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BLACKWOOD'S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
NO. CCCLIII. MARCH, 1845. VOL. LVII.
CONTENTS.
SUSPIRIA DE PROFUNDIS: BEING A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS OF AN
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER, 269
MRS POOLE'S "ENGLISHWOMAN IN EGYPT," 286
PRACTICAL AGRICULTURE--STEPHENS' BOOK OF THE FARM, &C., 298
STANZAS, 314
LORD MALMESBURY'S DIARIES AND CORRESPONDENCE 315
GERMAN-AMERICAN ROMANCES. PART II., 331
BRITISH HISTORY DURING THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, 353
NORTH'S SPECIMENS OF THE BRITISH CRITICS. NO. II--DRYDEN AND POPE, 369
EDINBURGH:
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, 45, GEORGE STREET;
AND 22 PALL-MALL, LONDON
_To whom all Communications (post paid) must be addressed._
SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.
PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND HUGHES, EDINBURGH.
BLACKWOOD'S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
NO. CCCLIII. MARCH, 1845. VOL. LVII.
SUSPIRIA DE PROFUNDIS: BEING A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH
OPIUM-EATER.
INTRODUCTORY NOTICE.
In 1821, as a contribution to a periodical work--in 1822, as a separate
volume--appeared the "Confessions of an English Opium-Eater." The object
of that work was to reveal something of the grandeur which belongs
_potentially_ to human dreams. Whatever may be the number of those in whom
this faculty of dreaming splendidly can be supposed to lurk, there are not
perhaps very many in whom it is developed. He whose talk is of oxen, will
probably dream of oxen: and the condition of human life, which yokes so
vast a majority to a daily experience incompatible with much elevation of
thought, oftentimes neutralizes the tone of grandeur in the reproductive
faculty of dreaming, even for those whose minds are populous with solemn
imagery. Habitually to dream magnificently, a man must have a
constitutional determination to reverie. This in the first place; and even
this, where it exists strongly, is too much liable to disturbance from the
gathering agitation of our present English life. Already, in this year
1845, what by the procession through fifty years of mighty revolutions
amongst the kingdoms of the earth, what by the continual development of
vast physical agencies--steam in all its applications, light getting under
harness as a slave for man,[1] powers from heaven descending upon
education and accelerations of the press, powers from hell (as it might
seem, but these also celestial) coming round upon artillery and the forces
of destruction--the eye of the calmest observer is troubled; the brain is
haunted as if by some jealousy of ghostly beings moving amongst us; and it
becomes too evident that, unless this colossal pace of advance can be
retarded, (a thing not to be expected,) or, which is happily more
probable, can be met by counter-forces of corresponding magnitude, forces
in the direction of religion or profound philosophy, that shall radiate
centrifugally against this storm of life so perilously centripetal towards
the vortex of the merely human, left to itself the natural tendency of so
chaotic a tumult must be to evil; for some minds to lunacy, for others to
a reagency of fleshly torpor. How much this fierce condition of eternal
hurry, upon an arena too exclusively human in its interests, is likely to
defeat the grandeur which is latent in all men, may be seen in the
ordinary effect from living too constantly in varied company. The word
_dissipation_, in one of its uses, expresses that effect; the action of
thought and feeling is too much dissipated and squandered. To
reconcentrate them into meditative habits, a necessity is felt by all
observing persons for sometimes retiring from crowds. No man ever will
unfold the capacities of his own intellect who does not at least chequer
his life with solitude. How much solitude, so much power. Or, if not true
in that rigour of expression, to this formula undoubtedly it is that the
wise rule of life must approximate.
Among the powers in man which suffer by this too intense life of the
_social_ instincts, none suffers more than the power of dreaming. Let no
man think this a trifle. The machinery for dreaming planted in the human
brain was not planted for nothing. That faculty, in alliance with the
mystery of darkness, is the one great tube through which man communicates
with the shadowy. And the dreaming organ, in connexion with the heart, the
eye, and the ear, compose the magnificent apparatus which forces the
infinite into the chambers of a human brain, and throws dark reflections
from eternities below all life upon the mirrors of the sleeping mind.
But if this faculty suffers from the decay of solitude, which is becoming
a visionary idea in England, on the other hand, it is certain that some
merely physical agencies can and do assist the faculty of dreaming almost
preternaturally. Amongst these is intense exercise; to some extent at
least, and for some persons: but beyond all others is opium, which indeed
seems to possess a _specific_ power in that direction; not merely for
exalting the colours of dream-scenery, but for deepening its shadows; and,
above all, for strengthening the sense of its fearful _realities_.
The _Opium Confessions_ were written with some slight secondary purpose of
exposing this specific power of opium upon the faculty of dreaming, but
much more with the purpose of displaying the faculty itself; and the
outline of the work travelled in this course. Supposing a reader
acquainted with the true object of the Confessions as here stated, viz.
the revelation of dreaming, to have put this question:--
"But how came you to dream more splendidly than others?"
