Confessions of an English opium-eater, and kindred papers

Front matter

f

Library ol the

iTrfivcrsity of North Carolina

Contents

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CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM EATER.

Part II. Vision of Life . 25* ADDITIONS TO THE CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM EATER

De Quincey . 289

My Guardians . 2i)5

A Manchester Home . 301

At the Manchester Grammar School .... 311 fi

CONTENTS.

ffAM

Elopement from Manchester ... • 354

Wanderings in North Wales . 374

From Wales to London . 404

The Plans laid for London Life • • • . . 427

Barbara Lewthwaitk ....... 437

The Daughter of Lebanon ...... 445

Notes on the Use of Opium . 455

THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH.

Dream Fugue . . « • (7S

VOTES . . « 8®S

PROM THE AUTHOR TO THE READER.

I here present you, courteous reader, with th« record of a remarkable period of my life; accord¬ ing to my application of it, I trust that it will prove, not merely an interesting record, but, in a considerable degree, useful and instructive. In that hope it is that I have drawn it up ; and that must be my apology for breaking through that del¬ icate and honorable reserve, which, for the most part, restrains us from the public exposure of our own errors and infirmities. Nothing, indeed, is more revolting to English feelings, than the spec¬ tacle of a human being obtruding on our notice his moral ulcers, or scars, and tearing away that u decent drapery ” which time, cr indulgence to human frailty, may have drawn over them accordingly, the greater part of our confession*. vihat is, spontaneous and extra-judicial confess

VIII FROM THE AUTHOR TO THE READER.

Bions) proceed from demireps, adventurers 01 Bwindlers; and for any such acts of gratuitous selfhumiliation from those who can be supposed in sympathy with the decent and self-respecting part of society, we must look to French literature, or to that part of the German which is tainted with the spurious and defective sensibility of the French. All this I feel so forcibly, and so nervously am 1 alive to reproach of this tendency, that I have fo* many months hesitated about the propriety of allowing this, or any part of my narrative, to come before the public eye, until after my death (when, for many reasons, the whole will be published) : and it is not without an anxious review of the rea¬ sons for and against this step, that I have, at last, concluded on taking it.

Guilt and misery shrink, by a natural instinct, from public notice: they court privacy and solitude; and, even in the choice of a grave, will sometimes sequester themselves from the general population af the church-yard, as if declining to claim fellow¬ ship with the great family of man, and wishing (in ‘die affecting language of Mr. Wordsworth)

- Humbly to express

A penitential loneliness.

It is well, upon the whole, and for the interest of us

FROM THE AUTHOR TO THE READER. H

ill. that it should be so ; nor would I willingly, in my own person, manifest a disregard cf such salu¬ tary feelings; nor in act or word do anything tc weaken them. But, cn the one hand, as my self* accusation does not amount to a confession of guilt, so, on the other, it is possible that, if it did, the bene¬ fit resulting to others, from the record of an experi¬ ence purchased at so heavy a price, might compen¬ sate, by a vast over-balance, for any violence done to the feelings I have noticed, and justify a breach of the general rule. Infirmity and misery do not, of necessity, imply guilt. They approach, or recede from, the shades of that dark alliance, in proportion to the probable motives and pros¬ pects of the offender, and the palliations, known or secret, of the offence ; in proportion as the temptations to it were potent from the first, and the resistance to it, in act or in effort, was ear¬ nest to the last. For my own part, without breach of truth or modesty, I may affirm, that my life has been, on the whole, the life of a philosopher : from my birth I was made an intellectual creature ; and intellectual in the highest sense my pursuits and pleasures have been, even from my scnool-boy days. If opium-eating be a sensual pleasure, and I am bound to confess that I have indulged

JL FROM THT AUTHOR TO THE READER.

vn it to an excess, not yet recorded* * of any othei man, it is no less true, that I have struggled against this fascinating enthralment with a relig¬ ious zeal, and have at length accomplished what I never yet heard attributed to any other man — have untwisted, almost to its final links, the accursed chain which fettered me. Such a seifconquest may reasonably be set off in countei bal¬ ance to any kind or degree of self-indulgence. Not to insist that, in my case, the self-conquest was unquestionable, the self-indulgence open to doubts of casuistry, according as that name shall be extended to acts aiming at the bare relief of pain, or shall be restricted to such as aim at the excite¬ ment of positive pleasure.

