Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
seemed to me, at the door of my own cottage. Right before me lay the
very scene which could really be commanded from that situation, but
exalted, as was usual, and solemnised by the power of dreams. There
were the same mountains, and the same lovely valley at their feet; but
the mountains were raised to more than Alpine height, and there was
interspace far larger between them of meadows and forest lawns; the
hedges were rich with white roses; and no living creature was to be
seen, excepting that in the green churchyard there were cattle
tranquilly reposing upon the verdant graves, and particularly round
about the grave of a child whom I had tenderly loved, just as I had
really beheld them, a little before sunrise in the same summer, when
that child died. I gazed upon the well-known scene, and I said aloud
(as I thought) to myself, “It yet wants much of sunrise, and it is
Easter Sunday; and that is the day on which they celebrate the first
fruits of resurrection. I will walk abroad; old griefs shall be
forgotten to-day; for the air is cool and still, and the hills are high
and stretch away to heaven; and the forest glades are as quiet as the
churchyard, and with the dew I can wash the fever from my forehead, and
then I shall be unhappy no longer.” And I turned as if to open my
garden gate, and immediately I saw upon the left a scene far different,
but which yet the power of dreams had reconciled into harmony with the
other. The scene was an Oriental one, and there also it was Easter
Sunday, and very early in the morning. And at a vast distance were
visible, as a stain upon the horizon, the domes and cupolas of a great
city—an image or faint abstraction, caught perhaps in childhood from
some picture of Jerusalem. And not a bow-shot from me, upon a stone and
shaded by Judean palms, there sat a woman, and I looked, and it
was—Ann! She fixed her eyes upon me earnestly, and I said to her at
length: “So, then, I have found you at last.” I waited, but she
answered me not a word. Her face was the same as when I saw it last,
and yet again how different! Seventeen years ago, when the lamplight
fell upon her face, as for the last time I kissed her lips (lips, Ann,
that to me were not polluted), her eyes were streaming with tears: the
tears were now wiped away; she seemed more beautiful than she was at
that time, but in all other points the same, and not older. Her looks
were tranquil, but with unusual solemnity of expression, and I now
gazed upon her with some awe; but suddenly her countenance grew dim,
and turning to the mountains I perceived vapours rolling between us. In
a moment all had vanished, thick darkness came on, and in the twinkling
of an eye I was far away from mountains, and by lamplight in Oxford
Street, walking again with Ann—just as we walked seventeen years
before, when we were both children.
As a final specimen, I cite one of a different character, from 1820.
The dream commenced with a music which now I often heard in dreams—a
music of preparation and of awakening suspense, a music like the
opening of the Coronation Anthem, and which, like _that_, gave the
feeling of a vast march, of infinite cavalcades filing off, and the
tread of innumerable armies. The morning was come of a mighty day—a day
of crisis and of final hope for human nature, then suffering some
mysterious eclipse, and labouring in some dread extremity. Somewhere, I
knew not where—somehow, I knew not how—by some beings, I knew not
whom—a battle, a strife, an agony, was conducting, was evolving like a
great drama or piece of music, with which my sympathy was the more
insupportable from my confusion as to its place, its cause, its nature,
and its possible issue. I, as is usual in dreams (where of necessity we
make ourselves central to every movement), had the power, and yet had
not the power, to decide it. I had the power, if I could raise myself
to will it, and yet again had not the power, for the weight of twenty
Atlantics was upon me, or the oppression of inexpiable guilt. “Deeper
than ever plummet sounded,” I lay inactive. Then like a chorus the
passion deepened. Some greater interest was at stake, some mightier
cause than ever yet the sword had pleaded, or trumpet had proclaimed.
Then came sudden alarms, hurryings to and fro, trepidations of
innumerable fugitives—I knew not whether from the good cause or the
bad, darkness and lights, tempest and human faces, and at last, with
the sense that all was lost, female forms, and the features that were
worth all the world to me, and but a moment allowed—and clasped hands,
and heart-breaking partings, and then—everlasting farewells! And with a
sigh, such as the caves of Hell sighed when the incestuous mother
uttered the abhorred name of death, the sound was
reverberated—everlasting farewells! And again and yet again
reverberated—everlasting farewells!
And I awoke in struggles, and cried aloud—“I will sleep no more.”