The answer would have been:--"Because (_praemissis praemittendis_) I took
excessive quantities of opium."
Secondly, suppose him to say, "But how came you to take opium in this
excess?"
The answer to _that_ would be, "Because some early events in my life had
left a weakness in one organ which required (or seemed to require) that
stimulant."
Then, because the opium dreams could not always have been understood
without a knowledge of these events, it became necessary to relate them.
Now, these two questions and answers exhibit the _law_ of the work, _i.e._
the principle which determined its form, but precisely in the inverse or
regressive order. The work itself opened with the narration of my early
adventures. These, in the natural order of succession, led to the opium as
a resource for healing their consequences; and the opium as naturally led
to the dreams. But in the synthetic order of presenting the facts, what
stood last in the succession of development, stood first in the order of
my purposes.
At the close of this little work, the reader was instructed to
believe--and _truly_ instructed--that I had mastered the tyranny of opium.
The fact is, that _twice_ I mastered it, and by efforts even more
prodigious, in the second of these cases, than in the first. But one error
I committed in both. I did not connect with the abstinence from opium--so
trying to the fortitude under _any_ circumstances--that enormity of
exercise which (as I have since learned) is the one sole resource for
making it endurable. I overlooked, in those days, the one _sine qua non_
for making the triumph permanent. Twice I sank--twice I rose again. A
third time I sank; partly from the cause mentioned, (the oversight as to
exercise,) partly from other causes, on which it avails not now to trouble
the reader. I could moralize if I chose; and perhaps _he_ will moralize
whether I choose it or not. But, in the mean time, neither of us is
acquainted properly with the circumstances of the case; I, from natural
bias of judgment, not altogether acquainted; and he (with his permission)
not at all.
During this third prostration before the dark idol, and after some years,
new and monstrous phenomena began slowly to arise. For a time, these were
neglected as accidents, or palliated by such remedies as I knew of. But
when I could no longer conceal from myself that these dreadful symptoms
were moving forward for ever, by a pace steadily, solemnly, and equably
increasing, I endeavoured, with some feeling of panic, for a third time to
retrace my steps. But I had not reversed my motions for many weeks, before
I became profoundly aware that this was impossible. Or, in the imagery of
my dreams, which translated every thing into their own language, I saw
through vast avenues of gloom those towering gates of ingress which
hitherto had always seemed to stand open, now at last barred against my
retreat, and hung with funeral crape.
As applicable to this tremendous situation, (the situation of one escaping
by some refluent current from the maelstrom roaring for him in the
distance, who finds suddenly that this current is but an eddy, wheeling
round upon the same maelstrom,) I have since remembered a striking
incident in a modern novel. A lady abbess of a convent, herself suspected
of Protestant leanings, and in that way already disarmed of all effectual
power, finds one of her own nuns (whom she knows to be innocent) accused
of an offence leading to the most terrific of punishments. The nun will be
immured alive if she is found guilty; and there is no chance that she will
not--for the evidence against her is strong--unless something were made
known that cannot be made known; and the judges are hostile. All follows
in the order of the reader's fears. The witnesses depose; the evidence is
without effectual contradiction; the conviction is declared; the judgment
is delivered; nothing remains but to see execution done. At this crisis
the abbess, alarmed too late for effectual interposition, considers with
herself that, according to the regular forms, there will be one single
night open during which the prisoner cannot be withdrawn from her own
separate jurisdiction. This one night, therefore, she will use, at any
hazard to herself, for the salvation of her friend. At midnight, when all
is hushed in the convent, the lady traverses the passages which lead to
the cells of prisoners. She bears a master-key under her professional
habit. As this will open every door in every corridor,--already, by
anticipation, she feels the luxury of holding her emancipated friend
within her arms. Suddenly she has reached the door; she descries a dusky
object; she raises her lamp; and, ranged within the recess of the
entrance, she beholds the funeral banner of the Holy Office, and the black
robes of its inexorable officials.
I apprehend that, in a situation such as this, supposing it a real one,
the lady abbess would not start, would not show any marks externally of
consternation or horror. The case was beyond _that_. The sentiment which
attends the sudden revelation that _all is lost_! silently is gathered up
into the heart; it is too deep for gestures or for words; and no part of
it passes to the outside. Were the ruin conditional, or were it in any
point doubtful, it would be natural to utter ejaculations, and to seek
sympathy. But where the ruin is understood to be absolute, where sympathy
cannot be consolation, and counsel cannot be hope, this is otherwise. The
voice perishes; the gestures are frozen; and the spirit of man flies back
upon its own centre. I, at least, upon seeing those awful gates closed and
hung with draperies of woe, as for a death already past, spoke not, nor
started, nor groaned. One profound sigh ascended from my heart, and I was
silent for days.
It is the record of this third, or final stage of opium, as one differing
in something more than degree from the others, that I am now undertaking.
But a scruple arises as to the true interpretation of these final
symptoms. I have elsewhere explained, that it was no particular purpose of
mine, and _why_ it was no particular purpose, to warn other opium-eaters.