Guilt, therefore, Ido not acknowledge; and, if [ did, it is possible that I might still resolve on the present act of confession, in consideration of the service which I may thereby render to the whole class of opium-eaters. But who are they ? Reader, l am sorry to say, a very numerous class indeed. Of this I became convinced, some years ago, by computing, at that time, the number of those in one small class of English society (the class of men

* “ Not yet recorded,)” I say ; for here is ob'3 celebrated man c

*he present day, who, if all be true which is repoi ted of him, has reatly exceeded me in quantity.

FROM THE AUTHOR TO THE READFR. XI

iJistinguished for talent, or of eminent station) whc were known to me, directly or indirectly, as opium* eaters ; such, for instance, as the eloquent ana

benevolent - j1 the late Dean of - ;2 Lord

- ; Mr. - , the philosopher;3 a late under*

secretary of state (who described to me the sensa¬ tion which first drove him to the use of opium, in

the very same words as the Dean of - , namely,

“that he felt as though rats were gnawing and

abrading the coats of his stomach”); Mr. - ;

and many others, hardly less known, whom it would be tedious to mention. Now, if one class, comparatively so limited, could furnish so many scores of cases (and that within the knowledge of one single inquirer), it was a natural inference, that the entire population of England would fur¬ nish a proportionable number. The soundness of this inference, however, I doubted, until some facts became known to me, which satisfied me that it was not incorrect. I will mention two : 1. Three espectable London druggists, in widely remote quaiters of London, from whom I happened lately to be pui chasing small quantities of opium, assured me that the number of amateur opium-eaters (as I may term them) was, at this time, immense ; and that the difficulty of distinguishing these persons to whom habit had rendered opium necessaiy

JOI FROM THE AUTHOR TO THE READER.

from such as were purchasing it with a view to suicide, occasioned them daily trouble and d is- •uites. This evidence respected London only But, 2 (which will possibly surprise the reader more), some years ago, on passing through Man¬ chester, I was informed by several cotton manu¬ facturers that their work-people were rapidly getting into the practice of opium-eating ; so much so, that on a Saturday afternoon the counters of the druggists were strewed with pills of one, two, or three grains, in preparation for the known demand of the evening. The immediate occa¬ sion of this practice was the lowness of wages, which, at that time, would not allow them to indulge in ale or spirits ; and, wages rising, it may be thought that this practice would cease : but, as I do not readily believe that any man. having once tasted the divine luxuries of opium, will afterwards descend to the gross and mortal enjoy- /nents of alcohol, I take it for granted

That those eat now who never ate before ;

And those who always ate now eat the more.

Indeed, the fascinating powers of opium arc admitted, even by medical writers who are its greatest enemies : thus, for instance, Awsiter apothecary to Greenwich Hospital, in his “ Essaf

FROM THE AUTHOR TO THE READER.

XH]

dii the Effects of Opium” (published in the yeai 1763), when attempting to explain why Mead haa not been sufficiently explicit on the properties, counter-agents, &c., of this drug, expresses him¬ self in the following mysterious terms (fovov xm owBToioi ) ; “ Perhaps he thought the subject of too delicate a nature to be made common; and as many people might then indiscriminately use it, it would take from that necessary fear and caution, which should prevent their experiencing the exten give power of this drug; for there are many 'prop¬ erties in it , if universally known , that would habit¬ uate the use , and make it more in request with us than the Turks themselves ; the result of which knowledge,” he adds, “must prove a general mis¬ fortune.” In the necessity of this conclusion I do not altogether concur ; but upon that point I shah have occasion to speak at the close of m3 sions, where I shall present the reader moral of my narrative.4 t

PRELIMINARY CONFESSIONS.

