No More Learning

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. For a philosopher should not see with the eyes of the poor
limitary creature calling himself a man of the world, and filled with
narrow and self-regarding prejudices of birth and education, but should
look upon himself as a catholic creature, and as standing in equal
relation to high and low, to educated and uneducated, to the guilty and
the innocent. Being myself at that time of necessity a peripatetic, or a
walker of the streets, I naturally fell in more frequently with those
female peripatetics who are technically called street-walkers. Many of
these women had occasionally taken my part against watchmen who wished to
drive me off the steps of houses where I was sitting. But one amongst
them, the one on whose account I have at all introduced this subject--yet
no! let me not class the, oh! noble-minded Ann--with that order of women.
Let me find, if it be possible, some gentler name to designate the
condition of her to whose bounty and compassion, ministering to my
necessities when all the world had forsaken me, I owe it that I am at
this time alive. For many weeks I had walked at nights with this poor
friendless girl up and down Oxford Street, or had rested with her on
steps and under the shelter of porticoes. She could not be so old as
myself; she told me, indeed, that she had not completed her sixteenth
year. By such questions as my interest about her prompted I had
gradually drawn forth her simple history. Hers was a case of ordinary
occurrence (as I have since had reason to think), and one in which, if
London beneficence had better adapted its arrangements to meet it, the
power of the law might oftener be interposed to protect and to avenge.
But the stream of London charity flows in a channel which, though deep
and mighty, is yet noiseless and underground; not obvious or readily
accessible to poor houseless wanderers; and it cannot be denied that the
outside air and framework of London society is harsh, cruel, and
repulsive. In any case, however, I saw that part of her injuries might
easily have been redressed, and I urged her often and earnestly to lay
her complaint before a magistrate. Friendless as she was, I assured her
that she would meet with immediate attention, and that English justice,
which was no respecter of persons, would speedily and amply avenge her on
the brutal ruffian who had plundered her little property. She promised
me often that she would, but she delayed taking the steps I pointed out
from time to time, for she was timid and dejected to a degree which
showed how deeply sorrow had taken hold of her young heart; and perhaps
she thought justly that the most upright judge and the most righteous
tribunals could do nothing to repair her heaviest wrongs. Something,
however, would perhaps have been done, for it had been settled between us
at length, but unhappily on the very last time but one that I was ever to
see her, that in a day or two we should go together before a magistrate,
and that I should speak on her behalf. This little service it was
destined, however, that I should never realise. Meantime, that which she
rendered to me, and which was greater than I could ever have repaid her,
was this:--One night, when we were pacing slowly along Oxford Street, and
after a day when I had felt more than usually ill and faint, I requested
her to turn off with me into Soho Square. Thither we went, and we sat
down on the steps of a house, which to this hour I never pass without a
pang of grief and an inner act of homage to the spirit of that unhappy
girl, in memory of the noble action which she there performed. Suddenly,
as we sate, I grew much worse. I had been leaning my head against her
bosom, and all at once I sank from her arms and fell backwards on the
steps. From the sensations I then had, I felt an inner conviction of the
liveliest kind, that without some powerful and reviving stimulus I should
either have died on the spot, or should at least have sunk to a point of
exhaustion from which all reascent under my friendless circumstances
would soon have become hopeless. Then it was, at this crisis of my fate,
that my poor orphan companion, who had herself met with little but
injuries in this world, stretched out a saving hand to me. Uttering a
cry of terror, but without a moment's delay, she ran off into Oxford
Street, and in less time than could be imagined returned to me with a
glass of port wine and spices, that acted upon my empty stomach, which at
that time would have rejected all solid food, with an instantaneous power
of restoration; and for this glass the generous girl without a murmur
paid out of her humble purse at a time--be it remembered! --when she had
scarcely wherewithal to purchase the bare necessaries of life, and when
she could have no reason to expect that I should ever be able to
reimburse her.

Oh, youthful benefactress! how often in succeeding years, standing in
solitary places, and thinking of thee with grief of heart and perfect
love--how often have I wished that, as in ancient times, the curse of a
father was believed to have a supernatural power, and to pursue its
object with a fatal necessity of self-fulfilment; even so the benediction
of a heart oppressed with gratitude might have a like prerogative, might
have power given to it from above to chase, to haunt, to waylay, to
overtake, to pursue thee into the central darkness of a London brothel,
or (if it were possible) into the darkness of the grave, there to awaken
thee with an authentic message of peace and forgiveness, and of final
reconciliation!

I do not often weep: for not only do my thoughts on subjects connected
with the chief interests of man daily, nay hourly, descend a thousand
fathoms "too deep for tears;" not only does the sternness of my habits of
thought present an antagonism to the feelings which prompt tears--wanting
of necessity to those who, being protected usually by their levity from
any tendency to meditative sorrow, would by that same levity be made
incapable of resisting it on any casual access of such feelings; but
also, I believe that all minds which have contemplated such objects as
deeply as I have done, must, for their own protection from utter
despondency, have early encouraged and cherished some tranquillising
belief as to the future balances and the hieroglyphic meanings of human
sufferings. On these accounts I am cheerful to this hour, and, as I have
said, I do not often weep. Yet some feelings, though not deeper or more
passionate, are more tender than others; and often, when I walk at this
time in Oxford Street by dreamy lamplight, and hear those airs played on
a barrel-organ which years ago solaced me and my dear companion (as I
must always call her), I shed tears, and muse with myself at the
mysterious dispensation which so suddenly and so critically separated us
for ever. How it happened the reader will understand from what remains
of this introductory narration.

