Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

That moveth altogether, if it move at all.

Now, then, I was again happy; I now took only 1000 drops of laudanum per day; and what was that?  A latter spring had come to close up the season of youth; my brain performed its functions as healthily as ever before; I read Kant again, and again I understood him, or fancied that I did.  Again my feelings of pleasure expanded themselves to all around me; and if any man from Oxford or Cambridge, or from neither, had been announced to me in my unpretending cottage, I should have welcomed him with as sumptuous a reception as so poor a man could offer.  Whatever else was wanting to a wise man’s happiness, of laudanum I would have given him as much as he wished, and in a golden cup.  And, by the way, now that I speak of giving laudanum away, I remember about this time a little incident, which I mention because, trifling as it was, the reader will soon meet it again in my dreams, which it influenced more fearfully than could be imagined.  One day a Malay knocked at my door.  What business a Malay could have to transact amongst English mountains I cannot conjecture; but possibly he was on his road to a seaport about forty miles distant.

The servant who opened the door to him was a young girl, born and bred amongst the mountains, who had never seen an Asiatic dress of any sort; his turban therefore confounded her not a little; and as it turned out that his attainments in English were exactly of the same extent as hers in the Malay, there seemed to be an impassable gulf fixed between all communication of ideas, if either party had happened to possess any.  In this dilemma, the girl, recollecting the reputed learning of her master (and doubtless giving me credit for a knowledge of all the languages of the earth besides perhaps a few of the lunar ones), came and gave me to understand that there was a sort of demon below, whom she clearly imagined that my art could exorcise from the house.  I did not immediately go down, but when I did, the group which presented itself, arranged as it was by accident, though not very elaborate, took hold of my fancy and my eye in a way that none of the statuesque attitudes exhibited in the ballets at the Opera-house, though so ostentatiously complex, had ever done.  In a cottage kitchen, but panelled on the wall with dark wood that from age and rubbing resembled oak, and looking more like a rustic hall of entrance than a kitchen, stood the Malay—his turban and loose trousers of dingy white relieved upon the dark panelling.  He had placed himself nearer to the girl than she seemed to relish, though her native spirit of mountain intrepidity contended with the feeling of simple awe which her countenance expressed as she gazed upon the tiger-cat before her.  And a more striking picture there could not be imagined than the beautiful English face of the girl, and its exquisite fairness, together with her erect and independent attitude, contrasted with the sallow and bilious skin of the Malay, enamelled or veneered with mahogany by marine air, his small, fierce, restless eyes, thin lips, slavish gestures and adorations.  Half-hidden by the ferocious-looking Malay was a little child from a neighbouring cottage who had crept in after him, and was now in the act of reverting its head and gazing upwards at the turban and the fiery eyes beneath it, whilst with one hand he caught at the dress of the young woman for protection.  My knowledge of the Oriental tongues is not remarkably extensive, being indeed confined to two words—the Arabic word for barley and the Turkish for opium (madjoon), which I have learned from Anastasius; and as I had neither a Malay dictionary nor even Adelung’s Mithridates, which might have helped me to a few words, I addressed him in some lines from the Iliad, considering that, of such languages as I possessed, Greek, in point of longitude, came geographically nearest to an Oriental one.  He worshipped me in a most devout manner, and replied in what I suppose was Malay.  In this way I saved my reputation with my neighbours, for the Malay had no means of betraying the secret.  He lay down upon the floor for about an hour, and then pursued his journey.  On his departure I presented him with a piece of opium.  To him, as an Orientalist, I concluded that opium must be familiar; and the expression of his face convinced me that it was.  Nevertheless, I was struck with some little consternation when I saw him suddenly raise his hand to his mouth, and, to use the schoolboy phrase, bolt the whole, divided into three pieces, at one mouthful.  The quantity was enough to kill three dragoons and their horses, and I felt some alarm for the poor creature; but what could be done?  I had given him the opium in compassion for his solitary life, on recollecting that if he had travelled on foot from London it must be nearly three weeks since he could have exchanged a thought with any human being.  I could not think of violating the laws of hospitality by having him seized and drenched with an emetic, and thus frightening him into a notion that we were going to sacrifice him to some English idol.  No: there was clearly no help for it.  He took his leave, and for some days I felt anxious, but as I never heard of any Malay being found dead, I became convinced that he was used 17 to opium; and that I must have done him the service I designed by giving him one night of respite from the pains of wandering.