Still, as some few persons may use the record in that way, it becomes a
matter of interest to ascertain how far it is likely, that, even with the
same excesses, other opium-eaters could fall into the same condition. I do
not mean to lay a stress upon any supposed idiosyncrasy in myself.
Possibly every man has an idiosyncrasy. In some things, undoubtedly, he
has. For no man ever yet resembled another man so far, as not to differ
from him in features innumerable of his inner nature. But what I point to
are not peculiarities of temperament or of organization, so much as
peculiar circumstances and incidents through which my own separate
experience had revolved. Some of these were of a nature to alter the whole
economy of my mind. Great convulsions, from whatever cause, from
conscience, from fear, from grief, from struggles of the will, sometimes,
in passing away themselves, do not carry off the changes which they have
worked. _All_ the agitations of this magnitude which a man may have
threaded in his life, he neither ought to report, nor _could_ report. But
one which affected my childhood is a privileged exception. It is
privileged as a proper communication for a stranger's ear; because, though
relating to a man's proper self, it is a self so far removed from his
present self as to wound no feelings of delicacy or just reserve. It is
privileged also as a proper subject for the sympathy of the narrator. An
adult sympathizes with himself in childhood because he _is_ the same, and
because (being the same) yet he is _not_ the same. He acknowledges the
deep, mysterious identity between himself, as adult and as infant, for the
ground of his sympathy; and yet, with this general agreement, and
necessity of agreement, he feels the differences between his two selves as
the main quickeners of his sympathy. He pities the infirmities, as they
arise to light in his young forerunner, which now perhaps he does not
share; he looks indulgently upon errors of the understanding, or
limitations of view which now he has long survived; and sometimes, also,
he honours in the infant that rectitude of will which, under _some_
temptations, he may since have felt it so difficult to maintain.
The particular case to which I refer in my own childhood, was one of
intolerable grief; a trial, in fact, more severe than many people at _any_
age are called upon to stand. The relation in which the case stands to my
latter opium experiences, is this:--Those vast clouds of gloomy grandeur
which overhung my dreams at all stages of opium, but which grew into the
darkest of miseries in the last, and that haunting of the human face,
which latterly towered into a curse--were they not partly derived from
this childish experience? It is certain that, from the essential solitude
in which my childhood was passed; from the depth of my sensibility; from
the exaltation of this by the resistance of an intellect too prematurely
developed, it resulted that the terrific grief which I passed through,
drove a shaft for me into the worlds of death and darkness which never
again closed, and through which it might be said that I ascended and
descended at will, according to the temper of my spirits. Some of the
phenomena developed in my dream-scenery, undoubtedly, do but repeat the
experiences of childhood; and others seem likely to have been growths and
fructifications from seeds at that time sown.
The reasons, therefore, for prefixing some account of a "passage" in
childhood, to this record of a dreadful visitation from opium excess,
are--1st, That, in colouring, it harmonizes with that record, and,
therefore, is related to it at least in point of feeling; 2dly, That
possibly it was in part the origin of some features in that record, and so
far is related to it in logic; 3dly, That, the final assault of opium
being of a nature to challenge the attention of medical men, it is
important to clear away all doubts and scruples which can gather about the
roots of such a malady. Was it opium, or was it opium in combination with
something else, that raised these storms?
Some cynical reader will object--that for this last purpose it would have
been sufficient to state the fact, without rehearsing _in extenso_ the
particulars of that case in childhood. But the reader of more kindness
(for a surly reader is always a bad critic) will also have more
discernment; and he will perceive that it is not for the mere facts that
the case is reported, but because these facts move through a wilderness of
natural thoughts or feelings; some in the child who suffers; some in the
man who reports; but all so far interesting as they relate to solemn
objects. Meantime, the objection of the sullen critic reminds me of a
scene sometimes beheld at the English lakes. Figure to yourself an
energetic tourist, who protests every where that he comes only to see the
lakes. He has no business whatever; he is not searching for any recreant
indorser of a bill, but simply in search of the picturesque. Yet this man
adjures every landlord, "by the virtue of his oath," to tell him, and as
he hopes for peace in this world to tell him truly, which is the _nearest_
road to Keswick. Next, he applies to the postilions--the Westmoreland
postilions always fly down hills at full stretch without locking--but
nevertheless, in the full career of their fiery race, our picturesque man
lets down the glasses, pulls up four horses and two postilions, at the
risk of six necks and twenty legs, adjuring them to reveal whether they
are taking the _shortest_ road. Finally, he descries my unworthy self upon
the road; and, instantly stopping his flying equipage, he demands of me
(as one whom he believes to be a scholar and a man of honour) whether
there is not, in the possibility of things, a _shorter_ cut to Keswick.
