Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lord of my learning, and no land beside—

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

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

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

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

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

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