PRELIMINARY CONFESSIONS

These preliminary confessions, or introductory narrative of the

youthful adventures which laid the foundation of the writer’s habit of

opium-eating in after-life, it has been judged proper to premise, for

three several reasons:

1. As forestalling that question, and giving it a satisfactory answer,

which else would painfully obtrude itself in the course of the Opium

Confessions—“How came any reasonable being to subject himself to such a

yoke of misery; voluntarily to incur a captivity so servile, and

knowingly to fetter himself with such a sevenfold chain?”—a question

which, if not somewhere plausibly resolved, could hardly fail, by the

indignation which it would be apt to raise as against an act of wanton

folly, to interfere with that degree of sympathy which is necessary in

any case to an author’s purposes.

2. As furnishing a key to some parts of that tremendous scenery which

afterwards peopled the dreams of the Opium-eater.

3. As creating some previous interest of a personal sort in the

confessing subject, apart from the matter of the confessions, which

cannot fail to render the confessions themselves more interesting. If a

man “whose talk is of oxen” should become an opium-eater, the

probability is that (if he is not too dull to dream at all) he will

dream about oxen; whereas, in the case before him, the reader will find

that the Opium-eater boasteth himself to be a philosopher; and

accordingly, that the phantasmagoria of _his_ dreams (waking or

sleeping, day-dreams or night-dreams) is suitable to one who in that

character

Humani nihil a se alienum putat.

For amongst the conditions which he deems indispensable to the

sustaining of any claim to the title of philosopher is not merely the

possession of a superb intellect in its _analytic_ functions (in which

part of the pretensions, however, England can for some generations show

but few claimants; at least, he is not aware of any known candidate for

this honour who can be styled emphatically _a subtle thinker_, with the

exception of _Samuel Taylor Coleridge_, and in a narrower department of

thought with the recent illustrious exception {2} of _David Ricardo_)

but also on such a constitution of the _moral_ faculties as shall give

him an inner eye and power of intuition for the vision and the

mysteries of our human nature: _that_ constitution of faculties, in

short, which (amongst all the generations of men that from the

beginning of time have deployed into life, as it were, upon this

planet) our English poets have possessed in the highest degree, and

Scottish professors {3} in the lowest.

I have often been asked how I first came to be a regular opium-eater,

and have suffered, very unjustly, in the opinion of my acquaintance

from being reputed to have brought upon myself all the sufferings which

I shall have to record, by a long course of indulgence in this practice

purely for the sake of creating an artificial state of pleasurable

excitement. This, however, is a misrepresentation of my case. True it

is that for nearly ten years I did occasionally take opium for the sake

of the exquisite pleasure it gave me; but so long as I took it with

this view I was effectually protected from all material bad

consequences by the necessity of interposing long intervals between the

several acts of indulgence, in order to renew the pleasurable

sensations. It was not for the purpose of creating pleasure, but of

mitigating pain in the severest degree, that I first began to use opium

as an article of daily diet. In the twenty-eighth year of my age a most

painful affection of the stomach, which I had first experienced about

ten years before, attacked me in great strength. This affection had

originally been caused by extremities of hunger, suffered in my boyish

days. During the season of hope and redundant happiness which succeeded

(that is, from eighteen to twenty-four) it had slumbered; for the three

following years it had revived at intervals; and now, under

unfavourable circumstances, from depression of spirits, it attacked me

with a violence that yielded to no remedies but opium. As the youthful

sufferings which first produced this derangement of the stomach were

interesting in themselves, and in the circumstances that attended them,

I shall here briefly retrace them.

My father died when I was about seven years old, and left me to the

care of four guardians. I was sent to various schools, great and small;