This incident I have digressed to mention, because this Malay (partly from the picturesque exhibition he assisted to frame, partly from the anxiety I connected with his image for some days) fastened afterwards upon my dreams, and brought other Malays with him, worse than himself, that ran “a-muck” 18 at me, and led me into a world of troubles.  But to quit this episode, and to return to my intercalary year of happiness.  I have said already, that on a subject so important to us all as happiness, we should listen with pleasure to any man’s experience or experiments, even though he were but a plough-boy, who cannot be supposed to have ploughed very deep into such an intractable soil as that of human pains and pleasures, or to have conducted his researches upon any very enlightened principles.  But I who have taken happiness both in a solid and liquid shape, both boiled and unboiled, both East India and Turkey—who have conducted my experiments upon this interesting subject with a sort of galvanic battery, and have, for the general benefit of the world, inoculated myself, as it were, with the poison of 8000 drops of laudanum per day (just for the same reason as a French surgeon inoculated himself lately with cancer, an English one twenty years ago with plague, and a third, I know not of what nation, with hydrophobia), I (it will be admitted) must surely know what happiness is, if anybody does.  And therefore I will here lay down an analysis of happiness; and as the most interesting mode of communicating it, I will give it, not didactically, but wrapped up and involved in a picture of one evening, as I spent every evening during the intercalary year when laudanum, though taken daily, was to me no more than the elixir of pleasure.  This done, I shall quit the subject of happiness altogether, and pass to a very different one—the pains of opium.

Let there be a cottage standing in a valley, eighteen miles from any town—no spacious valley, but about two miles long by three-quarters of a mile in average width; the benefit of which provision is that all the family resident within its circuit will compose, as it were, one larger household, personally familiar to your eye, and more or less interesting to your affections.  Let the mountains be real mountains, between 3,000 and 4,000 feet high, and the cottage a real cottage, not (as a witty author has it) “a cottage with a double coach-house;” let it be, in fact (for I must abide by the actual scene), a white cottage, embowered with flowering shrubs, so chosen as to unfold a succession of flowers upon the walls and clustering round the windows through all the months of spring, summer, and autumn—beginning, in fact, with May roses, and ending with jasmine.  Let it, however, not be spring, nor summer, nor autumn, but winter in his sternest shape.  This is a most important point in the science of happiness.  And I am surprised to see people overlook it, and think it matter of congratulation that winter is going, or, if coming, is not likely to be a severe one.  On the contrary, I put up a petition annually for as much snow, hail, frost, or storm, of one kind or other, as the skies can possibly afford us.  Surely everybody is aware of the divine pleasures which attend a winter fireside, candles at four o’clock, warm hearth-rugs, tea, a fair tea-maker, shutters closed, curtains flowing in ample draperies on the floor, whilst the wind and rain are raging audibly without,

And at the doors and windows seem to call,As heav’n and earth they would together mell;Yet the least entrance find they none at all;Whence sweeter grows our rest secure in massy hall.Castle of Indolence.

