Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
and therefore to, and if I had the wings of a dove, _that_ way I would
fly for comfort.” Thus I said, and thus I wished, in my blindness. Yet
even in that very northern region it was, even in that very valley,
nay, in that very house to which my erroneous wishes pointed, that this
second birth of my sufferings began, and that they again threatened to
besiege the citadel of life and hope. There it was that for years I was
persecuted by visions as ugly, and as ghastly phantoms as ever haunted
the couch of an Orestes; and in this unhappier than he, that sleep,
which comes to all as a respite and a restoration, and to him
especially as a blessed {7} balm for his wounded heart and his haunted
brain, visited me as my bitterest scourge. Thus blind was I in my
desires; yet if a veil interposes between the dim-sightedness of man
and his future calamities, the same veil hides from him their
alleviations, and a grief which had not been feared is met by
consolations which had not been hoped. I therefore, who participated,
as it were, in the troubles of Orestes (excepting only in his agitated
conscience), participated no less in all his supports. My Eumenides,
like his, were at my bed-feet, and stared in upon me through the
curtains; but watching by my pillow, or defrauding herself of sleep to
bear me company through the heavy watches of the night, sate my
Electra; for thou, beloved M., dear companion of my later years, thou
wast my Electra! and neither in nobility of mind nor in long-suffering
affection wouldst permit that a Grecian sister should excel an English
wife. For thou thoughtest not much to stoop to humble offices of
kindness and to servile {8} ministrations of tenderest affection—to
wipe away for years the unwholesome dews upon the forehead, or to
refresh the lips when parched and baked with fever; nor even when thy
own peaceful slumbers had by long sympathy become infected with the
spectacle of my dread contest with phantoms and shadowy enemies that
oftentimes bade me “sleep no more!”—not even then didst thou utter a
complaint or any murmur, nor withdraw thy angelic smiles, nor shrink
from thy service of love, more than Electra did of old. For she too,
though she was a Grecian woman, and the daughter of the king {9} of
men, yet wept sometimes, and hid her face {10} in her robe.
But these troubles are past; and thou wilt read records of a period so
dolorous to us both as the legend of some hideous dream that can return
no more. Meantime, I am again in London, and again I pace the terraces
of Oxford Street by night; and oftentimes, when I am oppressed by
anxieties that demand all my philosophy and the comfort of thy presence
to support, and yet remember that I am separated from thee by three
hundred miles and the length of three dreary months, I look up the
streets that run northwards from Oxford Street, upon moonlight nights,
and recollect my youthful ejaculation of anguish; and remembering that
thou art sitting alone in that same valley, and mistress of that very
house to which my heart turned in its blindness nineteen years ago, I
think that, though blind indeed, and scattered to the winds of late,
the promptings of my heart may yet have had reference to a remoter
time, and may be justified if read in another meaning; and if I could
allow myself to descend again to the impotent wishes of childhood, I
should again say to myself, as I look to the North, “Oh, that I had the
wings of a dove—” and with how just a confidence in thy good and
gracious nature might I add the other half of my early ejaculation—“And
_that_ way I would fly for comfort!”
THE PLEASURES OF OPIUM
It is so long since I first took opium that if it had been a trifling
incident in my life I might have forgotten its date; but cardinal
events are not to be forgotten, and from circumstances connected with
it I remember that it must be referred to the autumn of 1804. During
that season I was in London, having come thither for the first time
since my entrance at college. And my introduction to opium arose in the
following way. From an early age I had been accustomed to wash my head
in cold water at least once a day: being suddenly seized with
toothache, I attributed it to some relaxation caused by an accidental
intermission of that practice, jumped out of bed, plunged my head into
a basin of cold water, and with hair thus wetted went to sleep. The
next morning, as I need hardly say, I awoke with excruciating rheumatic
pains of the head and face, from which I had hardly any respite for
about twenty days. On the twenty-first day I think it was, and on a
Sunday, that I went out into the streets, rather to run away, if
possible, from my torments, than with any distinct purpose. By accident
I met a college acquaintance, who recommended opium. Opium! dread agent
of unimaginable pleasure and pain! I had heard of it as I had of manna
or of ambrosia, but no further. How unmeaning a sound was it at that
time: what solemn chords does it now strike upon my heart! what
heart-quaking vibrations of sad and happy remembrances! Reverting for a
moment to these, I feel a mystic importance attached to the minutest
circumstances connected with the place and the time and the man (if man
he was) that first laid open to me the Paradise of Opium-eaters. It was
a Sunday afternoon, wet and cheerless: and a duller spectacle this
earth of ours has not to show than a rainy Sunday in London. My road
homewards lay through Oxford Street; and near “the stately Pantheon”
(as Mr. Wordsworth has obligingly called it) I saw a druggist’s shop.
