REVELS AND REVERIES.
“That juice of earth, the bane
And blessing of man’s heart, and brain—
That draught of sorcery, which brings
Phantoms of fair forbidden things
Whose drops, like those of rainbows, smile
Upon the mists that circle man
Brightening not only earth, the while
But grasping heaven, too, in their span.”
_Lalla Rookh._
The Mahometan legend of their prophet’s ascent into heaven, where he
received instructions for the faith and conduct of his followers, is
thus current amongst them.
As Mahomet was reclining on the sacred stone in the temple of Mecca,
Gabriel came to him, and opened his breast from the breastbone to the
groin, and took out his heart, and washed it in a golden basin, full
of the water of Faith, and then restored it to its place. Afterwards a
white beast was brought to him, less than a mule, and larger than an
ass, called Al-Borak. It had a human face, but the cheeks of a horse,
its eyes were jacinths, and radiant as stars. It had eagle’s wings,
all glittering with rays of light, and its whole form was resplendent
with gems and precious stones. Upon this Mahomet was borne. Gabriel
proceeded with him to the first heaven of silver, and knocked at the
door, after some conversation he was welcomed, and the door opened.
Here Mahomet saluted Adam. They then proceeded to the second heaven,
all of polished steel and dazzling splendour, and saluted Noah. They
then entered the third heaven, studded with precious stones, and too
brilliant for mortal eyes. Here was seen Azrael, the Angel of Death,
writing continually in a book the names of those who are to be born,
and blotting out those who are to die. They mounted to the fourth
heaven, of the finest silver, where they saw the Angel of Tears, who
was appointed to weep over the sins of men, and predict the evils
that awaited them. The fifth heaven was of purest gold. Here Mahomet
was received and saluted by Aaron. This heaven was inhabited by the
Avenging Angel. He sat on a throne surrounded by flames, and before
him was a heap of red hot chains. The sixth heaven was composed of
a transparent stone, where dwelt the guardian angel of heaven and
earth. Here Moses wept at the sight of the prophet who was to have
more followers than himself. Mahomet then entered the seventh heaven
of divine light, where he saw many marvellous things, which he related
for the instruction of the faithful. He entered Al Mamour, the house
of Adoration, and as he entered, three vases were offered him, one
containing wine, another milk, and a third honey. He drank of the milk,
“Well hast thou done!” exclaimed Gabriel. “Hadst thou drunk of the
wine, thy people had all gone astray.” The Prophet then returned to
earth, as he had ascended to heaven.
The Al-Borak of modern Moslems is opium, by means of this most
miraculous of vehicles they mount to the heaven of heavens.
What are the true effects of opium are best described by an eminent
physician, who has studied well the results produced by all such
influences upon the brain. The imagination appears to be acted
upon, independent of the peculiar torpor, accompanied by sensations
of gratification, and the absence of all communication with the
external world. The senses convey no false impressions to the brain;
all that is seen, heard, or felt, is faithfully delineated, but
the imagination clothes each object in its own fanciful garb. It
exaggerates, it multiplies, it colours, it gives fantastic shapes;
there is a new condition arising out of ordinary perception, and the
reason, abandoning itself to the imagination, does not resist the
delight of indulging in visions. If the eyes are closed, and nothing
presented to excite the external senses, a whole train of vivid dreams
are presented. A theatre is lighted up in the brain—graceful dancers
perform the most captivating evolutions—music of an unearthly character
floats along—poesy, whose harmonious numbers, and whose exciting
themes, are far beyond the power of the human mind, is unceasingly
poured forth. Memory is, however, generally asleep—all the passions,
affections, and motions have lost their sway. It is all an exquisite
indolence, during which dreams spontaneously arise, brilliant,
beautiful, and exhilarating. There is order, harmony, tranquillity.
If a single object has been vividly impressed upon the eye, it is
multiplied a thousand times by the imagination—vast processions pass
him in his reveries in mournful pomp.