Now, the answer which rises to the lips of landlord, two postilions, and
myself, is this--"Most excellent stranger, as you come to the lakes simply
to see their loveliness, might it not be as well to ask after the most
beautiful road, rather than the shortest? Because, if abstract shortness,
if [Greek: to] brevity is your object, then the shortest of all possible
tours would seem, with submission--never to have left London." On the same
principle, I tell my critic that the whole course of this narrative
resembles, and was meant to resemble, a _caduceus_ wreathed about with
meandering ornaments, or the shaft of a tree's stem hung round and
surmounted with some vagrant parasitical plant. The mere medical subject
of the opium answers to the dry withered pole, which shoots all the rings
of the flowering plants, and seems to do so by some dexterity of its own;
whereas, in fact, the plant and its tendrils have curled round the sullen
cylinder by mere luxuriance of _theirs_. Just as in Cheapside, if you look
right and left, the streets so narrow, that lead off at right angles, seem
quarried and blasted out of some Babylonian brick kiln; bored, not raised
artificially by the builder's hand. But, if you enquire of the worthy men
who live in that neighbourhood, you will find it unanimously deposed--that
not the streets were quarried out of the bricks, but, on the contrary,
(most ridiculous as it seems,) that the bricks have supervened upon the
streets.
The streets did not intrude amongst the bricks, but those cursed bricks
came to imprison the streets. So, also, the ugly pole--hop pole, vine
pole, espalier, no matter what--is there only for support. Not the flowers
are for the pole, but the pole is for the flowers. Upon the same analogy
view me, as one (in the words of a true and most impassioned poet[2])
"_viridantem floribus hastas_"--making verdant, and gay with the life of
flowers, murderous spears and halberts--things that express death in their
origin, (being made from dead substances that once had lived in forests,)
things that express ruin in their use. The true object in my "Opium
Confessions" is not the naked physiological theme--on the contrary, _that_
is the ugly pole, the murderous spear, the halbert--but those wandering
musical variations upon the theme--those parasitical thoughts, feelings,
digressions, which climb up with bells and blossoms round about the arid
stock; ramble away from it at times with perhaps too rank a luxuriance;
but at the same time, by the eternal interest attached to the _subjects_
of these digressions, no matter what were the execution, spread a glory
over incidents that for themselves would be--less than nothing.
SUSPIRIA DE PROFUNDIS. PART I.
THE AFFLICTION OF CHILDHOOD.
It is so painful to a lover of open-hearted sincerity, that any indirect
traits of vanity should even _seem_ to creep into records of profound
passion; and yet, on the other hand, it is so impossible, without an
unnatural restraint upon the freedom of the narrative, to prevent oblique
gleams reaching the reader from such circumstances of luxury or elegance
as did really surround my childhood, that on all accounts I think it
better to tell him from the first, with the simplicity of truth, in what
order of society my family moved at the time from which this preliminary
narrative is dated. Otherwise it would happen that, merely by moving truly
and faithfully through the circumstances of this early experience, I could
hardly prevent the reader from receiving an impression as of some higher
rank than did really belong to my family. My father was a merchant; not in
the sense of Scotland, where it means a man who sells groceries in a
cellar, but in the English sense, a sense severely exclusive--viz. he was
a man engaged in _foreign_ commerce, and no other; therefore, in
_wholesale_ commerce, and no other--which last circumstance it is
important to mention, because it brings him within the benefit of Cicero's
condescending distinction[3]--as one to be despised, certainly, but not
too intensely to be despised even by a Roman senator. He, this imperfectly
despicable man, died at an early age, and very soon after the incidents
here recorded, leaving to his family, then consisting of a wife and six
children, an unburthened estate producing exactly L1600 a-year. Naturally,
therefore, at the date of my narrative, if narrative it can be called, he
had an income still larger, from the addition of current commercial
profits. Now, to any man who is acquainted with commercial life, but above
all with such life in England, it will readily occur that in an opulent
English family of that class--opulent, though not rich in a mercantile
estimate--the domestic economy is likely to be upon a scale of liberality
altogether unknown amongst the corresponding orders in foreign nations.
Whether as to the establishment of servants, or as to the provision made
for the comfort of all its members, such a household not uncommonly
eclipses the scale of living even amongst the poorer classes of our
nobility, though the most splendid in Europe--a fact which, since the
period of my infancy, I have had many personal opportunities for verifying
both in England and in Ireland. From this peculiar anomaly affecting the
domestic economy of merchants, there arises a disturbance upon the general
scale of outward signs by which we measure the relations of rank. The
equation, so to speak, between one order of society and another, which
usually travels in the natural line of their comparative expenditure, is
here interrupted and defeated, so that one rank would be collected from
the name of the occupation, and another rank, much higher, from the
splendour of the domestic _menage_. I warn the reader, therefore, (or
rather, my explanation has already warned him,) that he is not to infer
from any casual gleam of luxury or elegance a corresponding elevation of
rank.