All these are items in the description of a winter evening which must surely be familiar to everybody born in a high latitude.  And it is evident that most of these delicacies, like ice-cream, require a very low temperature of the atmosphere to produce them; they are fruits which cannot be ripened without weather stormy or inclement in some way or other.  I am not “particular,” as people say, whether it be snow, or black frost, or wind so strong that (as Mr. – says) “you may lean your back against it like a post.”  I can put up even with rain, provided it rains cats and dogs; but something of the sort I must have, and if I have it not, I think myself in a manner ill-used; for why am I called on to pay so heavily for winter, in coals and candles, and various privations that will occur even to gentlemen, if I am not to have the article good of its kind?  No, a Canadian winter for my money, or a Russian one, where every man is but a co-proprietor with the north wind in the fee-simple of his own ears.  Indeed, so great an epicure am I in this matter that I cannot relish a winter night fully if it be much past St. Thomas’s day, and have degenerated into disgusting tendencies to vernal appearances.  No, it must be divided by a thick wall of dark nights from all return of light and sunshine.  From the latter weeks of October to Christmas Eve, therefore, is the period during which happiness is in season, which, in my judgment, enters the room with the tea-tray; for tea, though ridiculed by those who are naturally of coarse nerves, or are become so from wine-drinking, and are not susceptible of influence from so refined a stimulant, will always be the favourite beverage of the intellectual; and, for my part, I would have joined Dr. Johnson in a bellum internecinum against Jonas Hanway, or any other impious person, who should presume to disparage it.  But here, to save myself the trouble of too much verbal description, I will introduce a painter, and give him directions for the rest of the picture.  Painters do not like white cottages, unless a good deal weather-stained; but as the reader now understands that it is a winter night, his services will not be required except for the inside of the house.

Paint me, then, a room seventeen feet by twelve, and not more than seven and a half feet high.  This, reader, is somewhat ambitiously styled in my family the drawing-room; but being contrived “a double debt to pay,” it is also, and more justly, termed the library, for it happens that books are the only article of property in which I am richer than my neighbours.  Of these I have about five thousand, collected gradually since my eighteenth year.  Therefore, painter, put as many as you can into this room.  Make it populous with books, and, furthermore, paint me a good fire, and furniture plain and modest, befitting the unpretending cottage of a scholar.  And near the fire paint me a tea-table, and (as it is clear that no creature can come to see one such a stormy night) place only two cups and saucers on the tea-tray; and, if you know how to paint such a thing symbolically or otherwise, paint me an eternal tea-pot—eternal à parte ante and à parte post—for I usually drink tea from eight o’clock at night to four o’clock in the morning.  And as it is very unpleasant to make tea or to pour it out for oneself, paint me a lovely young woman sitting at the table.  Paint her arms like Aurora’s and her smiles like Hebe’s.  But no, dear M., not even in jest let me insinuate that thy power to illuminate my cottage rests upon a tenure so perishable as mere personal beauty, or that the witchcraft of angelic smiles lies within the empire of any earthly pencil.  Pass then, my good painter, to something more within its power; and the next article brought forward should naturally be myself—a picture of the Opium-eater, with his “little golden receptacle of the pernicious drug” lying beside him on the table.  As to the opium, I have no objection to see a picture of that, though I would rather see the original.  You may paint it if you choose, but I apprise you that no “little” receptacle would, even in 1816, answer my purpose, who was at a distance from the “stately Pantheon,” and all druggists (mortal or otherwise).  No, you may as well paint the real receptacle, which was not of gold, but of glass, and as much like a wine-decanter as possible.  Into this you may put a quart of ruby-coloured laudanum; that, and a book of German Metaphysics placed by its side, will sufficiently attest my being in the neighbourhood.  But as to myself—there I demur.  I admit that, naturally, I ought to occupy the foreground of the picture; that being the hero of the piece, or (if you choose) the criminal at the bar, my body should be had into court.  This seems reasonable; but why should I confess on this point to a painter? or why confess at all?  If the public (into whose private ear I am confidentially whispering my confessions, and not into any painter’s) should chance to have framed some agreeable picture for itself of the Opium-eater’s exterior, should have ascribed to him, romantically an elegant person or a handsome face, why should I barbarously tear from it so pleasing a delusion—pleasing both to the public and to me?  No; paint me, if at all, according to your own fancy, and as a painter’s fancy should teem with beautiful creations, I cannot fail in that way to be a gainer.  And now, reader, we have run through all the ten categories of my condition as it stood about 1816-17, up to the middle of which latter year I judge myself to have been a happy man, and the elements of that happiness I have endeavoured to place before you in the above sketch of the interior of a scholar’s library, in a cottage among the mountains, on a stormy winter evening.

