And worn by weakness, disease, and wrong,
He fled for shelter to God, who mated
His soul with song--
VI.
“With song which alway, sublime or vapid,
Flowed like a rill in the morning beam,
Perchance not deep, but intense and rapid--
A mountain stream.
VII.
“Tell how the Nameless, condemned for years long
To herd with demons from hell beneath,
Saw things that made him, with groans and tears, long
For even death.
VIII.
“Go on to tell how, with genius wasted,
Betrayed in friendship, befooled in love,
With spirit shipwrecked and young hopes blasted,
He still, still strove.
IX.
“Till, spent with toil, dreeing death for others,
And some whose hands should have wrought for _him_
(If children live not for sires and mothers),
His mind grew dim.
X.
“And he fell far through the pit abysmal,
The gulf and grave of Maginn and Burns,
And pawned his soul for the devil’s dismal
Stock of returns.
XI.
“But yet redeemed it in days of darkness,
And shapes and signs of the final wrath,
Where death in hideous and ghastly starkness
Stood in his path.
XII.
“And tell how now, amid wreck and sorrow,
And want and sickness and houseless nights,
He bides in calmness the silent morrow
That no ray lights.
XIII.
“And lives he still, then? Yes! old and hoary
At thirty-nine, from despair and woe,
He lives enduring what future story
Will never know.
XIV.
“Him grant a grave to, ye pitying noble,
Deep in your bosoms! There let him dwell!
He, too, had tears for all souls in trouble,
Here and in hell.”
The burden of all his song is sad, and in his translations he has chosen
chiefly themes which echoed the harpings of his own soul. He began life
as a copying clerk in an attorney’s office, and had for some time to
support wholly, or in the main, a mother and sister. In Mitchel’s
preface there are many passages almost as fine as the verse of the poet.
Here is one, long as it is, that must find a place. Mitchel is speaking
of the days when Mangan was in the attorney’s office:--
“At what age he devoted himself to this drudgery, at what age he
left it, or was discharged from it, does not appear; for his whole
biography documents are wanting, the man having never, for one
moment, imagined that his poor life could interest any surviving
human being, and having never, accordingly, collected his
biographical assets, and appointed a literary executor to take care
of his posthumous fame. Neither did he ever acquire the habit,
common enough among literary men, of dwelling upon his own early
trials, struggles, and triumphs. But those who knew him in after
years can remember with what a shuddering and loathing horror he
spoke--when at rare intervals he could be induced to speak at
all--of his labours with the scrivener and attorney. He was shy and
sensitive, with exquisite sensibilities and fine impulses; eye,
ear, and soul open to all the beauty, music, and glory of heaven
and earth; humble, gentle, and unexacting; modestly craving nothing
in the world but celestial, glorified life, seraphic love, and a
throne among the immortal gods (that’s all); and he was eight or
ten years scribbling deeds, pleadings, and bills in Chancery.”
There is, I believe, but one portrait of him in existence, and a copy of
it hangs on the wall of the room in which I am writing, a few feet in
front of my eyes. It is not a face easy to describe. Beauty is the chief
characteristic of it. But it is not the beauty that men admire or that
inspires love in women. It is not the face of a poet or a visionary or a
thinker. There is no passion in it; not even the passionate sadness of
his own verse. It is not the face of a man who has suffered greatly, or
rejoiced in ecstasy. It is the face of a fleshless, worn man of forty,
with hair pressed back from the forehead and ear. I have been looking at
it for a long time, trying to find out something positive about it, and
I have failed. It is not interesting. It is the face of a man who is
done with the world and humanity. It is the face of a dead man whose
spirit has passed away, while the body remains alive. The eyes are open,
and have light in them; the face would be more complete if the light
were out, and the lids drawn down and composed for the blind tomb.
He gives a picture of his mental attitude at about the time this
portrait was taken:--
TWENTY GOLDEN YEARS AGO.
I.
“Oh, the rain, the weary, dreary rain,
How it plashes on the window-sill!
Night, I guess too, must be on the wane,
Strass and Gass around are grown so still.
Here I sit with coffee in my cup--
Ah, ’twas rarely I beheld it flow
In the tavern where I loved to sup
Twenty golden years ago!
II.
“Twenty years ago, alas!--but stay--
On my life, ’tis half-past twelve o’clock!
After all, the hours _do_ slip away--
Come, here goes to burn another block!