We, the children of the house, stood in fact upon the very happiest tier
in the scaffolding of society for all good influences. The prayer of
Agar--"Give me neither poverty nor riches"--was realized for us. That
blessing had we, being neither too high nor too low; high enough we were
to see models of good manners; obscure enough to be left in the sweetest
of solitudes. Amply furnished with the nobler benefits of wealth, _extra_
means of health, of intellectual culture, and of elegant enjoyment, on
the other hand, we knew nothing of its social distinctions. Not depressed
by the consciousness of privations too sordid, not tempted into
restlessness by the consciousness of privileges too aspiring, we had no
motives for shame, we had none for pride. Grateful also to this hour I am,
that, amidst luxuries in all things else, we were trained to a Spartan
simplicity of diet--that we fared, in fact, very much less sumptuously
than the servants. And if (after the model of the emperor Marcus Aurelius)
I should return thanks to Providence for all the separate blessings of my
early situation, these four I would single out as chiefly worthy to be
commemorated--that I lived in the country; that I lived in solitude; that
my infant feelings were moulded by the gentlest of sisters, not by horrid
pugilistic brothers; finally, that I and they were dutiful children of a
pure, holy, and magnificent church.
* * * * *
The earliest incidents in my life which affected me so deeply as to be
rememberable at this day, were two, and both before I could have completed
my second year, viz. a remarkable dream of terrific grandeur about a
favourite nurse, which is interesting for a reason to be noticed
hereafter; and secondly, the fact of having connected a profound sense of
pathos with the re-appearance, very early in spring, of some crocuses.
This I mention as inexplicable, for such annual resurrections of plants
and flowers affect us only as memorials, or suggestions of a higher
change, and therefore in connexion with the idea of death; but of death I
could, at that time, have had no experience whatever.
This, however, I was speedily to acquire. My two eldest sisters--eldest of
three _then_ living, and also elder than myself--were summoned to an early
death. The first who died was Jane--about a year older than myself. She
was three and a half, I two and a half, _plus_ or _minus_ some trifle that
I do not recollect. But death was then scarcely intelligible to me, and I
could not so properly be said to suffer sorrow as a sad perplexity. There
was another death in the house about the same time, viz. of a maternal
grandmother; but as she had in a manner come to us for the express purpose
of dying in her daughter's society, and from illness had lived perfectly
secluded, our nursery party knew her but little, and were certainly more
affected by the death (which I witnessed) of a favourite bird, viz. a
kingfisher who had been injured by an accident. With my sister Jane's
death [though otherwise, as I have said, less sorrowful than
unintelligible] there was, however, connected an incident which made a
most fearful impression upon myself, deepening my tendencies to
thoughtfulness and abstraction beyond what would seem credible for my
years. If there was one thing in this world from which, more than from any
other, nature had forced me to revolt, it was brutality and violence. Now
a whisper arose in the family, that a woman-servant, who by accident was
drawn off from her proper duties to attend my sister Jane for a day or
two, had on one occasion treated her harshly, if not brutally; and as this
ill treatment happened within two days of her death--so that the occasion
of it must have been some fretfulness in the poor child caused by her
sufferings--naturally there was a sense of awe diffused through the
family. I believe the story never reached my mother, and possibly it was
exaggerated; but upon me the effect was terrific. I did not often see the
person charged with this cruelty; but, when I did, my eyes sought the
ground; nor could I have borne to look her in the face--not through anger;
and as to vindictive thoughts, how could these lodge in a powerless
infant? The feeling which fell upon me was a shuddering awe, as upon a
first glimpse of the truth that I was in a world of evil and strife.
Though born in a large town, I had passed the whole of my childhood,
except for the few earliest weeks, in a rural seclusion. With three
innocent little sisters for playmates, sleeping always amongst them, and
shut up for ever in a silent garden from all knowledge of poverty, or
oppression, or outrage, I had not suspected until this moment the true
complexion of the world in which myself and my sisters were living.
Henceforward the character of my thoughts must have changed greatly; for
so _representative_ are some acts, that one single case of the class is
sufficient to throw open before you the whole theatre of possibilities in
that direction. I never heard that the woman, accused of this cruelty,
took it at all to heart, even after the event, which so immediately
succeeded, had reflected upon it a more painful emphasis. On the other
hand, I knew of a case, and will pause to mention it, where a mere
semblance and shadow of such cruelty, under similar circumstances,
inflicted the grief of self-reproach through the remainder of life. A boy,
interesting in his appearance, as also from his remarkable docility, was
attacked, on a cold day of spring, by a complaint of the trachea--not
precisely croup, but like it. He was three years old, and had been ill
perhaps for four days; but at intervals had been in high spirits, and
capable of playing. This sunshine, gleaming through dark clouds, had
continued even on the fourth day; and from nine to eleven o'clock at
night, he had showed more animated pleasure than ever. An old servant,
hearing of his illness, had called to see him; and her mode of talking
with him had excited all the joyousness of his nature. About midnight his
mother, fancying that his feet felt cold, was muffling them up in
flannels; and, as he seemed to resist her a little, she struck lightly on
the sole of one foot as a mode of admonishing him to be quiet. He did not
repeat his motion; and in less than a minute his mother had him in her
arms with his face looking upwards. "What is the meaning," she exclaimed,
in sudden affright, "of this strange repose settling upon his features?"