But now, farewell—a long farewell—to happiness, winter or summer!  Farewell to smiles and laughter!  Farewell to peace of mind!  Farewell to hope and to tranquil dreams, and to the blessed consolations of sleep.  For more than three years and a half I am summoned away from these.  I am now arrived at an Iliad of woes, for I have now to record

THE PAINS OF OPIUM

As when some great painter dipsHis pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse.SHELLEY’S Revolt of Islam.

Reader, who have thus far accompanied me, I must request your attention to a brief explanatory note on three points:

1.  For several reasons I have not been able to compose the notes for this part of my narrative into any regular and connected shape.  I give the notes disjointed as I find them, or have now drawn them up from memory.  Some of them point to their own date, some I have dated, and some are undated.  Whenever it could answer my purpose to transplant them from the natural or chronological order, I have not scrupled to do so.  Sometimes I speak in the present, sometimes in the past tense.  Few of the notes, perhaps, were written exactly at the period of time to which they relate; but this can little affect their accuracy, as the impressions were such that they can never fade from my mind.  Much has been omitted.  I could not, without effort, constrain myself to the task of either recalling, or constructing into a regular narrative, the whole burthen of horrors which lies upon my brain.  This feeling partly I plead in excuse, and partly that I am now in London, and am a helpless sort of person, who cannot even arrange his own papers without assistance; and I am separated from the hands which are wont to perform for me the offices of an amanuensis.

2.  You will think perhaps that I am too confidential and communicative of my own private history.  It may be so.  But my way of writing is rather to think aloud, and follow my own humours, than much to consider who is listening to me; and if I stop to consider what is proper to be said to this or that person, I shall soon come to doubt whether any part at all is proper.  The fact is, I place myself at a distance of fifteen or twenty years ahead of this time, and suppose myself writing to those who will be interested about me hereafter; and wishing to have some record of time, the entire history of which no one can know but myself, I do it as fully as I am able with the efforts I am now capable of making, because I know not whether I can ever find time to do it again.

3.  It will occur to you often to ask, why did I not release myself from the horrors of opium by leaving it off or diminishing it?  To this I must answer briefly: it might be supposed that I yielded to the fascinations of opium too easily; it cannot be supposed that any man can be charmed by its terrors.  The reader may be sure, therefore, that I made attempts innumerable to reduce the quantity.  I add, that those who witnessed the agonies of those attempts, and not myself, were the first to beg me to desist.  But could not have I reduced it a drop a day, or, by adding water, have bisected or trisected a drop?  A thousand drops bisected would thus have taken nearly six years to reduce, and that way would certainly not have answered.  But this is a common mistake of those who know nothing of opium experimentally; I appeal to those who do, whether it is not always found that down to a certain point it can be reduced with ease and even pleasure, but that after that point further reduction causes intense suffering.  Yes, say many thoughtless persons, who know not what they are talking of, you will suffer a little low spirits and dejection for a few days.  I answer, no; there is nothing like low spirits; on the contrary, the mere animal spirits are uncommonly raised: the pulse is improved: the health is better.  It is not there that the suffering lies.  It has no resemblance to the sufferings caused by renouncing wine.  It is a state of unutterable irritation of stomach (which surely is not much like dejection), accompanied by intense perspirations, and feelings such as I shall not attempt to describe without more space at my command.

I shall now enter in medias res, and shall anticipate, from a time when my opium pains might be said to be at their acmé, an account of their palsying effects on the intellectual faculties.