and was very early distinguished for my classical attainments,

especially for my knowledge of Greek. At thirteen I wrote Greek with

ease; and at fifteen my command of that language was so great that I

not only composed Greek verses in lyric metres, but could converse in

Greek fluently and without embarrassment—an accomplishment which I have

not since met with in any scholar of my times, and which in my case was

owing to the practice of daily reading off the newspapers into the best

Greek I could furnish _extempore_; for the necessity of ransacking my

memory and invention for all sorts and combinations of periphrastic

expressions as equivalents for modern ideas, images, relations of

things, &c., gave me a compass of diction which would never have been

called out by a dull translation of moral essays, &c. “That boy,” said

one of my masters, pointing the attention of a stranger to me, “that

boy could harangue an Athenian mob better than you and I could address

an English one.” He who honoured me with this eulogy was a scholar,

“and a ripe and a good one,” and of all my tutors was the only one whom

I loved or reverenced. Unfortunately for me (and, as I afterwards

learned, to this worthy man’s great indignation), I was transferred to

the care, first of a blockhead, who was in a perpetual panic lest I

should expose his ignorance; and finally to that of a respectable

scholar at the head of a great school on an ancient foundation. This

man had been appointed to his situation by —— College, Oxford, and was

a sound, well-built scholar, but (like most men whom I have known from

that college) coarse, clumsy, and inelegant. A miserable contrast he

presented, in my eyes, to the Etonian brilliancy of my favourite

master; and beside, he could not disguise from my hourly notice the

poverty and meagreness of his understanding. It is a bad thing for a

boy to be and to know himself far beyond his tutors, whether in

knowledge or in power of mind. This was the case, so far as regarded

knowledge at least, not with myself only, for the two boys, who jointly

with myself composed the first form, were better Grecians than the

head-master, though not more elegant scholars, nor at all more

accustomed to sacrifice to the Graces. When I first entered I remember

that we read Sophocles; and it was a constant matter of triumph to us,

the learned triumvirate of the first form, to see our “Archididascalus”

(as he loved to be called) conning our lessons before we went up, and

laying a regular train, with lexicon and grammar, for blowing up and

blasting (as it were) any difficulties he found in the choruses; whilst

_we_ never condescended to open our books until the moment of going up,

and were generally employed in writing epigrams upon his wig or some

such important matter. My two class-fellows were poor, and dependent

for their future prospects at the university on the recommendation of

the head-master; but I, who had a small patrimonial property, the

income of which was sufficient to support me at college, wished to be

sent thither immediately. I made earnest representations on the subject

to my guardians, but all to no purpose. One, who was more reasonable

and had more knowledge of the world than the rest, lived at a distance;

two of the other three resigned all their authority into the hands of

the fourth; and this fourth, with whom I had to negotiate, was a worthy

man in his way, but haughty, obstinate, and intolerant of all

opposition to his will. After a certain number of letters and personal

interviews, I found that I had nothing to hope for, not even a

compromise of the matter, from my guardian. Unconditional submission

was what he demanded, and I prepared myself, therefore, for other

measures. Summer was now coming on with hasty steps, and my seventeenth

birthday was fast approaching, after which day I had sworn within

myself that I would no longer be numbered amongst schoolboys. Money

being what I chiefly wanted, I wrote to a woman of high rank, who,

though young herself, had known me from a child, and had latterly

treated me with great distinction, requesting that she would “lend” me

five guineas. For upwards of a week no answer came, and I was beginning

to despond, when at length a servant put into my hands a double letter

with a coronet on the seal. The letter was kind and obliging. The fair

writer was on the sea-coast, and in that way the delay had arisen; she

enclosed double of what I had asked, and good-naturedly hinted that if

I should _never_ repay her, it would not absolutely ruin her. Now,

then, I was prepared for my scheme. Ten guineas, added to about two

which I had remaining from my pocket-money, seemed to me sufficient for

an indefinite length of time; and at that happy age, if no _definite_

boundary can be assigned to one’s power, the spirit of hope and

pleasure makes it virtually infinite.

It is a just remark of Dr. Johnson’s (and, what cannot often be said of

his remarks, it is a very feeling one), that we never do anything

consciously for the last time (of things, that is, which we have long

been in the habit of doing) without sadness of heart. This truth I felt

deeply when I came to leave ——, a place which I did not love, and where

I had not been happy. On the evening before I left —— for ever, I

grieved when the ancient and lofty schoolroom resounded with the

evening service, performed for the last time in my hearing; and at

night, when the muster-roll of names was called over, and mine (as

usual) was called first, I stepped forward, and passing the

head-master, who was standing by, I bowed to him, and looked earnestly

in his face, thinking to myself, “He is old and infirm, and in this

world I shall not see him again.” I was right; I never _did_ see him

again, nor ever shall. He looked at me complacently, smiled

good-naturedly, returned my salutation (or rather my valediction), and

we parted (though he knew it not) for ever. I could not reverence him

intellectually, but he had been uniformly kind to me, and had allowed

me many indulgences; and I grieved at the thought of the mortification

I should inflict upon him.