She called loudly to a servant in another room; but before the servant
could reach her, the child had drawn two inspirations--deep, yet
gentle--and had died in his mother's arms. Upon this the poor afflicted
lady made the discovery that those struggles, which she had supposed to be
expressions of resistance to herself, were the struggles of departing
life. It followed, or seemed to follow, that with these final struggles
had blended an expression, on _her_ part, of displeasure. Doubtless the
child had not distinctly perceived it; but the mother could never look
back to the incident without self-reproach. And seven years after, when
her own death happened, no progress had been made in reconciling her
thoughts to that which only the depth of love could have viewed as any
offence.
So passed away from earth one out of those sisters that made up my nursery
playmates; and so did my acquaintance (if such it could be called)
commence with mortality. Yet, in fact, I knew little more of mortality
than that Jane had disappeared. She had gone away; but, perhaps, she would
come back. Happy interval of heaven-born ignorance! Gracious immunity of
infancy from sorrow disproportioned to its strength! I was sad for Jane's
absence. But still in my heart I trusted that she would come again. Summer
and winter came again--crocuses and roses; why not little Jane?
Thus easily was healed, then, the first wound in my infant heart. Not so
the second. For thou, dear, noble Elizabeth, around whose ample brow, as
often as thy sweet countenance rises upon the darkness, I fancy a tiara of
light or a gleaming _aureola_ in token of thy premature intellectual
grandeur--thou whose head, for its superb developments, was the
astonishment of science[4]--thou next, but after an interval of happy
years, thou also wert summoned away from our nursery; and the night which,
for me, gathered upon that event, ran after my steps far into life; and
perhaps at this day I resemble little for good or for ill that which else
I should have been. Pillar of fire, that didst go before me to guide and
to quicken--pillar of darkness, when thy countenance was turned away to
God, that didst too truly shed the shadow of death over my young heart--in
what scales should I weigh thee? Was the blessing greater from thy
heavenly presence, or the blight which followed thy departure? Can a man
weigh off and value the glories of dawn against the darkness of hurricane?
Or, if he could, how is it that, when a memorable love has been followed
by a memorable bereavement, even suppose that God would replace the
sufferer in a point of time anterior to the entire experience, and offer
to cancel the woe, but so that the sweet face which had caused the woe
should also be obliterated--vehemently would every man shrink from the
exchange! In the _Paradise Lost_, this strong instinct of man--to prefer
the heavenly, mixed and polluted with the earthly, to a level experience
offering neither one nor the other--is divinely commemorated. What worlds
of pathos are in that speech of Adam's--"If God should make another Eve,"
&c.--that is, if God should replace him in his primitive state, and should
condescend to bring again a second Eve, one that would listen to no
temptation--still that original partner of his earliest solitude--
"Creature in whom excell'd
Whatever can to sight or thought be form'd,
Holy, divine, good, amiable, or sweet"--
even now, when she appeared in league with an eternity of woe, and
ministering to his ruin, could not be displaced for him by any better or
happier Eve. "Loss of thee!" he exclaims in this anguish of trial--
"Loss of thee
Would never from my heart; no, no, I feel
The link of nature draw me; flesh of flesh,
Bone of my bone thou art; and from thy state
Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe."[5]
But what was it that drew my heart, by gravitation so strong, to my
sister? Could a child, little above six years of age, place any special
value upon her intellectual forwardness? Serene and capacious as her mind
appeared to me upon after review, was _that_ a charm for stealing away the
heart of an infant? Oh, no! I think of it _now_ with interest, because it
lends, in a stranger's ear, some justification to the excess of my
fondness. But then it was lost upon me; or, if not lost, was but dimly
perceived. Hadst thou been an idiot, my sister, not the less I must have
loved thee--having that capacious heart overflowing, even as mine
overflowed, with tenderness, and stung, even as mine was stung, by the
necessity of being loved. This it was which crowned thee with beauty--
"Love, the holy sense,
Best gift of God, in thee was most intense."
That lamp lighted in Paradise was kindled for me which shone so steadily
in thee; and never but to thee only, never again since thy departure,
_durst_ I utter the feelings which possessed me. For I was the shiest of
children; and a natural sense of personal dignity held me back at all
stages of life, from exposing the least ray of feelings which I was not
encouraged _wholly_ to reveal.
It would be painful, and it is needless, to pursue the course of that
sickness which carried off my leader and companion. She (according to my
recollection at this moment) was just as much above eight years as I above
six. And perhaps this natural precedency in authority of judgment, and the
tender humility with which she declined to assert it, had been amongst the
fascinations of her presence. It was upon a Sunday evening, or so people
fancied, that the spark of fatal fire fell upon that train of
predispositions to a brain-complaint which had hitherto slumbered within
her. She had been permitted to drink tea at the house of a labouring man,
the father of an old female servant. The sun had set when she returned in
the company of this servant through meadows reeking with exhalations after
a fervent day. From that time she sickened. Happily a child in such
circumstances feels no anxieties. Looking upon medical men as people whose
natural commission it is to heal diseases, since it is their natural
function to profess it, knowing them only as _ex-officio_ privileged to
make war upon pain and sickness--I never had a misgiving about the result.