That this is the doctrine of the true church on the subject of opium,
we may learn from De Quincey, of which church he acknowledges himself
to be the Pope, and self-appointed _legate à latere_ to all degrees of
latitude and longitude.
“I often fell into such reveries after taking opium, and many a time
it has happened to me on a summer night, when I have been seated at
an open window, from which I could overlook the sea at a mile below
me, and could, at the same time, command a view of some great town
standing on a different radius of my circular prospect, but at nearly
the same distance—that from sunset to sunrise, all through the hours of
night, I have continued motionless, as if frozen, without consciousness
of myself as of an object anywise distinct from the multiform scene
which I contemplated from above. Such a scene in all its elements was
not unfrequently realised for me on the gentle eminence of Everton.
Obliquely to the left, lay the many languaged town of Liverpool;
obliquely to the right, the multitudinous sea. The scene itself was
somewhat typical of what took place in such a reverie. The town of
Liverpool represented the earth, with its sorrows and its graves left
behind, yet not out of sight nor wholly forgotten. The ocean, in
everlasting but gentle agitation, yet brooded over by dove-like calm,
might not unfitly typify the mind, and the mood which then swayed
it. For it seemed to me as if then first I stood at a distance aloof
from the uproar of life, as if the tumult, the fever, and the strife
were suspended; a respite were granted from the secret burdens of the
heart, some sabbath of repose, some resting from human labours. Here
were the hopes which blossom in the paths of life, reconciled with the
peace which is in the grave; motions of the intellect as unwearied as
the heavens, yet for all anxieties a halcyon calm; tranquillity that
seemed no product of inertia, but as if resulting from mighty and equal
antagonisms, infinite activities, infinite repose.”
And now let us follow him to the Opera. “The late Duke of Norfolk used
to say, ‘Next Monday, wind and weather permitting, I propose to be
drunk;’ and, in like manner, I used to fix beforehand how often, within
a given time, when, and with what accessory circumstances of festal
joy, I would commit a debauch of opium. This was seldom more than once
in three weeks, for at that time I could not have ventured to call
every day (as afterwards I did) for ‘a glass of laudanum negus, warm,
and without sugar.’
“No: once in three weeks sufficed; and the time selected was either
a Tuesday or a Saturday night, my reason for which was this—Tuesday
and Saturday were for many years the regular nights of performance
at the opera house, and there in those times Grassini sang, and her
voice was delightful to me beyond all that I had ever heard. Thrilling
was the pleasure with which almost always I heard her. Shivering with
expectation I sat, when the time drew near for her golden epiphany,
shivering I rose from my seat, incapable of rest, when that heavenly
and harp-like voice sang its own victorious welcome in its prelusive
_threttanelo—threttanelo_. The choruses were divine to hear; and, when
Grassini appeared in some interlude, as she often did, and poured
forth her passionate soul as Andromache at the tomb of Hector, &c.,
I question whether any Turk, of all that ever entered the paradise
of opium-eaters, can have had half the pleasure I had. But, indeed,
I honour the barbarians too much, by supposing them capable of any
pleasures approaching to the intellectual ones of an Englishman. A
chorus of elaborate harmony displayed before me, as in a piece of arras
work, the whole of my past life—not as if recalled by an act of memory,
but as if present, and incarnated in the music; no longer painful to
dwell upon, but the detail of its incidents removed, or blended in
some hazy abstraction, and its passions exalted, spiritualized, and
sublimed. And over and above the music of the stage and the orchestra
I had all around me, in the intervals of the performances, the music
of the Italian language talked by Italian women—for the gallery was
usually crowded with Italians—and I listened with a pleasure, such as
that with which Weld, the traveller, lay and listened in Canada, to the
sweet laughter of Indian women; for the less you understand a language,
the more sensible you are to the melody or harshness of its sounds.”
Let the reader who seeks to know of his other Saturday evenings’
experiences, wandering about in the market-places, and threading the
intricate mazes of bye-lanes and alleys, seek it in his “Confessions.”