The morning came which was to launch me into the world, and from which

my whole succeeding life has in many important points taken its

colouring. I lodged in the head-master’s house, and had been allowed

from my first entrance the indulgence of a private room, which I used

both as a sleeping-room and as a study. At half after three I rose, and

gazed with deep emotion at the ancient towers of ——, “drest in earliest

light,” and beginning to crimson with the radiant lustre of a cloudless

July morning. I was firm and immovable in my purpose; but yet agitated

by anticipation of uncertain danger and troubles; and if I could have

foreseen the hurricane and perfect hail-storm of affliction which soon

fell upon me, well might I have been agitated. To this agitation the

deep peace of the morning presented an affecting contrast, and in some

degree a medicine. The silence was more profound than that of midnight;

and to me the silence of a summer morning is more touching than all

other silence, because, the light being broad and strong as that of

noonday at other seasons of the year, it seems to differ from perfect

day chiefly because man is not yet abroad; and thus the peace of nature

and of the innocent creatures of God seems to be secure and deep only

so long as the presence of man and his restless and unquiet spirit are

not there to trouble its sanctity. I dressed myself, took my hat and

gloves, and lingered a little in the room. For the last year and a half

this room had been my “pensive citadel”: here I had read and studied

through all the hours of night, and though true it was that for the

latter part of this time I, who was framed for love and gentle

affections, had lost my gaiety and happiness during the strife and

fever of contention with my guardian, yet, on the other hand, as a boy

so passionately fond of books, and dedicated to intellectual pursuits,

I could not fail to have enjoyed many happy hours in the midst of

general dejection. I wept as I looked round on the chair, hearth,

writing-table, and other familiar objects, knowing too certainly that I

looked upon them for the last time. Whilst I write this it is eighteen

years ago, and yet at this moment I see distinctly, as if it were

yesterday, the lineaments and expression of the object on which I fixed

my parting gaze. It was a picture of the lovely ——, which hung over the

mantelpiece, the eyes and mouth of which were so beautiful, and the

whole countenance so radiant with benignity and divine tranquillity,

that I had a thousand times laid down my pen or my book to gather

consolation from it, as a devotee from his patron saint. Whilst I was

yet gazing upon it the deep tones of —— clock proclaimed that it was

four o’clock. I went up to the picture, kissed it, and then gently

walked out and closed the door for ever!

So blended and intertwisted in this life are occasions of laughter and

of tears, that I cannot yet recall without smiling an incident which

occurred at that time, and which had nearly put a stop to the immediate

execution of my plan. I had a trunk of immense weight, for, besides my

clothes, it contained nearly all my library. The difficulty was to get

this removed to a carrier’s: my room was at an aërial elevation in the

house, and (what was worse) the staircase which communicated with this

angle of the building was accessible only by a gallery, which passed

the head-master’s chamber door. I was a favourite with all the

servants, and knowing that any of them would screen me and act

confidentially, I communicated my embarrassment to a groom of the

head-master’s. The groom swore he would do anything I wished, and when

the time arrived went upstairs to bring the trunk down. This I feared

was beyond the strength of any one man; however, the groom was a man

Of Atlantean shoulders, fit to bear

The weight of mightiest monarchies;

and had a back as spacious as Salisbury Plain. Accordingly he persisted

in bringing down the trunk alone, whilst I stood waiting at the foot of

the last flight in anxiety for the event. For some time I heard him

descending with slow and firm steps; but unfortunately, from his

trepidation, as he drew near the dangerous quarter, within a few steps

of the gallery, his foot slipped, and the mighty burden falling from

his shoulders, gained such increase of impetus at each step of the

descent, that on reaching the bottom it trundled, or rather leaped,

right across, with the noise of twenty devils, against the very bedroom

door of the Archididascalus. My first thought was that all was lost,

and that my only chance for executing a retreat was to sacrifice my

baggage. However, on reflection I determined to abide the issue. The

groom was in the utmost alarm, both on his own account and on mine,

but, in spite of this, so irresistibly had the sense of the ludicrous

in this unhappy _contretemps_ taken possession of his fancy, that he

sang out a long, loud, and canorous peal of laughter, that might have

wakened the Seven Sleepers. At the sound of this resonant merriment,

within the very ears of insulted authority, I could not myself forbear

joining in it; subdued to this, not so much by the unhappy _étourderie_

of the trunk, as by the effect it had upon the groom. We both expected,

as a matter of course, that Dr. —— would sally, out of his room, for in

general, if but a mouse stirred, he sprang out like a mastiff from his

kennel. Strange to say, however, on this occasion, when the noise of

laughter had ceased, no sound, or rustling even, was to be heard in the

bedroom. Dr. —— had a painful complaint, which, sometimes keeping him

awake, made his sleep perhaps, when it did come, the deeper. Gathering

courage from the silence, the groom hoisted his burden again, and

accomplished the remainder of his descent without accident. I waited

until I saw the trunk placed on a wheelbarrow and on its road to the

carrier’s; then, “with Providence my guide,” I set off on foot,

carrying a small parcel with some articles of dress under my arm; a

favourite English poet in one pocket, and a small 12mo volume,

containing about nine plays of Euripides, in the other.