I grieved indeed that my sister should lie in bed: I grieved still more
sometimes to hear her moan. But all this appeared to me no more than a
night of trouble on which the dawn would soon arise. Oh! moment of
darkness and delirium, when a nurse awakened me from that delusion, and
launched God's thunderbolt at my heart in the assurance that my sister
_must_ die. Rightly it is said of utter, utter misery, that it "cannot be
_remembered_."[6] Itself, as a remembrable thing, is swallowed up in its
own chaos. Mere anarchy and confusion of mind fell upon me. Deaf and blind
I was, as I reeled under the revelation. I wish not to recal the
circumstances of that time, when _my_ agony was at its height, and hers in
another sense was approaching. Enough to say--that all was soon over; and
the morning of that day had at last arrived which looked down upon her
innocent face, sleeping the sleep from which there is no awaking, and upon
me sorrowing the sorrow for which there is no consolation.
On the day after my sister's death, whilst the sweet temple of her brain
was yet unviolated by human scrutiny, I formed my own scheme for seeing
her once more. Not for the world would I have made this known, nor have
suffered a witness to accompany me. I had never heard of feelings that
take the name of "sentimental," nor dreamed of such a possibility. But
grief even in a child hates the light, and shrinks from human eyes. The
house was large; there were two staircases; and by one of these I knew
that about noon, when all would be quiet, I could steal up into her
chamber. I imagine that it was exactly high noon when I reached the
chamber door; it was locked; but the key was not taken away. Entering, I
closed the door so softly, that, although it opened upon a hall which
ascended through all the stories, no echo ran along the silent walls. Then
turning round, I sought my sister's face. But the bed had been moved; and
the back was now turned. Nothing met my eyes but one large window wide
open, through which the sun of midsummer at noonday was showering down
torrents of splendour. The weather was dry, the sky was cloudless, the
blue depths seemed the express types of infinity; and it was not possible
for eye to behold or for heart to conceive any symbols more pathetic of
life and the glory of life.
Let me pause for one instant in approaching a remembrance so affecting and
revolutionary for my own mind, and one which (if any earthly remembrance)
will survive for me in the hour of death,--to remind some readers, and to
inform others, that in the original _Opium Confessions_ I endeavoured to
explain the reason[7] why death, _caeteris paribus_, is more profoundly
affecting in summer than in other parts of the year; so far at least as it
is liable to any modification at all from accidents of scenery or season.
The reason, as I there suggested, lies in the antagonism between the
tropical redundancy of life in summer and the dark sterilities of the
grave. The summer we see, the grave we haunt with our thoughts; the glory
is around us, the darkness is within us. And, the two coming into
collision, each exalts the other into stronger relief. But in my case
there was even a subtler reason why the summer had this intense power of
vivifying the spectacle or the thoughts of death. And, recollecting it,
often I have been struck with the important truth--that far more of our
deepest thoughts and feelings pass to us through perplexed combinations of
_concrete_ objects, pass to us as _involutes_ (if I may coin that word) in
compound experiences incapable of being disentangled, than ever reach us
_directly_, and in their own abstract shapes. It had happened that amongst
our nursery collection of books was the Bible illustrated with many
pictures. And in long dark evenings, as my three sisters with myself sate
by the firelight round the _guard_ of our nursery, no book was so much in
request amongst us. It ruled us and swayed us as mysteriously as music.
One young nurse, whom we all loved, before any candle was lighted, would
often strain her eyes to read it for us; and sometimes, according to her
simple powers, would endeavour to explain what we found obscure. We, the
children, were all constitutionally touched with pensiveness; the fitful
gloom and sudden lambencies of the room by fire-light, suited our evening
state of feelings; and they suited also the divine revelations of power
and mysterious beauty which awed us. Above all, the story of a just
man,--man and yet _not_ man, real above all things and yet shadowy above
all things, who had suffered the passion of death in Palestine, slept upon
our minds like early dawn upon the waters. The nurse knew and explained to
us the chief differences in Oriental climates; and all these differences
(as it happens) express themselves in the great varieties of summer. The
cloudless sunlights of Syria--those seemed to argue everlasting summer;
the disciples plucking the ears of corn--that _must_ be summer; but, above
all, the very name of Palm Sunday, (a festival in the English church,)
troubled me like an anthem. "Sunday!" what was _that_? That was the day of
peace which masqued another peace deeper than the heart of man can
comprehend. "Palms!"--what were they? _That_ was an equivocal word: palms,
in the sense of trophies, expressed the pomps of life: palms, as a product
of nature, expressed the pomps of summer. Yet still even this explanation
does not suffice: it was not merely by the peace and by the summer, by the
deep sound of rest below all rest, and of ascending glory,--that I had
been haunted. It was also because Jerusalem stood near to those deep
images both in time and in place. The great event of Jerusalem was at hand
when Palm Sunday came; and the scene of that Sunday was near in place to
Jerusalem. Yet what then was Jerusalem? Did I fancy it to be the
_omphalos_ (navel) of the earth? That pretension had once been made for
Jerusalem, and once for Delphi; and both pretensions had become
ridiculous, as the figure of the planet became known. Yes; but if not of
the earth, for earth's tenant Jerusalem was the _omphalos_ of mortality.
