* * * * *
Those who have read the Confessions will have closed them with the
impression that I had wholly renounced the use of opium.
Those who have read the Confessions will have closed them with the
impression that I had wholly renounced the use of opium.
De Quincey - Confessions of an Opium Eater
He wishes
and longs as earnestly as ever to realize what he believes possible, and
feels to be exacted by duty; but his intellectual apprehension of what is
possible infinitely outruns his power, not of execution only, but even of
power to attempt. He lies under the weight of incubus and nightmare; he
lies in sight of all that he would fain perform, just as a man forcibly
confined to his bed by the mortal languor of a relaxing disease, who is
compelled to witness injury or outrage offered to some object of his
tenderest love: he curses the spells which chain him down from motion; he
would lay down his life if he might but get up and walk; but he is
powerless as an infant, and cannot even attempt to rise.
I now pass to what is the main subject of these latter confessions, to
the history and journal of what took place in my dreams, for these were
the immediate and proximate cause of my acutest suffering.
The first notice I had of any important change going on in this part of
my physical economy was from the reawakening of a state of eye generally
incident to childhood, or exalted states of irritability. I know not
whether my reader is aware that many children, perhaps most, have a power
of painting, as it were upon the darkness, all sorts of phantoms. In
some that power is simply a mechanical affection of the eye; others have
a voluntary or semi-voluntary power to dismiss or to summon them; or, as
a child once said to me when I questioned him on this matter, "I can tell
them to go, and they go ---, but sometimes they come when I don't tell
them to come. " Whereupon I told him that he had almost as unlimited a
command over apparitions as a Roman centurion over his soldiers. --In the
middle of 1817, I think it was, that this faculty became positively
distressing to me: at night, when I lay awake in bed, vast processions
passed along in mournful pomp; friezes of never-ending stories, that to
my feelings were as sad and solemn as if they were stories drawn from
times before OEdipus or Priam, before Tyre, before Memphis. And at the
same time a corresponding change took place in my dreams; a theatre
seemed suddenly opened and lighted up within my brain, which presented
nightly spectacles of more than earthly splendour. And the four
following facts may be mentioned as noticeable at this time:
1. That as the creative state of the eye increased, a sympathy seemed to
arise between the waking and the dreaming states of the brain in one
point--that whatsoever I happened to call up and to trace by a voluntary
act upon the darkness was very apt to transfer itself to my dreams, so
that I feared to exercise this faculty; for, as Midas turned all things
to gold that yet baffled his hopes and defrauded his human desires, so
whatsoever things capable of being visually represented I did but think
of in the darkness, immediately shaped themselves into phantoms of the
eye; and by a process apparently no less inevitable, when thus once
traced in faint and visionary colours, like writings in sympathetic ink,
they were drawn out by the fierce chemistry of my dreams into
insufferable splendour that fretted my heart.
2. For this and all other changes in my dreams were accompanied by deep-
seated anxiety and gloomy melancholy, such as are wholly incommunicable
by words. I seemed every night to descend, not metaphorically, but
literally to descend, into chasms and sunless abysses, depths below
depths, from which it seemed hopeless that I could ever reascend. Nor
did I, by waking, feel that I _had_ reascended. This I do not dwell
upon; because the state of gloom which attended these gorgeous
spectacles, amounting at last to utter darkness, as of some suicidal
despondency, cannot be approached by words.
3. The sense of space, and in the end the sense of time, were both
powerfully affected. Buildings, landscapes, &c. , were exhibited in
proportions so vast as the bodily eye is not fitted to receive. Space
swelled, and was amplified to an extent of unutterable infinity. This,
however, did not disturb me so much as the vast expansion of time; I
sometimes seemed to have lived for 70 or 100 years in one night--nay,
sometimes had feelings representative of a millennium passed in that
time, or, however, of a duration far beyond the limits of any human
experience.
4. The minutest incidents of childhood, or forgotten scenes of later
years, were often revived: I could not be said to recollect them, for if
I had been told of them when waking, I should not have been able to
acknowledge them as parts of my past experience. But placed as they were
before me, in dreams like intuitions, and clothed in all their evanescent
circumstances and accompanying feelings, I _recognised_ them
instantaneously. I was once told by a near relative of mine, that having
in her childhood fallen into a river, and being on the very verge of
death but for the critical assistance which reached her, she saw in a
moment her whole life, in its minutest incidents, arrayed before her
simultaneously as in a mirror; and she had a faculty developed as
suddenly for comprehending the whole and every part. This, from some
opium experiences of mine, I can believe; I have indeed seen the same
thing asserted twice in modern books, and accompanied by a remark which I
am convinced is true; viz. , that the dread book of account which the
Scriptures speak of is in fact the mind itself of each individual. Of
this at least I feel assured, that there is no such thing as _forgetting_
possible to the mind; a thousand accidents may and will interpose a veil
between our present consciousness and the secret inscriptions on the
mind; accidents of the same sort will also rend away this veil; but
alike, whether veiled or unveiled, the inscription remains for ever, just
as the stars seem to withdraw before the common light of day, whereas in
fact we all know that it is the light which is drawn over them as a veil,
and that they are waiting to be revealed when the obscuring daylight
shall have withdrawn.
Having noticed these four facts as memorably distinguishing my dreams
from those of health, I shall now cite a case illustrative of the first
fact, and shall then cite any others that I remember, either in their
chronological order, or any other that may give them more effect as
pictures to the reader.
I had been in youth, and even since, for occasional amusement, a great
reader of Livy, whom I confess that I prefer, both for style and matter,
to any other of the Roman historians; and I had often felt as most solemn
and appalling sounds, and most emphatically representative of the majesty
of the Roman people, the two words so often occurring in Livy--_Consul
Romanus_, especially when the consul is introduced in his military
character. I mean to say that the words king, sultan, regent, &c. , or
any other titles of those who embody in their own persons the collective
majesty of a great people, had less power over my reverential feelings. I
had also, though no great reader of history, made myself minutely and
critically familiar with one period of English history, viz. , the period
of the Parliamentary War, having been attracted by the moral grandeur of
some who figured in that day, and by the many interesting memoirs which
survive those unquiet times. Both these parts of my lighter reading,
having furnished me often with matter of reflection, now furnished me
with matter for my dreams. Often I used to see, after painting upon the
blank darkness a sort of rehearsal whilst waking, a crowd of ladies, and
perhaps a festival and dances. And I heard it said, or I said to myself,
"These are English ladies from the unhappy times of Charles I. These are
the wives and the daughters of those who met in peace, and sate at the
same table, and were allied by marriage or by blood; and yet, after a
certain day in August 1642, never smiled upon each other again, nor met
but in the field of battle; and at Marston Moor, at Newbury, or at
Naseby, cut asunder all ties of love by the cruel sabre, and washed away
in blood the memory of ancient friendship. " The ladies danced, and
looked as lovely as the court of George IV. Yet I knew, even in my
dream, that they had been in the grave for nearly two centuries. This
pageant would suddenly dissolve; and at a clapping of hands would be
heard the heart-quaking sound _of Consul Romanus_; and immediately came
"sweeping by," in gorgeous paludaments, Paulus or Marius, girt round by a
company of centurions, with the crimson tunic hoisted on a spear, and
followed by the _alalagmos_ of the Roman legions.
Many years ago, when I was looking over Piranesi's, Antiquities of Rome,
Mr. Coleridge, who was standing by, described to me a set of plates by
that artist, called his _Dreams_, and which record the scenery of his own
visions during the delirium of a fever. Some of them (I describe only
from memory of Mr. Coleridge's account) represented vast Gothic halls, on
the floor of which stood all sorts of engines and machinery, wheels,
cables, pulleys, levers, catapults, &c. &c. , expressive of enormous power
put forth and resistance overcome. Creeping along the sides of the walls
you perceived a staircase; and upon it, groping his way upwards, was
Piranesi himself: follow the stairs a little further and you perceive it
come to a sudden and abrupt termination without any balustrade, and
allowing no step onwards to him who had reached the extremity except into
the depths below. Whatever is to become of poor Piranesi, you suppose at
least that his labours must in some way terminate here. But raise your
eyes, and behold a second flight of stairs still higher, on which again
Piranesi is perceived, but this time standing on the very brink of the
abyss. Again elevate your eye, and a still more aerial flight of stairs
is beheld, and again is poor Piranesi busy on his aspiring labours; and
so on, until the unfinished stairs and Piranesi both are lost in the
upper gloom of the hall. With the same power of endless growth and self-
reproduction did my architecture proceed in dreams. In the early stage
of my malady the splendours of my dreams were indeed chiefly
architectural; and I beheld such pomp of cities and palaces as was never
yet beheld by the waking eye unless in the clouds. From a great modern
poet I cite part of a passage which describes, as an appearance actually
beheld in the clouds, what in many of its circumstances I saw frequently
in sleep:
The appearance, instantaneously disclosed,
Was of a mighty city--boldly say
A wilderness of building, sinking far
And self-withdrawn into a wondrous depth,
Far sinking into splendour--without end!
Fabric it seem'd of diamond, and of gold,
With alabaster domes, and silver spires,
And blazing terrace upon terrace, high
Uplifted; here, serene pavilions bright
In avenues disposed; there towers begirt
With battlements that on their restless fronts
Bore stars--illumination of all gems!
By earthly nature had the effect been wrought
Upon the dark materials of the storm
Now pacified; on them, and on the coves,
And mountain-steeps and summits, whereunto
The vapours had receded,--taking there
Their station under a cerulean sky. &c. &c.
The sublime circumstance, "battlements that on their _restless_ fronts
bore stars," might have been copied from my architectural dreams, for it
often occurred. We hear it reported of Dryden and of Fuseli, in modern
times, that they thought proper to eat raw meat for the sake of obtaining
splendid dreams: how much better for such a purpose to have eaten opium,
which yet I do not remember that any poet is recorded to have done,
except the dramatist Shadwell; and in ancient days Homer is I think
rightly reputed to have known the virtues of opium.
To my architecture succeeded dreams of lakes and silvery expanses of
water: these haunted me so much that I feared (though possibly it will
appear ludicrous to a medical man) that some dropsical state or tendency
of the brain might thus be making itself (to use a metaphysical word)
_objective_; and the sentient organ _project_ itself as its own object.
For two months I suffered greatly in my head, a part of my bodily
structure which had hitherto been so clear from all touch or taint of
weakness (physically I mean) that I used to say of it, as the last Lord
Orford said of his stomach, that it seemed likely to survive the rest of
my person. Till now I had never felt a headache even, or any the
slightest pain, except rheumatic pains caused by my own folly. However,
I got over this attack, though it must have been verging on something
very dangerous.
The waters now changed their character--from translucent lakes shining
like mirrors they now became seas and oceans. And now came a tremendous
change, which, unfolding itself slowly like a scroll through many months,
promised an abiding torment; and in fact it never left me until the
winding up of my case. Hitherto the human face had mixed often in my
dreams, but not despotically nor with any special power of tormenting.
But now that which I have called the tyranny of the human face began to
unfold itself. Perhaps some part of my London life might be answerable
for this. Be that as it may, now it was that upon the rocking waters of
the ocean the human face began to appear; the sea appeared paved with
innumerable faces upturned to the heavens--faces imploring, wrathful,
despairing, surged upwards by thousands, by myriads, by generations, by
centuries: my agitation was infinite; my mind tossed and surged with the
ocean.
May 1818
The Malay has been a fearful enemy for months. I have been every night,
through his means, transported into Asiatic scenes. I know not whether
others share in my feelings on this point; but I have often thought that
if I were compelled to forego England, and to live in China, and among
Chinese manners and modes of life and scenery, I should go mad. The
causes of my horror lie deep, and some of them must be common to others.