It had been my intention originally to proceed to Westmoreland, both

from the love I bore to that country and on other personal accounts.

Accident, however, gave a different direction to my wanderings, and I

bent my steps towards North Wales.

After wandering about for some time in Denbighshire, Merionethshire,

and Carnarvonshire, I took lodgings in a small neat house in B——. Here

I might have stayed with great comfort for many weeks, for provisions

were cheap at B——, from the scarcity of other markets for the surplus

produce of a wide agricultural district. An accident, however, in which

perhaps no offence was designed, drove me out to wander again. I know

not whether my reader may have remarked, but I have often remarked,

that the proudest class of people in England (or at any rate the class

whose pride is most apparent) are the families of bishops. Noblemen and

their children carry about with them, in their very titles, a

sufficient notification of their rank. Nay, their very names (and this

applies also to the children of many untitled houses) are often, to the

English ear, adequate exponents of high birth or descent. Sackville,

Manners, Fitzroy, Paulet, Cavendish, and scores of others, tell their

own tale. Such persons, therefore, find everywhere a due sense of their

claims already established, except among those who are ignorant of the

world by virtue of their own obscurity: “Not to know _them_, argues

one’s self unknown.” Their manners take a suitable tone and colouring,

and for once they find it necessary to impress a sense of their

consequence upon others, they meet with a thousand occasions for

moderating and tempering this sense by acts of courteous condescension.

With the families of bishops it is otherwise: with them, it is all

uphill work to make known their pretensions; for the proportion of the

episcopal bench taken from noble families is not at any time very

large, and the succession to these dignities is so rapid that the

public ear seldom has time to become familiar with them, unless where

they are connected with some literary reputation. Hence it is that the

children of bishops carry about with them an austere and repulsive air,

indicative of claims not generally acknowledged, a sort of _noli me

tangere_ manner, nervously apprehensive of too familiar approach, and

shrinking with the sensitiveness of a gouty man from all contact with

the οι πολλοι. Doubtless, a powerful understanding, or unusual goodness

of nature, will preserve a man from such weakness, but in general the

truth of my representation will be acknowledged; pride, if not of

deeper root in such families, appears at least more upon the surface of

their manners. This spirit of manners naturally communicates itself to

their domestics and other dependants. Now, my landlady had been a

lady’s maid or a nurse in the family of the Bishop of ——, and had but

lately married away and “settled” (as such people express it) for life.

In a little town like B——, merely to have lived in the bishop’s family

conferred some distinction; and my good landlady had rather more than

her share of the pride I have noticed on that score. What “my lord”

said and what “my lord” did, how useful he was in Parliament and how

indispensable at Oxford, formed the daily burden of her talk. All this

I bore very well, for I was too good-natured to laugh in anybody’s

face, and I could make an ample allowance for the garrulity of an old

servant. Of necessity, however, I must have appeared in her eyes very

inadequately impressed with the bishop’s importance, and, perhaps to

punish me for my indifference, or possibly by accident, she one day

repeated to me a conversation in which I was indirectly a party

concerned. She had been to the palace to pay her respects to the

family, and, dinner being over, was summoned into the dining-room. In

giving an account of her household economy she happened to mention that

she had let her apartments. Thereupon the good bishop (it seemed) had

taken occasion to caution her as to her selection of inmates, “for,”

said he, “you must recollect, Betty, that this place is in the high

road to the Head; so that multitudes of Irish swindlers running away

from their debts into England, and of English swindlers running away

from their debts to the Isle of Man, are likely to take this place in

their route.” This advice certainly was not without reasonable grounds,

but rather fitted to be stored up for Mrs. Betty’s private meditations

than specially reported to me. What followed, however, was somewhat

worse. “Oh, my lord,” answered my landlady (according to her own

representation of the matter), “I really don’t think this young

gentleman is a swindler, because ——” “You don’t _think_ me a swindler?”

