De Quincey: A Portrait: A Portrait [Reprint 2014 ed.] 9780674421080, 9780674427693

Citation preview

DeQuincey : A Portrait

LONDON : HUMPHREY MILFORD OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

THOMAS DE QUINCEY From the portrait by Sir J. Watson Gordon National Portrait Gallery, London

DeQuincey : A Portrait By John Calvin

Metcalf

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS

HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1940

COPYRIGHT, I 9 4 O BY THE PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS ÖF HARVARD COLLEGE

PRINTED AT THE HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, U.S.A.

To The Memory of

V. S. M. Youthful Admirer of De Quincey

FOREWORD literary portrait of Thomas De Quincey, based on available primary and secondary sources, was completed before the appearance of several recent books on De Quincey's life and work. The most important of these is the standard biography by Professor Horace A. Eaton. The present work is different: it is a brief and swiftly moving story of De Quincey's life. The author's purpose has been to present a picture of De Quincey the man and his relationships, without detailed discussion, lengthy quotations from his writings, or reproduction of letters and other documents. The book was written for the author's pleasure without thought of making a contribution to knowledge. He wanted simply to portray the personality of a man and writer of exceptional charm. Whatever originality the story may have must be in the way it is told, since the facts of De Quincey's life are now well known. In the interest of the general reader, for whom this portrait is mainly intended, footnotes and other documentary impedimenta have been omitted. THIS

The author gratefully acknowledges the courtesies of librarians and others for making available books and manuscripts or for helpful information. His thanks are extended in particular to the following: William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh, for access to many manuscript letters; the officials of the Manchester Reference Library for the privileges of its extensive De Quincey collection; the British Museum; the National Library of Scotland; the Worcester College Li-

viii

FOREWORD

brary and the Bodleian, Oxford; the Library of Congress; the late Gordon Wordsworth, Esq., the poet's grandson, and the Misses Bairdsmith, De Quincey's granddaughters. He wishes to record his obligation to Lawrence Lee, editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review, University of Virginia, for his interest in the work itself and in its publication. Finally, and most of all, he is indebted to his wife, Edmonia C. L. Metcalf, for constant assistance in an undertaking which, but for her labors, would not have been carried out. J. C. M. UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA

November 15, 1939

C O N T E N T S I. Y O U N G ROMANTIC II. PRECOCIOUS SCHOLAR

3 13

III. VAGABONDAGE

24

IV.

CLOISTERED LIFE

34

T H E M A S T E R OF D O V E COTTAGE

50

AUTHORSHIP AND FAME

71

VII.

FUGITIVE DEBTOR

94

VIII.

LITERARY REALISM

111

LASSWADE CELEBRITY

129

INVICTUS

150

EVENSONG

166

EPILOGUE

182

BIBLIOGRAPHY

199

INDEX

205

V. VI.

IX. X. XI.

DeQuincey : A Portrait

I

Young Romantic

M

OTION on the open road always thrilled De Quincey. His lifelong zest for wandering found its earliest gratification in a post chaise journey to faraway Lincolnshire when he was seven years old. It was his first excursion from his native Manchester, one that would take him through the enchanted shades of Sherwood Forest. Breakfast by candlelight on a stormy December day, the child too excited to eat, the solicitous servants, and the waiting neighbor in whose care he was to travel, form the engaging household picture. It only remained for the young traveler to receive the maternal blessing. Up to his mother's room he was conducted by an ancient domestic. The benign mistress of Greenhay put into Iiis hot little hand six shining guineas and delivered herself of sundry cautions. Her brief goodbye was Roman in its firmness and restraint. London born and bred, Elizabeth Quincey had known the great world from infancy; Robin Hood's haunts and distant Lincolnshire stirred within her no romantic emotions. Absorbed just then in making her morning toilet, the stately madonna moistened her son's cheeks with milk of roses, and then resigned Master Thomas to nursery maids, who smothered him with kisses. Elizabeth Penson, wife of Thomas Quincey (he never used the prefix), merchant of Manchester, was the daughter