Soon after the period of the last incident I have recorded I met in
Albemarle Street a gentleman of his late Majesty's household. This
gentleman had received hospitalities on different occasions from my
family, and he challenged me upon the strength of my family likeness. I
did not attempt any disguise; I answered his questions ingenuously, and,
on his pledging his word of honour that he would not betray me to my
guardians, I gave him an address to my friend the attorney's. The next
day I received from him a 10 pound bank-note. The letter enclosing it
was delivered with other letters of business to the attorney, but though
his look and manner informed me that he suspected its contents, he gave
it up to me honourably and without demur.

This present, from the particular service to which it was applied, leads
me naturally to speak of the purpose which had allured me up to London,
and which I had been (to use a forensic word) soliciting from the first
day of my arrival in London to that of my final departure.

In so mighty a world as London it will surprise my readers that I should
not have found some means of starving off the last extremities, of
penury; and it will strike them that two resources at least must have
been open to me--viz. , either to seek assistance from the friends of my
family, or to turn my youthful talents and attainments into some channel
of pecuniary emolument. As to the first course, I may observe generally,
that what I dreaded beyond all other evils was the chance of being
reclaimed by my guardians; not doubting that whatever power the law gave
them would have been enforced against me to the utmost--that is, to the
extremity of forcibly restoring me to the school which I had quitted, a
restoration which, as it would in my eyes have been a dishonour, even if
submitted to voluntarily, could not fail, when extorted from me in
contempt and defiance of my own wishes and efforts, to have been a
humiliation worse to me than death, and which would indeed have
terminated in death. I was therefore shy enough of applying for
assistance even in those quarters where I was sure of receiving it, at
the risk of furnishing my guardians with any clue of recovering me. But
as to London in particular, though doubtless my father had in his
lifetime had many friends there, yet (as ten years had passed since his
death) I remembered few of them even by name; and never having seen
London before, except once for a few hours, I knew not the address of
even those few. To this mode of gaining help, therefore, in part the
difficulty, but much more the paramount fear which I have mentioned,
habitually indisposed me. In regard to the other mode, I now feel half
inclined to join my reader in wondering that I should have overlooked it.
As a corrector of Greek proofs (if in no other way) I might doubtless
have gained enough for my slender wants. Such an office as this I could
have discharged with an exemplary and punctual accuracy that would soon
have gained me the confidence of my employers. But it must not be
forgotten that, even for such an office as this, it was necessary that I
should first of all have an introduction to some respectable publisher,
and this I had no means of obtaining. To say the truth, however, it had
never once occurred to me to think of literary labours as a source of
profit. No mode sufficiently speedy of obtaining money had ever occurred
to me but that of borrowing it on the strength of my future claims and
expectations. This mode I sought by every avenue to compass; and amongst
other persons I applied to a Jew named D--- {4}

To this Jew, and to other advertising money-lenders (some of whom were, I
believe, also Jews), I had introduced myself with an account of my
expectations; which account, on examining my father's will at Doctors'
Commons, they had ascertained to be correct. The person there mentioned
as the second son of --- was found to have all the claims (or more than
all) that I had stated; but one question still remained, which the faces
of the Jews pretty significantly suggested--was _I_ that person? This
doubt had never occurred to me as a possible one; I had rather feared,
whenever my Jewish friends scrutinised me keenly, that I might be too
well known to be that person, and that some scheme might be passing in
their minds for entrapping me and selling me to my guardians. It was
strange to me to find my own self _materialiter_ considered (so I
expressed it, for I doated on logical accuracy of distinctions), accused,
or at least suspected, of counterfeiting my own self _formaliter_
considered. However, to satisfy their scruples, I took the only course
in my power. Whilst I was in Wales I had received various letters from
young friends these I produced, for I carried them constantly in my
pocket, being, indeed, by this time almost the only relics of my personal
encumbrances (excepting the clothes I wore) which I had not in one way or
other disposed of. Most of these letters were from the Earl of ---, who
was at that time my chief (or rather only) confidential friend. These
letters were dated from Eton. I had also some from the Marquis of ---,
his father, who, though absorbed in agricultural pursuits, yet having
been an Etonian himself, and as good a scholar as a nobleman needs to be,
still retained an affection for classical studies and for youthful
scholars. He had accordingly, from the time that I was fifteen,
corresponded with me; sometimes upon the great improvements which he had
made or was meditating in the counties of M--- and Sl--- since I had been
there, sometimes upon the merits of a Latin poet, and at other times
suggesting subjects to me on which he wished me to write verses.