But I am now called upon to wind up a narrative which has already
extended to an unreasonable length. Within more spacious limits the
materials which I have used might have been better unfolded, and much
which I have not used might have been added with effect. Perhaps,
however, enough has been given. It now remains that I should say
something of the way in which this conflict of horrors was finally
brought to a crisis. The reader is already aware (from a passage near
the beginning of the introduction to the first part) that the
Opium-eater has, in some way or other, “unwound almost to its final
links the accursed chain which bound him.” By what means? To have
narrated this according to the original intention would have far
exceeded the space which can now be allowed. It is fortunate, as such a
cogent reason exists for abridging it, that I should, on a maturer view
of the case, have been exceedingly unwilling to injure, by any such
unaffecting details, the impression of the history itself, as an appeal
to the prudence and the conscience of the yet unconfirmed
opium-eater—or even (though a very inferior consideration) to injure
its effect as a composition. The interest of the judicious reader will
not attach itself chiefly to the subject of the fascinating spells, but
to the fascinating power. Not the Opium-eater, but the opium, is the
true hero of the tale, and the legitimate centre on which the interest
revolves. The object was to display the marvellous agency of opium,
whether for pleasure or for pain: if that is done, the action of the
piece has closed.
However, as some people, in spite of all laws to the contrary, will
persist in asking what became of the Opium-eater, and in what state he
now is, I answer for him thus: The reader is aware that opium had long
ceased to found its empire on spells of pleasure; it was solely by the
tortures connected with the attempt to abjure it that it kept its hold.
Yet, as other tortures, no less it may be thought, attended the
non-abjuration of such a tyrant, a choice only of evils was left; and
_that_ might as well have been adopted which, however terrific in
itself, held out a prospect of final restoration to happiness. This
appears true; but good logic gave the author no strength to act upon
it. However, a crisis arrived for the author’s life, and a crisis for
other objects still dearer to him—and which will always be far dearer
to him than his life, even now that it is again a happy one. I saw that
I must die if I continued the opium. I determined, therefore, if that
should be required, to die in throwing it off. How much I was at that
time taking I cannot say, for the opium which I used had been purchased
for me by a friend, who afterwards refused to let me pay him; so that I
could not ascertain even what quantity I had used within the year. I
apprehend, however, that I took it very irregularly, and that I varied
from about fifty or sixty grains to 150 a day. My first task was to
reduce it to forty, to thirty, and as fast as I could to twelve grains.
I triumphed. But think not, reader, that therefore my sufferings were
ended, nor think of me as of one sitting in a _dejected_ state. Think
of me as one, even when four months had passed, still agitated,
writhing, throbbing, palpitating, shattered, and much perhaps in the
situation of him who has been racked, as I collect the torments of that
state from the affecting account of them left by a most innocent
sufferer {20} of the times of James I. Meantime, I derived no benefit
from any medicine, except one prescribed to me by an Edinburgh surgeon
of great eminence, viz., ammoniated tincture of valerian. Medical
account, therefore, of my emancipation I have not much to give, and
even that little, as managed by a man so ignorant of medicine as
myself, would probably tend only to mislead. At all events, it would be
misplaced in this situation. The moral of the narrative is addressed to
the opium-eater, and therefore of necessity limited in its application.
If he is taught to fear and tremble, enough has been effected. But he
may say that the issue of my case is at least a proof that opium, after
a seventeen years’ use and an eight years’ abuse of its powers, may
still be renounced, and that _he_ may chance to bring to the task
greater energy than I did, or that with a stronger constitution than
mine he may obtain the same results with less. This may be true. I
would not presume to measure the efforts of other men by my own. I
heartily wish him more energy. I wish him the same success.
Nevertheless, I had motives external to myself which he may
unfortunately want, and these supplied me with conscientious supports
which mere personal interests might fail to supply to a mind
debilitated by opium.
Jeremy Taylor conjectures that it may be as painful to be born as to
die. I think it probable; and during the whole period of diminishing
the opium I had the torments of a man passing out of one mode of
existence into another. The issue was not death, but a sort of physical
regeneration; and I may add that ever since, at intervals, I have had a
restoration of more than youthful spirits, though under the pressure of
difficulties which in a less happy state of mind I should have called
misfortunes.
One memorial of my former condition still remains—my dreams are not yet
perfectly calm; the dread swell and agitation of the storm have not
wholly subsided; the legions that encamped in them are drawing off, but
not all departed; my sleep is still tumultuous, and, like the gates of
Paradise to our first parents when looking back from afar, it is still
(in the tremendous line of Milton)
With dreadful faces throng’d, and fiery arms.
APPENDIX
From the “London Magazine” for December 1822.
The interest excited by the two papers bearing this title, in our
numbers for September and October 1821, will have kept our promise of a
Third Part fresh in the remembrance of our readers. That we are still
unable to fulfil our engagement in its original meaning will, we, are
sure, be matter of regret to them as to ourselves, especially when they
have perused the following affecting narrative. It was composed for the
purpose of being appended to an edition of the Confessions in a
separate volume, which is already before the public, and we have
reprinted it entire, that our subscribers may be in possession of the
whole of this extraordinary history.
The proprietors of this little work having determined on reprinting it,
some explanation seems called for, to account for the non-appearance of
a third part promised in the _London Magazine_ of December last; and
the more so because the proprietors, under whose guarantee that promise
was issued, might otherwise be implicated in the blame—little or
much—attached to its non-fulfilment. This blame, in mere justice, the