4

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

of an officer of the King and a woman of strong character and a certain distinction of manner. What most impressed her children was her moral rigidity. In her relations with them she was strangely formal. Her morning greeting, for instance, was a mixture of military discipline and religious ritual. After they had been washed and dressed in the nursery, she had them marshalled into her presence. She kissed them in turn upon the forehead, sprinkled their hair with lavender water and dismissed them. Such a ceremonial of cleansing and dedication, one might suppose, would have set them apart in the maternal mind as superior or at least as exceptional beings. But this was not the case. She appeared to regard her children as inferior and deprecated any praise of them. Praise was dangerous. They might think more highly of themselves than they ought to think. She loved them and punctiliously did her duty by them, but according to her son Thomas, she delighted not in infancy nor infancy in her. The children of Elizabeth Quincey, though honoring and respecting her, never gave that admirable lady the full measure of their affection. Her husband had a flourishing business as an importer of linens and laces. A mile or more from smoky Manchester he had in succession two country houses, the more pretentious of which, called Greenhay, stood in a lovely lawn. Within, it was adorned with sculptures and paintings and furnished with a respectable collection of eighteenth-century essays and poetry. In his early manhood Thomas Quincey had himself published some observations entitled A Tour in the Midland Counties of England, a booklet that reposes today in dusty oblivion on the shelves of certain old British libraries. Ex-

YOUNG ROMANTIC

5

cept for an occasional picturesque phrase this effusion has no literary merit. The author's vocabulary, however, reveals a thoughtful and cultivated mind. Thomas Quincey was descended from a landed family, free-living, fox-hunting, and prolific. He married a lady of higher social estate and, like his forebears, steadily enlarged his family and his fortune. Thomas Quincey's last home-coming, this time from the West Indies, his gifted son vividly remembered. The eightyear-old boy was one of the expectant circle of children and servants that summer evening on the lawn at Greenhay. The stillness of the June night, the slowly moving carriage, the pale-faced invalid propped up on white pillows invested the scene with an atmosphere of weird foreboding. The child soon divined that his father had come home to die. The little fellow used to sit by the couch in front of a window opening upon the green stretches around Greenhay, his hand in his father's. Perhaps the stealthy ravages of the tubercular demon fascinated the dreamy child who throughout a long life had for all helpless or afflicted creatures an eager sympathy. At any rate, in those last days the sick man seemed to find in the company of his little namesake a peculiar comfort. Thomas Quincey died at the age of thirty-nine, leaving to his wife and children an honorable name and a considerable estate. Of the eight Quincey children, two of whom died veryyoung, Thomas was the second son and fifth child. He was born in Manchester on August 15, 1785. His earliest years were spent at The Farm and the rest of his childhood, until he was twelve years old, at his father's other country house, Greenhay. He was the most sensitive and dreamy of a group of singularly pensive children. He records several vivid mem-

6

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

ories of his impressionable infancy. He recalled a dream of "terrific grandeur," when less than two years old, about a favorite nurse. He was impressed with a sense of pathos in the return of the crocuses in the spring, and he was grieved at the death of a kingfisher. The report of a servant's harsh treatment of his infant sister Jane was a cause of poignant sorrow. But the memorable affliction of his childhood was the death in his eighth year of his nine-year-old sister Elizabeth. Into the still chamber where she lay he crept and kissed her cold lips. It was summer, a season henceforth to be associated with death. The child found solace in visions and memories of his lost playmate, wandering alone in the fields and woods around Greenhay. These consolations of solitude brought healing to De Quincey's spirit throughout life. He was sure that God speaks to children in dreams and "by the oracles that lurk in darkness." It is significant, moreover, that long before he began his opium-eating, even from infancy, he was given to dreaming, that heritage of j o y and pain which the potent drug in after days made splendid and terrible. These solitary musings were soon rudely interrupted by the return of his elder brother William from school in Lincolnshire. William was a red-blooded youth, imaginative, ingenious, and militant. He viewed Iiis dreamy, inactive brother with scornful contempt, and promptly denounced him, specifically, as effeminate, and, generally, as idiotic. He was pleased, however, to admit that morally Thomas was above reproach. "You're honest, you're willing, though lazy; you would pull, if you had the strength of a flea; and though a monstrous coward, you don't run away." The