On reading the letters, one of my Jewish friends agreed to furnish me
with two or three hundred pounds on my personal security, provided I
could persuade the young Earl --- who was, by the way, not older than
myself--to guarantee the payment on our coming of age; the Jew's final
object being, as I now suppose, not the trifling profit he could expect
to make by me, but the prospect of establishing a connection with my
noble friend, whose immense expectations were well known to him. In
pursuance of this proposal on the part of the Jew, about eight or nine
days after I had received the 10 pounds, I prepared to go down to Eton.
Nearly 3 pounds of the money I had given to my money-lending friend, on
his alleging that the stamps must be bought, in order that the writings
might be preparing whilst I was away from London. I thought in my heart
that he was lying; but I did not wish to give him any excuse for charging
his own delays upon me. A smaller sum I had given to my friend the
attorney (who was connected with the money-lenders as their lawyer), to
which, indeed, he was entitled for his unfurnished lodgings. About
fifteen shillings I had employed in re-establishing (though in a very
humble way) my dress. Of the remainder I gave one quarter to Ann,
meaning on my return to have divided with her whatever might remain.
These arrangements made, soon after six o'clock on a dark winter evening
I set off, accompanied by Ann, towards Piccadilly; for it was my
intention to go down as far as Salthill on the Bath or Bristol mail. Our
course lay through a part of the town which has now all disappeared, so
that I can no longer retrace its ancient boundaries--Swallow Street, I
think it was called. Having time enough before us, however, we bore away
to the left until we came into Golden Square; there, near the corner of
Sherrard Street, we sat down, not wishing to part in the tumult and blaze
of Piccadilly. I had told her of my plans some time before, and I now
assured her again that she should share in my good fortune, if I met with
any, and that I would never forsake her as soon as I had power to protect
her. This I fully intended, as much from inclination as from a sense of
duty; for setting aside gratitude, which in any case must have made me
her debtor for life, I loved her as affectionately as if she had been my
sister; and at this moment with sevenfold tenderness, from pity at
witnessing her extreme dejection. I had apparently most reason for
dejection, because I was leaving the saviour of my life; yet I,
considering the shock my health had received, was cheerful and full of
hope. She, on the contrary, who was parting with one who had had little
means of serving her, except by kindness and brotherly treatment, was
overcome by sorrow; so that, when I kissed her at our final farewell, she
put her arms about my neck and wept without speaking a word. I hoped to
return in a week at farthest, and I agreed with her that on the fifth
night from that, and every night afterwards, she would wait for me at six
o'clock near the bottom of Great Titchfield Street, which had been our
customary haven, as it were, of rendezvous, to prevent our missing each
other in the great Mediterranean of Oxford Street. This and other
measures of precaution I took; one only I forgot. She had either never
told me, or (as a matter of no great interest) I had forgotten her
surname. It is a general practice, indeed, with girls of humble rank in
her unhappy condition, not (as novel-reading women of higher pretensions)
to style themselves _Miss Douglas_, _Miss Montague_, &c. , but simply by
their Christian names--_Mary_, _Jane_, _Frances_, &c. Her surname, as
the surest means of tracing her hereafter, I ought now to have inquired;
but the truth is, having no reason to think that our meeting could, in
consequence of a short interruption, be more difficult or uncertain than
it had been for so many weeks, I had scarcely for a moment adverted to it
as necessary, or placed it amongst my memoranda against this parting
interview; and my final anxieties being spent in comforting her with
hopes, and in pressing upon her the necessity of getting some medicines
for a violent cough and hoarseness with which she was troubled, I wholly
forgot it until it was too late to recall her.