These preliminary confessions, or introductory nar* rative of the youthful adventures which laid the fouL,da« tion of the writer’s habit of opium-eating in after life, .t has been judged proper to premise, for three severa. reason?; :

1. Am forestalling that question, and giving it a satis¬ factory answer, which else would painfully obtrude itself in the course of the Opium Confessions — “ How cairn any reasonable being to subject himself to such a yoke of misery, voluntarily to incur a captivity so servile, and knowingly to fetter himself with such a sevenchain ? — ” a question which, if not somewhere ]|§|ijjj§ resolved, could hardly fail, by the indignation,

would be apt to raise as against an act of waiRPfolly, to interfere with that degree of sympathy which is necessary in any case to an author’s purposes.

2. As furnishing a key to some parts of that tremen¬ dous scenery which afterwards peopled the dreams of the op:um-eater.

3 As creating some previous interest of a personal »ort in the confessing subject, apart from the matter the confessions, which cannot fad to render thr

Confessions themselves more interesting. If a man “ whose talk is of oxen ” should become an opium-eater, the probability is, that (if he is not too dull 10 dream at all) he will dream about oxen : whereas, in the case before him, the reader will find that tie opium-eater boasteth himself to be a philosopher ; and accord¬ ingly, that the phantasmagoria of his dreams (waking or sleeping, day dreams or night dreams) is suitable ta on 3 who in that character,

or amongst the conditions which he deems indis¬ pensable to the sustaining of any claim to the title of philosopher, is not merely the possession of a superb intellect in its analytic functions (in which part of the pretension, however, England can for some generations show but few claimants ; at least, he is not aware of any known candidate for this honor who can be styled emphatically a subtle thinker, with the exception of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and, in a narrower depart¬ ment of thought with the recent illustrious exception *

on might perhaps have been added : and my g that exception is chiefly because it was only ts that the writer whom I allude to expressly addressed himself to philosophical themes ; his riper powers have Deen dedicated (on very excusable and very intelligible grounds, under the present direction of the popular mind in England) it criticism and the fine arts. This reason apart, however, I doubt whether he is not rather to be considered an acute thinker thin a Bubtie one. It is, besides, a great drawback on his master y o*ei philosophical subjects, that lie has obviously not had the adv^ji tage of a regular scholastic education : he has not read Plato in his youth (which most likely was only his misfortune), bn leitter has he read Kant in his manlmod (which is nir -•ttu)

f A third exceptii reason for not addin in his juvenile effor

EIWLISH OriUM-EATFtt.

n of David Ricardo),- — but also on suck a constitution of the mo al faculties as shall give him an inner eye and power of intuition for the vision and mysteries of human nature: that constitution of faculties, in short, which (amongst all the generations of men that from the beginning of time have deployed into life, as it were, upon this planet) our English poets have pos¬ sessed in the highest degree — and Scottish* professors in the lowest,

I have often been asked how I first came to be a regular opium-eater; and have suffered, very unjustly, in the opinion of my acquaintance, from being reputed to have brought upon myself all the sufferings which I shall have to record, by a long course of indulgence in iiis practice, purely for the sake of creating an artificial state of pleasurable excitement. This, however, is a misrepresentation of my case. True it is, that foi nearly ten years I did occasionally take opium, for the sake of the exquisite pleasure it gave me ; but, so long as 1 took it with this view, I was effectually protected from all material bad consequences, by the necessity of interposing long intervals between the several acts pf indulgence, in order to renew the pleasurable sensa¬ tions. It was not for the purpose of creating pleasure but of mitigating pain in the severest degree, that 1 first began to use opium as an article of daily diet. In the twenty-eighth year of my age, a most piinfm affection of the stomach, which I had first experienced about ten years before, attacked me in great strength. This affection had originally been caused by the extrem-

* I disclaim any a.^usion to existing professes, of whom indeed, 1 know only one.

o fties of hunger, suffered in my boyish days. During the season of hope and redundant happiness which succeeded (that is, from eighteen to twenty-four) it had slumbered : for the three following years it had revised at intervals ; and now, under unfavorable circumstances from depression of spirits, it attacked me with violence that yielded to no remedies but opium. As the youthful sufferings which tirst produced this derangement of fne stomach were interesting in themselves and in the circumstances that attended them, I shall here briefly retrace them.