YOUNG ROMANTIC

7

younger brother denied the charge of effeminacy, but acquiesced, with reservations, in the more general indictment of idiocy. Though lacking in qualities of leadership, he was no coward. In the daily conflicts with a group of factory urchins, who fiercely attacked the Quincey brothers on their way to school, Thomas proved a good second to William. This warfare between the young patricians and the plebeians, the well-dressed children of the neighboring villa and the ragamuffins of the cotton mills, lasted for many months. Though usually routed by overwhelming numbers, William and his brothers never surrendered. Each evening William planned the next day's campaign, issued bulletins after the battle, and at night recounted to an audience of household children and servants the details of the combat. Only once did Thomas fall into notorious dishonor. In the fierce tide of battle he was cut off from his superior officer and surrounded by girls, several of whom picked him up and kissed him. That the eight-year-old major general should be captured and fondled by the petticoat brigade, sisters of the tatterdemalion foe, was an ignominy for which the commanderin-chief's vocabulary was quite inadequate. William Quincey had other accomplishments besides his genius for campaigning. He conceived himself to be the ruler of a kingdom called Tigrosylvania and his brother Thomas monarch of Gombroon, an island realm which he had evoked from the vasty deep. The Gombroonians were of course inferior. To them William derisively applied the early evolutionary theory of a contemporary writer that primitive men were equipped with tails, which wore off as the race became sedentary. William insisted that his brother's

8

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

subjects were still in the caudal stage, and graciously suggested that they might be required to sit down six hours a day as a start toward caudal atrophy. Thomas was in despair at the prospect of generations intervening before complete taillessness was achieved. And even William's recommendation that they wear togas to conceal their bestial inheritance gave little consolation to one who was then and afterwards an admirer of the Romans. In other creations o f his opulent brain William applied his boasted knowledge of necromancy and kindred esoteric arts. He favored his little group o f brothers, sisters, and servants with discussions on "how to raise a ghost; and when you've got him down, how to keep him down"; he devised books on magic; and even ventured into the field o f physics by proposing to beat the flies in their favorite pastime o f walking on the ceiling. A practical demonstration o f this accomplishment was never attempted, partly because o f the skepticism o f his sister Mary, whose satirical attack on his boastful claims set all his audience laughing. This remarkable boy, who made so lasting an impression on his brother Thomas, had by his fifteenth year shown such an extraordinary talent for drawing that he was accepted by a well-known London artist as a pupil. But in his sixteenth year he was stricken with a fever, and death cut short his promising life. After William left Greenhay, the noise o f battle no more resounded at the little bridge over the Irwell. Thomas De Quincey later wrote o f the peaceful days that followed as a welcome return to tranquillity. Even in the months o f daily strife, he was living in another world quite as real to him. It was made up o f impressions gained from books and nature, mental and emotional responses to sights and sounds about

YOUNG ROMANTIC

9

him. In childhood, as in manhood, he was acutely sensitive to music, the music of words as well as the varied harmonies in the pageant of life. Hardly less marked was his sensitiveness to the disharmonies around him. He sympathized with abnormal persons and animals. There were, for instance, two afflicted daughters of a neighbor, reputed to be idiots, who were mistreated by their mother. These eight-year-old Thomas pitied and loved. There was, in a lower realm, the big mad dog, chased with hue and cry, that faced him and the other children one morning across the brook at Greenhay. Thomas looked into the dog's eyes and noticed that they seemed glazed and dreamy. Dreaminess interested him. Such imaginative reactions did the contemplative child have toward man and beast, a quality of spirit that later drew him to Wordsworth and Coleridge and made him a poet in all but form. In his earliest reading those passages which were at once pictorial and musical made a lasting impression. One incident in the Arabian Nights particularly fascinated him — the account of the wicked magician listening for the footsteps in faraway Bagdad of the innocent child who should release from its subterranean hiding place the enchanted lamp. Such fabulous power of perception symbolized to the child De Quincey the possible key by which mysteries of all languages might be solved. This phase of the Arabian tale was an illustration of what he called "the dark sublime." A passage in Phaedrus was another favorite. It is the passage about the statue erected by the Athenians to Aesop, with the inscription: A colossal statue did the Athenians raise to Aesop; and a poor pariah slave they planted upon an everlasting pedestal.

10

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

These words, he says, illustrate "the glory of the sublime." The picturesque story of Belshazzar's Feast in the Book of Daniel he later called " a crashing overture." The opening speech of the witch in Macbeth — "When shall we three meet again»" — likewise satisfied his passion for harmonies of sense and sound. But it was not alone such resounding and colorful speech that impressed him in those early years. He also found delight in the more intellectual aspects of literature and conversation. He was quick to note in visitors at Greenhay any unusual brilliancy of mind that showed itself in clashes of opinion. Occasional controversy, especially on religious subjects, relieved for him the staid conformity of domestic life and thought. He never forgot a disturbing guest of his mother known as "the female infidel." This lady became the protagonist in a succession of devastating arguments against the beliefs of Mrs. Quincey and her circle of ecclesiastical friends. One after another fell before the onslaughts of the quick-witted woman whose youth and beauty made her apostasy doubly dangerous. At table one day the stately mistress of the mansion was betrayed into a fit of hysterical indignation because of a particularly offensive attack on the faith. Would not the attending servants be corrupted, the very bastions of her ancillary fortress endangered? Should she permit a guest, protected by the tolerant laws of hospitality, to undermine the religious discipline of menials whose souls were in her keeping? This episode and others in the course of those memorable debates at Greenhay were to Mrs. Quincey inexpressibly tragic. Thomas, on the contrary, found in them a touch of comedy. Perhaps he had a secret