It was past eight o'clock when I reached the Gloucester Coffee-house, and
the Bristol mail being on the point of going off, I mounted on the
outside. The fine fluent motion {5} of this mail soon laid me asleep: it
is somewhat remarkable that the first easy or refreshing sleep which I
had enjoyed for some months, was on the outside of a mail-coach--a bed
which at this day I find rather an uneasy one. Connected with this sleep
was a little incident which served, as hundreds of others did at that
time, to convince me how easily a man who has never been in any great
distress may pass through life without knowing, in his own person at
least, anything of the possible goodness of the human heart--or, as I
must add with a sigh, of its possible vileness. So thick a curtain of
_manners_ is drawn over the features and expression of men's _natures_,
that to the ordinary observer the two extremities, and the infinite field
of varieties which lie between them, are all confounded; the vast and
multitudinous compass of their several harmonies reduced to the meagre
outline of differences expressed in the gamut or alphabet of elementary
sounds. The case was this: for the first four or five miles from London
I annoyed my fellow-passenger on the roof by occasionally falling against
him when the coach gave a lurch to his: side; and indeed, if the road had
been less smooth and level than it is, I should have fallen off from
weakness. Of this annoyance he complained heavily, as perhaps, in the
same circumstances, most people would; he expressed his complaint,
however, more morosely than the occasion seemed to warrant, and if I had
parted with him at that moment I should have thought of him (if I had
considered it worth while to think of him at all) as a surly and almost
brutal fellow. However, I was conscious that I had given him some cause
for complaint, and therefore I apologized to him, and assured him I would
do what I could to avoid falling asleep for the future; and at the same
time, in as few words as possible, I explained to him that I was ill and
in a weak state from long suffering, and that I could not afford at that
time to take an inside place. This man's manner changed, upon hearing
this explanation, in an instant; and when I next woke for a minute from
the noise and lights of Hounslow (for in spite of my wishes and efforts I
had fallen asleep again within two minutes from the time I had spoken to
him) I found that he had put his arm round me to protect me from falling
off, and for the rest of my journey he behaved to me with the gentleness
of a woman, so that at length I almost lay in his arms; and this was the
more kind, as he could not have known that I was not going the whole way
to Bath or Bristol. Unfortunately, indeed, I _did_ go rather farther
than I intended, for so genial and so refreshing was my sleep, that the
next time after leaving Hounslow that I fully awoke was upon the sudden
pulling up of the mail (possibly at a post-office), and on inquiry I
found that we had reached Maidenhead--six or seven miles, I think, ahead
of Salthill. Here I alighted, and for the half-minute that the mail
stopped I was entreated by my friendly companion (who, from the transient
glimpse I had had of him in Piccadilly, seemed to me to be a gentleman's
butler, or person of that rank) to go to bed without delay. This I
promised, though with no intention of doing so; and in fact I immediately
set forward, or rather backward, on foot. It must then have been nearly
midnight, but so slowly did I creep along that I heard a clock in a
cottage strike four before I turned down the lane from Slough to Eton.
The air and the sleep had both refreshed me; but I was weary
nevertheless. I remember a thought (obvious enough, and which has been
prettily expressed by a Roman poet) which gave me some consolation at
that moment under my poverty. There had been some time before a murder
committed on or near Hounslow Heath. I think I cannot be mistaken when I
say that the name of the murdered person was _Steele_, and that he was
the owner of a lavender plantation in that neighbourhood. Every step of
my progress was bringing me nearer to the Heath, and it naturally
occurred to me that I and the accused murderer, if he were that night
abroad, might at every instant be unconsciously approaching each other
through the darkness; in which case, said I--supposing I, instead of
being (as indeed I am) little better than an outcast--

Lord of my learning, and no land beside--

were, like my friend Lord ---, heir by general repute to 70,000 pounds
per annum, what a panic should I be under at this moment about my throat!
Indeed, it was not likely that Lord --- should ever be in my situation.
But nevertheless, the spirit of the remark remains true--that vast power
and possessions make a man shamefully afraid of dying; and I am convinced
that many of the most intrepid adventurers, who, by fortunately being
poor, enjoy the full use of their natural courage, would, if at the very
instant of going into action news were brought to them that they had
unexpectedly succeeded to an estate in England of 50,000 pounds a-year,
feel their dislike to bullets considerably sharpened, {6} and their
efforts at perfect equanimity and self-possession proportionably
difficult. So true it is, in the language of a wise man whose own
experience had made him acquainted with both fortunes, that riches are
better fitted

To slacken virtue, and abate her edge,
Than tempt her to do ought may merit praise.

_Paradise Regained_.

I dally with my subject because, to myself, the remembrance of these
times is profoundly interesting. But my reader shall not have any
further cause to complain, for I now hasten to its close. In the road
between Slough and Eton I fell asleep, and just as the morning began to
dawn I was awakened by the voice of a man standing over me and surveying
me. I know not what he was: he was an ill-looking fellow, but not
therefore of necessity an ill-meaning fellow; or, if he were, I suppose
he thought that no person sleeping out-of-doors in winter could be worth
robbing. In which conclusion, however, as it regarded myself, I beg to
assure him, if he should be among my readers, that he was mistaken. After
a slight remark he passed on; and I was not sorry at his disturbance, as
it enabled me to pass through Eton before people were generally up. The
night had been heavy and lowering, but towards the morning it had changed
to a slight frost, and the ground and the trees were now covered with
rime. I slipped through Eton unobserved; washed myself, and as far as
possible adjusted my dress, at a little public-house in Windsor; and
about eight o'clock went down towards Pote's. On my road I met some
junior boys, of whom I made inquiries. An Etonian is always a gentleman;
and, in spite of my shabby habiliments, they answered me civilly. My
friend Lord --- was gone to the University of ---. "Ibi omnis effusus
labor! " I had, however, other friends at Eton; but it is not to all that
wear that name in prosperity that a man is willing to present himself in
distress. On recollecting myself, however, I asked for the Earl of D---,
to whom (though my acquaintance with him was not so intimate as with some
others) I should not have shrunk from presenting myself under any
circumstances. He was still at Eton, though I believe on the wing for
Cambridge. I called, was received kindly, and asked to breakfast.