For the night, or morn, is wet and cold;
And my fire is dwindling rather low:
I had fire enough, when young and bold
Twenty golden years ago.
III.
“Dear! I don’t feel well at all, somehow:
Few in Weimar dream how bad I am;
Floods of tears grow common with me now,
High-Dutch floods that Reason cannot dam.
Doctors think I’ll neither live nor thrive
If I mope at home so--I don’t know--
_Am_ I living _now_? I _was_ alive
Twenty golden years ago.
IV.
“Wifeless, friendless, flagonless, alone,
Not quite bookless, though, unless I choose;
Left with naught to do, except to groan,
Not a soul to woo, except the Muse.
Oh, this is hard for _me_ to bear--
Me who whilom lived so much _en haut_--
Me who broke all hearts like china-ware,
Twenty golden years ago.
V.
“Perhaps ’tis better;--time’s defacing waves
Long have quenched the radiance of my brow--
They who curse me nightly from their graves
Scarce could love me were they living now;
But my loneliness hath darker ills--
Such dun duns as Conscience, Thought, & Co.,
Awful Gorgons! Worse than tailors’ bills
Twenty golden years ago.
VI.
“Did I paint a fifth of what I feel,
Oh, how plaintive you would ween I was!
But I won’t, albeit I have a deal
More to wail about than Kerner has!
Kerner’s tears are wept for withered flowers;
Mine for withered hopes; my scroll of woe
Dates, alas! from youth’s deserted bowers,
Twenty golden years ago.
VII.
“Yet, may Deutschland’s bardlings flourish long!
Me, I tweak no beak among them;--hawks
Must not pounce on hawks: besides, in song
I could once beat all of them by chalks.
Though you find me, as I near my goal,
Sentimentalising like Rousseau,
Oh, I had a great Byronian soul
Twenty golden years ago!
VIII.
“Tick-tick, tick-tick!--not a sound save Time’s,
And the wind gust as it drives the rain--
Tortured torturer of reluctant rhymes,
Go to bed and rest thine aching brain!
Sleep!--no more the dupe of hopes or schemes;
Soon thou sleepest where the thistles blow;
Curious anti-climax to thy dreams
Twenty golden years ago!”
I find myself now in a great puzzle. I want, first of all, to say I
think it most melancholy that Mangan, when of full age and judgment,
should have thought Byron had “a great Byronian soul.” Observe, he does
not mean that he had a soul greatly like Byron’s, but that he had a soul
like the great soul of Byron. I do not believe Byron had a great soul at
all. I believe he was simply a fine stage-manager of melodrama, the
finest that ever lived, and that as a property-master he was unrivalled;
but that to please no one, himself included, could he have written the
play. I am not descending to so defiling a depth as to talk about
plagiarism. What I wish to say is, that whether Byron stole or not made
not the least difference in the world, for he never by the aid of his
gifts or his thefts wrote a poem. I wanted further to say of Byron that
there was nothing great about him except his vanity. Suddenly I
remembered some words of the critic of whom I spoke a while back, in
dealing with the question of poetical poetry and poems. I took down the
printed page, where I found these lines:--
“Mr. Swinburne’s poetry is almost altogether poetical. Not all the
poetry of even the Poets is so, and to one who loves this dear and
intimate quality of which we speak, Coleridge, for instance, is a
poet of some four poems, Wordsworth of some sixteen, Keats of five,
Byron of none, though Byron is _great and eloquent_, but the thing
we prize so much is far away from eloquence. Poetical poetry is the
inner garden; there grows the ‘flower of the mind.’”
Now, my difficulty is plain. My critic, who is also a poet, says Byron
is great, and I find fault with Mangan for saying Byron had a great
Byronian soul. Here are two of my select authors against me. Plainly,
the best thing I can do is say nothing at all about the matter!
_Twenty Golden Years Ago_ is by no means a poetical poem, but there is
poetry in it. There is no poetical poem by Mangan. But he has written no
serious verses in which there is not poetry.