YOUNG ROMANTIC

Ii

satisfaction also in reflecting on the discomfiture of his guardian, the Reverend Mr. Hall, foremost among the defeated champions of orthodoxy. When Thomas was eleven, his mother sold Greenhay and moved to Bath, but the boy continued for a while as a pupil of Mr. Hall. From that gentleman he learned a deal of Latin and some Greek. In addition to his daily lessons he had for several years been required to hear and remember one sermon every Sunday by that uninspired divine. From a stock of three hundred discourses young De Quincey submitted extracts of more than a hundred and fifty, without benefit of notes. To the clergyman and dominie such weekly offerings from the altar of mnemonic discipline were as incense. Quite different was the effect upon the boy. On Saturday night his dreams were haunted by fears of failing memory, on Sunday night by dread of the feat to be performed. Except for these hebdomadal afflictions, De Quincey's relations with his teacher and guardian were pleasant. And even this uncongenial mental exercise, as the victim later acknowledged, was not without a certain tonic value. A systematic effort at analysis and reconstruction of spoken discourse made for concentration of mind in a youth too much given to reverie. Had Mr. Hall been a gifted orator whose gorgeous rhetoric dazzled the fancy, his young protege would have been set a-dreaming. As it was, Thomas's intellectual labor in restoring a dull sermon brought him to grips with reality and proved a salutary experience. And so De Quincey's childhood was drawing to a close. It had been spent in the country, away from urban tumult, but within sight and sound of city steeples and their bells.

12

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

The grime and noise o f the factories of Manchester hardly penetrated the grounds o f Greenhay to dull their beauty or wreck their quiet. Here Thomas had the companionship o f brothers and sisters with their daily round o f activity, and here he found that essential solitude which satisfied the poetic sensibility o f his nature. He was, as we have seen, a meditative child, drawn against his will into the turbulent pastimes o f his vital brother William. These drastic disciplines, like the sermonizing exercises exacted o f him by the Reverend Mr. Hall, were no doubt good for the shy and sensitive boy, prematurely addicted to reflection. Contemplation marked him as a child o f Plato before Epicurus tempted him. The full j o y o f living, the gusto o f complete abandon, he never wholly knew. The faculty o f observation, on which mere sensation so largely depends, was not strong in him. Such impressions as he received from without instantly became the stuff o f dreams. Even his childhood griefs, which were very real and sometimes poignant, were translated into dreams. This absorption in things o f the spirit tended to disturb his peace and check his physical growth. It must not be inferred, however, that this pensive boy, who created and peopled his visionary world, was unhappy. That he did enjoy his childhood is abundantly attested from his own recorded memories o f it. Reflecting upon the childish scenes at Greenhay, De Quincey wrote, more than twenty years later in his Confessions of an Opium-Eater, that his earliest youth was a time o f "divinest happiness."

II

Precocious Scholar HE Quinceys made Bath their home for about three years. In the closing days of the eighteenth century the old city was still a popular resort, but the parade of notables along its famous thoroughfares had steadily diminished. If Thomas De Quincey met any celebrities there whose names are still familiar, he has not recorded his impressions. His recollections are mainly concerned with the Bath Grammar School, scene of his earliest triumphs as a precocious scholar. The master of this ancient foundation was Dr. Morgan, a good classicist, under whom the twelve-year-old boy made a reputation for his knowledge of Latin and Greek. That he could, at thirteen or fourteen, harangue an Athenian mob better than his instructor could address an English one, was only the proud schoolmaster's way of saying that Thomas was the best Grecian in the school. He was also the best Latinist. His proficiency in writing Latin verses had already moved his classmates to threats against him if he continued to win the master's praise. He quietly defied his envious fellows by still better versifying. In the end his good sportsmanship won over the more generous of them. A few even condescended to solicit the help of so eminent a composer, and by this subtle compliment lessened the irritation on both sides.