Here let me stop for a moment to check my reader from any erroneous
conclusions. Because I have had occasion incidentally to speak of
various patrician friends, it must not be supposed that I have myself any
pretension to rank and high blood. I thank God that I have not. I am
the son of a plain English merchant, esteemed during his life for his
great integrity, and strongly attached to literary pursuits (indeed, he
was himself, anonymously, an author). If he had lived it was expected
that he would have been very rich; but dying prematurely, he left no more
than about 30,000 pounds amongst seven different claimants. My mother I
may mention with honour, as still more highly gifted; for though
unpretending to the name and honours of a _literary_ woman, I shall
presume to call her (what many literary women are not) an _intellectual_
woman; and I believe that if ever her letters should be collected and
published, they would be thought generally to exhibit as much strong and
masculine sense, delivered in as pure "mother English," racy and fresh
with idiomatic graces, as any in our language--hardly excepting those of
Lady M. W. Montague. These are my honours of descent, I have no other;
and I have thanked God sincerely that I have not, because, in my
judgment, a station which raises a man too eminently above the level of
his fellow-creatures is not the most favourable to moral or to
intellectual qualities.

Lord D--- placed before me a most magnificent breakfast. It was really
so; but in my eyes it seemed trebly magnificent, from being the first
regular meal, the first "good man's table," that I had sate down to for
months. Strange to say, however, I could scarce eat anything. On the
day when I first received my 10 pound bank-note I had gone to a baker's
shop and bought a couple of rolls; this very shop I had two months or six
weeks before surveyed with an eagerness of desire which it was almost
humiliating to me to recollect. I remembered the story about Otway, and
feared that there might be danger in eating too rapidly. But I had no
need for alarm; my appetite was quite sunk, and I became sick before I
had eaten half of what I had bought. This effect from eating what
approached to a meal I continued to feel for weeks; or, when I did not
experience any nausea, part of what I ate was rejected, sometimes with
acidity, sometimes immediately and without any acidity. On the present
occasion, at Lord D-'s table, I found myself not at all better than
usual, and in the midst of luxuries I had no appetite. I had, however,
unfortunately, at all times a craving for wine; I explained my situation,
therefore, to Lord D---, and gave him a short account of my late
sufferings, at which he expressed great compassion, and called for wine.
This gave me a momentary relief and pleasure; and on all occasions when I
had an opportunity I never failed to drink wine, which I worshipped then
as I have since worshipped opium. I am convinced, however, that this
indulgence in wine contributed to strengthen my malady, for the tone of
my stomach was apparently quite sunk, and by a better regimen it might
sooner, and perhaps effectually, have been revived. I hope that it was
not from this love of wine that I lingered in the neighbourhood of my
Eton friends; I persuaded myself then that it was from reluctance to ask
of Lord D---, on whom I was conscious I had not sufficient claims, the
particular service in quest of which I had come down to Eton. I was,
however unwilling to lose my journey, and--I asked it. Lord D---, whose
good nature was unbounded, and which, in regard to myself, had been
measured rather by his compassion perhaps for my condition, and his
knowledge of my intimacy with some of his relatives, than by an
over-rigorous inquiry into the extent of my own direct claims, faltered,
nevertheless, at this request. He acknowledged that he did not like to
have any dealings with money-lenders, and feared lest such a transaction
might come to the ears of his connexions. Moreover, he doubted whether
_his_ signature, whose expectations were so much more bounded than those
of ---, would avail with my unchristian friends. However, he did not
wish, as it seemed, to mortify me by an absolute refusal; for after a
little consideration he promised, under certain conditions which he
pointed out, to give his security. Lord D--- was at this time not
eighteen years of age; but I have often doubted, on recollecting since
the good sense and prudence which on this occasion he mingled with so
much urbanity of manner (an urbanity which in him wore the grace of
youthful sincerity), whether any statesman--the oldest and the most
accomplished in diplomacy--could have acquitted himself better under the
same circumstances. Most people, indeed, cannot be addressed on such a
business without surveying you with looks as austere and unpropitious as
those of a Saracen's head.

Recomforted by this promise, which was not quite equal to the best but
far above the worst that I had pictured to myself as possible, I returned
in a Windsor coach to London three days after I had quitted it. And now
I come to the end of my story. The Jews did not approve of Lord D---'s
terms; whether they would in the end have acceded to them, and were only
seeking time for making due inquiries, I know not; but many delays were
made, time passed on, the small fragment of my bank-note had just melted
away, and before any conclusion could have been put to the business I
must have relapsed into my former state of wretchedness. Suddenly,
however, at this crisis, an opening was made, almost by accident, for
reconciliation with my friends; I quitted London in haste for a remote
part of England; after some time I proceeded to the university, and it
was not until many months had passed away that I had it in my power again
to revisit the ground which had become so interesting to me, and to this
day remains so, as the chief scene of my youthful sufferings.