An Englishman awaking one morning finds himself at Hong-Kong, in the
midst of opium and opium-smokers. He is astonished that the Chinaman
loves opium as he loves nothing else; he cannot think why his vitiated
taste had not settled upon something nobler, why he does not take a
fancy to British Brandy? But no! he loves opium. And a Parsee takes him
to see the lions, and is so civil as to convey the stranger into his
warehouse and open two chests of opium, that he may see the drug as it
passes into commerce. Of these, the first consisted of balls, which he
describes as of the size of a large apple dumpling, and when cut open
the mass is found to be solid. The other was full of objects which a
commander in the navy ordered his men to return to the owners of a
captured junk, “Ar’nt you ashamed, my lads, to loot a lot of miserable
Dutch cheeses?” The “Dutch cheeses” were Patna opium, worth about £5
each. Globes of thick dark jelly enclosed in a crust not unlike the
rind of a cheese. The Parsee tapped one with a fragment of an iron
fastening of a chest, and drew forth about a spoonful of the drug. It
was not the opium which engaged the traveller’s attention, it was the
effect it produced upon the surrounding coolies. He had never before
seen excitement in a Chinaman’s face. He had seen them tried for their
lives, and condemned to death. He had seen them test the long-suffering
patience of Mr. Tudor Davies in the Hong-Kong police court, where that
gentleman was daily engaged in laborious endeavours to extract truth
out of conflicting lies. He had seen them laugh heartily at a gesture
at a sing-song; and he once saw a witness grin with great delight, as
he unexpectedly saw his most intimate friend, a tradesman of reputed
wealth, among a crowd of prisoners in the dock. But these coolies, when
they saw that opium opened their horizontal, slit-shaped eyes, till
they grew round and starting, their limbs, so lax and limpid, when not
in actual strain of labour, were stiff from excitement, every head
was pressed forward, every hand seemed ready to clutch. There was a
possibility that it would be put down upon the window-sill, near which
the stranger and his Parsee friend were standing—and there could be
seen the shadow of fingers ready to slide in. It was almost certain
that it would be thrown aside—and there was the grand hope of an opium
debauch gratis, and this was the state of mind that hope created. And
oh what raptures, what delights, what dreams! Already, in imagination,
they revelled in scenes such as the wakeful eye of mortal man ne’er
saw, and such as never did the mind of man conceive.
“A paradise of vaulted bowers
Lit by downward gazing flowers,
And watery paths that wind between
Wildernesses calm and green,
Peopled by shapes too bright to see
And rest, having beheld; somewhat like thee
Which walk upon the sea, and chaunt melodiously.”
We cannot understand this fascination in which opium holds its devotee
to its full extent; and yet, in some sort, the lover of tobacco,
deprived of his pipe or quid, can in some sort understand it better
than any other Englishman, the opiophagi excepted. Let the admirer
of his weed be placed in circumstances wherein he cannot indulge in
that luxury, and the inward longings for his cherished companion are
akin to those of the smoker of opium without his drug. Some inveterate
smokers of tobacco have been known to declare that they would rather
forego their accustomed meal than their whiff; this they will sometimes
profess, but this the opium devotee often accomplishes. Instances are
far from rare of opium-smokers dying of starvation, having denied
their bodies the sustenance they required, to procure their much loved
chandu. Martyrs to their love of opium.