My father died when I was about seven years old and left me to the care of four guardians.5 I was senl to various schools, great and small ; and was very early distinguished for my classical attainments, especially for my knowledge of Greek. At thirteen I wrote Greel with ease ; and at fifteen my command of that language was so great, that I not only composed Greek verses in lyric metres, but would converse in Greek fluently, and without embarrassment — an accomplishment which i have not since met with in any scholar of my times, and which, in my case, was owing to the practice of daily’" reading off the newspapers into the best Greek 1 could furnish extempore; for the necessity of ransacking my memory and invention for all sorts and combination? of periphrastic expressions, as equivalents for modern ideas, images, relations cf things, &c., gave me a com¬ pass of diction which would never have been called out oy a dull translation of moral essays, &c. “ That

boy,’* said one of my masters, pointing the attention of ft stranger to me, “ that boy could harangue an Athenian Biot better than you or I cou.d address an English

ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.

we.” He who honored me with this eulogy was a ucholar, “ and a ripe and good one,” and, of all my •tutors, was the only one whom I loved or reverenced. Unfortunately for me (and, as I afterwards learned, to this worthy man’s great indignation), I was transferred to the care, first of a blockhead, who was in a perpetual panic lest I should expose his ignorance ; and, finally, to that of a respectable scholar, at the head of a great school on an ancient foundation. This man had been

appointed to his situation by - College, Oxford ; and

was a sound, well-built scholar, but (like most men whom I have known from that college) coarse, clumsy, and inelegant. A miserable contrast he presented, in my eyes, to the Etonian brilliancy of my favorite master ; and, besides, he could not disguise from my hourly notice the poverty and meagreness of his understanding. It is a bad thing for a boy to be, and know himself, far beyond his tutors, whether in knowledge or in power of mind. This was the case, so lar as regarded knowledge at least, not with myself only ; foi the two boys who jointly with myself composed the. first form were better Grecians than the head-master, though not more elegant scholars, nor at all more uccustomed to sacrifice tc the graces. When I first entered, I remember that we read Sophocles ; and it was a constant matter of triumph to us, the learned triumvirate of the first form, to see our “ Archididas* talus” (as he loved to be called) conning our lesson oefore we went up, and laying a regular train, with exicon and grammar, for blowing up and blasting (aa it were) any difficulties he found in the choruses vhilst we never condescended to open our books, unti

>0 the moment of going up, and were generally employed in writing epigrams upon his wig, or some such import ant matter. My two class-fellows were poor, anc dependent, for their future prospects at the university, an the recommendation of the head-master ; but I, who had a small patrimonial property, the income of which was sufficient to support me at college, wished to be sent thither immediately. I made earnest representa¬ tions on the subject to my guardians, but all to no purpose. One, who was more reasonable, and had more knowledge of the world than the rest, lived at a distance ; two of the other three resigned all their authority into the hands of the fourth ; and this fourth, with whom I had to negotiate, was a worthy man, in his way, but haughty, obstinate, and intolerant of all opposi¬ tion to his will. After a certain number of letters and personal interviews, I found that I had nothing to hope for, not even a compromise of the matter, from my guardian : unconditional submission was what he de¬ manded ; and I prepared myself, therefore, for other measures. Summer was now coming on with hasty steps, and my seventeenth birth-day was fast approach¬ ing; after which day I had sworn within myself that I would no longer be numbered amongst school-boys.6 Money being what I chiefly wanted, I wrote to a woman of high rank,7 who, though young herself, had known tne from a child, and had latterly treated me with great aistinction, requesting that she would “ lend ” me five guineas. For upwards of a week no answer came ind I was beginning to despond, when, at length, a servant put into my hands a double letter, with a coronet on the seal. The letter was kind and obliging

ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.

2, she fail wil ter was on the sea-coast, and in that way the delay had arisen , she enclosed double of what I had asked, and good-naturedly hinted, that if I should •lever repay her, it wou_d not absolutely ruin her. Now then, I was prepared for my scheme : ten guineas, added to about two that I had remaining from my pocket TLoney, seemed to me sufficient for an indefinite length of time ; and at that happy age, if no definite boundary can be assigned to one’s power, the spirit of hope and pleasure makes it virtually infinite.