After giving Mangan’s own verse account of what he was like in his own
regard at about forty years of age, I copy what Mitchel saw when the
poet was first pointed out to him:--
“Being in the College Library [Trinity, Dublin], and having
occasion for a book in that gloomy apartment of the institution
called the ‘Fagal Library,’ which is the innermost recess of the
stately building, an acquaintance pointed out to me a man perched
on the top of a ladder, with the whispered information that the
figure was Clarence Mangan. It was an unearthly and ghostly figure,
in a brown garment; the same garment (to all appearance), which
lasted till the day of his death. The blanched hair was totally
unkempt; the corpse-like features still as marble; a large book was
in his arms, and all his soul was in the book. I had never heard of
Clarence Mangan before, and knew not for what he was celebrated,
whether as a magician, a poet, or a murderer; yet took a volume and
spread it on a table, not to read, but with the pretence of reading
to gaze on the spectral creature on the ladder.”
I never met any one who had known Mangan. Mitchel did not know the name
of the woman who lured him on with smiles that seemed to promise love.
He always addressed her in his poems as Frances. Some time ago the name
of the woman was divulged. It is ungallant of me to have forgotten it,
but such is the case. The address at which Mangan visited her was in
Mountpleasant Square, Dublin. At the time I saw the name of the lady I
looked into a directory of 1848 which I happened to have by me, and
found a different name at the address given in the Square. I know the
love affair of the poet took place years before his death in 1849, but
people in quiet and unpretentious houses in Dublin, or correctly
Ranelagh, often live a whole generation in the same house.
Here I find myself in a second puzzle. So long as I thought merely of
writing this rambling account of “My Borrowed Poet,” I decided upon
trying to say something about the stupidity of women and poets in
general. But I don’t feel in case to do so when I glance up at the face
of Mangan hanging on the wall, and bring myself to realise the fact
that this face now looking so dead and unburied was young and bright and
perhaps cheerful when he went wooing in Ranelagh.
Instead of saying anything wise and stupid and commonplace about either
poets or women, let me quote here stanzas which must have been written
some day when he saw sunshine among the clouds:--
THE MARINER’S BRIDE.
“Look, mother! the mariner’s rowing
His galley adown the tide;
I’ll go where the mariner’s going,
And be the mariner’s bride!
“I saw him one day through the wicket,
I opened the gate and we met--
As a bird in the fowler’s net,
Was I caught in my own green thicket.
O mother, my tears are flowing,
I’ve lost my maidenly pride--
I’ll go if the mariner’s going,
And be the mariner’s bride!
“This Love the tyrant winces,
Alas! an omnipotent might,
He darkens the mind like night,
He treads on the necks of Princes!
O mother, my bosom is glowing,
I’ll go whatever betide,
I’ll go where the mariners going,
And be the mariner’s bride!
“Yes, mother! the spoiler has reft me
Of reason and self-control;
Gone, gone is my wretched soul,
And only my body is left me!
The winds, O mother, are blowing,
The ocean is bright and wide;
I’ll go where the mariner’s going,
And be the mariner’s bride.”
This appears among the Apocrypha, and is credited by Mangan to the
“Spanish;” but it is safe to assume when he is so vague that the poem is
original. It is one of the most bright and cheerful he has given us. The
only touch of sorrow we feel is for the poor mother who is about to lose
so impulsive and vivacious a daughter. The time of this delightful
ballad is not clearly defined, but we may be absolutely certain that we
of this moribund nineteenth century will never meet except at a function
of a recondite spiritual medium even the great grandchild of the
Mariner’s Bride. How much more is our devout gratitude due to a good and
pious spiritualist than to any riotous and licentious poet! The former
can give us intercourse with the illustrious defunct of history; the
latter can give us no more than the image of a figment, the phantom of a
shade, the echo of sounds that never vibrated in the ear of man. All
persons who believe the evidence adduced by poets are the victims of
subornation.
A saw-mill does not seem a good subject for a “copy of verses.” Mangan
died single and in poverty, and was buried by his friends. Listen:--
THE SAW-MILL.
“My path lay towards the Mourne again,
But I stopped to rest by the hill-side
That glanced adown o’er the sunken glen
Which the Saw-and Water-mills hide,
Which now, as then,
The Saw-and Water-mills hide.
“And there, as I lay reclined on the hill,
Like a man made by sudden _qualm_ ill,
I heard the water in the Water-mill,
And I saw the saw in the Saw-mill!
As I thus lay still
I saw the saw in the Saw-mill!
“The saw, the breeze, and the humming bees,
Lulled me into a dreamy reverie,
Till the objects round me--hills, mills, trees,
Seemed grown alive all and every--
By slow degrees
Took life as it were, all and every!
“Anon the sound of the waters grew
To a Mourne-ful ditty,
And the song of the tree that the saw sawed through
Disturbed my spirit with pity,
Began to subdue
My spirit with tenderest pity!