As opium is generally indulged in by the lower classes, in
establishments called Opium Shops, otherwise Papan Mera, a word or
two belongs to them. In Singapore, these shops are limited by the
regulations to forty-five in town and six in the country. Each has a
red board, which the vendor ought to hang up outside his shop, with
the number thereon, as received from the opium farmer. Hence the name
of Papan Mera, or “red board,” and the shops are known by that name
by all classes of natives. They are scattered in all directions over
the island; and wherever a number of Chinese are congregated, there
you have one or more. The farmer is most interested in the sale of
opium, and the extension of shops, and of the trade. A man goes to him
generally, either previously known or recommended, and says he wishes
to open a Papan Mera; of course, the opium farmer wishes that he may do
so, and be successful, and vend plenty of opium, all the opium being
purchased of the opium farmer, no one else being allowed to sell opium
in the island, and for which privilege he contracts annually with the
Government in a handsome sum. The man gets the red board, for which he
pays two shillings. If the limited number of forty-five is completed
he does not require a board, but he is not refused the privilege of
opening a shop. In this case, he hangs a mat in the place of the door,
by which an opium shop is known to all, while the fact is announced by
a Chinese inscription. Nothing is paid for a licence, no securities
are entered into, but the new man purchases of the farmer a certain
quantity of chandu, or prepared opium, and according to his facilities
for selling it so is the price. If the shop is to be opened in town,
where there are more customers, and if near to where Chinese artificers
abound, then he pays about eight shillings a tael (1⅓ oz.), or at
the rate of six shillings an ounce. If at a little distance, about
five shillings and sixpence an ounce. Still further from town, five
shillings, then four shillings and sixpence. Nay, it even descends to a
fraction beyond three shillings an ounce. The last is the sum paid by
the Nacodah of a Chinese junk, who takes a large quantity at a time, as
two-thirds of his crew are generally consumers, and the facility for
illicit consumption is great. The proprietors of the Papan Mera are
expected to retail it to their customers at a little above the price
at which they have purchased it. If in town, where they pay tenpence a
cheen or six shillings an ounce, then they charge elevenpence a cheen
or scarcely seven shillings an ounce, to those who come to buy or use
it on the premises. The opium farmer receives nothing from the owner of
the shop, except the money for his opium; the owner receives nothing
from the farmer but the opium for his money, and sometimes a discount
of eight per cent. Nor do the opium-smokers pay more at the shops for
their opium than if they purchased it direct from the farmer. How,
then, does the owner of the “red board” manage to live? How does he pay
rent, sometimes to the extent of £2 or £3 per month? How can he keep
his wife, and the little “red boards,” and one or two coolies? Ecce! He
does all this on the refuse of the chandu, the _Tye_ or _Tinco_, sold
to the poor.
On the Tinco and Samshing, the owners of many of the opium shops almost
entirely depend for their living. By their sale the rent is paid, the
family supported, and the servants kept. If a man sells three taels, or
three ounces and three-quarters of chandu a day, there will be about
half that quantity of Tinco, or one ounce and three-quarters, this is
the unconsumed refuse left in the pipe after smoking, and which is
the property of the owner of the Papan Mera, and from the consumption
of this he gets a further refuse of little more than three-quarters
of an ounce, which is called _Samshing_. If he sells his Chandu for
twenty-five shillings, by his Tinco and Samshing he will realize nearly
twelve shillings and sixpence a day, and this is his income. Few,
however, _sell_ so much, and fewer still _receive_ as much.
The “Papan Mera” is of all kinds, from a hovel to a brick house of two
stories, for which £3 monthly is paid for rent. Generally speaking,
the luxury of the pipe is all that the smoker cares for, and all other
things, such as commodious apartments, elegant furniture, and proper
ventilation are disregarded. In some houses there are apartments beside
those entered from the street. The police regulations ordain that at
nine P.M. all shall give up their pipes. But is the sound of the curfew
always heeded? “Sooner would the panting traveller, under a burning
sun, when hours have elapsed, since his parched lips were moistened,
dash from his mouth the goblet before his thirst was half quenched,
than the opium-smoker be the slave of time.” If nine o’clock comes, and
he has not reached his climax, he then retires to an inner chamber,
where, at ease and undisturbed, he may realize that enjoyment, and
consummate that bliss, of which the owner of “blue coat and bright
buttons” would deprive him. Thus he slips into Paradise whilst the Peri
and the “peeler” remain outside disconsolate.