14

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

His connection with the Bath Grammar School was suddenly terminated, not by the hostility of his captious classmates, but by a blow on the head f r o m a tutor's cane which had been aimed at an impertinent pupil. The physical and nervous shock was serious enough to require weeks of medical attention, and to convince Mrs. Quincey that Thomas, despite Dr. Morgan's entreaties, ought not to return to the local school. Furthermore, she recalled the compliments that the headmaster had paid her son. That settled it. She would not have him corrupted by worldly ambition. There was a school at Winkfield, the Reverend Mr. Spencer's small establishment, which was well spoken of for its religious atmosphere. She would send the boy there. T o Winkfield, accordingly, he went. During his two years at Bath D e Quincey had done considerable reading at home; he had devoured Paradise Lost and other solid literary pabulum, and, what was more significant of his romantic taste, he had read with delight several of the shorter poems of Wordsworth, then little known. In the months of his enforced retirement his mother had read to him much of Ariosto in translation, besides other works in verse and prose. These browsings in the pleasant field of letters were continued through his year at Winkfield, where his scholastic labors were lighter than at Bath. He also turned author. Besides essays and poems for the school magazine, he contributed to a juvenile periodical a metrical translation of one of Horace's odes which w o n third place in a contest. The verses are excellent and deserved first place. The decision hurt the boy's pride and served to discourage poetic activity in the youthful writer. More decisive than this, however,

PRECOCIOUS SCHOLAR

15

was the conviction that he lacked the authentic inspiration for making great verse. Rather than become an inferior poet, he chose to w o o the Muses in less formal dress; he preferred to follow his irregular path toward supremacy in prose. In his fifteenth year D e Quincey had an invitation from young Lord Westport to accompany him to Dublin. Westport's family in Ireland had been friends of his father, and Mrs. Quincey readily gave her consent. Thomas was glad to leave provincial Winkfield for the liberalizing education of travel. Some years before, he had felt the glory of motion amid strange scenes and faces in that first visit to relatives in Lincolnshire, and he was eager for another journey into the great world. He was, for his age, well stocked with book learning; what he needed was attrition with society. He joined Lord Westport at Eton. During his stay there, young Thomas was honored one day, in the grounds of Windsor Castle, by some notice from George III. In the course of the brief and altogether unexpected interview with the King, his Majesty referred to his young subject's surname as of French origin. Whereupon the boy, at no time a lover of the French, explained that the De Quinceys (it was he who restored the prefix to his paternal Quincey) had been in England since the Conquest, and were of Norman and therefore primarily of Norse, not French, descent. In proof of this he cited Robert of Gloucester's Chronicle and other early records. The monarch, who was a great bookcollector, said, " I know, I k n o w . " The youthful Thomas, like Dr. Johnson, did not care to bandy words with his sovereign, but he was not so sure of the King's knowledge of De Quincey origins.

l6

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

From Eton the boy went up to London for his first sight of the metropolis. Though it was only a glimpse of three hours, the impression was overwhelming. The mighty city, to which he was to return in two years as a homeless wanderer, recurrently haunted his dreams. In London he would fain have lingered, but his companion was for hurrying on to his grandfather's country house. Thence they returned to Eton where De Quincey once more found himself in the royal presence. He and his noble friend were bidden to a party at Frogmore in the grounds of Windsor Castle. N o feature of the gorgeous entertainment so delighted him as the dancing and the music. The rhythmical movement held him in thrall, while the glitter of dress and ornamental trappings was hardly less enchanting. The fancy of the impressionable youth was permanently enriched by a scene that perfectly satisfied both eye and ear. The visit to Ireland lasted through the summer and far into the autumn. In Dublin as a guest of the Earl of Altamont, Lord Westport's father, young De Quincey saw many political notables and was present at one or more assemblies of the last Irish Parliament. He was privately presented to several eminent personages, among them the Marquis Cornwallis, once the foe of Washington, now LordLieutenant of Ireland, who impressed his young compatriot as considerate and benevolent, albeit slow and heavy. The boy attended the installation of Lord Altamont as a Knight of St. Patrick, a colorful ceremony in the cathedral of that name, and was an interested spectator at the meeting of the Parliament which ratified the union of Ireland with England. These busy weeks in Dublin opened for De Quincey