Meantime, what had become of poor Ann? For her I have reserved my
concluding words. According to our agreement, I sought her daily, and
waited for her every night, so long as I stayed in London, at the corner
of Titchfield Street. I inquired for her of every one who was likely to
know her, and during the last hours of my stay in London I put into
activity every means of tracing her that my knowledge of London suggested
and the limited extent of my power made possible. The street where she
had lodged I knew, but not the house; and I remembered at last some
account which she had given me of ill-treatment from her landlord, which
made it probable that she had quitted those lodgings before we parted.
She had few acquaintances; most people, besides, thought that the
earnestness of my inquiries arose from motives which moved their laughter
or their slight regard; and others, thinking I was in chase of a girl who
had robbed me of some trifles, were naturally and excusably indisposed to
give me any clue to her, if indeed they had any to give. Finally as my
despairing resource, on the day I left London I put into the hands of the
only person who (I was sure) must know Ann by sight, from having been in
company with us once or twice, an address to ---, in ---shire, at that
time the residence of my family. But to this hour I have never heard a
syllable about her. This, amongst such troubles as most men meet with in
this life, has been my heaviest affliction. If she lived, doubtless we
must have been some time in search of each other, at the very same
moment, through the mighty labyrinths of London; perhaps even within a
few feet of each other--a barrier no wider than a London street often
amounting in the end to a separation for eternity! During some years I
hoped that she _did_ live; and I suppose that, in the literal and
unrhetorical use of the word _myriad_, I may say that on my different
visits to London I have looked into many, many myriads of female faces,
in the hope of meeting her. I should know her again amongst a thousand,
if I saw her for a moment; for though not handsome, she had a sweet
expression of countenance and a peculiar and graceful carriage of the
head. I sought her, I have said, in hope. So it was for years; but now
I should fear to see her; and her cough, which grieved me when I parted
with her, is now my consolation. I now wish to see her no longer; but
think of her, more gladly, as one long since laid in the grave--in the
grave, I would hope, of a Magdalen; taken away, before injuries and
cruelty had blotted out and transfigured her ingenuous nature, or the
brutalities of ruffians had completed the ruin they had begun.

[The remainder of this very interesting article will be given in the next
number. --ED. ]




PART II


From the London Magazine for October 1821.

So then, Oxford Street, stony-hearted step-mother! thou that listenest to
the sighs of orphans and drinkest the tears of children, at length I was
dismissed from thee; the time was come at last that I no more should pace
in anguish thy never-ending terraces, no more should dream and wake in
captivity to the pangs of hunger. Successors too many, to myself and
Ann, have doubtless since then trodden in our footsteps, inheritors of
our calamities; other orphans than Ann have sighed; tears have been shed
by other children; and thou, Oxford Street, hast since doubtless echoed
to the groans of innumerable hearts. For myself, however, the storm
which I had outlived seemed to have been the pledge of a long
fair-weather--the premature sufferings which I had paid down to have been
accepted as a ransom for many years to come, as a price of long immunity
from sorrow; and if again I walked in London a solitary and contemplative
man (as oftentimes I did), I walked for the most part in serenity and
peace of mind. And although it is true that the calamities of my
noviciate in London had struck root so deeply in my bodily constitution,
that afterwards they shot up and flourished afresh, and grew into a
noxious umbrage that has overshadowed and darkened my latter years, yet
these second assaults of suffering were met with a fortitude more
confirmed, with the resources of a maturer intellect, and with
alleviations from sympathising affection--how deep and tender!

Thus, however, with whatsoever alleviations, years that were far asunder
were bound together by subtle links of suffering derived from a common
root. And herein I notice an instance of the short-sightedness of human
desires, that oftentimes on moonlight nights, during my first mournful
abode in London, my consolation was (if such it could be thought) to gaze
from Oxford Street up every avenue in succession which pierces through
the heart of Marylebone to the fields and the woods; for _that_, said I,
travelling with my eyes up the long vistas which lay part in light and
part in shade, "_that_ is the road to the North, and therefore to, and if
I had the wings of a dove, _that_ way I would fly for comfort. " Thus I
said, and thus I wished, in my blindness. Yet even in that very northern
region it was, even in that very valley, nay, in that very house to which
my erroneous wishes pointed, that this second birth of my sufferings
began, and that they again threatened to besiege the citadel of life and
hope. There it was that for years I was persecuted by visions as ugly,
and as ghastly phantoms as ever haunted the couch of an Orestes; and in
this unhappier than he, that sleep, which comes to all as a respite and a
restoration, and to him especially as a blessed {7} balm for his wounded
heart and his haunted brain, visited me as my bitterest scourge. Thus
blind was I in my desires; yet if a veil interposes between the
dim-sightedness of man and his future calamities, the same veil hides
from him their alleviations, and a grief which had not been feared is met
by consolations which had not been hoped. I therefore, who participated,
as it were, in the troubles of Orestes (excepting only in his agitated
conscience), participated no less in all his supports. My Eumenides,
like his, were at my bed-feet, and stared in upon me through the
curtains; but watching by my pillow, or defrauding herself of sleep to
bear me company through the heavy watches of the night, sate my Electra;
for thou, beloved M. , dear companion of my later years, thou wast my
Electra! and neither in nobility of mind nor in long-suffering affection
wouldst permit that a Grecian sister should excel an English wife. For
thou thoughtest not much to stoop to humble offices of kindness and to
servile {8} ministrations of tenderest affection--to wipe away for years
the unwholesome dews upon the forehead, or to refresh the lips when
parched and baked with fever; nor even when thy own peaceful slumbers had
by long sympathy become infected with the spectacle of my dread contest
with phantoms and shadowy enemies that oftentimes bade me "sleep no
more! "--not even then didst thou utter a complaint or any murmur, nor
withdraw thy angelic smiles, nor shrink from thy service of love, more
than Electra did of old. For she too, though she was a Grecian woman,
and the daughter of the king {9} of men, yet wept sometimes, and hid her
face {10} in her robe.