said I, interrupting her, in a tumult of indignation: “for the future I

shall spare you the trouble of thinking about it.” And without delay I

prepared for my departure. Some concessions the good woman seemed

disposed to make; but a harsh and contemptuous expression, which I fear

that I applied to the learned dignitary himself, roused her indignation

in turn, and reconciliation then became impossible. I was indeed

greatly irritated at the bishop’s having suggested any grounds of

suspicion, however remotely, against a person whom he had never seen;

and I thought of letting him know my mind in Greek, which, at the same

time that it would furnish some presumption that I was no swindler,

would also (I hoped) compel the bishop to reply in the same language;

in which case I doubted not to make it appear that if I was not so rich

as his lordship, I was a far better Grecian. Calmer thoughts, however,

drove this boyish design out of my mind; for I considered that the

bishop was in the right to counsel an old servant; that he could not

have designed that his advice should be reported to me; and that the

same coarseness of mind which had led Mrs. Betty to repeat the advice

at all, might have coloured it in a way more agreeable to her own style

of thinking than to the actual expressions of the worthy bishop.

I left the lodgings the very same hour, and this turned out a very

unfortunate occurrence for me, because, living henceforward at inns, I

was drained of my money very rapidly. In a fortnight I was reduced to

short allowance; that is, I could allow myself only one meal a day.

From the keen appetite produced by constant exercise and mountain air,

acting on a youthful stomach, I soon began to suffer greatly on this

slender regimen, for the single meal which I could venture to order was

coffee or tea. Even this, however, was at length withdrawn; and

afterwards, so long as I remained in Wales, I subsisted either on

blackberries, hips, haws, &c., or on the casual hospitalities which I

now and then received in return for such little services as I had an

opportunity of rendering. Sometimes I wrote letters of business for

cottagers who happened to have relatives in Liverpool or in London;

more often I wrote love-letters to their sweethearts for young women

who had lived as servants at Shrewsbury or other towns on the English

border. On all such occasions I gave great satisfaction to my humble

friends, and was generally treated with hospitality; and once in

particular, near the village of Llan-y-styndw (or some such name), in a

sequestered part of Merionethshire, I was entertained for upwards of

three days by a family of young people with an affectionate and

fraternal kindness that left an impression upon my heart not yet

impaired. The family consisted at that time of four sisters and three

brothers, all grown up, and all remarkable for elegance and delicacy of

manners. So much beauty, and so much native good breeding and

refinement, I do not remember to have seen before or since in any

cottage, except once or twice in Westmoreland and Devonshire. They

spoke English, an accomplishment not often met with in so many members

of one family, especially in villages remote from the high road. Here I

wrote, on my first introduction, a letter about prize-money, for one of

the brothers, who had served on board an English man-of-war; and, more

privately, two love-letters for two of the sisters. They were both

interesting-looking girls, and one of uncommon loveliness. In the midst

of their confusion and blushes, whilst dictating, or rather giving me

general instructions, it did not require any great penetration to

discover that what they wished was that their letters should be as kind

as was consistent with proper maidenly pride. I contrived so to temper

my expressions as to reconcile the gratification of both feelings; and

they were as much pleased with the way in which I had expressed their

thoughts as (in their simplicity) they were astonished at my having so

readily discovered them. The reception one meets with from the women of

a family generally determines the tenor of one’s whole entertainment.

In this case I had discharged my confidential duties as secretary so

much to the general satisfaction, perhaps also amusing them with my

conversation, that I was pressed to stay with a cordiality which I had

little inclination to resist. I slept with the brothers, the only

unoccupied bed standing in the apartment of the young women; but in all

other points they treated me with a respect not usually paid to purses

as light as mine—as if my scholarship were sufficient evidence that I

was of “gentle blood.” Thus I lived with them for three days and great

part of a fourth; and, from the undiminished kindness which they

continued to show me, I believe I might have stayed with them up to

this time, if their power had corresponded with their wishes. On the

last morning, however, I perceived upon their countenances, as they

sate at breakfast, the expression of some unpleasant communication

which was at hand; and soon after, one of the brothers explained to me

that their parents had gone, the day before my arrival, to an annual

meeting of Methodists, held at Carnarvon, and were that day expected to

return; “and if they should not be so civil as they ought to be,” he

begged, on the part of all the young people, that I would not take it

amiss. The parents returned with churlish faces, and “_Dym Sassenach_”

(_no English_) in answer to all my addresses. I saw how matters stood;

and so, taking an affectionate leave of my kind and interesting young

hosts, I went my way; for, though they spoke warmly to their parents in

my behalf, and often excused the manner of the old people by saying it

was “only their way,” yet I easily understood that my talent for

writing love-letters would do as little to recommend me with two grave

sexagenarian Welsh Methodists as my Greek sapphics or alcaics; and what

had been hospitality when offered to me with the gracious courtesy of

my young friends, would become charity when connected with the harsh

demeanour of these old people. Certainly, Mr. Shelley is right in his

notions about old age: unless powerfully counteracted by all sorts of

opposite agencies, it is a miserable corrupter and blighter to the

genial charities of the human heart.

