Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
trees were now covered with rime. I slipped through Eton unobserved;
washed myself, and as far as possible adjusted my dress, at a little
public-house in Windsor; and about eight o’clock went down towards
Pote’s. On my road I met some junior boys, of whom I made inquiries. An
Etonian is always a gentleman; and, in spite of my shabby habiliments,
they answered me civilly. My friend Lord —— was gone to the University
of ——. “Ibi omnis effusus labor!” I had, however, other friends at
Eton; but it is not to all that wear that name in prosperity that a man
is willing to present himself in distress. On recollecting myself,
however, I asked for the Earl of D——, to whom (though my acquaintance
with him was not so intimate as with some others) I should not have
shrunk from presenting myself under any circumstances. He was still at
Eton, though I believe on the wing for Cambridge. I called, was
received kindly, and asked to breakfast.
Here let me stop for a moment to check my reader from any erroneous
conclusions. Because I have had occasion incidentally to speak of
various patrician friends, it must not be supposed that I have myself
any pretension to rank and high blood. I thank God that I have not. I
am the son of a plain English merchant, esteemed during his life for
his great integrity, and strongly attached to literary pursuits
(indeed, he was himself, anonymously, an author). If he had lived it
was expected that he would have been very rich; but dying prematurely,
he left no more than about £30,000 amongst seven different claimants.
My mother I may mention with honour, as still more highly gifted; for
though unpretending to the name and honours of a _literary_ woman, I
shall presume to call her (what many literary women are not) an
_intellectual_ woman; and I believe that if ever her letters should be
collected and published, they would be thought generally to exhibit as
much strong and masculine sense, delivered in as pure “mother English,”
racy and fresh with idiomatic graces, as any in our language—hardly
excepting those of Lady M. W. Montague. These are my honours of
descent, I have no other; and I have thanked God sincerely that I have
not, because, in my judgment, a station which raises a man too
eminently above the level of his fellow-creatures is not the most
favourable to moral or to intellectual qualities.
Lord D—— placed before me a most magnificent breakfast. It was really
so; but in my eyes it seemed trebly magnificent, from being the first
regular meal, the first “good man’s table,” that I had sate down to for
months. Strange to say, however, I could scarce eat anything. On the
day when I first received my £10 bank-note I had gone to a baker’s shop
and bought a couple of rolls; this very shop I had two months or six
weeks before surveyed with an eagerness of desire which it was almost
humiliating to me to recollect. I remembered the story about Otway, and
feared that there might be danger in eating too rapidly. But I had no
need for alarm; my appetite was quite sunk, and I became sick before I
had eaten half of what I had bought. This effect from eating what
approached to a meal I continued to feel for weeks; or, when I did not
experience any nausea, part of what I ate was rejected, sometimes with
acidity, sometimes immediately and without any acidity. On the present
occasion, at Lord D-’s table, I found myself not at all better than
usual, and in the midst of luxuries I had no appetite. I had, however,
unfortunately, at all times a craving for wine; I explained my
situation, therefore, to Lord D——, and gave him a short account of my
late sufferings, at which he expressed great compassion, and called for
wine. This gave me a momentary relief and pleasure; and on all
occasions when I had an opportunity I never failed to drink wine, which
I worshipped then as I have since worshipped opium. I am convinced,
however, that this indulgence in wine contributed to strengthen my
malady, for the tone of my stomach was apparently quite sunk, and by a
better regimen it might sooner, and perhaps effectually, have been
revived. I hope that it was not from this love of wine that I lingered
in the neighbourhood of my Eton friends; I persuaded myself then that
it was from reluctance to ask of Lord D——, on whom I was conscious I
had not sufficient claims, the particular service in quest of which I
had come down to Eton. I was, however unwilling to lose my journey,
and—I asked it. Lord D——, whose good nature was unbounded, and which,
in regard to myself, had been measured rather by his compassion perhaps
for my condition, and his knowledge of my intimacy with some of his
relatives, than by an over-rigorous inquiry into the extent of my own
direct claims, faltered, nevertheless, at this request. He acknowledged
that he did not like to have any dealings with money-lenders, and
feared lest such a transaction might come to the ears of his
connexions. Moreover, he doubted whether _his_ signature, whose
expectations were so much more bounded than those of ——, would avail
with my unchristian friends. However, he did not wish, as it seemed, to
mortify me by an absolute refusal; for after a little consideration he
promised, under certain conditions which he pointed out, to give his
security. Lord D—— was at this time not eighteen years of age; but I
have often doubted, on recollecting since the good sense and prudence
which on this occasion he mingled with so much urbanity of manner (an
urbanity which in him wore the grace of youthful sincerity), whether
any statesman—the oldest and the most accomplished in diplomacy—could
have acquitted himself better under the same circumstances. Most
people, indeed, cannot be addressed on such a business without
surveying you with looks as austere and unpropitious as those of a
Saracen’s head.