Southern Asia in general is the seat of awful images and associations. As
the cradle of the human race, it would alone have a dim and reverential
feeling connected with it. But there are other reasons. No man can
pretend that the wild, barbarous, and capricious superstitions of Africa,
or of savage tribes elsewhere, affect him in the way that he is affected
by the ancient, monumental, cruel, and elaborate religions of Indostan,
&c. The mere antiquity of Asiatic things, of their institutions,
histories, modes of faith, &c. , is so impressive, that to me the vast age
of the race and name overpowers the sense of youth in the individual. A
young Chinese seems to me an antediluvian man renewed. Even Englishmen,
though not bred in any knowledge of such institutions, cannot but shudder
at the mystic sublimity of _castes_ that have flowed apart, and refused
to mix, through such immemorial tracts of time; nor can any man fail to
be awed by the names of the Ganges or the Euphrates. It contributes much
to these feelings that southern Asia is, and has been for thousands of
years, the part of the earth most swarming with human life, the great
_officina gentium_. Man is a weed in those regions. The vast empires
also in which the enormous population of Asia has always been cast, give
a further sublimity to the feelings associated with all Oriental names or
images. In China, over and above what it has in common with the rest of
southern Asia, I am terrified by the modes of life, by the manners, and
the barrier of utter abhorrence and want of sympathy placed between us by
feelings deeper than I can analyse. I could sooner live with lunatics or
brute animals. All this, and much more than I can say or have time to
say, the reader must enter into before he can comprehend the unimaginable
horror which these dreams of Oriental imagery and mythological tortures
impressed upon me. Under the connecting feeling of tropical heat and
vertical sunlights I brought together all creatures, birds, beasts,
reptiles, all trees and plants, usages and appearances, that are found in
all tropical regions, and assembled them together in China or Indostan.
From kindred feelings, I soon brought Egypt and all her gods under the
same law. I was stared at, hooted at, grinned at, chattered at, by
monkeys, by parroquets, by cockatoos. I ran into pagodas, and was fixed
for centuries at the summit or in secret rooms: I was the idol; I was the
priest; I was worshipped; I was sacrificed. I fled from the wrath of
Brama through all the forests of Asia: Vishnu hated me: Seeva laid wait
for me. I came suddenly upon Isis and Osiris: I had done a deed, they
said, which the ibis and the crocodile trembled at. I was buried for a
thousand years in stone coffins, with mummies and sphynxes, in narrow
chambers at the heart of eternal pyramids. I was kissed, with cancerous
kisses, by crocodiles; and laid, confounded with all unutterable slimy
things, amongst reeds and Nilotic mud.
I thus give the reader some slight abstraction of my Oriental dreams,
which always filled me with such amazement at the monstrous scenery that
horror seemed absorbed for a while in sheer astonishment. Sooner or
later came a reflux of feeling that swallowed up the astonishment, and
left me not so much in terror as in hatred and abomination of what I saw.
Over every form, and threat, and punishment, and dim sightless
incarceration, brooded a sense of eternity and infinity that drove me
into an oppression as of madness. Into these dreams only it was, with
one or two slight exceptions, that any circumstances of physical horror
entered. All before had been moral and spiritual terrors. But here the
main agents were ugly birds, or snakes, or crocodiles; especially the
last. The cursed crocodile became to me the object of more horror than
almost all the rest. I was compelled to live with him, and (as was
always the case almost in my dreams) for centuries. I escaped sometimes,
and found myself in Chinese houses, with cane tables, &c. All the feet
of the tables, sofas, &c. , soon became instinct with life: the abominable
head of the crocodile, and his leering eyes, looked out at me, multiplied
into a thousand repetitions; and I stood loathing and fascinated. And so
often did this hideous reptile haunt my dreams that many times the very
same dream was broken up in the very same way: I heard gentle voices
speaking to me (I hear everything when I am sleeping), and instantly I
awoke. It was broad noon, and my children were standing, hand in hand,
at my bedside--come to show me their coloured shoes, or new frocks, or to
let me see them dressed for going out. I protest that so awful was the
transition from the damned crocodile, and the other unutterable monsters
and abortions of my dreams, to the sight of innocent _human_ natures and
of infancy, that in the mighty and sudden revulsion of mind I wept, and
could not forbear it, as I kissed their faces.
June 1819
I have had occasion to remark, at various periods of my life, that the
deaths of those whom we love, and indeed the contemplation of death
generally, is (_caeteris paribus_) more affecting in summer than in any
other season of the year. And the reasons are these three, I think:
first, that the visible heavens in summer appear far higher, more
distant, and (if such a solecism may be excused) more infinite; the
clouds, by which chiefly the eye expounds the distance of the blue
pavilion stretched over our heads, are in summer more voluminous, massed
and accumulated in far grander and more towering piles. Secondly, the
light and the appearances of the declining and the setting sun are much
more fitted to be types and characters of the Infinite. And thirdly
(which is the main reason), the exuberant and riotous prodigality of life
naturally forces the mind more powerfully upon the antagonist thought of
death, and the wintry sterility of the grave. For it may be observed
generally, that wherever two thoughts stand related to each other by a
law of antagonism, and exist, as it were, by mutual repulsion, they are
apt to suggest each other. On these accounts it is that I find it
impossible to banish the thought of death when I am walking alone in the
endless days of summer; and any particular death, if not more affecting,
at least haunts my mind more obstinately and besiegingly in that season.
Perhaps this cause, and a slight incident which I omit, might have been
the immediate occasions of the following dream, to which, however, a
predisposition must always have existed in my mind; but having been once
roused it never left me, and split into a thousand fantastic varieties,
which often suddenly reunited, and composed again the original dream.
I thought that it was a Sunday morning in May, that it was Easter Sunday,
and as yet very early in the morning. I was standing, as it seemed to
me, at the door of my own cottage. Right before me lay the very scene
which could really be commanded from that situation, but exalted, as was
usual, and solemnised by the power of dreams. There were the same
mountains, and the same lovely valley at their feet; but the mountains
were raised to more than Alpine height, and there was interspace far
larger between them of meadows and forest lawns; the hedges were rich
with white roses; and no living creature was to be seen, excepting that
in the green churchyard there were cattle tranquilly reposing upon the
verdant graves, and particularly round about the grave of a child whom I
had tenderly loved, just as I had really beheld them, a little before
sunrise in the same summer, when that child died. I gazed upon the well-
known scene, and I said aloud (as I thought) to myself, "It yet wants
much of sunrise, and it is Easter Sunday; and that is the day on which
they celebrate the first fruits of resurrection. I will walk abroad; old
griefs shall be forgotten to-day; for the air is cool and still, and the
hills are high and stretch away to heaven; and the forest glades are as
quiet as the churchyard, and with the dew I can wash the fever from my
forehead, and then I shall be unhappy no longer. " And I turned as if to
open my garden gate, and immediately I saw upon the left a scene far
different, but which yet the power of dreams had reconciled into harmony
with the other. The scene was an Oriental one, and there also it was
Easter Sunday, and very early in the morning. And at a vast distance
were visible, as a stain upon the horizon, the domes and cupolas of a
great city--an image or faint abstraction, caught perhaps in childhood
from some picture of Jerusalem. And not a bow-shot from me, upon a stone
and shaded by Judean palms, there sat a woman, and I looked, and it
was--Ann! She fixed her eyes upon me earnestly, and I said to her at
length: "So, then, I have found you at last. " I waited, but she answered
me not a word. Her face was the same as when I saw it last, and yet
again how different! Seventeen years ago, when the lamplight fell upon
her face, as for the last time I kissed her lips (lips, Ann, that to me
were not polluted), her eyes were streaming with tears: the tears were
now wiped away; she seemed more beautiful than she was at that time, but
in all other points the same, and not older. Her looks were tranquil,
but with unusual solemnity of expression, and I now gazed upon her with
some awe; but suddenly her countenance grew dim, and turning to the
mountains I perceived vapours rolling between us. In a moment all had
vanished, thick darkness came on, and in the twinkling of an eye I was
far away from mountains, and by lamplight in Oxford Street, walking again
with Ann--just as we walked seventeen years before, when we were both
children.
As a final specimen, I cite one of a different character, from 1820.
The dream commenced with a music which now I often heard in dreams--a
music of preparation and of awakening suspense, a music like the opening
of the Coronation Anthem, and which, like _that_, gave the feeling of a
vast march, of infinite cavalcades filing off, and the tread of
innumerable armies. The morning was come of a mighty day--a day of
crisis and of final hope for human nature, then suffering some mysterious
eclipse, and labouring in some dread extremity. Somewhere, I knew not
where--somehow, I knew not how--by some beings, I knew not whom--a
battle, a strife, an agony, was conducting, was evolving like a great
drama or piece of music, with which my sympathy was the more
insupportable from my confusion as to its place, its cause, its nature,
and its possible issue. I, as is usual in dreams (where of necessity we
make ourselves central to every movement), had the power, and yet had not
the power, to decide it. I had the power, if I could raise myself to
will it, and yet again had not the power, for the weight of twenty
Atlantics was upon me, or the oppression of inexpiable guilt. "Deeper
than ever plummet sounded," I lay inactive. Then like a chorus the
passion deepened. Some greater interest was at stake, some mightier
cause than ever yet the sword had pleaded, or trumpet had proclaimed.
Then came sudden alarms, hurryings to and fro, trepidations of
innumerable fugitives--I knew not whether from the good cause or the bad,
darkness and lights, tempest and human faces, and at last, with the sense
that all was lost, female forms, and the features that were worth all the
world to me, and but a moment allowed--and clasped hands, and
heart-breaking partings, and then--everlasting farewells! And with a
sigh, such as the caves of Hell sighed when the incestuous mother uttered
the abhorred name of death, the sound was reverberated--everlasting
farewells! And again and yet again reverberated--everlasting farewells!
And I awoke in struggles, and cried aloud--"I will sleep no more. "
But I am now called upon to wind up a narrative which has already
extended to an unreasonable length. Within more spacious limits the
materials which I have used might have been better unfolded, and much
which I have not used might have been added with effect. Perhaps,
however, enough has been given. It now remains that I should say
something of the way in which this conflict of horrors was finally
brought to a crisis. The reader is already aware (from a passage near
the beginning of the introduction to the first part) that the Opium-eater
has, in some way or other, "unwound almost to its final links the
accursed chain which bound him. " By what means? To have narrated this
according to the original intention would have far exceeded the space
which can now be allowed. It is fortunate, as such a cogent reason
exists for abridging it, that I should, on a maturer view of the case,
have been exceedingly unwilling to injure, by any such unaffecting
details, the impression of the history itself, as an appeal to the
prudence and the conscience of the yet unconfirmed opium-eater--or even
(though a very inferior consideration) to injure its effect as a
composition. The interest of the judicious reader will not attach itself
chiefly to the subject of the fascinating spells, but to the fascinating
power. Not the Opium-eater, but the opium, is the true hero of the tale,
and the legitimate centre on which the interest revolves. The object was
to display the marvellous agency of opium, whether for pleasure or for
pain: if that is done, the action of the piece has closed.
However, as some people, in spite of all laws to the contrary, will
persist in asking what became of the Opium-eater, and in what state he
now is, I answer for him thus: The reader is aware that opium had long
ceased to found its empire on spells of pleasure; it was solely by the
tortures connected with the attempt to abjure it that it kept its hold.
Yet, as other tortures, no less it may be thought, attended the
non-abjuration of such a tyrant, a choice only of evils was left; and
_that_ might as well have been adopted which, however terrific in itself,
held out a prospect of final restoration to happiness. This appears
true; but good logic gave the author no strength to act upon it. However,
a crisis arrived for the author's life, and a crisis for other objects
still dearer to him--and which will always be far dearer to him than his
life, even now that it is again a happy one. I saw that I must die if I
continued the opium. I determined, therefore, if that should be
required, to die in throwing it off. How much I was at that time taking
I cannot say, for the opium which I used had been purchased for me by a
friend, who afterwards refused to let me pay him; so that I could not
ascertain even what quantity I had used within the year. I apprehend,
however, that I took it very irregularly, and that I varied from about
fifty or sixty grains to 150 a day. My first task was to reduce it to
forty, to thirty, and as fast as I could to twelve grains.
I triumphed. But think not, reader, that therefore my sufferings were
ended, nor think of me as of one sitting in a _dejected_ state. Think of
me as one, even when four months had passed, still agitated, writhing,
throbbing, palpitating, shattered, and much perhaps in the situation of
him who has been racked, as I collect the torments of that state from the
affecting account of them left by a most innocent sufferer {20} of the
times of James I. Meantime, I derived no benefit from any medicine,
except one prescribed to me by an Edinburgh surgeon of great eminence,
viz. , ammoniated tincture of valerian. Medical account, therefore, of my
emancipation I have not much to give, and even that little, as managed by
a man so ignorant of medicine as myself, would probably tend only to
mislead. At all events, it would be misplaced in this situation. The
moral of the narrative is addressed to the opium-eater, and therefore of
necessity limited in its application. If he is taught to fear and
tremble, enough has been effected. But he may say that the issue of my
case is at least a proof that opium, after a seventeen years' use and an
eight years' abuse of its powers, may still be renounced, and that _he_
may chance to bring to the task greater energy than I did, or that with a
stronger constitution than mine he may obtain the same results with less.