But these troubles are past; and thou wilt read records of a period so
dolorous to us both as the legend of some hideous dream that can return
no more. Meantime, I am again in London, and again I pace the terraces
of Oxford Street by night; and oftentimes, when I am oppressed by
anxieties that demand all my philosophy and the comfort of thy presence
to support, and yet remember that I am separated from thee by three
hundred miles and the length of three dreary months, I look up the
streets that run northwards from Oxford Street, upon moonlight nights,
and recollect my youthful ejaculation of anguish; and remembering that
thou art sitting alone in that same valley, and mistress of that very
house to which my heart turned in its blindness nineteen years ago, I
think that, though blind indeed, and scattered to the winds of late, the
promptings of my heart may yet have had reference to a remoter time, and
may be justified if read in another meaning; and if I could allow myself
to descend again to the impotent wishes of childhood, I should again say
to myself, as I look to the North, "Oh, that I had the wings of a dove--"
and with how just a confidence in thy good and gracious nature might I
add the other half of my early ejaculation--"And _that_ way I would fly
for comfort! "



THE PLEASURES OF OPIUM


It is so long since I first took opium that if it had been a trifling
incident in my life I might have forgotten its date; but cardinal events
are not to be forgotten, and from circumstances connected with it I
remember that it must be referred to the autumn of 1804. During that
season I was in London, having come thither for the first time since my
entrance at college. And my introduction to opium arose in the following
way. From an early age I had been accustomed to wash my head in cold
water at least once a day: being suddenly seized with toothache, I
attributed it to some relaxation caused by an accidental intermission of
that practice, jumped out of bed, plunged my head into a basin of cold
water, and with hair thus wetted went to sleep. The next morning, as I
need hardly say, I awoke with excruciating rheumatic pains of the head
and face, from which I had hardly any respite for about twenty days. On
the twenty-first day I think it was, and on a Sunday, that I went out
into the streets, rather to run away, if possible, from my torments, than
with any distinct purpose. By accident I met a college acquaintance, who
recommended opium. Opium! dread agent of unimaginable pleasure and pain!
I had heard of it as I had of manna or of ambrosia, but no further. How
unmeaning a sound was it at that time: what solemn chords does it now
strike upon my heart! what heart-quaking vibrations of sad and happy
remembrances! Reverting for a moment to these, I feel a mystic
importance attached to the minutest circumstances connected with the
place and the time and the man (if man he was) that first laid open to me
the Paradise of Opium-eaters. It was a Sunday afternoon, wet and
cheerless: and a duller spectacle this earth of ours has not to show than
a rainy Sunday in London. My road homewards lay through Oxford Street;
and near "the stately Pantheon" (as Mr. Wordsworth has obligingly called
it) I saw a druggist's shop. The druggist--unconscious minister of
celestial pleasures! --as if in sympathy with the rainy Sunday, looked
dull and stupid, just as any mortal druggist might be expected to look on
a Sunday; and when I asked for the tincture of opium, he gave it to me as
any other man might do, and furthermore, out of my shilling returned me
what seemed to be real copper halfpence, taken out of a real wooden
drawer. Nevertheless, in spite of such indications of humanity, he has
ever since existed in my mind as the beatific vision of an immortal
druggist, sent down to earth on a special mission to myself. And it
confirms me in this way of considering him, that when I next came up to
London I sought him near the stately Pantheon, and found him not; and
thus to me, who knew not his name (if indeed he had one), he seemed
rather to have vanished from Oxford Street than to have removed in any
bodily fashion. The reader may choose to think of him as possibly no
more than a sublunary druggist; it may be so, but my faith is better--I
believe him to have evanesced, {11} or evaporated. So unwillingly would
I connect any mortal remembrances with that hour, and place, and
creature, that first brought me acquainted with the celestial drug.