It is a just remark of Dr. Johnson’s (and, what cannot often be said of his remarks, it is a very feeling one) that we never do anything consciously for the last time (of things, that is, which we have long been in the habit of doing), without sadness of heart. This

truth I felt deeply when I came to leave - — , a place

which I did not love, and where I had not been happy.

On the evening before I left - forever, I grieved

when the ancient and lofty school-room resounded with the evening service, performed for the last time in my hearing; and at night, when the muster-roll of names was called over, and mine (as usual) was called first I stepped forward, and passing the head-master, who was standing by, I bowed to him, and lookmg earnestly in his face, thinking to myself, “ He is old and infirm, and in this world I shall not see him again.” I was right ; I never did see him again, nor never shall He looked at me complacently, smiled good-naturedly, Returned my salutation (or rather my valediction), and parted (though he knew it not) forever. I could #ot reverence him intellectually ; Dut he had beea tmlormly kind to me, and had al.Dwed me many indul

CONFESSION! OF AN fences ; and I grieved at the thought of the mortifica tion I should inflict upon him.

The morning came, which was to launch me into thi world, and from which my whole succeeding life has in many important points, taken its coloring. I lodged in the head-master’s house, and had been allowed, from my first entrance, the indulgence of a private room, which I used both as a sleeping room and as a study. At half after three I rose, and gazed with deep emotion

at the ancient towers of - , “ drest in earliest light,*

and beginning to crimson with the radiant lustre of a cloudless July morning. I was firm and immovable in my purpose, but yet agitated by anticipation of uncer« iain danger and troubles ; and if I could have foreseen the hurricane, and perfect hail-storm of affliction, which soon fell upon me, well might I have been agitated. To this agitation the deep peace of the morning pre¬ sented an affecting contrast, and in some degree a medicine. The silence was more profound than that of midnight : and to me the silence of a summer morn¬ ing is more touching than all ,other silence, because, the .ight being broad and strong, as that of noon-day at other seasons of the year, it seems to differ from per¬ fect day chiefly because man is not yet abroad ; and thus, the peace of nature, and of the innocent creatures of God, seems to be secure and deep, only so long as the presence of man, and his restless and unquiet spirit, me not there to trouble its sarctity. I dressed myself, took my hat and gloves, and lingered a little in the room. For the last year and s half this room had been my “ pensive citadel : ” here had read and studied trough aL the hours of night; and, though true it was

ENGLISH OHtM-EATER.

that, for the latter part of this time, I, who ivas framed for love and gentle affections, had lost my gayetv and happiness, during the strife and fever of contention with my guardian, yet, on the other hand, as a boy so passionately fond of books, and dedicated to intellectual pursuits, 1 could not fail to have enjoyed many happy hours in the midst of general dejection. I wept as 1 looked round on the chair, hearth, writing-table, and other familiar objects, knowing too certainly that 1 looked upon them for the last time. Whilst I write this, it is eighteen years ago ; and yet, at this moment, I see distinctly, as if it were but yesterday, the lineaments and expressions of the object on which I fixed my parting

gaze : it was a picture of the lovely - , which hung

over the mantel-piece ; the eyes and mouth of which were so beautiful, and the whole countenance so rauiant with benignity and divine tranquillity, that I had a thousand times laid down my pen, or my book, to i [ ither consolation from it, as a devotee from his patron saint. Whilst I was yet gazing upon it, the deep tones

of - - clock proclaimed that it was four o’clock. I

went up to the picture, kissed it, and then gently walked at, and closed the door forever !