This may be true. I would not presume to measure the efforts of other
men by my own. I heartily wish him more energy. I wish him the same
success. Nevertheless, I had motives external to myself which he may
unfortunately want, and these supplied me with conscientious supports
which mere personal interests might fail to supply to a mind debilitated
by opium.
Jeremy Taylor conjectures that it may be as painful to be born as to die.
I think it probable; and during the whole period of diminishing the opium
I had the torments of a man passing out of one mode of existence into
another. The issue was not death, but a sort of physical regeneration;
and I may add that ever since, at intervals, I have had a restoration of
more than youthful spirits, though under the pressure of difficulties
which in a less happy state of mind I should have called misfortunes.
One memorial of my former condition still remains--my dreams are not yet
perfectly calm; the dread swell and agitation of the storm have not
wholly subsided; the legions that encamped in them are drawing off, but
not all departed; my sleep is still tumultuous, and, like the gates of
Paradise to our first parents when looking back from afar, it is still
(in the tremendous line of Milton)
With dreadful faces throng'd, and fiery arms.
APPENDIX
From the "London Magazine" for December 1822.
The interest excited by the two papers bearing this title, in our numbers
for September and October 1821, will have kept our promise of a Third
Part fresh in the remembrance of our readers. That we are still unable
to fulfil our engagement in its original meaning will, we, are sure, be
matter of regret to them as to ourselves, especially when they have
perused the following affecting narrative. It was composed for the
purpose of being appended to an edition of the Confessions in a separate
volume, which is already before the public, and we have reprinted it
entire, that our subscribers may be in possession of the whole of this
extraordinary history.
* * * * *
The proprietors of this little work having determined on reprinting it,
some explanation seems called for, to account for the non-appearance of a
third part promised in the _London Magazine_ of December last; and the
more so because the proprietors, under whose guarantee that promise was
issued, might otherwise be implicated in the blame--little or
much--attached to its non-fulfilment. This blame, in mere justice, the
author takes wholly upon himself. What may be the exact amount of the
guilt which he thus appropriates is a very dark question to his own
judgment, and not much illuminated by any of the masters in casuistry
whom he has consulted on the occasion. On the one hand it seems
generally agreed that a promise is binding in the inverse ratio of the
numbers to whom it is made; for which reason it is that we see many
persons break promises without scruple that are made to a whole nation,
who keep their faith religiously in all private engagements, breaches of
promise towards the stronger party being committed at a man's own peril;
on the other hand, the only parties interested in the promises of an
author are his readers, and these it is a point of modesty in any author
to believe as few as possible--or perhaps only one, in which case any
promise imposes a sanctity of moral obligation which it is shocking to
think of. Casuistry dismissed, however, the author throws himself on the
indulgent consideration of all who may conceive themselves aggrieved by
his delay, in the following account of his own condition from the end of
last year, when the engagement was made, up nearly to the present time.
For any purpose of self-excuse it might be sufficient to say that
intolerable bodily suffering had totally disabled him for almost any
exertion of mind, more especially for such as demands and presupposes a
pleasurable and genial state of feeling; but, as a case that may by
possibility contribute a trifle to the medical history of opium, in a
further stage of its action than can often have been brought under the
notice of professional men, he has judged that it might be acceptable to
some readers to have it described more at length. _Fiat experimentum in
corpore vili_ is a just rule where there is any reasonable presumption of
benefit to arise on a large scale. What the benefit may be will admit of
a doubt, but there can be none as to the value of the body; for a more
worthless body than his own the author is free to confess cannot be. It
is his pride to believe that it is the very ideal of a base, crazy,
despicable human system, that hardly ever could have been meant to be
seaworthy for two days under the ordinary storms and wear and tear of
life; and indeed, if that were the creditable way of disposing of human
bodies, he must own that he should almost be ashamed to bequeath his
wretched structure to any respectable dog. But now to the case, which,
for the sake of avoiding the constant recurrence of a cumbersome
periphrasis, the author will take the liberty of giving in the first
person.
* * * * *
Those who have read the Confessions will have closed them with the
impression that I had wholly renounced the use of opium. This impression
I meant to convey, and that for two reasons: first, because the very act
of deliberately recording such a state of suffering necessarily presumes
in the recorder a power of surveying his own case as a cool spectator,
and a degree of spirits for adequately describing it which it would be
inconsistent to suppose in any person speaking from the station of an
actual sufferer; secondly, because I, who had descended from so large a
quantity as 8,000 drops to so small a one (comparatively speaking) as a
quantity ranging between 300 and 160 drops, might well suppose that the
victory was in effect achieved. In suffering my readers, therefore, to
think of me as of a reformed opium-eater, I left no impression but what I
shared myself; and, as may be seen, even this impression was left to be
collected from the general tone of the conclusion, and not from any
specific words, which are in no instance at variance with the literal
truth. In no long time after that paper was written I became sensible
that the effort which remained would cost me far more energy than I had
anticipated, and the necessity for making it was more apparent every
month. In particular I became aware of an increasing callousness or
defect of sensibility in the stomach, and this I imagined might imply a
scirrhous state of that organ, either formed or forming. An eminent
physician, to whose kindness I was at that time deeply indebted, informed
me that such a termination of my case was not impossible, though likely
to be forestalled by a different termination in the event of my
continuing the use of opium. Opium therefore I resolved wholly to abjure
as soon as I should find myself at liberty to bend my undivided attention
and energy to this purpose. It was not, however, until the 24th of June
last that any tolerable concurrence of facilities for such an attempt
arrived. On that day I began my experiment, having previously settled in
my own mind that I would not flinch, but would "stand up to the scratch"
under any possible "punishment. " I must premise that about 170 or 180
drops had been my ordinary allowance for many months; occasionally I had
run up as high as 500, and once nearly to 700; in repeated preludes to my
final experiment I had also gone as low as 100 drops; but had found it
impossible to stand it beyond the fourth day--which, by the way, I have
always found more difficult to get over than any of the preceding three.
I went off under easy sail--130 drops a day for three days; on the fourth
I plunged at once to 80. The misery which I now suffered "took the
conceit" out of me at once, and for about a month I continued off and on
about this mark; then I sunk to 60, and the next day to--none at all.
This was the first day for nearly ten years that I had existed without
opium. I persevered in my abstinence for ninety hours; i. e. , upwards of
half a week. Then I took--ask me not how much; say, ye severest, what
would ye have done? Then I abstained again--then took about 25 drops
then abstained; and so on.
Meantime the symptoms which attended my case for the first six weeks of
my experiment were these: enormous irritability and excitement of the
whole system; the stomach in particular restored to a full feeling of
vitality and sensibility, but often in great pain; unceasing restlessness
night and day; sleep--I scarcely knew what it was; three hours out of the
twenty-four was the utmost I had, and that so agitated and shallow that I
heard every sound that was near me. Lower jaw constantly swelling, mouth
ulcerated, and many other distressing symptoms that would be tedious to
repeat; amongst which, however, I must mention one, because it had never
failed to accompany any attempt to renounce opium--viz. , violent
sternutation. This now became exceedingly troublesome, sometimes lasting
for two hours at once, and recurring at least twice or three times a day.
I was not much surprised at this on recollecting what I had somewhere
heard or read, that the membrane which lines the nostrils is a
prolongation of that which lines the stomach; whence, I believe, are
explained the inflammatory appearances about the nostrils of dram
drinkers. The sudden restoration of its original sensibility to the
stomach expressed itself, I suppose, in this way. It is remarkable also
that during the whole period of years through which I had taken opium I
had never once caught cold (as the phrase is), nor even the slightest
cough. But now a violent cold attacked me, and a cough soon after. In
an unfinished fragment of a letter begun about this time to--I find these
words: "You ask me to write the--Do you know Beaumont and Fletcher's play
of "Thierry and Theodore"? There you will see my case as to sleep; nor
is it much of an exaggeration in other features. I protest to you that I
have a greater influx of thoughts in one hour at present than in a whole
year under the reign of opium. It seems as though all the thoughts which
had been frozen up for a decade of years by opium had now, according to
the old fable, been thawed at once--such a multitude stream in upon me
from all quarters. Yet such is my impatience and hideous irritability
that for one which I detain and write down fifty escape me: in spite of
my weariness from suffering and want of sleep, I cannot stand still or
sit for two minutes together. 'I nunc, et versus tecum meditare
canoros. '"
At this stage of my experiment I sent to a neighbouring surgeon,
requesting that he would come over to see me. In the evening he came;
and after briefly stating the case to him, I asked this question; Whether
he did not think that the opium might have acted as a stimulus to the
digestive organs, and that the present state of suffering in the stomach,
which manifestly was the cause of the inability to sleep, might arise
from indigestion? His answer was; No; on the contrary, he thought that
the suffering was caused by digestion itself, which should naturally go
on below the consciousness, but which from the unnatural state of the
stomach, vitiated by so long a use of opium, was become distinctly
perceptible. This opinion was plausible; and the unintermitting nature
of the suffering disposes me to think that it was true, for if it had
been any mere _irregular_ affection of the stomach, it should naturally
have intermitted occasionally, and constantly fluctuated as to degree.
The intention of nature, as manifested in the healthy state, obviously is
to withdraw from our notice all the vital motions, such as the
circulation of the blood, the expansion and contraction of the lungs, the
peristaltic action of the stomach, &c. , and opium, it seems, is able in
this, as in other instances, to counteract her purposes. By the advice
of the surgeon I tried _bitters_. For a short time these greatly
mitigated the feelings under which I laboured, but about the forty-second
day of the experiment the symptoms already noticed began to retire, and
new ones to arise of a different and far more tormenting class; under
these, but with a few intervals of remission, I have since continued to
suffer. But I dismiss them undescribed for two reasons: first, because
the mind revolts from retracing circumstantially any sufferings from
which it is removed by too short or by no interval. To do this with
minuteness enough to make the review of any use would be indeed _infandum
renovare dolorem_, and possibly without a sufficient motive; for
secondly, I doubt whether this latter state be anyway referable to
opium--positively considered, or even negatively; that is, whether it is
to be numbered amongst the last evils from the direct action of opium, or
even amongst the earliest evils consequent upon a _want_ of opium in a
system long deranged by its use. Certainly one part of the symptoms
might be accounted for from the time of year (August), for though the
summer was not a hot one, yet in any case the sum of all the heat
_funded_ (if one may say so) during the previous months, added to the
existing heat of that month, naturally renders August in its better half
the hottest part of the year; and it so happened that--the excessive
perspiration which even at Christmas attends any great reduction in the
daily quantum of opium--and which in July was so violent as to oblige me
to use a bath five or six times a day--had about the setting-in of the
hottest season wholly retired, on which account any bad effect of the
heat might be the more unmitigated. Another symptom--viz. , what in my
ignorance I call internal rheumatism (sometimes affecting the shoulders,
&c. , but more often appearing to be seated in the stomach)--seemed again
less probably attributable to the opium, or the want of opium, than to
the dampness of the house {21} which I inhabit, which had about this time
attained its maximum, July having been, as usual, a month of incessant
rain in our most rainy part of England.
Under these reasons for doubting whether opium had any connexion with the
latter stage of my bodily wretchedness--except, indeed, as an occasional
cause, as having left the body weaker and more crazy, and thus
predisposed to any mal-influence whatever--I willingly spare my reader
all description of it; let it perish to him, and would that I could as
easily say let it perish to my own remembrances, that any future hours of
tranquillity may not be disturbed by too vivid an ideal of possible human
misery!
So much for the sequel of my experiment. As to the former stage, in
which probably lies the experiment and its application to other cases, I
must request my reader not to forget the reasons for which I have
recorded it. These were two: First, a belief that I might add some
trifle to the history of opium as a medical agent. In this I am aware
that I have not at all fulfilled my own intentions, in consequence of the
torpor of mind, pain of body, and extreme disgust to the subject which
besieged me whilst writing that part of my paper; which part being
immediately sent off to the press (distant about five degrees of
latitude), cannot be corrected or improved. But from this account,
rambling as it may be, it is evident that thus much of benefit may arise
to the persons most interested in such a history of opium, viz. , to opium-
eaters in general, that it establishes, for their consolation and
encouragement, the fact that opium may be renounced, and without greater
sufferings than an ordinary resolution may support, and by a pretty rapid
course {22} of descent.
To communicate this result of my experiment was my foremost purpose.