Arrived at my lodgings, it may be supposed that I lost not a moment in
taking the quantity prescribed. I was necessarily ignorant of the whole
art and mystery of opium-taking, and what I took I took under every
disadvantage. But I took it--and in an hour--oh, heavens! what a
revulsion! what an upheaving, from its lowest depths, of inner spirit!
what an apocalypse of the world within me! That my pains had vanished
was now a trifle in my eyes: this negative effect was swallowed up in the
immensity of those positive effects which had opened before me--in the
abyss of divine enjoyment thus suddenly revealed. Here was a panacea, a
[Greek text] for all human woes; here was the secret of happiness, about
which philosophers had disputed for so many ages, at once discovered:
happiness might now be bought for a penny, and carried in the waistcoat
pocket; portable ecstacies might be had corked up in a pint bottle, and
peace of mind could be sent down in gallons by the mail-coach. But if I
talk in this way the reader will think I am laughing, and I can assure
him that nobody will laugh long who deals much with opium: its pleasures
even are of a grave and solemn complexion, and in his happiest state the
opium-eater cannot present himself in the character of _L'Allegro_: even
then he speaks and thinks as becomes _Il Penseroso_. Nevertheless, I
have a very reprehensible way of jesting at times in the midst of my own
misery; and unless when I am checked by some more powerful feelings, I am
afraid I shall be guilty of this indecent practice even in these annals
of suffering or enjoyment. The reader must allow a little to my infirm
nature in this respect; and with a few indulgences of that sort I shall
endeavour to be as grave, if not drowsy, as fits a theme like opium, so
anti-mercurial as it really is, and so drowsy as it is falsely reputed.

And first, one word with respect to its bodily effects; for upon all that
has been hitherto written on the subject of opium, whether by travellers
in Turkey (who may plead their privilege of lying as an old immemorial
right), or by professors of medicine, writing _ex cathedra_, I have but
one emphatic criticism to pronounce--Lies! lies! lies! I remember once,
in passing a book-stall, to have caught these words from a page of some
satiric author: "By this time I became convinced that the London
newspapers spoke truth at least twice a week, viz. , on Tuesday and
Saturday, and might safely be depended upon for--the list of bankrupts. "
In like manner, I do by no means deny that some truths have been
delivered to the world in regard to opium. Thus it has been repeatedly
affirmed by the learned that opium is a dusky brown in colour; and this,
take notice, I grant. Secondly, that it is rather dear, which also I
grant, for in my time East Indian opium has been three guineas a pound,
and Turkey eight. And thirdly, that if you eat a good deal of it, most
probably you must--do what is particularly disagreeable to any man of
regular habits, viz. , die. {12} These weighty propositions are, all and
singular, true: I cannot gainsay them, and truth ever was, and will be,
commendable. But in these three theorems I believe we have exhausted the
stock of knowledge as yet accumulated by men on the subject of opium.

And therefore, worthy doctors, as there seems to be room for further
discoveries, stand aside, and allow me to come forward and lecture on
this matter.

First, then, it is not so much affirmed as taken for granted, by all who
ever mention opium, formally or incidentally, that it does or can produce
intoxication. Now, reader, assure yourself, _meo perieulo_, that no
quantity of opium ever did or could intoxicate. As to the tincture of
opium (commonly called laudanum) _that_ might certainly intoxicate if a
man could bear to take enough of it; but why? Because it contains so
much proof spirit, and not because it contains so much opium. But crude
opium, I affirm peremptorily, is incapable of producing any state of body
at all resembling that which is produced by alcohol, and not in _degree_
only incapable, but even in _kind_: it is not in the quantity of its
effects merely, but in the quality, that it differs altogether. The
pleasure given by wine is always mounting and tending to a crisis, after
which it declines; that from opium, when once generated, is stationary
for eight or ten hours: the first, to borrow a technical distinction from
medicine, is a case of acute--the second, the chronic pleasure; the one
is a flame, the other a steady and equable glow. But the main
distinction lies in this, that whereas wine disorders the mental
faculties, opium, on the contrary (if taken in a proper manner),
introduces amongst them the most exquisite order, legislation, and
harmony. Wine robs a man of his self-possession; opium greatly
invigorates it. Wine unsettles and clouds the judgement, and gives a
preternatural brightness and a vivid exaltation to the contempts and the
admirations, the loves and the hatreds of the drinker; opium, on the
contrary, communicates serenity and equipoise to all the faculties,
active or passive, and with respect to the temper and moral feelings in
general it gives simply that sort of vital warmth which is approved by
the judgment, and which would probably always accompany a bodily
constitution of primeval or antediluvian health. Thus, for instance,
opium, like wine, gives an expansion to the heart and the benevolent
affections; but then, with this remarkable difference, that in the sudden
development of kind-heartedness which accompanies inebriation there is
always more or less of a maudlin character, which exposes it to the
contempt of the bystander. Men shake hands, swear eternal friendship,
and shed tears, no mortal knows why; and the sensual creature is clearly
uppermost. But the expansion of the benigner feelings incident to opium
is no febrile access, but a healthy restoration to that state which the
mind would naturally recover upon the removal of any deep-seated
irritation of pain that had disturbed and quarrelled with the impulses of
a heart originally just and good. True it is that even wine, up to a
certain point and with certain men, rather tends to exalt and to steady
the intellect; I myself, who have never been a great wine-drinker, used
to find that half-a-dozen glasses of wine advantageously affected the
faculties--brightened and intensified the consciousness, and gave to the
mind a feeling of being "ponderibus librata suis;" and certainly it is
most absurdly said, in popular language, of any man that he is
_disguised_ in liquor; for, on the contrary, most men are disguised by
sobriety, and it is when they are drinking (as some old gentleman says in
Athenaeus), that men [Greek text]--display themselves in their true
complexion of character, which surely is not disguising themselves.