“‘Oh, wanderer, the hour that brings thee back
Is of all meet hours the meetest.
Thou now, in sooth art on the Track,
And nigher to Home than thou weetest;
Thou hast thought Time slack,
But his flight has been of the fleetest!
“‘For this it is that I dree such pain
As, when wounded, even a plank will;
My bosom is pierced, is rent in twain,
That thine may ever bide tranquil.
May ever remain
Henceforward untroubled and tranquil.
“‘In a few days more, most Lonely One!
Shall I, as a narrow ark, veil
Thine eyes from the glare of the world and sun
’Mong the urns of yonder dark vale--
In the cold and dun
Recesses of yonder dark vale!
“‘For this grieve not! Thou knowest what thanks
The Weary-souled and Meek owe
To Death!’ I awoke, and heard four planks
Fall down with a saddening echo.
_I heard four planks_
_Fall down with a hollow echo._”
This was the epithalamium of James Clarence Mangan sung by himself.
THE ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.
I bought my copy new for fourpence-halfpenny, in Holywell Street. It was
published by George Routledge and Sons, of the Broadway, London. The
little volume is made up of a “Preface,” by Thomas de Quincey;
“Confessions of an English Opium-eater;” and “Notes from the Pocket-book
of a late Opium-eater;” including “Walking Stewart,” “On the Knocking at
the Gates in _Macbeth_,” and “On Suicide.” When it last left my hands it
boasted a paper cover, on which appeared the head of the illustrious
Laker. At my elbow now it lies, divested of its shield; and I sit face
to face with the title-page, as though my author had taken off his hat
and overcoat, and I were asking him which he preferred, clear or thick
soup, while the servant stood behind filling his glass with
Amontillado. How that cover came to be removed I do not know. The last
borrower was of the less destructive sex, and I am at a great loss to
account for the injury.
I object to the presence of “Walking Stewart,” and “On Suicide,”
otherwise I count my copy perfect. With the exception of _Robinson
Crusoe_ and Poe’s _Tales_ I have read nothing so often as the
_Opium-eater_. Only twice in my life up to five-and-twenty years of age
did I sit up all night to read a book: once when about midnight I came
into possession of _Enoch Arden_, and a second time when, at the same
witching hour I drew a red cloth-bound edition of the _Opium-eater_ out
of my pocket, in my lonely, dreary bedroom, five hundred miles from
where I am now writing. The household were all asleep, and I by no means
strong of nerve. The room was large, the dwelling ghostly. I sat in an
embrasure of one of the windows, with a little table supporting the
candles on one side, and on the other a small movable bookcase. Thus I
was in a kind of dock, only open on one side, that fronting the room. It
was in the beginning of autumn, and a low, warm wind blew the
complaining rain against the pane on a level with my ear. At that time I
had not seen London, and I remember being overpowered and broken before
the spectacle of that sensitive and imaginative boy in the text, hungry
and forlorn, in the unsympathetic mass of innumerable houses, every door
of which was shut against him.
As I read on and the hour grew late, the succession of splendours and
terrors wrought on my imagination, until I felt cold and exhausted, and
had scarcely strength to sit upright in my chair. My hand trembled, and
my mind became tremulously apprehensive of something vague and awful; I
could not tell what. Sounds of the night which I had heard a thousand
times before, which were as familiar to me as the bell of my parish
church, now assumed dire, uncertain imports. The rattling of the sash
was not the work of the wind, not the work of ghostly hands, but worse
still, of human hands belonging to men in some more dire extremity than
the approach of death. The beating of the rain against the glass was
made to cover voices trying to tell me secrets I could not hear and
live, and which yet I would have given my life to know.
I cannot tell why I was so exhilarated by terror. The _Confessions_
alone are not calculated to produce inexplicable disturbance of the
mind. It may be I had eaten little or nothing that day; it may be I had
steeped myself too deeply in nicotine. All I know for certain is that I
was in such a state of abject panic I had not courage to cross the room
to my bed. It was in the dreary, pitiless, raw hour before the dawn I
finished the book. Then I found I durst not rise. I put down the book
and looked at the candles. They would last till daylight.
I would have given all the world to lie on that bed over there, with my
back secure against it, warmed by it, comforted by it. But that open
space was more terrible to me than if it were filled with flame. I
should have been much more at my ease in the dark, yet I could not bring
myself to blow out the lights; not because I dreaded the darkness, but
because I shrank from encountering the possibilities of that awful
moment of twilight between the full light of the candles and the blank
gloom.