Secondly, as a purpose collateral to this, I wished to explain how it had
become impossible for me to compose a Third Part in time to accompany
this republication; for during the time of this experiment the
proof-sheets of this reprint were sent to me from London, and such was my
inability to expand or to improve them, that I could not even bear to
read them over with attention enough to notice the press errors or to
correct any verbal inaccuracies. These were my reasons for troubling my
reader with any record, long or short, of experiments relating to so
truly base a subject as my own body; and I am earnest with the reader
that he will not forget them, or so far misapprehend me as to believe it
possible that I would condescend to so rascally a subject for its own
sake, or indeed for any less object than that of general benefit to
others. Such an animal as the self-observing valetudinarian I know there
is; I have met him myself occasionally, and I know that he is the worst
imaginable _heautontimoroumenos_; aggravating and sustaining, by calling
into distinct consciousness, every symptom that would else perhaps, under
a different direction given to the thoughts, become evanescent. But as
to myself, so profound is my contempt for this undignified and selfish
habit, that I could as little condescend to it as I could to spend my
time in watching a poor servant girl, to whom at this moment I hear some
lad or other making love at the back of my house. Is it for a
Transcendental Philosopher to feel any curiosity on such an occasion? Or
can I, whose life is worth only eight and a half years' purchase, be
supposed to have leisure for such trivial employments? However, to put
this out of question, I shall say one thing, which will perhaps shock
some readers, but I am sure it ought not to do so, considering the
motives on which I say it. No man, I suppose, employs much of his time
on the phenomena of his own body without some regard for it; whereas the
reader sees that, so far from looking upon mine with any complacency or
regard, I hate it, and make it the object of my bitter ridicule and
contempt; and I should not be displeased to know that the last
indignities which the law inflicts upon the bodies of the worst
malefactors might hereafter fall upon it. And, in testification of my
sincerity in saying this, I shall make the following offer. Like other
men, I have particular fancies about the place of my burial; having lived
chiefly in a mountainous region, I rather cleave to the conceit, that a
grave in a green churchyard amongst the ancient and solitary hills will
be a sublimer and more tranquil place of repose for a philosopher than
any in the hideous Golgothas of London. Yet if the gentlemen of
Surgeons' Hall think that any benefit can redound to their science from
inspecting the appearances in the body of an opium-eater, let them speak
but a word, and I will take care that mine shall be legally secured to
them--i. e. , as soon as I have done with it myself. Let them not hesitate
to express their wishes upon any scruples of false delicacy and
consideration for my feelings; I assure them they will do me too much
honour by "demonstrating" on such a crazy body as mine, and it will give
me pleasure to anticipate this posthumous revenge and insult inflicted
upon that which has caused me so much suffering in this life. Such
bequests are not common; reversionary benefits contingent upon the death
of the testator are indeed dangerous to announce in many cases: of this
we have a remarkable instance in the habits of a Roman prince, who used,
upon any notification made to him by rich persons that they had left him
a handsome estate in their wills, to express his entire satisfaction at
such arrangements and his gracious acceptance of those loyal legacies;
but then, if the testators neglected to give him immediate possession of
the property, if they traitorously "persisted in living" (_si vivere
perseverarent_, as Suetonius expresses it), he was highly provoked, and
took his measures accordingly. In those times, and from one of the worst
of the Caesars, we might expect such conduct; but I am sure that from
English surgeons at this day I need look for no expressions of
impatience, or of any other feelings but such as are answerable to that
pure love of science and all its interests which induces me to make such
an offer.
Sept 30, 1822
FOOTNOTES
{1} "Not yet _recorded_," I say; for there is one celebrated man of the
present day, who, if all be true which is reported of him, has greatly
exceeded me in quantity.
{2} A third exception might perhaps have been added; and my reason for
not adding that exception is chiefly because it was only in his juvenile
efforts that the writer whom I allude to expressly addressed hints to
philosophical themes; his riper powers having been all dedicated (on very
excusable and very intelligible grounds, under the present direction of
the popular mind in England) to criticism and the Fine Arts. This reason
apart, however, I doubt whether he is not rather to be considered an
acute thinker than a subtle one. It is, besides, a great drawback on his
mastery over philosophical subjects that he has obviously not had the
advantage of a regular scholastic education: he has not read Plato in his
youth (which most likely was only his misfortune), but neither has he
read Kant in his manhood (which is his fault).
{3} I disclaim any allusion to _existing_ professors, of whom indeed I
know only one.
{4} To this same Jew, by the way, some eighteen months afterwards, I
applied again on the same business; and, dating at that time from a
respectable college, I was fortunate enough to gain his serious attention
to my proposals. My necessities had not arisen from any extravagance or
youthful levities (these my habits and the nature of my pleasures raised
me far above), but simply from the vindictive malice of my guardian, who,
when he found himself no longer able to prevent me from going to the
university, had, as a parting token of his good nature, refused to sign
an order for granting me a shilling beyond the allowance made to me at
school--viz. , 100 pounds per annum. Upon this sum it was in my time
barely possible to have lived in college, and not possible to a man who,
though above the paltry affectation of ostentatious disregard for money,
and without any expensive tastes, confided nevertheless rather too much
in servants, and did not delight in the petty details of minute economy.
I soon, therefore, became embarrassed, and at length, after a most
voluminous negotiation with the Jew (some parts of which, if I had
leisure to rehearse them, would greatly amuse my readers), I was put in
possession of the sum I asked for, on the "regular" terms of paying the
Jew seventeen and a half per cent. by way of annuity on all the money
furnished; Israel, on his part, graciously resuming no more than about
ninety guineas of the said money, on account of an attorney's bill (for
what services, to whom rendered, and when, whether at the siege of
Jerusalem, at the building of the second Temple, or on some earlier
occasion, I have not yet been able to discover). How many perches this
bill measured I really forget; but I still keep it in a cabinet of
natural curiosities, and some time or other I believe I shall present it
to the British Museum.
{5} The Bristol mail is the best appointed in the Kingdom, owing to the
double advantages of an unusually good road and of an extra sum for the
expenses subscribed by the Bristol merchants.
{6} It will be objected that many men, of the highest rank and wealth,
have in our own day, as well as throughout our history, been amongst the
foremost in courting danger in battle. True; but this is not the case
supposed; long familiarity with power has to them deadened its effect and
its attractions.
{7} [Greek text].
{8} [Greek text]. EURIP. Orest.
{9} [Greek text].
{10} [Greek text]. The scholar will know that throughout this passage I
refer to the early scenes of the Orestes; one of the most beautiful
exhibitions of the domestic affections which even the dramas of Euripides
can furnish. To the English reader it may be necessary to say that the
situation at the opening of the drama is that of a brother attended only
by his sister during the demoniacal possession of a suffering conscience
(or, in the mythology of the play, haunted by the Furies), and in
circumstances of immediate danger from enemies, and of desertion or cold
regard from nominal friends.
{11} _Evanesced_: this way of going off the stage of life appears to
have been well known in the 17th century, but at that time to have been
considered a peculiar privilege of blood-royal, and by no means to be
allowed to druggists. For about the year 1686 a poet of rather ominous
name (and who, by-the-bye, did ample justice to his name), viz. , Mr.
_Flat-man_, in speaking of the death of Charles II. expresses his
surprise that any prince should commit so absurd an act as dying,
because, says he,
"Kings should disdain to die, and only _disappear_. "
They should _abscond_, that is, into the other world.
{12} Of this, however, the learned appear latterly to have doubted; for
in a pirated edition of Buchan's _Domestic Medicine_, which I once saw in
the hands of a farmer's wife, who was studying it for the benefit of her
health, the Doctor was made to say--"Be particularly careful never to
take above five-and-twenty _ounces_ of laudanum at once;" the true
reading being probably five-and-twenty _drops_, which are held equal to
about one grain of crude opium.
{13} Amongst the great herd of travellers, &c. , who show sufficiently by
their stupidity that they never held any intercourse with opium, I must
caution my readers specially against the brilliant author of
_Anastasius_. This gentleman, whose wit would lead one to presume him an
opium-eater, has made it impossible to consider him in that character,
from the grievous misrepresentation which he gives of its effects at pp.
215-17 of vol. i. Upon consideration it must appear such to the author
himself, for, waiving the errors I have insisted on in the text, which
(and others) are adopted in the fullest manner, he will himself admit
that an old gentleman "with a snow-white beard," who eats "ample doses of
opium," and is yet able to deliver what is meant and received as very
weighty counsel on the bad effects of that practice, is but an
indifferent evidence that opium either kills people prematurely or sends
them into a madhouse. But for my part, I see into this old gentleman and
his motives: the fact is, he was enamoured of "the little golden
receptacle of the pernicious drug" which Anastasius carried about him;
and no way of obtaining it so safe and so feasible occurred as that of
frightening its owner out of his wits (which, by the bye, are none of the
strongest). This commentary throws a new light upon the case, and
greatly improves it as a story; for the old gentleman's speech,
considered as a lecture on pharmacy, is highly absurd; but considered as
a hoax on Anastasius, it reads excellently.
{14} I have not the book at this moment to consult; but I think the
passage begins--"And even that tavern music, which makes one man merry,
another mad, in me strikes a deep fit of devotion," &c.
{15} A handsome newsroom, of which I was very politely made free in
passing through Manchester by several gentlemen of that place, is called,
I think, _The Porch_; whence I, who am a stranger in Manchester, inferred
that the subscribers meant to profess themselves followers of Zeno. But
I have been since assured that this is a mistake.
{16} I here reckon twenty-five drops of laudanum as equivalent to one
grain of opium, which, I believe, is the common estimate. However, as
both may be considered variable quantities (the crude opium varying much
in strength, and the tincture still more), I suppose that no
infinitesimal accuracy can be had in such a calculation. Teaspoons vary
as much in size as opium in strength. Small ones hold about 100 drops;
so that 8,000 drops are about eighty times a teaspoonful. The reader
sees how much I kept within Dr. Buchan's indulgent allowance.
{17} This, however, is not a necessary conclusion; the varieties of
effect produced by opium on different constitutions are infinite. A
London magistrate (Harriott's _Struggles through Life_, vol. iii. p. 391,
third edition) has recorded that, on the first occasion of his trying
laudanum for the gout he took _forty_ drops, the next night _sixty_, and
on the fifth night _eighty_, without any effect whatever; and this at an
advanced age. I have an anecdote from a country surgeon, however, which
sinks Mr. Harriott's case into a trifle; and in my projected medical
treatise on opium, which I will publish provided the College of Surgeons
will pay me for enlightening their benighted understandings upon this
subject, I will relate it; but it is far too good a story to be published
gratis.
{18} See the common accounts in any Eastern traveller or voyager of the
frantic excesses committed by Malays who have taken opium, or are reduced
to desperation by ill-luck at gambling.
{19} The reader must remember what I here mean by _thinking_, because
else this would be a very presumptuous expression. England, of late, has
been rich to excess in fine thinkers, in the departments of creative and
combining thought; but there is a sad dearth of masculine thinkers in any
analytic path. A Scotchman of eminent name has lately told us that he is
obliged to quit even mathematics for want of encouragement.
{20} William Lithgow. His book (Travels, &c. ) is ill and pedantically
written; but the account of his own sufferings on the rack at Malaga is
overpoweringly affecting.
{21} In saying this I mean no disrespect to the individual house, as the
reader will understand when I tell him that, with the exception of one or
two princely mansions, and some few inferior ones that have been coated
with Roman cement, I am not acquainted with any house in this mountainous
district which is wholly waterproof. The architecture of books, I
flatter myself, is conducted on just principles in this country; but for
any other architecture, it is in a barbarous state, and what is worse, in
a retrograde state.
{22} On which last notice I would remark that mine was _too_ rapid, and
the suffering therefore needlessly aggravated; or rather, perhaps, it was
not sufficiently continuous and equably graduated. But that the reader
may judge for himself, and above all that the Opium-eater, who is
preparing to retire from business, may have every sort of information
before him, I subjoin my diary:--
First Week Second Week
Drops of Laud. Drops of Laud.