PRECOCIOUS SCHOLAR

17

vistas into the social and political life of Ireland. Only two years before his visit two rebellions, or insurrections, had broken out in that turbulent island. The boy heard echoes and saw vestiges of these as he went west to extend his visit to Altamont's estates in Connaught. In daily journeys through the country he stopped at the houses of the old Irish nobility and had glimpses of the provincial seats of absentee Englishmen. This eventful visit to Ireland was De Quincey's first great adventure. He now knew something of the world. He had for months been on familiar terms with a noble old family. As the boat was bearing him back to England that late October day, he felt himself no longer a mere schoolboy untutored in the ways of men, but a youth who sensed his coming manhood and showed it in manner and mind. Lord Westport accompanied his friend back to England. The two boys proceeded to Birmingham where, according to direction, De Quincey found a letter from his mother. There they separated. Thomas, obedient to maternal orders, journeyed on to Laxton Hall in Northamptonshire, the country house of Lord and Lady Carbery. His sister Mary was visiting there, and Thomas was to remain until his mother and guardians had selected his next school. Lady Carbery, as a frequent guest of the Quincey family, had known him from infancy. She had been drawn to Mrs. Quincey by that lady's polished manners and Low Church preferences. She was now twenty-five, handsome, literary, and religiously inclined. Laxton Hall would be a safe retreat for the restless youth. There he would find congenial companionship, socially diverting and morally uplifting. Already this adolescent intellectual had achieved an ease of manner

18

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

and a maturity of mind which most men never attain. His aesthetic tastes and good looks made him a favorite with younger women. During his visit to Ireland he was one day flattered on a canal boat by the confidence of beautiful Miss Blake. Crossing to that country he had made friends with a lady whom, because of a subsequent indiscretion, he named "the frail enchantress of the packet." At Laxton he found Lady Massey, another charming woman from Ireland who was manifestly impressed by his bearing and conversation. But it was Lady Carbery who engaged his attention most. In Lord Carbery's absence he was thrown much in her company. They read and chatted on high themes in the great library. She called him her "admirable Crichton," so versatile was his knowledge, so eloquent his discourse. Her interest was less in the classics and poetry than in the more somber realm of theology. Thomas was not versed in theology. He proceeded diplomatically to shift to the related subject of New Testament Greek. She set to work with the ardor of a neophyte. Lady Massey and Mary Quincey were soon outdistanced, and Thomas had only Lady Carbery as a disciple. She was an apt pupil and he an engaging master. The susceptible boy promptly surrendered to the charms of the beautiful woman, ten years his senior, who sat as a learner at his feet. This innocent relationship came suddenly to an end when Lord Carbery returned one day and politely discouraged his wife's quest of Greek. Religion might be a proper study for women, but not Greek. No; at that he drew the line. He had no great fancy for bluestockings. And furthermore, a healthy boy should not be cloistered in the

PRECOCIOUS SCHOLAR

19

library with women. It was much more natural for him to be with the hounds and horses. His lordship's will prevailed; studies in New Testament Greek yielded to lessons under the tutelage of the Laxton groom. The months at Laxton had been happy. The daily society of bright, highbred women and intelligent men of the world made life in this Eden ideal. Only one shadow cast by coming events darkened now and then those carefree days and nights. It was the sobering reflection that soon he must go back to school. His mother and guardians had decreed that he should enter the Manchester Grammar School to prepare for Oxford. The prospect of toiling three long years at monotonous tasks in company with less cultured schoolmates was disconcerting to the mature youth of fifteen. He was too young to go to Oxford and he knew too much to be happy at Manchester. The auguries were inauspicious, but he had to obey. He returned to his native city and was enrolled on the books of its ancient and honorable academy. From this wealthy foundation the ablest boys regularly proceeded to Oxford on scholarships. And young De Quincey, if he was to live like a gentleman at the university, must supplement his slender inherited income. The head of the Manchester school was Charles Lawson, a competent scholar but one who was deadening in his effect upon students. He, like the boy's other masters, was wont to compliment his precocious pupil. At his house in the quadrangle the youthful scholar lodged. Almost opposite was Chetham Hospital School, containing one of the oldest and loveliest libraries in England; and across a court stood the collegiate church, later enlarged into the present cathedral