* * * * *

My studies have now been long interrupted.  I cannot read to myself with any pleasure, hardly with a moment’s endurance.  Yet I read aloud sometimes for the pleasure of others, because reading is an accomplishment of mine, and, in the slang use of the word “accomplishment” as a superficial and ornamental attainment, almost the only one I possess; and formerly, if I had any vanity at all connected with any endowment or attainment of mine, it was with this, for I had observed that no accomplishment was so rare.  Players are the worst readers of all:—reads vilely; and Mrs. –, who is so celebrated, can read nothing well but dramatic compositions: Milton she cannot read sufferably.  People in general either read poetry without any passion at all, or else overstep the modesty of nature, and read not like scholars.  Of late, if I have felt moved by anything it has been by the grand lamentations of Samson Agonistes, or the great harmonies of the Satanic speeches in Paradise Regained, when read aloud by myself.  A young lady sometimes comes and drinks tea with us: at her request and M.’s, I now and then read W-’s poems to them.  (W., by-the-bye is the only poet I ever met who could read his own verses: often indeed he reads admirably.)

For nearly two years I believe that I read no book, but one; and I owe it to the author, in discharge of a great debt of gratitude, to mention what that was.  The sublimer and more passionate poets I still read, as I have said, by snatches, and occasionally.  But my proper vocation, as I well know, was the exercise of the analytic understanding.  Now, for the most part analytic studies are continuous, and not to be pursued by fits and starts, or fragmentary efforts.  Mathematics, for instance, intellectual philosophy, &c, were all become insupportable to me; I shrunk from them with a sense of powerless and infantine feebleness that gave me an anguish the greater from remembering the time when I grappled with them to my own hourly delight; and for this further reason, because I had devoted the labour of my whole life, and had dedicated my intellect, blossoms and fruits, to the slow and elaborate toil of constructing one single work, to which I had presumed to give the title of an unfinished work of Spinosa’s—viz., De Emendatione Humani Intellectus.  This was now lying locked up, as by frost, like any Spanish bridge or aqueduct, begun upon too great a scale for the resources of the architect; and instead of reviving me as a monument of wishes at least, and aspirations, and a life of labour dedicated to the exaltation of human nature in that way in which God had best fitted me to promote so great an object, it was likely to stand a memorial to my children of hopes defeated, of baffled efforts, of materials uselessly accumulated, of foundations laid that were never to support a super-structure—of the grief and the ruin of the architect.  In this state of imbecility I had, for amusement, turned my attention to political economy; my understanding, which formerly had been as active and restless as a hyæna, could not, I suppose (so long as I lived at all) sink into utter lethargy; and political economy offers this advantage to a person in my state, that though it is eminently an organic science (no part, that is to say, but what acts on the whole as the whole again reacts on each part), yet the several parts may be detached and contemplated singly.  Great as was the prostration of my powers at this time, yet I could not forget my knowledge; and my understanding had been for too many years intimate with severe thinkers, with logic, and the great masters of knowledge, not to be aware of the utter feebleness of the main herd of modern economists.  I had been led in 1811 to look into loads of books and pamphlets on many branches of economy; and, at my desire, M. sometimes read to me chapters from more recent works, or parts of parliamentary debates.  I saw that these were generally the very dregs and rinsings of the human intellect; and that any man of sound head, and practised in wielding logic with a scholastic adroitness, might take up the whole academy of modern economists, and throttle them between heaven and earth with his finger and thumb, or bray their fungus-heads to powder with a lady’s fan.  At length, in 1819, a friend in Edinburgh sent me down Mr. Ricardo’s book; and recurring to my own prophetic anticipation of the advent of some legislator for this science, I said, before I had finished the first chapter, “Thou art the man!”  Wonder and curiosity were emotions that had long been dead in me.  Yet I wondered once more: I wondered at myself that I could once again be stimulated to the effort of reading, and much more I wondered at the book.  Had this profound work been really written in England during the nineteenth century?  Was it possible?  I supposed thinking 19 had been extinct in England.  Could it be that an Englishman, and he not in academic bowers, but oppressed by mercantile and senatorial cares, had accomplished what all the universities of Europe and a century of thought had failed even to advance by one hair’s breadth?  All other writers had been crushed and overlaid by the enormous weight of facts and documents.  Mr. Ricardo had deduced à priori from the understanding itself laws which first gave a ray of light into the unwieldy chaos of materials, and had constructed what had been but a collection of tentative discussions into a science of regular proportions, now first standing on an eternal basis.