid to purses as light as
mine--as if my scholarship were sufficient evidence that I was of "gentle
blood. " Thus I lived with them for three days and great part of a
fourth; and, from the undiminished kindness which they continued to show
me, I believe I might have stayed with them up to this time, if their
power had corresponded with their wishes. On the last morning, however,
I perceived upon their countenances, as they sate at breakfast, the
expression of some unpleasant communication which was at hand; and soon
after, one of the brothers explained to me that their parents had gone,
the day before my arrival, to an annual meeting of Methodists, held at
Carnarvon, and were that day expected to return; "and if they should not
be so civil as they ought to be," he begged, on the part of all the young
people, that I would not take it amiss. The parents returned with
churlish faces, and "_Dym Sassenach_" (_no English_) in answer to all my
addresses. I saw how matters stood; and so, taking an affectionate leave
of my kind and interesting young hosts, I went my way; for, though they
spoke warmly to their parents in my behalf, and often excused the manner
of the old people by saying it was "only their way," yet I easily
understood that my talent for writing love-letters would do as little to
recommend me with two grave sexagenarian Welsh Methodists as my Greek
sapphics or alcaics; and what had been hospitality when offered to me
with the gracious courtesy of my young friends, would become charity when
connected with the harsh demeanour of these old people. Certainly, Mr.
Shelley is right in his notions about old age: unless powerfully
counteracted by all sorts of opposite agencies, it is a miserable
corrupter and blighter to the genial charities of the human heart.
Soon after this I contrived, by means which I must omit for want of room,
to transfer myself to London. And now began the latter and fiercer stage
of my long sufferings; without using a disproportionate expression I
might say, of my agony. For I now suffered, for upwards of sixteen
weeks, the physical anguish of hunger in. I various degrees of
intensity, but as bitter perhaps as ever any human being can have
suffered who has survived it would not needlessly harass my reader's
feelings by a detail of all that I endured; for extremities such as
these, under any circumstances of heaviest misconduct or guilt, cannot be
contemplated, even in description, without a rueful pity that is painful
to the natural goodness of the human heart. Let it suffice, at least on
this occasion, to say that a few fragments of bread from the breakfast-
table of one individual (who supposed me to be ill, but did not know of
my being in utter want), and these at uncertain intervals, constituted my
whole support. During the former part of my sufferings (that is,
generally in Wales, and always for the first two months in London) I was
houseless, and very seldom slept under a roof. To this constant
exposure to the open air I ascribe it mainly that I did not sink under my
torments. Latterly, however, when colder and more inclement weather came
on, and when, from the length of my sufferings, I had begun to sink into
a more languishing condition, it was no doubt fortunate for me that the
same person to whose breakfast-table I had access, allowed me to sleep in
a large unoccupied house of which he was tenant. Unoccupied I call it,
for there was no household or establishment in it; nor any furniture,
indeed, except a table and a few chairs. But I found, on taking
possession of my new quarters, that the house already contained one
single inmate, a poor friendless child, apparently ten years old; but she
seemed hunger-bitten, and sufferings of that sort often make children
look older than they are. From this forlorn child I learned that she had
slept and lived there alone for some time before I came; and great joy
the poor creature expressed when she found that I was in future to be her
companion through the hours of darkness. The house was large, and, from
the want of furniture, the noise of the rats made a prodigious echoing on
the spacious staircase and hall; and amidst the real fleshly ills of cold
and, I fear, hunger, the forsaken child had found leisure to suffer still
more (it appeared) from the self-created one of ghosts. I promised her
protection against all ghosts whatsoever, but alas! I could offer her no
other assistance. We lay upon the floor, with a bundle of cursed law
papers for a pillow, but with no other covering than a sort of large
horseman's cloak; afterwards, however, we discovered in a garret an old
sofa-cover, a small piece of rug, and some fragments of other articles,
which added a little to our warmth. The poor child crept close to me for
warmth, and for security against her ghostly enemies. When I was not
more than usually ill I took her into my arms, so that in general she was
tolerably warm, and often slept when I could not, for during the last two
months of my sufferings I slept much in daytime, and was apt to fall into
transient dosings at all hours. But my sleep distressed me more than my
watching, for beside the tumultuousness of my dreams (which were only not
so awful as those which I shall have to describe hereafter as produced by
opium), my sleep was never more than what is called _dog-sleep_; so that
I could hear myself moaning, and was often, as it seemed to me, awakened
suddenly by my own voice; and about this time a hideous sensation began
to haunt me as soon as I fell into a slumber, which has since returned
upon me at different periods of my life--viz. , a sort of twitching (I
know not where, but apparently about the region of the stomach) which
compelled me violently to throw out my feet for the sake of relieving it.
This sensation coming on as soon as I began to sleep, and the effort to
relieve it constantly awaking me, at length I slept only from exhaustion;
and from increasing weakness (as I said before) I was constantly falling
asleep and constantly awaking. Meantime, the master of the house
sometimes came in upon us suddenly, and very early; sometimes not till
ten o'clock, sometimes not at all. He was in constant fear of bailiffs.