20

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

of Manchester. Surely beauty, books, and religion should have satisfied Elizabeth Quincey's fastidious son. Translation to this cloistered retreat from the happy demesnes of Laxton was made easier by the decision of Lady Carbery and her household to spend some months in Manchester. As a special favor he was permitted by the headmaster to spend several hours each evening in the drawing room of his winsome friend. Parleys on divinity and the Greek Testament might be resumed. Her latest fad, however, was Hebrew, recommended by a learned divine of Manchester. Her young Grecian did not take to that sacred tongue. Just then he was absorbed in a little book of recent verse, Lyrical Ballads. One night he read to her "The Ancient Mariner" from that enchanted volume. She listened gravely to the boyish enthusiast. The weird tale about an old sailor and a seabird struck her as absurdly unreal. The boy was shocked by her flippant remarks, amused by her clever mockery. After all, could a student of theology and New Testament Greek, with evangelical leanings, be expected to like the new poetry» He laughed in spite of himself. Why argue with a woman? This woman enjoyed his eloquent talk, had wondered, indeed, at his conversational gifts since those childhood days at Greenhay when she had called him "the talking doll." And he admired her quick intellect, her interest in books, her elegance and beauty. That Christmas, when he had to declaim some Latin verses at the school entertainment, she and her friends filled the front seats and rapturously applauded. He was miserable. Lady Carbery alone sensed his misery, understood his revolt against such a public exhibition of himself. His part ended,

PRECOCIOUS SCHOLAR

21

he should have resumed his place among the participants, but instead he came down and sat by her. She was his confidante. He would miss her sympathy. After Lady Carbery's departure from Manchester, his discontent grew apace. There was nothing to do but to grind at grammar. His septuagenarian friend, the Reverend Mr. Clowes, lover of art and music, was now his only consolation. And he was touched with the Swedenborgian madness. The unhappy youth would always remember that summer night when the old man gave him the treasured copy of Homer and Iiis solemn benediction. The boy too was ready to break with the past. His daily tasks were confining and terribly monotonous. Want of exercise affected his health. A somnolent apothecary, instructed by his guardian to furnish him medicine, dosed him drastically but ineffectually. His heart was not in his work, and his liver was torpid. He decided to run away from school. The Lake Country, that region of far-famed loveliness, would be a healing refuge for mind and body. Moreover, his newly discovered poet lived there. Perhaps he could see the great Wordsworth and even hear him talk. But there was his mother to be reckoned with and his formidable guardian; and there was another consideration, his lack of money. Perhaps he might borrow a few guineas from the sympathetic mistress of Laxton. His destination had not yet been settled. He would bide his time. Mrs. Quincey was now living at Chester, forty miles away. Thomas kept her informed of his ill-health, discontent, and consequent desire to quit the Manchester Grammar School. Between mother and son relations had never been

22

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

really confidential. Threatened disobedience to her wishes brought in the winter and spring of 1802 letters both hortatory and mandatory. In February she wrote more in sorrow than in anger. W o u l d he disregard his dead father's injunction to submit unreservedly to her direction; March brought forth an epistle on doing one's duty, seasoned with religious sanctions. As a parent she had an awful account to give. Every human being is brought upon this stage of existence to glorify God, to do good, and to prepare for eternal happiness. He should subdue self and eschew pride. Through pride, the deadliest o f sins, the angels had been cast out of heaven. Already he had unduly exalted imagination, that most dangerous faculty which, if not brought under religious government, would desolate his life. Let him read daily a chapter in the Gospels or Epistles and study the works of men who were neither infidels nor Jacobins. "Give me your confidence. . . . God bless you, m y son. . . . Ever your truly affectionate mother." T o this and subsequent letters the sixteen-year-old boy replied with arguments for leaving Manchester. His mother's letter in early June is a curious mixture of cutting reproaches and dogmatic assertions. She will not argue with him; as well engage Don Quixote's windmills. His illness is produced by his sick mind, which no earthly physician can cure. His brothers, Richard and Henry, shall not be contaminated by Thomas's mischievous sentiments on "unnatural liberty." She herself is divinely directed and cannot agree with opinions which he must have got from advocates for early emancipation and other "preposterous" theories. She will never relinquish her

PRECOCIOUS SCHOLAR

23

reason and comfort for one who despises her commands. But she will never cease to pray for him and love him. Early one summer morning Thomas De Quincey slipped quietly out of the headmaster's house into liberty. The porter stumbled on the stairway and let his heavy trunk fall before the master's door, but that weary dignitary slept on. His bilious young scholar was at last getting exercise on the open road. He had in his pockets ten guineas from Lady Carbery and two little volumes of Greek and English poems.