Mond. June 24 . . . 130 Mond. July 1 . . . 80
25 . . . 140 2 . . . 80
26 . . . 130 3 . . . 90
27 . . . 80 4 . . . 100
28 . . . 80 5 . . . 80
29 . . . 80 6 . . . 80
30 . . . 80 7 . . . 80
Third Week Fourth Week
Mond. July 8 . . . 300 Mond. July 15 . . . 76
9 . . . 50 16 . . . 73. 5
10 } 17 . . . 73. 5
11 } Hiatus in 18 . .
and longs as earnestly as ever to realize what he believes possible, and
feels to be exacted by duty; but his intellectual apprehension of what is
possible infinitely outruns his power, not of execution only, but even of
power to attempt. He lies under the weight of incubus and nightmare; he
lies in sight of all that he would fain perform, just as a man forcibly
confined to his bed by the mortal languor of a relaxing disease, who is
compelled to witness injury or outrage offered to some object of his
tenderest love: he curses the spells which chain him down from motion; he
would lay down his life if he might but get up and walk; but he is
powerless as an infant, and cannot even attempt to rise.
I now pass to what is the main subject of these latter confessions, to
the history and journal of what took place in my dreams, for these were
the immediate and proximate cause of my acutest suffering.
The first notice I had of any important change going on in this part of
my physical economy was from the reawakening of a state of eye generally
incident to childhood, or exalted states of irritability. I know not
whether my reader is aware that many children, perhaps most, have a power
of painting, as it were upon the darkness, all sorts of phantoms. In
some that power is simply a mechanical affection of the eye; others have
a voluntary or semi-voluntary power to dismiss or to summon them; or, as
a child once said to me when I questioned him on this matter, "I can tell
them to go, and they go ---, but sometimes they come when I don't tell
them to come. " Whereupon I told him that he had almost as unlimited a
command over apparitions as a Roman centurion over his soldiers. --In the
middle of 1817, I think it was, that this faculty became positively
distressing to me: at night, when I lay awake in bed, vast processions
passed along in mournful pomp; friezes of never-ending stories, that to
my feelings were as sad and solemn as if they were stories drawn from
times before OEdipus or Priam, before Tyre, before Memphis. And at the
same time a corresponding change took place in my dreams; a theatre
seemed suddenly opened and lighted up within my brain, which presented
nightly spectacles of more than earthly splendour. And the four
following facts may be mentioned as noticeable at this time:
1. That as the creative state of the eye increased, a sympathy seemed to
arise between the waking and the dreaming states of the brain in one
point--that whatsoever I happened to call up and to trace by a voluntary
act upon the darkness was very apt to transfer itself to my dreams, so
that I feared to exercise this faculty; for, as Midas turned all things
to gold that yet baffled his hopes and defrauded his human desires, so
whatsoever things capable of being visually represented I did but think
of in the darkness, immediately shaped themselves into phantoms of the
eye; and by a process apparently no less inevitable, when thus once
traced in faint and visionary colours, like writings in sympathetic ink,
they were drawn out by the fierce chemistry of my dreams into
insufferable splendour that fretted my heart.
2. For this and all other changes in my dreams were accompanied by deep-
seated anxiety and gloomy melancholy, such as are wholly incommunicable
by words. I seemed every night to descend, not metaphorically, but
literally to descend, into chasms and sunless abysses, depths below
depths, from which it seemed hopeless that I could ever reascend. Nor
did I, by waking, feel that I _had_ reascended. This I do not dwell
upon; because the state of gloom which attended these gorgeous
spectacles, amounting at last to utter darkness, as of some suicidal
despondency, cannot be approached by words.
3. The sense of space, and in the end the sense of time, were both
powerfully affected. Buildings, landscapes, &c. , were exhibited in
proportions so vast as the bodily eye is not fitted to receive. Space
swelled, and was amplified to an extent of unutterable infinity. This,
however, did not disturb me so much as the vast expansion of time; I
sometimes seemed to have lived for 70 or 100 years in one night--nay,
sometimes had feelings representative of a millennium passed in that
time, or, however, of a duration far beyond the limits of any human
experience.
4. The minutest incidents of childhood, or forgotten scenes of later
years, were often revived: I could not be said to recollect them, for if
I had been told of them when waking, I should not have been able to
acknowledge them as parts of my past experience. But placed as they were
before me, in dreams like intuitions, and clothed in all their evanescent
circumstances and accompanying feelings, I _recognised_ them
instantaneously. I was once told by a near relative of mine, that having
in her childhood fallen into a river, and being on the very verge of
death but for the critical assistance which reached her, she saw in a
moment her whole life, in its minutest incidents, arrayed before her
simultaneously as in a mirror; and she had a faculty developed as
suddenly for comprehending the whole and every part. This, from some
opium experiences of mine, I can believe; I have indeed seen the same
thing asserted twice in modern books, and accompanied by a remark which I
am convinced is true; viz. , that the dread book of account which the
Scriptures speak of is in fact the mind itself of each individual. Of
this at least I feel assured, that there is no such thing as _forgetting_
possible to the mind; a thousand accidents may and will interpose a veil
between our present consciousness and the secret inscriptions on the
mind; accidents of the same sort will also rend away this veil; but
alike, whether veiled or unveiled, the inscription remains for ever, just
as the stars seem to withdraw before the common light of day, whereas in
fact we all know that it is the light which is drawn over them as a veil,
and that they are waiting to be revealed when the obscuring daylight
shall have withdrawn.
Having noticed these four facts as memorably distinguishing my dreams
from those of health, I shall now cite a case illustrative of the first
fact, and shall then cite any others that I remember, either in their
chronological order, or any other that may give them more effect as
pictures to the reader.
I had been in youth, and even since, for occasional amusement, a great
reader of Livy, whom I confess that I prefer, both for style and matter,
to any other of the Roman historians; and I had often felt as most solemn
and appalling sounds, and most emphatically representative of the majesty
of the Roman people, the two words so often occurring in Livy--_Consul
Romanus_, especially when the consul is introduced in his military
character. I mean to say that the words king, sultan, regent, &c. , or
any other titles of those who embody in their own persons the collective
majesty of a great people, had less power over my reverential feelings. I
had also, though no great reader of history, made myself minutely and
critically familiar with one period of English history, viz. , the period
of the Parliamentary War, having been attracted by the moral grandeur of
some who figured in that day, and by the many interesting memoirs which
survive those unquiet times. Both these parts of my lighter reading,
having furnished me often with matter of reflection, now furnished me
with matter for my dreams. Often I used to see, after painting upon the
blank darkness a sort of rehearsal whilst waking, a crowd of ladies, and
perhaps a festival and dances. And I heard it said, or I said to myself,
"These are English ladies from the unhappy times of Charles I. These are
the wives and the daughters of those who met in peace, and sate at the
same table, and were allied by marriage or by blood; and yet, after a
certain day in August 1642, never smiled upon each other again, nor met
but in the field of battle; and at Marston Moor, at Newbury, or at
Naseby, cut asunder all ties of love by the cruel sabre, and washed away
in blood the memory of ancient friendship. " The ladies danced, and
looked as lovely as the court of George IV. Yet I knew, even in my
dream, that they had been in the grave for nearly two centuries. This
pageant would suddenly dissolve; and at a clapping of hands would be
heard the heart-quaking sound _of Consul Romanus_; and immediately came
"sweeping by," in gorgeous paludaments, Paulus or Marius, girt round by a
company of centurions, with the crimson tunic hoisted on a spear, and
followed by the _alalagmos_ of the Roman legions.
Many years ago, when I was looking over Piranesi's, Antiquities of Rome,
Mr. Coleridge, who was standing by, described to me a set of plates by
that artist, called his _Dreams_, and which record the scenery of his own
visions during the delirium of a fever. Some of them (I describe only
from memory of Mr. Coleridge's account) represented vast Gothic halls, on
the floor of which stood all sorts of engines and machinery, wheels,
cables, pulleys, levers, catapults, &c. &c. , expressive of enormous power
put forth and resistance overcome. Creeping along the sides of the walls
you perceived a staircase; and upon it, groping his way upwards, was
Piranesi himself: follow the stairs a little further and you perceive it
come to a sudden and abrupt termination without any balustrade, and
allowing no step onwards to him who had reached the extremity except into
the depths below. Whatever is to become of poor Piranesi, you suppose at
least that his labours must in some way terminate here. But raise your
eyes, and behold a second flight of stairs still higher, on which again
Piranesi is perceived, but this time standing on the very brink of the
abyss. Again elevate your eye, and a still more aerial flight of stairs
is beheld, and again is poor Piranesi busy on his aspiring labours; and
so on, until the unfinished stairs and Piranesi both are lost in the
upper gloom of the hall. With the same power of endless growth and self-
reproduction did my architecture proceed in dreams. In the early stage
of my malady the splendours of my dreams were indeed chiefly
architectural; and I beheld such pomp of cities and palaces as was never
yet beheld by the waking eye unless in the clouds. From a great modern
poet I cite part of a passage which describes, as an appearance actually
beheld in the clouds, what in many of its circumstances I saw frequently
in sleep:
The appearance, instantaneously disclosed,
Was of a mighty city--boldly say
A wilderness of building, sinking far
And self-withdrawn into a wondrous depth,
Far sinking into splendour--without end!
Fabric it seem'd of diamond, and of gold,
With alabaster domes, and silver spires,
And blazing terrace upon terrace, high
Uplifted; here, serene pavilions bright
In avenues disposed; there towers begirt
With battlements that on their restless fronts
Bore stars--illumination of all gems!
By earthly nature had the effect been wrought
Upon the dark materials of the storm
Now pacified; on them, and on the coves,
And mountain-steeps and summits, whereunto
The vapours had receded,--taking there
Their station under a cerulean sky. &c. &c.
The sublime circumstance, "battlements that on their _restless_ fronts
bore stars," might have been copied from my architectural dreams, for it
often occurred. We hear it reported of Dryden and of Fuseli, in modern
times, that they thought proper to eat raw meat for the sake of obtaining
splendid dreams: how much better for such a purpose to have eaten opium,
which yet I do not remember that any poet is recorded to have done,
except the dramatist Shadwell; and in ancient days Homer is I think
rightly reputed to have known the virtues of opium.
To my architecture succeeded dreams of lakes and silvery expanses of
water: these haunted me so much that I feared (though possibly it will
appear ludicrous to a medical man) that some dropsical state or tendency
of the brain might thus be making itself (to use a metaphysical word)
_objective_; and the sentient organ _project_ itself as its own object.
For two months I suffered greatly in my head, a part of my bodily
structure which had hitherto been so clear from all touch or taint of
weakness (physically I mean) that I used to say of it, as the last Lord
Orford said of his stomach, that it seemed likely to survive the rest of
my person. Till now I had never felt a headache even, or any the
slightest pain, except rheumatic pains caused by my own folly. However,
I got over this attack, though it must have been verging on something
very dangerous.
The waters now changed their character--from translucent lakes shining
like mirrors they now became seas and oceans. And now came a tremendous
change, which, unfolding itself slowly like a scroll through many months,
promised an abiding torment; and in fact it never left me until the
winding up of my case. Hitherto the human face had mixed often in my
dreams, but not despotically nor with any special power of tormenting.
But now that which I have called the tyranny of the human face began to
unfold itself. Perhaps some part of my London life might be answerable
for this. Be that as it may, now it was that upon the rocking waters of
the ocean the human face began to appear; the sea appeared paved with
innumerable faces upturned to the heavens--faces imploring, wrathful,
despairing, surged upwards by thousands, by myriads, by generations, by
centuries: my agitation was infinite; my mind tossed and surged with the
ocean.
May 1818
The Malay has been a fearful enemy for months. I have been every night,
through his means, transported into Asiatic scenes. I know not whether
others share in my feelings on this point; but I have often thought that
if I were compelled to forego England, and to live in China, and among
Chinese manners and modes of life and scenery, I should go mad. The
causes of my horror lie deep, and some of them must be common to others.
Southern Asia in general is the seat of awful images and associations. As
the cradle of the human race, it would alone have a dim and reverential
feeling connected with it. But there are other reasons. No man can
pretend that the wild, barbarous, and capricious superstitions of Africa,
or of savage tribes elsewhere, affect him in the way that he is affected
by the ancient, monumental, cruel, and elaborate religions of Indostan,
&c. The mere antiquity of Asiatic things, of their institutions,
histories, modes of faith, &c. , is so impressive, that to me the vast age
of the race and name overpowers the sense of youth in the individual. A
young Chinese seems to me an antediluvian man renewed. Even Englishmen,
though not bred in any knowledge of such institutions, cannot but shudder
at the mystic sublimity of _castes_ that have flowed apart, and refused
to mix, through such immemorial tracts of time; nor can any man fail to
be awed by the names of the Ganges or the Euphrates. It contributes much
to these feelings that southern Asia is, and has been for thousands of
years, the part of the earth most swarming with human life, the great
_officina gentium_. Man is a weed in those regions. The vast empires
also in which the enormous population of Asia has always been cast, give
a further sublimity to the feelings associated with all Oriental names or
images. In China, over and above what it has in common with the rest of
southern Asia, I am terrified by the modes of life, by the manners, and
the barrier of utter abhorrence and want of sympathy placed between us by
feelings deeper than I can analyse. I could sooner live with lunatics or
brute animals. All this, and much more than I can say or have time to
say, the reader must enter into before he can comprehend the unimaginable
horror which these dreams of Oriental imagery and mythological tortures
impressed upon me. Under the connecting feeling of tropical heat and
vertical sunlights I brought together all creatures, birds, beasts,
reptiles, all trees and plants, usages and appearances, that are found in
all tropical regions, and assembled them together in China or Indostan.