Yet how? there on the contrary it was, as we infants understood, that
mortality had been trampled under foot. True; but for that very reason
there it was that mortality had opened its very gloomiest crater. There it
was indeed that the human had risen on wings from the grave; but for that
reason there also it was that the divine had been swallowed up by the
abyss: the lesser star could not rise, before the greater would submit to
eclipse. Summer, therefore, had connected itself with death not merely as
a mode of antagonism, but also through intricate relations to Scriptural
scenery and events.
Out of this digression, which was almost necessary for the purpose of
showing how inextricably my feelings and images of death were entangled
with those of summer, I return to the bedchamber of my sister. From the
gorgeous sunlight I turned round to the corpse. There lay the sweet
childish figure, there the angel face: and, as people usually fancy, it as
said in the house that no features had suffered any change. Had they not?
The forehead indeed, the serene and noble forehead, _that_ might be the
same; but the frozen eyelids, the darkness that seemed to steal from
beneath them, the marble lips, the stiffening hands, laid palm to palm, as
if repeating the supplications of closing anguish, could these be mistaken
for life? Had it been so, wherefore did I not spring to those heavenly
lips with tears and never-ending kisses? But so it as _not_. I stood
checked for a moment; awe, not fear, fell upon me; and, whilst I stood, a
solemn wind began to blow--the most mournful that ear ever heard.
Mournful! that is saying nothing. It was a wind that had swept the fields
of mortality for a hundred centuries. Many times since, upon a summer day,
when the sun is about the hottest, I have remarked the same wind arising
and uttering the same hollow, solemn, Memnonian, but saintly swell: it is
in this world the one sole _audible_ symbol of eternity. And three times
in my life I have happened to hear the same sound in the same
circumstances, viz. when standing between an open window and a dead body
on a summer day.
Instantly, when my ear caught this vast AEolian intonation, when my eye
filled with the golden fulness of life, the pomps and glory of the heavens
outside, and turning when it settled upon the frost which overspread my
sister's face, instantly a trance fell upon me. A vault seemed to open in
the zenith of the far blue sky, a shaft which ran up for ever. I in spirit
rose as if on billows that also ran up the shaft for ever; and the billows
seemed to pursue the throne of God; but _that_ also ran before us and fled
away continually. The flight and the pursuit seemed to go on for ever and
ever. Frost, gathering frost, some Sarsar wind of death, seemed to repel
me; I slept--for how long I cannot say; slowly I recovered my
self-possession, and found myself standing, as before, close to my
sister's bed.
Oh[8] flight of the solitary child to the solitary God--flight from the
ruined corpse to the throne that could not be ruined!--how rich wert thou
in truth for after years. Rapture of grief, that, being too mighty for a
child to sustain, foundest a happy oblivion in a heaven-born sleep, and
within that sleep didst conceal a dream, whose meanings in after years,
when slowly I deciphered, suddenly there flashed upon me a new light; and
even by the grief of a child, as I will show you reader hereafter, were
confounded the falsehoods of philosophers.[9]
In the _Opium Confessions_ I touched a little upon the extraordinary power
connected with opium (after long use) of amplifying the dimensions of
time. Space also it amplifies by degrees that are sometimes terrific. But
time it is upon which the exalting and multiplying power of opium chiefly
spends its operation. Time becomes infinitely elastic, stretching out to
such immeasurable and vanishing termini, that it seems ridiculous to
compute the sense of it on waking by expressions commensurate to human
life. As in starry fields one computes by diameters of the earth's orbit,
or of Jupiter's, so in valuing the _virtual_ time lived during some
dreams, the measurement by generations is ridiculous--by millennia is
ridiculous: by aeons, I should say, if aeons were more determinate, would be
also ridiculous. On this single occasion, however, in my life, the very
inverse phenomenon occurred. But why speak of it in connexion with opium?
Could a child of six years old have been under that influence? No, but
simply because it so exactly reversed the operation of opium. Instead of a
short interval expanding into a vast one, upon this occasion a long one
had contracted into a minute. I have reason to believe that a _very_ long
one had elapsed during this wandering or suspension of my perfect mind.
When I returned to myself, there was a foot (or I fancied so) on the
stairs. I was alarmed. For I believed that, if any body should detect me,
means would be taken to prevent my coming again. Hastily, therefore, I
kissed the lips that I should kiss no more, and slunk like a guilty thing
with stealthy steps from the room. Thus perished the vision, loveliest
amongst all the shows which earth has revealed to me; thus mutilated was
the parting which should have lasted for ever; thus tainted with fear was
the farewell sacred to love and grief, to perfect love and perfect grief.