Improving on the plan of Cromwell, every night he slept in a different
quarter of London; and I observed that he never failed to examine through
a private window the appearance of those who knocked at the door before
he would allow it to be opened. He breaksfasted alone; indeed, his tea
equipage would hardly have admitted of his hazarding an invitation to a
second person, any more than the quantity of esculent _materiel_, which
for the most part was little more than a roll or a few biscuits which he
had bought on his road from the place where he had slept. Or, if he
_had_ asked a party--as I once learnedly and facetiously observed to
him--the several members of it must have _stood_ in the relation to each
other (not _sate_ in any relation whatever) of succession, as the
metaphysicians have it, and not of a coexistence; in the relation of the
parts of time, and not of the parts of space. During his breakfast I
generally contrived a reason for lounging in, and, with an air of as much
indifference as I could assume, took up such fragments as he had left;
sometimes, indeed, there were none at all. In doing this I committed no
robbery except upon the man himself, who was thus obliged (I believe) now
and then to send out at noon for an extra biscuit; for as to the poor
child, _she_ was never admitted into his study (if I may give that name
to his chief depository of parchments, law writings, &c. ); that room was
to her the Bluebeard room of the house, being regularly locked on his
departure to dinner, about six o'clock, which usually was his final
departure for the night. Whether this child were an illegitimate
daughter of Mr. ---, or only a servant, I could not ascertain; she did
not herself know; but certainly she was treated altogether as a menial
servant. No sooner did Mr. --- make his appearance than she went below
stairs, brushed his shoes, coat, &c. ; and, except when she was summoned
to run an errand, she never emerged from the dismal Tartarus of the
kitchen, &c. , to the upper air until my welcome knock at night called up
her little trembling footsteps to the front door. Of her life during the
daytime, however, I knew little but what I gathered from her own account
at night, for as soon as the hours of business commenced I saw that my
absence would be acceptable, and in general, therefore, I went off and
sate in the parks or elsewhere until nightfall.
But who and what, meantime, was the master of the house himself? Reader,
he was one of those anomalous practitioners in lower departments of the
law who--what shall I say? --who on prudential reasons, or from necessity,
deny themselves all indulgence in the luxury of too delicate a
conscience, (a periphrasis which might be abridged considerably, but
_that_ I leave to the reader's taste): in many walks of life a conscience
is a more expensive encumbrance than a wife or a carriage; and just as
people talk of "laying down" their carriages, so I suppose my friend Mr.
--- had "laid down" his conscience for a time, meaning, doubtless, to
resume it as soon as he could afford it. The inner economy of such a
man's daily life would present a most strange picture, if I could allow
myself to amuse the reader at his expense. Even with my limited
opportunities for observing what went on, I saw many scenes of London
intrigues and complex chicanery, "cycle and epicycle, orb in orb," at
which I sometimes smile to this day, and at which I smiled then, in spite
of my misery. My situation, however, at that time gave me little
experience in my own person of any qualities in Mr. ---'s character but
such as did him honour; and of his whole strange composition I must
forget everything but that towards me he was obliging, and to the extent
of his power, generous.
That power was not, indeed, very extensive; however, in common with the
rats, I sate rent free; and as Dr. Johnson has recorded that he never but
once in his life had as much wall-fruit as he could eat, so let me be
grateful that on that single occasion I had as large a choice of
apartments in a London mansion as I could possibly desire. Except the
Bluebeard room, which the poor child believed to be haunted, all others,
from the attics to the cellars, were at our service; "the world was all
before us," and we pitched our tent for the night in any spot we chose.
This house I have already described as a large one; it stands in a
conspicuous situation and in a well-known part of London. Many of my
readers will have passed it, I doubt not, within a few hours of reading
this. For myself, I never fail to visit it when business draws me to
London; about ten o'clock this very night, August 15, 1821--being my
birthday--I turned aside from my evening walk down Oxford Street,
purposely to take a glance at it; it is now occupied by a respectable
family, and by the lights in the front drawing-room I observed a domestic
party assembled, perhaps at tea, and apparently cheerful and gay.
Marvellous contrast, in my eyes, to the darkness, cold, silence, and
desolation of that same house eighteen years ago, when its nightly
occupants were one famishing scholar and a neglected child. Her, by-the-
bye, in after-years I vainly endeavoured to trace. Apart from her
situation, she was not what would be called an interesting child; she was
neither pretty, nor quick in understanding, nor remarkably pleasing in
manners. But, thank God! even in those years I needed not the
embellishments of novel accessories to conciliate my affections: plain
human nature, in its humblest and most homely apparel, was enough for me,
and I loved the child because she was my partner in wretchedness. If she
is now living she is probably a mother, with children of her own; but, as
I have said, I could never trace her.
This I regret; but another person there was at that time whom I have
since sought to trace with far deeper earnestness, and with far deeper
sorrow at my failure. This person was a young woman, and one of that
unhappy class who subsist upon the wages of prostitution. I feel no
shame, nor have any reason to feel it, in avowing that I was then on
familiar and friendly terms with many women in that unfortunate
condition. The reader needs neither smile at this avowal nor frown; for,
not to remind my classical readers of the old Latin proverb, "_Sine
cerere_," &c. , it may well be supposed that in the existing state of my
purse my connection with such women could not have been an impure one.
But the truth is, that at no time of my life have I been a person to hold
myself polluted by the touch or approach of any creature that wore a
human shape; on the contrary, from my very earliest youth it has been my
pride to converse familiarly, _more Socratio_, with all human beings,
man, woman, and child, that chance might fling in my way; a practice
which is friendly to the knowledge of human nature, to good feelings, and
to that frankness of address which becomes a man who would be thought a
philosopher.