Soon after this I contrived, by means which I must omit for want of

room, to transfer myself to London. And now began the latter and

fiercer stage of my long sufferings; without using a disproportionate

expression I might say, of my agony. For I now suffered, for upwards of

sixteen weeks, the physical anguish of hunger in various degrees of

intensity; but as bitter, perhaps, as ever any human being can have

suffered who has survived it. I would not needlessly harass my reader’s

feelings by a detail of all that I endured; for extremities such as

these, under any circumstances of heaviest misconduct or guilt, cannot

be contemplated, even in description, without a rueful pity that is

painful to the natural goodness of the human heart. Let it suffice, at

least on this occasion, to say that a few fragments of bread from the

breakfast-table of one individual (who supposed me to be ill, but did

not know of my being in utter want), and these at uncertain intervals,

constituted my whole support. During the former part of my sufferings

(that is, generally in Wales, and always for the first two months in

London) I was houseless, and very seldom slept under a roof. To this

constant exposure to the open air I ascribe it mainly that I did not

sink under my torments. Latterly, however, when colder and more

inclement weather came on, and when, from the length of my sufferings,

I had begun to sink into a more languishing condition, it was no doubt

fortunate for me that the same person to whose breakfast-table I had

access, allowed me to sleep in a large unoccupied house of which he was

tenant. Unoccupied I call it, for there was no household or

establishment in it; nor any furniture, indeed, except a table and a

few chairs. But I found, on taking possession of my new quarters, that

the house already contained one single inmate, a poor friendless child,

apparently ten years old; but she seemed hunger-bitten, and sufferings

of that sort often make children look older than they are. From this

forlorn child I learned that she had slept and lived there alone for

some time before I came; and great joy the poor creature expressed when

she found that I was in future to be her companion through the hours of

darkness. The house was large, and, from the want of furniture, the

noise of the rats made a prodigious echoing on the spacious staircase

and hall; and amidst the real fleshly ills of cold and, I fear, hunger,

the forsaken child had found leisure to suffer still more (it appeared)

from the self-created one of ghosts. I promised her protection against

all ghosts whatsoever, but alas! I could offer her no other assistance.

We lay upon the floor, with a bundle of cursed law papers for a pillow,

but with no other covering than a sort of large horseman’s cloak;

afterwards, however, we discovered in a garret an old sofa-cover, a

small piece of rug, and some fragments of other articles, which added a

little to our warmth. The poor child crept close to me for warmth, and

for security against her ghostly enemies. When I was not more than

usually ill I took her into my arms, so that in general she was

tolerably warm, and often slept when I could not, for during the last

two months of my sufferings I slept much in daytime, and was apt to

fall into transient dosings at all hours. But my sleep distressed me

more than my watching, for beside the tumultuousness of my dreams

(which were only not so awful as those which I shall have to describe

hereafter as produced by opium), my sleep was never more than what is

called _dog-sleep_; so that I could hear myself moaning, and was often,

as it seemed to me, awakened suddenly by my own voice; and about this

time a hideous sensation began to haunt me as soon as I fell into a

slumber, which has since returned upon me at different periods of my

life—viz., a sort of twitching (I know not where, but apparently about

the region of the stomach) which compelled me violently to throw out my

feet for the sake of relieving it. This sensation coming on as soon as

I began to sleep, and the effort to relieve it constantly awaking me,

at length I slept only from exhaustion; and from increasing weakness

(as I said before) I was constantly falling asleep and constantly

awaking. Meantime, the master of the house sometimes came in upon us

suddenly, and very early; sometimes not till ten o’clock, sometimes not

at all. He was in constant fear of bailiffs. Improving on the plan of

Cromwell, every night he slept in a different quarter of London; and I

observed that he never failed to examine through a private window the

appearance of those who knocked at the door before he would allow it to

be opened. He breaksfasted alone; indeed, his tea equipage would hardly

have admitted of his hazarding an invitation to a second person, any

more than the quantity of esculent _matériel_, which for the most part

was little more than a roll or a few biscuits which he had bought on

his road from the place where he had slept. Or, if he _had_ asked a

party—as I once learnedly and facetiously observed to him—the several

members of it must have _stood_ in the relation to each other (not

_sate_ in any relation whatever) of succession, as the metaphysicians

have it, and not of a coexistence; in the relation of the parts of

time, and not of the parts of space. During his breakfast I generally

contrived a reason for lounging in, and, with an air of as much

indifference as I could assume, took up such fragments as he had left;