When I thought of blowing out the lights and imagined the dread of
catching a glimpse of some spectacle of supreme horror, I imprudently
gave my imagination rein, and set myself to find out what would terrify
me most. All at once, and before I had made more than the inquiry of my
mind, I saw in fancy between me and the bed, a thing of unapproachable
terror; I had not been recently reading _Christabel_, and yet it must
have been remotely from that poem I conjured the spectre which so awed
me. I placed out in the open of the room on the floor, between me and
the door, and close to a straight line drawn between me and the bed, a
figure shrouded in a black cloak, from hidden shoulder to invisible
feet. Over the head of this figure was cast a cowl, which completely
concealed the head and face. At any moment the cloak might open and
disclose the body of that figure. I knew the body of that figure was a
“thing to dream of, not to see.” I felt sure I should lose my reason if
the cloak opened and discovered the loathsome body. I had no idea what I
should see, but I knew I should go mad.
In my dock by the window, and with the light behind my eyes I felt
secure. But at that moment no earthly consideration, no consideration
whatever, would have induced me to face that ghostly form in the flicker
of expiring light. I was not under any delusion. I knew then as well as
I know now that there was no object on which the normal human eye could
exercise itself between me and the bed. I deliberately willed the figure
to appear, and although once I had summoned it I could not dismiss it, I
had complete and self-possessed knowledge that I saw nothing with my
physical eye. Moreover, full of potentiality for terror as that figure
was in its present shape and attitude, it had no dread for me. I was
fascinated by considering possibilities which I knew could not arise so
long as the present circumstances remained unchanged. In other words, I
knew I could trust my reason to keep my imagination in subjection, so
long as my senses were not confused or my attention scared. If I
attempted to extinguish the candles that figure might waver! if I moved
across the floor it might get behind my back, and as I caught sight of
it over my shoulder, the cloak might fall aside! Then I should go mad.
Thus I sat and waited until daylight came. Then I fell asleep in my
chair.
As I have said, the copy of the _Opium-eater_ I then had was bound in
red cloth. It was a much handsomer book than the humble one published by
Routledge. Since that memorable night many years ago in my high, dreary,
lonely bedroom, I cannot tell you all the copies of the _Opium-eater_
which have been mine. I remember another, bound in dark blue cloth, with
copious notes. There was a third, the outside seeming of which I forget,
but which I think formed part of two volumes of selections from De
Quincey. I love my little sixpenny volume for one reason chiefly. I can
lend it without fear, and lose it without a pang. Why, the beggarliest
miser alive can’t think much of fourpence-halfpenny! I have already
dispensed a few copies of the _Opium-eater_, price fourpence-halfpenny.
As it lies on my table now, I take no more care of it than one does of
yesterday’s morning paper. When I read it I double it back, to show to
myself how little I value the gross material of the book. Any one coming
in likely to appreciate the book, and who has not read it is welcome to
carry it off as a gift. Yet if I am free with the volume, I am jealous
of the author. I do not mention his name to people I believe unwilling
or unable to worship him becomingly.
But when I meet a true disciple what prodigal joy environs and suffuses
me! What talks of him I have had, and speechless raptures in hearing of
him! How thick with gold the air of evenings has been, spent with him
and one who loved him! I recall one glorious summer’s day, when an old
friend and I (we were then, alas! years and years younger than we are
to-day), had toiled on through mountain heather for hours, until we were
half-baked by the sun and famished with thirst. Suddenly we came upon
the topmost peak of all the hills, and saw, many miles away, the
unexpected sea. As we stood, shading our eyes with our hands, my
companion chanted out, “Obliquely to the right lay the many-languaged
town of Liverpool; obliquely to the left ‘the multitudinous sea.’”
“Whose is that?” I asked eagerly, notwithstanding my drought. “What
isn’t Shakespeare’s is De Quincey’s.” “Where did you find it?” “In the
_Opium-eater_.” I remember cursing my memory because I had forgotten
that passage. When I got home I looked through the copy I then had, and
could not find the sentence. I wrote to my friend, saying I could not
come upon his quotation. He answered that he now believed it did not
occur in the body of the _Confessions_, but in a note in some edition,
he could not remember which. What a sense of miserable desolation I had
that this edition had never come my way!