From kindred feelings, I soon brought Egypt and all her gods under the
same law. I was stared at, hooted at, grinned at, chattered at, by
monkeys, by parroquets, by cockatoos. I ran into pagodas, and was fixed
for centuries at the summit or in secret rooms: I was the idol; I was the
priest; I was worshipped; I was sacrificed. I fled from the wrath of
Brama through all the forests of Asia: Vishnu hated me: Seeva laid wait
for me. I came suddenly upon Isis and Osiris: I had done a deed, they
said, which the ibis and the crocodile trembled at. I was buried for a
thousand years in stone coffins, with mummies and sphynxes, in narrow
chambers at the heart of eternal pyramids. I was kissed, with cancerous
kisses, by crocodiles; and laid, confounded with all unutterable slimy
things, amongst reeds and Nilotic mud.
I thus give the reader some slight abstraction of my Oriental dreams,
which always filled me with such amazement at the monstrous scenery that
horror seemed absorbed for a while in sheer astonishment. Sooner or
later came a reflux of feeling that swallowed up the astonishment, and
left me not so much in terror as in hatred and abomination of what I saw.
Over every form, and threat, and punishment, and dim sightless
incarceration, brooded a sense of eternity and infinity that drove me
into an oppression as of madness. Into these dreams only it was, with
one or two slight exceptions, that any circumstances of physical horror
entered. All before had been moral and spiritual terrors. But here the
main agents were ugly birds, or snakes, or crocodiles; especially the
last. The cursed crocodile became to me the object of more horror than
almost all the rest. I was compelled to live with him, and (as was
always the case almost in my dreams) for centuries. I escaped sometimes,
and found myself in Chinese houses, with cane tables, &c. All the feet
of the tables, sofas, &c. , soon became instinct with life: the abominable
head of the crocodile, and his leering eyes, looked out at me, multiplied
into a thousand repetitions; and I stood loathing and fascinated. And so
often did this hideous reptile haunt my dreams that many times the very
same dream was broken up in the very same way: I heard gentle voices
speaking to me (I hear everything when I am sleeping), and instantly I
awoke. It was broad noon, and my children were standing, hand in hand,
at my bedside--come to show me their coloured shoes, or new frocks, or to
let me see them dressed for going out. I protest that so awful was the
transition from the damned crocodile, and the other unutterable monsters
and abortions of my dreams, to the sight of innocent _human_ natures and
of infancy, that in the mighty and sudden revulsion of mind I wept, and
could not forbear it, as I kissed their faces.
June 1819
I have had occasion to remark, at various periods of my life, that the
deaths of those whom we love, and indeed the contemplation of death
generally, is (_caeteris paribus_) more affecting in summer than in any
other season of the year. And the reasons are these three, I think:
first, that the visible heavens in summer appear far higher, more
distant, and (if such a solecism may be excused) more infinite; the
clouds, by which chiefly the eye expounds the distance of the blue
pavilion stretched over our heads, are in summer more voluminous, massed
and accumulated in far grander and more towering piles. Secondly, the
light and the appearances of the declining and the setting sun are much
more fitted to be types and characters of the Infinite. And thirdly
(which is the main reason), the exuberant and riotous prodigality of life
naturally forces the mind more powerfully upon the antagonist thought of
death, and the wintry sterility of the grave. For it may be observed
generally, that wherever two thoughts stand related to each other by a
law of antagonism, and exist, as it were, by mutual repulsion, they are
apt to suggest each other. On these accounts it is that I find it
impossible to banish the thought of death when I am walking alone in the
endless days of summer; and any particular death, if not more affecting,
at least haunts my mind more obstinately and besiegingly in that season.
Perhaps this cause, and a slight incident which I omit, might have been
the immediate occasions of the following dream, to which, however, a
predisposition must always have existed in my mind; but having been once
roused it never left me, and split into a thousand fantastic varieties,
which often suddenly reunited, and composed again the original dream.
I thought that it was a Sunday morning in May, that it was Easter Sunday,
and as yet very early in the morning. I was standing, as it seemed to
me, at the door of my own cottage. Right before me lay the very scene
which could really be commanded from that situation, but exalted, as was
usual, and solemnised by the power of dreams. There were the same
mountains, and the same lovely valley at their feet; but the mountains
were raised to more than Alpine height, and there was interspace far
larger between them of meadows and forest lawns; the hedges were rich
with white roses; and no living creature was to be seen, excepting that
in the green churchyard there were cattle tranquilly reposing upon the
verdant graves, and particularly round about the grave of a child whom I
had tenderly loved, just as I had really beheld them, a little before
sunrise in the same summer, when that child died. I gazed upon the well-
known scene, and I said aloud (as I thought) to myself, "It yet wants
much of sunrise, and it is Easter Sunday; and that is the day on which
they celebrate the first fruits of resurrection. I will walk abroad; old
griefs shall be forgotten to-day; for the air is cool and still, and the
hills are high and stretch away to heaven; and the forest glades are as
quiet as the churchyard, and with the dew I can wash the fever from my
forehead, and then I shall be unhappy no longer. " And I turned as if to
open my garden gate, and immediately I saw upon the left a scene far
different, but which yet the power of dreams had reconciled into harmony
with the other. The scene was an Oriental one, and there also it was
Easter Sunday, and very early in the morning. And at a vast distance
were visible, as a stain upon the horizon, the domes and cupolas of a
great city--an image or faint abstraction, caught perhaps in childhood
from some picture of Jerusalem. And not a bow-shot from me, upon a stone
and shaded by Judean palms, there sat a woman, and I looked, and it
was--Ann! She fixed her eyes upon me earnestly, and I said to her at
length: "So, then, I have found you at last. " I waited, but she answered
me not a word. Her face was the same as when I saw it last, and yet
again how different! Seventeen years ago, when the lamplight fell upon
her face, as for the last time I kissed her lips (lips, Ann, that to me
were not polluted), her eyes were streaming with tears: the tears were
now wiped away; she seemed more beautiful than she was at that time, but
in all other points the same, and not older. Her looks were tranquil,
but with unusual solemnity of expression, and I now gazed upon her with
some awe; but suddenly her countenance grew dim, and turning to the
mountains I perceived vapours rolling between us. In a moment all had
vanished, thick darkness came on, and in the twinkling of an eye I was
far away from mountains, and by lamplight in Oxford Street, walking again
with Ann--just as we walked seventeen years before, when we were both
children.
As a final specimen, I cite one of a different character, from 1820.
The dream commenced with a music which now I often heard in dreams--a
music of preparation and of awakening suspense, a music like the opening
of the Coronation Anthem, and which, like _that_, gave the feeling of a
vast march, of infinite cavalcades filing off, and the tread of
innumerable armies. The morning was come of a mighty day--a day of
crisis and of final hope for human nature, then suffering some mysterious
eclipse, and labouring in some dread extremity. Somewhere, I knew not
where--somehow, I knew not how--by some beings, I knew not whom--a
battle, a strife, an agony, was conducting, was evolving like a great
drama or piece of music, with which my sympathy was the more
insupportable from my confusion as to its place, its cause, its nature,
and its possible issue. I, as is usual in dreams (where of necessity we
make ourselves central to every movement), had the power, and yet had not
the power, to decide it. I had the power, if I could raise myself to
will it, and yet again had not the power, for the weight of twenty
Atlantics was upon me, or the oppression of inexpiable guilt. "Deeper
than ever plummet sounded," I lay inactive. Then like a chorus the
passion deepened. Some greater interest was at stake, some mightier
cause than ever yet the sword had pleaded, or trumpet had proclaimed.
Then came sudden alarms, hurryings to and fro, trepidations of
innumerable fugitives--I knew not whether from the good cause or the bad,
darkness and lights, tempest and human faces, and at last, with the sense
that all was lost, female forms, and the features that were worth all the
world to me, and but a moment allowed--and clasped hands, and
heart-breaking partings, and then--everlasting farewells! And with a
sigh, such as the caves of Hell sighed when the incestuous mother uttered
the abhorred name of death, the sound was reverberated--everlasting
farewells! And again and yet again reverberated--everlasting farewells!
And I awoke in struggles, and cried aloud--"I will sleep no more. "
But I am now called upon to wind up a narrative which has already
extended to an unreasonable length. Within more spacious limits the
materials which I have used might have been better unfolded, and much
which I have not used might have been added with effect. Perhaps,
however, enough has been given. It now remains that I should say
something of the way in which this conflict of horrors was finally
brought to a crisis. The reader is already aware (from a passage near
the beginning of the introduction to the first part) that the Opium-eater
has, in some way or other, "unwound almost to its final links the
accursed chain which bound him. " By what means? To have narrated this
according to the original intention would have far exceeded the space
which can now be allowed. It is fortunate, as such a cogent reason
exists for abridging it, that I should, on a maturer view of the case,
have been exceedingly unwilling to injure, by any such unaffecting
details, the impression of the history itself, as an appeal to the
prudence and the conscience of the yet unconfirmed opium-eater--or even
(though a very inferior consideration) to injure its effect as a
composition. The interest of the judicious reader will not attach itself
chiefly to the subject of the fascinating spells, but to the fascinating
power. Not the Opium-eater, but the opium, is the true hero of the tale,
and the legitimate centre on which the interest revolves. The object was
to display the marvellous agency of opium, whether for pleasure or for
pain: if that is done, the action of the piece has closed.
However, as some people, in spite of all laws to the contrary, will
persist in asking what became of the Opium-eater, and in what state he
now is, I answer for him thus: The reader is aware that opium had long
ceased to found its empire on spells of pleasure; it was solely by the
tortures connected with the attempt to abjure it that it kept its hold.
Yet, as other tortures, no less it may be thought, attended the
non-abjuration of such a tyrant, a choice only of evils was left; and
_that_ might as well have been adopted which, however terrific in itself,
held out a prospect of final restoration to happiness. This appears
true; but good logic gave the author no strength to act upon it. However,
a crisis arrived for the author's life, and a crisis for other objects
still dearer to him--and which will always be far dearer to him than his
life, even now that it is again a happy one. I saw that I must die if I
continued the opium. I determined, therefore, if that should be
required, to die in throwing it off. How much I was at that time taking
I cannot say, for the opium which I used had been purchased for me by a
friend, who afterwards refused to let me pay him; so that I could not
ascertain even what quantity I had used within the year. I apprehend,
however, that I took it very irregularly, and that I varied from about
fifty or sixty grains to 150 a day. My first task was to reduce it to
forty, to thirty, and as fast as I could to twelve grains.
I triumphed. But think not, reader, that therefore my sufferings were
ended, nor think of me as of one sitting in a _dejected_ state. Think of
me as one, even when four months had passed, still agitated, writhing,
throbbing, palpitating, shattered, and much perhaps in the situation of
him who has been racked, as I collect the torments of that state from the
affecting account of them left by a most innocent sufferer {20} of the
times of James I. Meantime, I derived no benefit from any medicine,
except one prescribed to me by an Edinburgh surgeon of great eminence,
viz. , ammoniated tincture of valerian. Medical account, therefore, of my
emancipation I have not much to give, and even that little, as managed by
a man so ignorant of medicine as myself, would probably tend only to
mislead. At all events, it would be misplaced in this situation. The
moral of the narrative is addressed to the opium-eater, and therefore of
necessity limited in its application. If he is taught to fear and
tremble, enough has been effected. But he may say that the issue of my
case is at least a proof that opium, after a seventeen years' use and an
eight years' abuse of its powers, may still be renounced, and that _he_
may chance to bring to the task greater energy than I did, or that with a
stronger constitution than mine he may obtain the same results with less.