Recomforted by this promise, which was not quite equal to the best but
far above the worst that I had pictured to myself as possible, I
returned in a Windsor coach to London three days after I had quitted
it. And now I come to the end of my story. The Jews did not approve of
Lord D——’s terms; whether they would in the end have acceded to them,
and were only seeking time for making due inquiries, I know not; but
many delays were made, time passed on, the small fragment of my
bank-note had just melted away, and before any conclusion could have
been put to the business I must have relapsed into my former state of
wretchedness. Suddenly, however, at this crisis, an opening was made,
almost by accident, for reconciliation with my friends; I quitted
London in haste for a remote part of England; after some time I
proceeded to the university, and it was not until many months had
passed away that I had it in my power again to revisit the ground which
had become so interesting to me, and to this day remains so, as the
chief scene of my youthful sufferings.
Meantime, what had become of poor Ann? For her I have reserved my
concluding words. According to our agreement, I sought her daily, and
waited for her every night, so long as I stayed in London, at the
corner of Titchfield Street. I inquired for her of every one who was
likely to know her, and during the last hours of my stay in London I
put into activity every means of tracing her that my knowledge of
London suggested and the limited extent of my power made possible. The
street where she had lodged I knew, but not the house; and I remembered
at last some account which she had given me of ill-treatment from her
landlord, which made it probable that she had quitted those lodgings
before we parted. She had few acquaintances; most people, besides,
thought that the earnestness of my inquiries arose from motives which
moved their laughter or their slight regard; and others, thinking I was
in chase of a girl who had robbed me of some trifles, were naturally
and excusably indisposed to give me any clue to her, if indeed they had
any to give. Finally as my despairing resource, on the day I left
London I put into the hands of the only person who (I was sure) must
know Ann by sight, from having been in company with us once or twice,
an address to ——, in ——shire, at that time the residence of my family.
But to this hour I have never heard a syllable about her. This, amongst
such troubles as most men meet with in this life, has been my heaviest
affliction. If she lived, doubtless we must have been some time in
search of each other, at the very same moment, through the mighty
labyrinths of London; perhaps even within a few feet of each other—a
barrier no wider than a London street often amounting in the end to a
separation for eternity! During some years I hoped that she _did_ live;
and I suppose that, in the literal and unrhetorical use of the word
_myriad_, I may say that on my different visits to London I have looked
into many, many myriads of female faces, in the hope of meeting her. I
should know her again amongst a thousand, if I saw her for a moment;
for though not handsome, she had a sweet expression of countenance and
a peculiar and graceful carriage of the head. I sought her, I have
said, in hope. So it was for years; but now I should fear to see her;
and her cough, which grieved me when I parted with her, is now my
consolation. I now wish to see her no longer; but think of her, more
gladly, as one long since laid in the grave—in the grave, I would hope,
of a Magdalen; taken away, before injuries and cruelty had blotted out
and transfigured her ingenuous nature, or the brutalities of ruffians
had completed the ruin they had begun.
[The remainder of this very interesting article will be given in the
next number.—ED.]
PART II
From the London Magazine for October 1821.
So then, Oxford Street, stony-hearted step-mother! thou that listenest
to the sighs of orphans and drinkest the tears of children, at length I
was dismissed from thee; the time was come at last that I no more
should pace in anguish thy never-ending terraces, no more should dream
and wake in captivity to the pangs of hunger. Successors too many, to
myself and Ann, have doubtless since then trodden in our footsteps,
inheritors of our calamities; other orphans than Ann have sighed; tears
have been shed by other children; and thou, Oxford Street, hast since
doubtless echoed to the groans of innumerable hearts. For myself,
however, the storm which I had outlived seemed to have been the pledge
of a long fair-weather—the premature sufferings which I had paid down
to have been accepted as a ransom for many years to come, as a price of
long immunity from sorrow; and if again I walked in London a solitary
and contemplative man (as oftentimes I did), I walked for the most part
in serenity and peace of mind. And although it is true that the
calamities of my noviciate in London had struck root so deeply in my
bodily constitution, that afterwards they shot up and flourished
afresh, and grew into a noxious umbrage that has overshadowed and
darkened my latter years, yet these second assaults of suffering were
met with a fortitude more confirmed, with the resources of a maturer
intellect, and with alleviations from sympathising affection—how deep
and tender!
Thus, however, with whatsoever alleviations, years that were far
asunder were bound together by subtle links of suffering derived from a
common root. And herein I notice an instance of the short-sightedness
of human desires, that oftentimes on moonlight nights, during my first
mournful abode in London, my consolation was (if such it could be
thought) to gaze from Oxford Street up every avenue in succession which
pierces through the heart of Marylebone to the fields and the woods;
for _that_, said I, travelling with my eyes up the long vistas which
lay part in light and part in shade, “_that_ is the road to the North,