1 Le AC «WU s Jr

W *7v* TP* *Jv TV T^*

So blended and intertwisted in this life are occasions », laughter and of tears, that I cannot yet recall, without an iking, an incident which occurred at that time, and which had nearly put a stop to the immediate execution if my plan. I had a trunk of immense weight; for, Iksides my clothes, it contained nearly all my library. 1 he difficulty was to get this removed to a carrier’s . a.y room was at an aerial elevation in the house, and

(what was worse) the staircase which communicated with this angle of the building was accessible only by a gallery, which passed the head-master’s chamberdoor. I was a favorite with all the servants; and knowing that any of +hem would screen me, and act confidentially, I communicated my embarrassment to a groom of the head-master’s. The groom swore he would do anything I wished ; and, when the time arrived, went up stairs to bring the trunk down. This I feared was beyond the strength of any one man : however, the groom was a man

Of Atlantean shoulders, fit to bear

The weight of mightiest monarchies ;

nd had a back as spacious as Salisbury Plains. Ac¬ cordingly he persisted in bringing down the trunk alone, whilst I# stood waiting at the foot of the last flight, in anxiety for the event. For some time I heard him descending with slow and firm steps; but, unfor¬ tunately, from his trepidation, as he drew near the dangerous quarter, within a few steps of the gallery his foot slipped ; and the mighty burden, falling from his shoulders, gained such increase of impetus at each step of the descent, that, on reaching the bottom, it trundled, or rather leaped, right across, with the noise of twenty devils, against the very bed-room door of the archididascalus. My first thought was, that all was lost , and that my only chance for executing a retreat was to sacrifice my baggage. However, on reflection, 1 determined to abide the issue. The groom was in the utmost alarm, both on his own account and on mine but, in spite of this, so irresistibly had the sense of the

ndicrous, in this unhappy contretems taken possessios if his fancy, that he sang out a long, loud, and canorous peal of laughter, that might have wakened the Seven Sleepers. At the sound of this resonant merriment, within the very ears of insulted authority, I could not forbear joining in it, subdued to this, not so much by the unhappy etourderie of the trunk, as by the effect it had upon the groom. We both expected, as a matter

of course, that Dr. - would sally out of his room j

for, in general, if but a mouse stirred, he sprang out like a mastiff from his kennel. Strange to say, how¬ ever, on this occasion, when the noise of laughter had ceased, no sound, or rustling even, was to be heard

in the bed-room. Dr. - had a painful complaint

which sometimes keeping him awake, made him sleep, perhaps, when it did come, the deeper. Gathering courage from the silence, the groom hoisted his burden again, and accomplished the remainder of his descent without accident. I waited until I saw the trunk placed on a wheelbarrow, and on its road to the carrier’s : then, “ with Providence my guide,” I set off on foot, carry Ing a small parcel, with some articles of dress under .my arm : a favorite English poet in one pocket ; and a imall 12mo volume, containing about nine plays of Euripides, in the other.

It had been my intention, or ginally, to proceed t®

' Vestmoreland, both from the love I bore to that county, and on other personal accounts. Accident, however grave a different direction to my wanderings, and I bent nvy steps towards North Wales.8

After wandering about for some +ime in Denbigh* •hire, Merionethshire, and Caernarvonshire, I took odgmgs in a small nea; house in B - 9 Here I mighi

£6

CONFESSIONS OF AlS nave staid with great comfort for many weeks ; fa

provisions were cheap at B - , from the scarcity ot

other markets for the surplus products of a wide agri cultural district. An accident, however, in which perhaps, no offence was designed, drove me out to wander again. I know not whether my reader maf have remarked, but I have often remarked, that the proudest class of people in England (or, at any rate the class whose pride is most apparent) are the families of bishops. Noblemen, and their children, carry about with them, in their very titles, a sufficient notification of their rank. Nay, their very names (and this applies also to the children of many untitled houses) are often, to the English ear, adequate exponents of high birth, or descent. Sackville, Manners, Fitzroy, Paulet, Caven¬ dish, and scores of others, tell their own tale. Such persons, therefore, find everywhere a due sense of their claims already established, except among those who are ignorant of the world, by virtue of their own obscurity ; “ Not to know them argues one’s self un¬ known.” Their manners take a suitable tone and coloring; and, for once that they find it necessary to impress a sense of their consequence upon others, they meet with a thousand occasions for moderating and tempering this sense by acts of courteous condescension With the families of bishops it is otherwise ; with them it is all up-hill work to make known their pretensions ; Snr the proportion of the episcopal bench taken from ruble families is not at any t.me very large ; and the succession, to these dignities is so rapid, that the public car seldom has time to become familiar with them anless where they are connected with some literar?