Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
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;