Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
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