The druggist—unconscious minister of celestial pleasures!—as if in
sympathy with the rainy Sunday, looked dull and stupid, just as any
mortal druggist might be expected to look on a Sunday; and when I asked
for the tincture of opium, he gave it to me as any other man might do,
and furthermore, out of my shilling returned me what seemed to be real
copper halfpence, taken out of a real wooden drawer. Nevertheless, in
spite of such indications of humanity, he has ever since existed in my
mind as the beatific vision of an immortal druggist, sent down to earth
on a special mission to myself. And it confirms me in this way of
considering him, that when I next came up to London I sought him near
the stately Pantheon, and found him not; and thus to me, who knew not
his name (if indeed he had one), he seemed rather to have vanished from
Oxford Street than to have removed in any bodily fashion. The reader
may choose to think of him as possibly no more than a sublunary
druggist; it may be so, but my faith is better—I believe him to have
evanesced, {11} or evaporated. So unwillingly would I connect any
mortal remembrances with that hour, and place, and creature, that first
brought me acquainted with the celestial drug.
Arrived at my lodgings, it may be supposed that I lost not a moment in
taking the quantity prescribed. I was necessarily ignorant of the whole
art and mystery of opium-taking, and what I took I took under every
disadvantage. But I took it—and in an hour—oh, heavens! what a
revulsion! what an upheaving, from its lowest depths, of inner spirit!
what an apocalypse of the world within me! That my pains had vanished
was now a trifle in my eyes: this negative effect was swallowed up in
the immensity of those positive effects which had opened before me—in
the abyss of divine enjoyment thus suddenly revealed. Here was a
panacea, a φαρμακον for all human woes; here was the secret of
happiness, about which philosophers had disputed for so many ages, at
once discovered: happiness might now be bought for a penny, and carried
in the waistcoat pocket; portable ecstacies might be had corked up in a
pint bottle, and peace of mind could be sent down in gallons by the
mail-coach. But if I talk in this way the reader will think I am
laughing, and I can assure him that nobody will laugh long who deals
much with opium: its pleasures even are of a grave and solemn
complexion, and in his happiest state the opium-eater cannot present
himself in the character of _L’Allegro_: even then he speaks and thinks
as becomes _Il Penseroso_. Nevertheless, I have a very reprehensible
way of jesting at times in the midst of my own misery; and unless when
I am checked by some more powerful feelings, I am afraid I shall be
guilty of this indecent practice even in these annals of suffering or
enjoyment. The reader must allow a little to my infirm nature in this
respect; and with a few indulgences of that sort I shall endeavour to
be as grave, if not drowsy, as fits a theme like opium, so
anti-mercurial as it really is, and so drowsy as it is falsely reputed.
And first, one word with respect to its bodily effects; for upon all
that has been hitherto written on the subject of opium, whether by
travellers in Turkey (who may plead their privilege of lying as an old
immemorial right), or by professors of medicine, writing _ex cathedra_,
I have but one emphatic criticism to pronounce—Lies! lies! lies! I
remember once, in passing a book-stall, to have caught these words from
a page of some satiric author: “By this time I became convinced that
the London newspapers spoke truth at least twice a week, viz., on
Tuesday and Saturday, and might safely be depended upon for—the list of
bankrupts.” In like manner, I do by no means deny that some truths have
been delivered to the world in regard to opium. Thus it has been
repeatedly affirmed by the learned that opium is a dusky brown in
colour; and this, take notice, I grant. Secondly, that it is rather
dear, which also I grant, for in my time East Indian opium has been
three guineas a pound, and Turkey eight. And thirdly, that if you eat a
good deal of it, most probably you must do what is particularly
disagreeable to any man of regular habits, viz., die. {12} These
weighty propositions are, all and singular, true: I cannot gainsay
them, and truth ever was, and will be, commendable. But in these three
theorems I believe we have exhausted the stock of knowledge as yet
accumulated by men on the subject of opium.
And therefore, worthy doctors, as there seems to be room for further
discoveries, stand aside, and allow me to come forward and lecture on
this matter.
First, then, it is not so much affirmed as taken for granted, by all
who ever mention opium, formally or incidentally, that it does or can
produce intoxication. Now, reader, assure yourself, _meo perieulo_,
that no quantity of opium ever did or could intoxicate. As to the
tincture of opium (commonly called laudanum) _that_ might certainly
intoxicate if a man could bear to take enough of it; but why? Because
it contains so much proof spirit, and not because it contains so much
opium. But crude opium, I affirm peremptorily, is incapable of
producing any state of body at all resembling that which is produced by
alcohol, and not in _degree_ only incapable, but even in _kind_: it is
not in the quantity of its effects merely, but in the quality, that it
differs altogether. The pleasure given by wine is always mounting and
tending to a crisis, after which it declines; that from opium, when
once generated, is stationary for eight or ten hours: the first, to
borrow a technical distinction from medicine, is a case of acute—the
second, the chronic pleasure; the one is a flame, the other a steady
and equable glow. But the main distinction lies in this, that whereas
wine disorders the mental faculties, opium, on the contrary (if taken
in a proper manner), introduces amongst them the most exquisite order,
legislation, and harmony. Wine robs a man of his self-possession; opium
greatly invigorates it. Wine unsettles and clouds the judgement, and
gives a preternatural brightness and a vivid exaltation to the
contempts and the admirations, the loves and the hatreds of the