sometimes, indeed, there were none at all. In doing this I committed no

robbery except upon the man himself, who was thus obliged (I believe)

now and then to send out at noon for an extra biscuit; for as to the

poor child, _she_ was never admitted into his study (if I may give that

name to his chief depository of parchments, law writings, &c.); that

room was to her the Bluebeard room of the house, being regularly locked

on his departure to dinner, about six o’clock, which usually was his

final departure for the night. Whether this child were an illegitimate

daughter of Mr. ——, or only a servant, I could not ascertain; she did

not herself know; but certainly she was treated altogether as a menial

servant. No sooner did Mr. —— make his appearance than she went below

stairs, brushed his shoes, coat, &c.; and, except when she was summoned

to run an errand, she never emerged from the dismal Tartarus of the

kitchen, &c., to the upper air until my welcome knock at night called

up her little trembling footsteps to the front door. Of her life during

the daytime, however, I knew little but what I gathered from her own

account at night, for as soon as the hours of business commenced I saw

that my absence would be acceptable, and in general, therefore, I went

off and sate in the parks or elsewhere until nightfall.

But who and what, meantime, was the master of the house himself?

Reader, he was one of those anomalous practitioners in lower

departments of the law who—what shall I say?—who on prudential reasons,

or from necessity, deny themselves all indulgence in the luxury of too

delicate a conscience, (a periphrasis which might be abridged

considerably, but _that_ I leave to the reader’s taste): in many walks

of life a conscience is a more expensive encumbrance than a wife or a

carriage; and just as people talk of “laying down” their carriages, so

I suppose my friend Mr. —— had “laid down” his conscience for a time,

meaning, doubtless, to resume it as soon as he could afford it. The

inner economy of such a man’s daily life would present a most strange

picture, if I could allow myself to amuse the reader at his expense.

Even with my limited opportunities for observing what went on, I saw

many scenes of London intrigues and complex chicanery, “cycle and

epicycle, orb in orb,” at which I sometimes smile to this day, and at

which I smiled then, in spite of my misery. My situation, however, at

that time gave me little experience in my own person of any qualities

in Mr. ——’s character but such as did him honour; and of his whole

strange composition I must forget everything but that towards me he was

obliging, and to the extent of his power, generous.

That power was not, indeed, very extensive; however, in common with the

rats, I sate rent free; and as Dr. Johnson has recorded that he never

but once in his life had as much wall-fruit as he could eat, so let me

be grateful that on that single occasion I had as large a choice of

apartments in a London mansion as I could possibly desire. Except the

Bluebeard room, which the poor child believed to be haunted, all

others, from the attics to the cellars, were at our service; “the world

was all before us,” and we pitched our tent for the night in any spot

we chose. This house I have already described as a large one; it stands

in a conspicuous situation and in a well-known part of London. Many of

my readers will have passed it, I doubt not, within a few hours of

reading this. For myself, I never fail to visit it when business draws

me to London; about ten o’clock this very night, August 15, 1821—being

my birthday—I turned aside from my evening walk down Oxford Street,

purposely to take a glance at it; it is now occupied by a respectable

family, and by the lights in the front drawing-room I observed a

domestic party assembled, perhaps at tea, and apparently cheerful and

gay. Marvellous contrast, in my eyes, to the darkness, cold, silence,

and desolation of that same house eighteen years ago, when its nightly

occupants were one famishing scholar and a neglected child. Her,

by-the-bye, in after-years I vainly endeavoured to trace. Apart from

her situation, she was not what would be called an interesting child;

she was neither pretty, nor quick in understanding, nor remarkably

pleasing in manners. But, thank God! even in those years I needed not

the embellishments of novel accessories to conciliate my affections:

plain human nature, in its humblest and most homely apparel, was enough

for me, and I loved the child because she was my partner in

wretchedness. If she is now living she is probably a mother, with

children of her own; but, as I have said, I could never trace her.