Our Papan Mera man is a good man, and his wife is a good woman, so we
get a peep indoors, upstairs, behind the scenes, the apartment where
ladies are at home _de jure_, not being allowed perhaps to smoke at
home _de facto_. Of course, the general visitor has no admittance. In
the centre stands a large bed, sitting up thereon a female, her back
supported with cushions. She is young, she is fair—yea, passing fair,
and dressed in the habiliments of the flowery land. Near her stands a
table, on which are tea and sweetmeats. She, too, is a votary to the
drug; with dreamy eyes half closed, she draws in the inspiring vapour,
then sinks back upon the cushions, unconscious that we are gazing upon
her, her dark dishevelled tresses hanging over, but scarce concealing
the heaving bosom, the only sign of life.
Although there are supposed to be but forty-five licensed opium shops
in Singapore town, there are upwards of eighty; wherever there are
Chinese, there may also be found the Papan Mera. Certain trades are
congregated together—you have carpenters in one street, blacksmiths in
another, gold and silver smiths in a third, and so on. Amongst some
trades, the habit of opium-smoking is more common than in others, the
principal consumers will be found amongst carpenters, blacksmiths,
barbers, huxsters, coolies, boatmen, gambier planters, and gardeners.
Full eighty-five per cent. of the persons engaged in these callings are
devoted to the drug. Shoemakers, tailors, and bakers, are generally
less addicted to the habit; amongst the two first-named, not more
than twenty per cent. are smokers. Wherever you have carpenters,
blacksmiths, &c., in abundance, there will you have opium shops in
abundance also. In many streets there are six of these shops. In one
street there are twelve. In Canton Street there are eight houses, and
two of them are licensed for opium. At Hong-Kong and at Canton, the
same thing occurs. Certain streets are devoted to certain trades, and
certain trades devoted to opium.
M. Abbé Huc communicates a few additional facts concerning opium in
China. At present this country purchases annually of the English,
opium to the amount of seven millions sterling; the traffic is
contraband, but it is carried on along the whole coast of the Empire,
and especially in the neighbourhood of the five ports which have been
opened to Europeans. Large fine vessels, armed like ships of war,
serve as depots to the English merchants, and the trade is protected,
not only by the English Government, but also by the mandarins of the
Chinese Empire. The law which forbids the smoking of opium under pain
of death, has, indeed, never been repealed; but everybody smokes away
quite at his ease notwithstanding. Pipes, lamps, and all the apparatus
are sold publicly in every town, and the mandarins themselves are the
first to violate the law, and give this bad example to the people, even
in the courts of justice. During the whole of the Abbé’s long journey
through China, he met with but one tribunal where opium was not smoked
openly and with impunity.
The Chinese prepare and smoke their opium lying down, sometimes on one
side, sometimes on the other, saying that this is the most favourable
position; and the smokers of distinction do not give themselves all the
trouble of the operation, but have their pipes prepared for them.
For several years past some of the southern provinces have been
actively engaged in the cultivation of the poppy, and the fabrication
of opium. The English merchants confess that the Chinese product is
of excellent quality, though inferior to that of Bengal; but the
English opium suffers so much adulteration before it reaches the pipe
of the smoker, that it is not in reality so good as what the Chinese
themselves prepare. The latter, however, though delivered perfectly
pure, is sold at a low price, and only consumed by smokers of the
lowest class. That of the English, notwithstanding its adulteration,
thus writes Abbé Huc dear and reserved to smokers of distinction; a
caprice which can only be accounted for from the vanity of the rich
Chinese, who would think it beneath them to smoke opium of native
production, and not of a ruinous price; that which comes from a long
way off must evidently be preferable. It is very probable that the
Chinese will soon cultivate the poppy on a large scale, and make at
home all the opium necessary for their consumption. It is certain
that the English cannot offer an equally good article at the same
price; and, should the fashion alter, British India will suffer a
great reverse in her Chinese opium trade. The Abbé makes reference
to the increased consumption of opium in England, both in the liquid
and solid form, the progress of which he characterises as alarming,
and then concludes the subject with the following extraordinary
paragraph:—“Curious and instructive would it be, indeed, if we should
one day see the English going to buy opium in the ports of China, and
their ships bringing back from the Celestial Empire this deleterious
stuff, to poison England. Well might we exclaim in such a case, ‘Leave
judgment to God.’”