This may be true. I would not presume to measure the efforts of other
men by my own. I heartily wish him more energy. I wish him the same
success. Nevertheless, I had motives external to myself which he may
unfortunately want, and these supplied me with conscientious supports
which mere personal interests might fail to supply to a mind debilitated
by opium.
Jeremy Taylor conjectures that it may be as painful to be born as to die.
I think it probable; and during the whole period of diminishing the opium
I had the torments of a man passing out of one mode of existence into
another. The issue was not death, but a sort of physical regeneration;
and I may add that ever since, at intervals, I have had a restoration of
more than youthful spirits, though under the pressure of difficulties
which in a less happy state of mind I should have called misfortunes.
One memorial of my former condition still remains--my dreams are not yet
perfectly calm; the dread swell and agitation of the storm have not
wholly subsided; the legions that encamped in them are drawing off, but
not all departed; my sleep is still tumultuous, and, like the gates of
Paradise to our first parents when looking back from afar, it is still
(in the tremendous line of Milton)
With dreadful faces throng'd, and fiery arms.
APPENDIX
From the "London Magazine" for December 1822.
The interest excited by the two papers bearing this title, in our numbers
for September and October 1821, will have kept our promise of a Third
Part fresh in the remembrance of our readers. That we are still unable
to fulfil our engagement in its original meaning will, we, are sure, be
matter of regret to them as to ourselves, especially when they have
perused the following affecting narrative. It was composed for the
purpose of being appended to an edition of the Confessions in a separate
volume, which is already before the public, and we have reprinted it
entire, that our subscribers may be in possession of the whole of this
extraordinary history.
* * * * *
The proprietors of this little work having determined on reprinting it,
some explanation seems called for, to account for the non-appearance of a
third part promised in the _London Magazine_ of December last; and the
more so because the proprietors, under whose guarantee that promise was
issued, might otherwise be implicated in the blame--little or
much--attached to its non-fulfilment. This blame, in mere justice, the
author takes wholly upon himself. What may be the exact amount of the
guilt which he thus appropriates is a very dark question to his own
judgment, and not much illuminated by any of the masters in casuistry
whom he has consulted on the occasion. On the one hand it seems
generally agreed that a promise is binding in the inverse ratio of the
numbers to whom it is made; for which reason it is that we see many
persons break promises without scruple that are made to a whole nation,
who keep their faith religiously in all private engagements, breaches of
promise towards the stronger party being committed at a man's own peril;
on the other hand, the only parties interested in the promises of an
author are his readers, and these it is a point of modesty in any author
to believe as few as possible--or perhaps only one, in which case any
promise imposes a sanctity of moral obligation which it is shocking to
think of. Casuistry dismissed, however, the author throws himself on the
indulgent consideration of all who may conceive themselves aggrieved by
his delay, in the following account of his own condition from the end of
last year, when the engagement was made, up nearly to the present time.
For any purpose of self-excuse it might be sufficient to say that
intolerable bodily suffering had totally disabled him for almost any
exertion of mind, more especially for such as demands and presupposes a
pleasurable and genial state of feeling; but, as a case that may by
possibility contribute a trifle to the medical history of opium, in a
further stage of its action than can often have been brought under the
notice of professional men, he has judged that it might be acceptable to
some readers to have it described more at length. _Fiat experimentum in
corpore vili_ is a just rule where there is any reasonable presumption of
benefit to arise on a large scale. What the benefit may be will admit of
a doubt, but there can be none as to the value of the body; for a more
worthless body than his own the author is free to confess cannot be. It
is his pride to believe that it is the very ideal of a base, crazy,
despicable human system, that hardly ever could have been meant to be
seaworthy for two days under the ordinary storms and wear and tear of
life; and indeed, if that were the creditable way of disposing of human
bodies, he must own that he should almost be ashamed to bequeath his
wretched structure to any respectable dog. But now to the case, which,
for the sake of avoiding the constant recurrence of a cumbersome
periphrasis, the author will take the liberty of giving in the first
person.
* * * * *
Those who have read the Confessions will have closed them with the
impression that I had wholly renounced the use of opium. This impression
I meant to convey, and that for two reasons: first, because the very act
of deliberately recording such a state of suffering necessarily presumes
in the recorder a power of surveying his own case as a cool spectator,
and a degree of spirits for adequately describing it which it would be
inconsistent to suppose in any person speaking from the station of an
actual sufferer; secondly, because I, who had descended from so large a
quantity as 8,000 drops to so small a one (comparatively speaking) as a
quantity ranging between 300 and 160 drops, might well suppose that the
victory was in effect achieved. In suffering my readers, therefore, to
think of me as of a reformed opium-eater, I left no impression but what I
shared myself; and, as may be seen, even this impression was left to be
collected from the general tone of the conclusion, and not from any
specific words, which are in no instance at variance with the literal
truth. In no long time after that paper was written I became sensible
that the effort which remained would cost me far more energy than I had
anticipated, and the necessity for making it was more apparent every
month. In particular I became aware of an increasing callousness or
defect of sensibility in the stomach, and this I imagined might imply a
scirrhous state of that organ, either formed or forming. An eminent
physician, to whose kindness I was at that time deeply indebted, informed
me that such a termination of my case was not impossible, though likely
to be forestalled by a different termination in the event of my
continuing the use of opium. Opium therefore I resolved wholly to abjure
as soon as I should find myself at liberty to bend my undivided attention
and energy to this purpose. It was not, however, until the 24th of June
last that any tolerable concurrence of facilities for such an attempt
arrived. On that day I began my experiment, having previously settled in
my own mind that I would not flinch, but would "stand up to the scratch"
under any possible "punishment. " I must premise that about 170 or 180
drops had been my ordinary allowance for many months; occasionally I had
run up as high as 500, and once nearly to 700; in repeated preludes to my
final experiment I had also gone as low as 100 drops; but had found it
impossible to stand it beyond the fourth day--which, by the way, I have
always found more difficult to get over than any of the preceding three.
I went off under easy sail--130 drops a day for three days; on the fourth
I plunged at once to 80. The misery which I now suffered "took the
conceit" out of me at once, and for about a month I continued off and on
about this mark; then I sunk to 60, and the next day to--none at all.
This was the first day for nearly ten years that I had existed without
opium. I persevered in my abstinence for ninety hours; i. e. , upwards of
half a week. Then I took--ask me not how much; say, ye severest, what
would ye have done? Then I abstained again--then took about 25 drops
then abstained; and so on.
Meantime the symptoms which attended my case for the first six weeks of
my experiment were these: enormous irritability and excitement of the
whole system; the stomach in particular restored to a full feeling of
vitality and sensibility, but often in great pain; unceasing restlessness
night and day; sleep--I scarcely knew what it was; three hours out of the
twenty-four was the utmost I had, and that so agitated and shallow that I
heard every sound that was near me. Lower jaw constantly swelling, mouth
ulcerated, and many other distressing symptoms that would be tedious to
repeat; amongst which, however, I must mention one, because it had never
failed to accompany any attempt to renounce opium--viz. , violent
sternutation. This now became exceedingly troublesome, sometimes lasting
for two hours at once, and recurring at least twice or three times a day.
I was not much surprised at this on recollecting what I had somewhere
heard or read, that the membrane which lines the nostrils is a
prolongation of that which lines the stomach; whence, I believe, are
explained the inflammatory appearances about the nostrils of dram
drinkers. The sudden restoration of its original sensibility to the
stomach expressed itself, I suppose, in this way. It is remarkable also
that during the whole period of years through which I had taken opium I
had never once caught cold (as the phrase is), nor even the slightest
cough. But now a violent cold attacked me, and a cough soon after. In
an unfinished fragment of a letter begun about this time to--I find these
words: "You ask me to write the--Do you know Beaumont and Fletcher's play
of "Thierry and Theodore"? There you will see my case as to sleep; nor
is it much of an exaggeration in other features. I protest to you that I
have a greater influx of thoughts in one hour at present than in a whole
year under the reign of opium. It seems as though all the thoughts which
had been frozen up for a decade of years by opium had now, according to
the old fable, been thawed at once--such a multitude stream in upon me
from all quarters. Yet such is my impatience and hideous irritability
that for one which I detain and write down fifty escape me: in spite of
my weariness from suffering and want of sleep, I cannot stand still or
sit for two minutes together. 'I nunc, et versus tecum meditare
canoros. '"
At this stage of my experiment I sent to a neighbouring surgeon,
requesting that he would come over to see me. In the evening he came;
and after briefly stating the case to him, I asked this question; Whether
he did not think that the opium might have acted as a stimulus to the
digestive organs, and that the present state of suffering in the stomach,
which manifestly was the cause of the inability to sleep, might arise
from indigestion? His answer was; No; on the contrary, he thought that
the suffering was caused by digestion itself, which should naturally go
on below the consciousness, but which from the unnatural state of the
stomach, vitiated by so long a use of opium, was become distinctly
perceptible. This opinion was plausible; and the unintermitting nature
of the suffering disposes me to think that it was true, for if it had
been any mere _irregular_ affection of the stomach, it should naturally
have intermitted occasionally, and constantly fluctuated as to degree.
The intention of nature, as manifested in the healthy state, obviously is
to withdraw from our notice all the vital motions, such as the
circulation of the blood, the expansion and contraction of the lungs, the
peristaltic action of the stomach, &c. , and opium, it seems, is able in
this, as in other instances, to counteract her purposes. By the advice
of the surgeon I tried _bitters_. For a short time these greatly
mitigated the feelings under which I laboured, but about the forty-second
day of the experiment the symptoms already noticed began to retire, and
new ones to arise of a different and far more tormenting class; under
these, but with a few intervals of remission, I have since continued to
suffer. But I dismiss them undescribed for two reasons: first, because
the mind revolts from retracing circumstantially any sufferings from
which it is removed by too short or by no interval. To do this with
minuteness enough to make the review of any use would be indeed _infandum
renovare dolorem_, and possibly without a sufficient motive; for
secondly, I doubt whether this latter state be anyway referable to
opium--positively considered, or even negatively; that is, whether it is
to be numbered amongst the last evils from the direct action of opium, or
even amongst the earliest evils consequent upon a _want_ of opium in a
system long deranged by its use. Certainly one part of the symptoms
might be accounted for from the time of year (August), for though the
summer was not a hot one, yet in any case the sum of all the heat
_funded_ (if one may say so) during the previous months, added to the
existing heat of that month, naturally renders August in its better half
the hottest part of the year; and it so happened that--the excessive
perspiration which even at Christmas attends any great reduction in the
daily quantum of opium--and which in July was so violent as to oblige me
to use a bath five or six times a day--had about the setting-in of the
hottest season wholly retired, on which account any bad effect of the
heat might be the more unmitigated. Another symptom--viz. , what in my
ignorance I call internal rheumatism (sometimes affecting the shoulders,
&c. , but more often appearing to be seated in the stomach)--seemed again
less probably attributable to the opium, or the want of opium, than to
the dampness of the house {21} which I inhabit, which had about this time
attained its maximum, July having been, as usual, a month of incessant
rain in our most rainy part of England.
Under these reasons for doubting whether opium had any connexion with the
latter stage of my bodily wretchedness--except, indeed, as an occasional
cause, as having left the body weaker and more crazy, and thus
predisposed to any mal-influence whatever--I willingly spare my reader
all description of it; let it perish to him, and would that I could as
easily say let it perish to my own remembrances, that any future hours of
tranquillity may not be disturbed by too vivid an ideal of possible human
misery!
So much for the sequel of my experiment. As to the former stage, in
which probably lies the experiment and its application to other cases, I
must request my reader not to forget the reasons for which I have
recorded it. These were two: First, a belief that I might add some
trifle to the history of opium as a medical agent. In this I am aware
that I have not at all fulfilled my own intentions, in consequence of the
torpor of mind, pain of body, and extreme disgust to the subject which
besieged me whilst writing that part of my paper; which part being
immediately sent off to the press (distant about five degrees of
latitude), cannot be corrected or improved. But from this account,
rambling as it may be, it is evident that thus much of benefit may arise
to the persons most interested in such a history of opium, viz. , to opium-
eaters in general, that it establishes, for their consolation and
encouragement, the fact that opium may be renounced, and without greater
sufferings than an ordinary resolution may support, and by a pretty rapid
course {22} of descent.
To communicate this result of my experiment was my foremost purpose.