This I regret; but another person there was at that time whom I have

since sought to trace with far deeper earnestness, and with far deeper

sorrow at my failure. This person was a young woman, and one of that

unhappy class who subsist upon the wages of prostitution. I feel no

shame, nor have any reason to feel it, in avowing that I was then on

familiar and friendly terms with many women in that unfortunate

condition. The reader needs neither smile at this avowal nor frown;

for, not to remind my classical readers of the old Latin proverb,

“_Sine cerere_,” &c., it may well be supposed that in the existing

state of my purse my connection with such women could not have been an

impure one. But the truth is, that at no time of my life have I been a

person to hold myself polluted by the touch or approach of any creature

that wore a human shape; on the contrary, from my very earliest youth

it has been my pride to converse familiarly, _more Socratio_, with all

human beings, man, woman, and child, that chance might fling in my way;

a practice which is friendly to the knowledge of human nature, to good

feelings, and to that frankness of address which becomes a man who

would be thought a philosopher. For a philosopher should not see with

the eyes of the poor limitary creature calling himself a man of the

world, and filled with narrow and self-regarding prejudices of birth

and education, but should look upon himself as a catholic creature, and

as standing in equal relation to high and low, to educated and

uneducated, to the guilty and the innocent. Being myself at that time

of necessity a peripatetic, or a walker of the streets, I naturally

fell in more frequently with those female peripatetics who are

technically called street-walkers. Many of these women had occasionally

taken my part against watchmen who wished to drive me off the steps of

houses where I was sitting. But one amongst them, the one on whose

account I have at all introduced this subject—yet no! let me not class

the, oh! noble-minded Ann—with that order of women. Let me find, if it

be possible, some gentler name to designate the condition of her to

whose bounty and compassion, ministering to my necessities when all the

world had forsaken me, I owe it that I am at this time alive. For many

weeks I had walked at nights with this poor friendless girl up and down

Oxford Street, or had rested with her on steps and under the shelter of

porticoes. She could not be so old as myself; she told me, indeed, that

she had not completed her sixteenth year. By such questions as my

interest about her prompted I had gradually drawn forth her simple

history. Hers was a case of ordinary occurrence (as I have since had

reason to think), and one in which, if London beneficence had better

adapted its arrangements to meet it, the power of the law might oftener

be interposed to protect and to avenge. But the stream of London

charity flows in a channel which, though deep and mighty, is yet

noiseless and underground; not obvious or readily accessible to poor

houseless wanderers; and it cannot be denied that the outside air and

framework of London society is harsh, cruel, and repulsive. In any

case, however, I saw that part of her injuries might easily have been

redressed, and I urged her often and earnestly to lay her complaint

before a magistrate. Friendless as she was, I assured her that she

would meet with immediate attention, and that English justice, which

was no respecter of persons, would speedily and amply avenge her on the

brutal ruffian who had plundered her little property. She promised me

often that she would, but she delayed taking the steps I pointed out

from time to time, for she was timid and dejected to a degree which

showed how deeply sorrow had taken hold of her young heart; and perhaps

she thought justly that the most upright judge and the most righteous

tribunals could do nothing to repair her heaviest wrongs. Something,

however, would perhaps have been done, for it had been settled between

us at length, but unhappily on the very last time but one that I was

ever to see her, that in a day or two we should go together before a

magistrate, and that I should speak on her behalf. This little service

it was destined, however, that I should never realise. Meantime, that

which she rendered to me, and which was greater than I could ever have

repaid her, was this:—One night, when we were pacing slowly along

Oxford Street, and after a day when I had felt more than usually ill

and faint, I requested her to turn off with me into Soho Square.

Thither we went, and we sat down on the steps of a house, which to this

hour I never pass without a pang of grief and an inner act of homage to

the spirit of that unhappy girl, in memory of the noble action which

she there performed. Suddenly, as we sate, I grew much worse. I had

been leaning my head against her bosom, and all at once I sank from her

arms and fell backwards on the steps. From the sensations I then had, I

felt an inner conviction of the liveliest kind, that without some

powerful and reviving stimulus I should either have died on the spot,

or should at least have sunk to a point of exhaustion from which all

reäscent under my friendless circumstances would soon have become

hopeless. Then it was, at this crisis of my fate, that my poor orphan

companion, who had herself met with little but injuries in this world,

stretched out a saving hand to me. Uttering a cry of terror, but

without a moment’s delay, she ran off into Oxford Street, and in less

time than could be imagined returned to me with a glass of port wine

and spices, that acted upon my empty stomach, which at that time would

have rejected all solid food, with an instantaneous power of

restoration; and for this glass the generous girl without a murmur paid

out of her humble purse at a time—be it remembered!—when she had

scarcely wherewithal to purchase the bare necessaries of life, and when

she could have no reason to expect that I should ever be able to

reimburse her.

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—