Secondly, as a purpose collateral to this, I wished to explain how it had
become impossible for me to compose a Third Part in time to accompany
this republication; for during the time of this experiment the
proof-sheets of this reprint were sent to me from London, and such was my
inability to expand or to improve them, that I could not even bear to
read them over with attention enough to notice the press errors or to
correct any verbal inaccuracies. These were my reasons for troubling my
reader with any record, long or short, of experiments relating to so
truly base a subject as my own body; and I am earnest with the reader
that he will not forget them, or so far misapprehend me as to believe it
possible that I would condescend to so rascally a subject for its own
sake, or indeed for any less object than that of general benefit to
others. Such an animal as the self-observing valetudinarian I know there
is; I have met him myself occasionally, and I know that he is the worst
imaginable _heautontimoroumenos_; aggravating and sustaining, by calling
into distinct consciousness, every symptom that would else perhaps, under
a different direction given to the thoughts, become evanescent. But as
to myself, so profound is my contempt for this undignified and selfish
habit, that I could as little condescend to it as I could to spend my
time in watching a poor servant girl, to whom at this moment I hear some
lad or other making love at the back of my house. Is it for a
Transcendental Philosopher to feel any curiosity on such an occasion? Or
can I, whose life is worth only eight and a half years' purchase, be
supposed to have leisure for such trivial employments? However, to put
this out of question, I shall say one thing, which will perhaps shock
some readers, but I am sure it ought not to do so, considering the
motives on which I say it. No man, I suppose, employs much of his time
on the phenomena of his own body without some regard for it; whereas the
reader sees that, so far from looking upon mine with any complacency or
regard, I hate it, and make it the object of my bitter ridicule and
contempt; and I should not be displeased to know that the last
indignities which the law inflicts upon the bodies of the worst
malefactors might hereafter fall upon it. And, in testification of my
sincerity in saying this, I shall make the following offer. Like other
men, I have particular fancies about the place of my burial; having lived
chiefly in a mountainous region, I rather cleave to the conceit, that a
grave in a green churchyard amongst the ancient and solitary hills will
be a sublimer and more tranquil place of repose for a philosopher than
any in the hideous Golgothas of London. Yet if the gentlemen of
Surgeons' Hall think that any benefit can redound to their science from
inspecting the appearances in the body of an opium-eater, let them speak
but a word, and I will take care that mine shall be legally secured to
them--i. e. , as soon as I have done with it myself. Let them not hesitate
to express their wishes upon any scruples of false delicacy and
consideration for my feelings; I assure them they will do me too much
honour by "demonstrating" on such a crazy body as mine, and it will give
me pleasure to anticipate this posthumous revenge and insult inflicted
upon that which has caused me so much suffering in this life. Such
bequests are not common; reversionary benefits contingent upon the death
of the testator are indeed dangerous to announce in many cases: of this
we have a remarkable instance in the habits of a Roman prince, who used,
upon any notification made to him by rich persons that they had left him
a handsome estate in their wills, to express his entire satisfaction at
such arrangements and his gracious acceptance of those loyal legacies;
but then, if the testators neglected to give him immediate possession of
the property, if they traitorously "persisted in living" (_si vivere
perseverarent_, as Suetonius expresses it), he was highly provoked, and
took his measures accordingly. In those times, and from one of the worst
of the Caesars, we might expect such conduct; but I am sure that from
English surgeons at this day I need look for no expressions of
impatience, or of any other feelings but such as are answerable to that
pure love of science and all its interests which induces me to make such
an offer.
Sept 30, 1822
FOOTNOTES
{1} "Not yet _recorded_," I say; for there is one celebrated man of the
present day, who, if all be true which is reported of him, has greatly
exceeded me in quantity.
{2} A third exception might perhaps have been added; and my reason for
not adding that exception is chiefly because it was only in his juvenile
efforts that the writer whom I allude to expressly addressed hints to
philosophical themes; his riper powers having been all dedicated (on very
excusable and very intelligible grounds, under the present direction of
the popular mind in England) to criticism and the Fine Arts. This reason
apart, however, I doubt whether he is not rather to be considered an
acute thinker than a subtle one. It is, besides, a great drawback on his
mastery over philosophical subjects that he has obviously not had the
advantage of a regular scholastic education: he has not read Plato in his
youth (which most likely was only his misfortune), but neither has he
read Kant in his manhood (which is his fault).
{3} I disclaim any allusion to _existing_ professors, of whom indeed I
know only one.
{4} To this same Jew, by the way, some eighteen months afterwards, I
applied again on the same business; and, dating at that time from a
respectable college, I was fortunate enough to gain his serious attention
to my proposals. My necessities had not arisen from any extravagance or
youthful levities (these my habits and the nature of my pleasures raised
me far above), but simply from the vindictive malice of my guardian, who,
when he found himself no longer able to prevent me from going to the
university, had, as a parting token of his good nature, refused to sign
an order for granting me a shilling beyond the allowance made to me at
school--viz. , 100 pounds per annum. Upon this sum it was in my time
barely possible to have lived in college, and not possible to a man who,
though above the paltry affectation of ostentatious disregard for money,
and without any expensive tastes, confided nevertheless rather too much
in servants, and did not delight in the petty details of minute economy.
I soon, therefore, became embarrassed, and at length, after a most
voluminous negotiation with the Jew (some parts of which, if I had
leisure to rehearse them, would greatly amuse my readers), I was put in
possession of the sum I asked for, on the "regular" terms of paying the
Jew seventeen and a half per cent. by way of annuity on all the money
furnished; Israel, on his part, graciously resuming no more than about
ninety guineas of the said money, on account of an attorney's bill (for
what services, to whom rendered, and when, whether at the siege of
Jerusalem, at the building of the second Temple, or on some earlier
occasion, I have not yet been able to discover). How many perches this
bill measured I really forget; but I still keep it in a cabinet of
natural curiosities, and some time or other I believe I shall present it
to the British Museum.
{5} The Bristol mail is the best appointed in the Kingdom, owing to the
double advantages of an unusually good road and of an extra sum for the
expenses subscribed by the Bristol merchants.
{6} It will be objected that many men, of the highest rank and wealth,
have in our own day, as well as throughout our history, been amongst the
foremost in courting danger in battle. True; but this is not the case
supposed; long familiarity with power has to them deadened its effect and
its attractions.
{7} [Greek text].
{8} [Greek text]. EURIP. Orest.
{9} [Greek text].
{10} [Greek text]. The scholar will know that throughout this passage I
refer to the early scenes of the Orestes; one of the most beautiful
exhibitions of the domestic affections which even the dramas of Euripides
can furnish. To the English reader it may be necessary to say that the
situation at the opening of the drama is that of a brother attended only
by his sister during the demoniacal possession of a suffering conscience
(or, in the mythology of the play, haunted by the Furies), and in
circumstances of immediate danger from enemies, and of desertion or cold
regard from nominal friends.
{11} _Evanesced_: this way of going off the stage of life appears to
have been well known in the 17th century, but at that time to have been
considered a peculiar privilege of blood-royal, and by no means to be
allowed to druggists. For about the year 1686 a poet of rather ominous
name (and who, by-the-bye, did ample justice to his name), viz. , Mr.
_Flat-man_, in speaking of the death of Charles II. expresses his
surprise that any prince should commit so absurd an act as dying,
because, says he,
"Kings should disdain to die, and only _disappear_. "
They should _abscond_, that is, into the other world.
{12} Of this, however, the learned appear latterly to have doubted; for
in a pirated edition of Buchan's _Domestic Medicine_, which I once saw in
the hands of a farmer's wife, who was studying it for the benefit of her
health, the Doctor was made to say--"Be particularly careful never to
take above five-and-twenty _ounces_ of laudanum at once;" the true
reading being probably five-and-twenty _drops_, which are held equal to
about one grain of crude opium.
{13} Amongst the great herd of travellers, &c. , who show sufficiently by
their stupidity that they never held any intercourse with opium, I must
caution my readers specially against the brilliant author of
_Anastasius_. This gentleman, whose wit would lead one to presume him an
opium-eater, has made it impossible to consider him in that character,
from the grievous misrepresentation which he gives of its effects at pp.
215-17 of vol. i. Upon consideration it must appear such to the author
himself, for, waiving the errors I have insisted on in the text, which
(and others) are adopted in the fullest manner, he will himself admit
that an old gentleman "with a snow-white beard," who eats "ample doses of
opium," and is yet able to deliver what is meant and received as very
weighty counsel on the bad effects of that practice, is but an
indifferent evidence that opium either kills people prematurely or sends
them into a madhouse. But for my part, I see into this old gentleman and
his motives: the fact is, he was enamoured of "the little golden
receptacle of the pernicious drug" which Anastasius carried about him;
and no way of obtaining it so safe and so feasible occurred as that of
frightening its owner out of his wits (which, by the bye, are none of the
strongest). This commentary throws a new light upon the case, and
greatly improves it as a story; for the old gentleman's speech,
considered as a lecture on pharmacy, is highly absurd; but considered as
a hoax on Anastasius, it reads excellently.
{14} I have not the book at this moment to consult; but I think the
passage begins--"And even that tavern music, which makes one man merry,
another mad, in me strikes a deep fit of devotion," &c.
{15} A handsome newsroom, of which I was very politely made free in
passing through Manchester by several gentlemen of that place, is called,
I think, _The Porch_; whence I, who am a stranger in Manchester, inferred
that the subscribers meant to profess themselves followers of Zeno. But
I have been since assured that this is a mistake.
{16} I here reckon twenty-five drops of laudanum as equivalent to one
grain of opium, which, I believe, is the common estimate. However, as
both may be considered variable quantities (the crude opium varying much
in strength, and the tincture still more), I suppose that no
infinitesimal accuracy can be had in such a calculation. Teaspoons vary
as much in size as opium in strength. Small ones hold about 100 drops;
so that 8,000 drops are about eighty times a teaspoonful. The reader
sees how much I kept within Dr. Buchan's indulgent allowance.
{17} This, however, is not a necessary conclusion; the varieties of
effect produced by opium on different constitutions are infinite. A
London magistrate (Harriott's _Struggles through Life_, vol. iii. p. 391,
third edition) has recorded that, on the first occasion of his trying
laudanum for the gout he took _forty_ drops, the next night _sixty_, and
on the fifth night _eighty_, without any effect whatever; and this at an
advanced age. I have an anecdote from a country surgeon, however, which
sinks Mr. Harriott's case into a trifle; and in my projected medical
treatise on opium, which I will publish provided the College of Surgeons
will pay me for enlightening their benighted understandings upon this
subject, I will relate it; but it is far too good a story to be published
gratis.
{18} See the common accounts in any Eastern traveller or voyager of the
frantic excesses committed by Malays who have taken opium, or are reduced
to desperation by ill-luck at gambling.
{19} The reader must remember what I here mean by _thinking_, because
else this would be a very presumptuous expression. England, of late, has
been rich to excess in fine thinkers, in the departments of creative and
combining thought; but there is a sad dearth of masculine thinkers in any
analytic path. A Scotchman of eminent name has lately told us that he is
obliged to quit even mathematics for want of encouragement.
{20} William Lithgow. His book (Travels, &c. ) is ill and pedantically
written; but the account of his own sufferings on the rack at Malaga is
overpoweringly affecting.
{21} In saying this I mean no disrespect to the individual house, as the
reader will understand when I tell him that, with the exception of one or
two princely mansions, and some few inferior ones that have been coated
with Roman cement, I am not acquainted with any house in this mountainous
district which is wholly waterproof. The architecture of books, I
flatter myself, is conducted on just principles in this country; but for
any other architecture, it is in a barbarous state, and what is worse, in
a retrograde state.
{22} On which last notice I would remark that mine was _too_ rapid, and
the suffering therefore needlessly aggravated; or rather, perhaps, it was
not sufficiently continuous and equably graduated. But that the reader
may judge for himself, and above all that the Opium-eater, who is
preparing to retire from business, may have every sort of information
before him, I subjoin my diary:--
First Week Second Week
Drops of Laud. Drops of Laud.
Mond. June 24 . . . 130 Mond. July 1 . . . 80
25 . . . 140 2 . . . 80
26 . . . 130 3 . . . 90
27 . . . 80 4 . . . 100
28 . . . 80 5 . . . 80
29 . . . 80 6 . . . 80
30 . . . 80 7 . . . 80
Third Week Fourth Week
Mond. July 8 . . . 300 Mond. July 15 . . . 76
9 . . . 50 16 . . . 73. 5
10 } 17 . . . 73. 5
11 } Hiatus in 18 . .