III

I

NSTEAD of starting for the Lake Country, the runaway youth headed for North Wales. Two days' walking brought him to Chester, gateway to that picturesque region. Just outside the old walled city was St. John's Priory, his mother's home. If he could only see his sister Mary, she would tell him the family news and agree to write to him on his tramp abroad. He might even have it out with his mother about that wilful flight from Manchester. Cautiously reconnoitering the premises, he was suddenly confronted by his uncle, Colonel Penson of Bengal, lately returned on furlough from his strenuous Indian campaigning. It was a fortunate conjunction. The military man took his part at once. How, thought he, could an intelligent, red-blooded youth be expected to keep his health and be happy poring over books in a musty grammar school? Let him go to Wales and breathe the invigorating mountain air. Bivouacking would benefit him. He might get along nicely on a guinea a week. Mrs. Quincey, though unappeased, yielded to her dominating brother, and this allowance was agreed upon. Uncle Penson would gladly have added to it, lavish spender that he was, but Mrs. Quincey argued that her other sons might conclude that a premium had been put on filial revolt. The example would be bad for their morale.

VAGABONDAGE

25

By her brother's intervention mother and son were formally reconciled. He acknowledged his error and was partially forgiven. The less said the better when points of view were so different. Thomas might remain at the Priory or proceed to Wales, as he chose. The maternal weather was clearing, but promised to be cool and partly cloudy. Meanwhile Mary Quincey was scouring Lakeland for the truant. Mr. Lawson's messenger, furiously riding for Chester, had passed unrecognized the fugitive scholar. He brought the tidings of Thomas's flight to the dismayed family, and Mary started posthaste on a false trail for the Lakes. Before her return the restless youth was off to the salubrious Welsh valleys. His first weeks across the border were spent with acquaintances or friends of the Quincey family. But the scenery and the society were very like what he had just left. Trim villas and traditional opinions furnished little stimulus for the eye and mind of a young fellow who had fled from the conservative conventions of home and school. He had not come to Wales for social and intellectual conformity. The drawing rooms of lords and ladies were less congenial to him now that he had tasted freedom and had been branded as a rebel. One homestead where he was cordially received had attracted him at first because of its situation in the lovely vale of Llangollen, but the cultured ladies' ignorance of his new poetic hero of Grasmere chilled him. He was not in Wales seeking the society of women, especially if they were so misguided as to be indifferent to Wordsworth. Besides, one could not be a social success on a guinea a week. Accordingly, he pressed on into wilder Wales. Not far from Bangor he decided to lodge at a little cottage which seemed a likely

26

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

center for long rambles. The landlady was a kindly soul, her house was neat, and her charges moderate. She had once been a lady's maid in the Bishop of Bangor's household, and about this proud experience she never tired of talking. The good bishop had warned her, now that she was herself a householder, against hospitality to strolling strangers. They might be swindlers. She had told his lordship that she was sure her nice young lodger was no swindler. The report of this conversation, with its implications, so angered that sensitive little gentleman that he promptly paid his bill and left. In the years to come he was not so punctilious. On this occasion, moreover, he meditated an oral attack on the bishop in the Greek language. That would settle him; that would convince any churchman, high or low, that he was an honest man and fit for Oxford, fit even for Brasenose, the bishop's college, where a Manchester Grammar School boy might have had a scholarship. But the Bishop of Bangor was spared a colloquial combat in Greek. The boy next tried lodging at inns. These whitewashed hostelries were plentiful in rural Wales, and their charges for meals were then incredibly low. At some of them a dinner might be had for sixpence. Pedestrians with little or no luggage, scantily furnished wayfarers on holiday in those entrancing landscapes were heartily welcomed. To a traveler recently emancipated from the tumult of commercial Manchester the quiet of a Welsh tavern was refreshing. He was sure of a good night's rest, and it was certain he would not go hungry to bed. If he had any dreams, they would be happy echoes of the day's sights and sounds. Tramping ten or fifteen miles through the gorgeously apparelled autumn

VAGABONDAGE

27

of highland Wales was a guarantee of golden slumber. Often at evening in the comfortable lounge there was music, the song and harp beloved of Celtic folk. But life at inns, however modest, makes heavy inroads on a slender purse. His irregular movements made communication with the Priory uncertain, and in consequence his supply of shillings was running short. There was nothing to do but to bivouac with the cows in the open. A young intellectual might manage to subsist on a diet of roadside berries, supplemented by an occasional meal at some hospitable cottage. And now followed trying weeks of vagabondage through those parts of northern Wales collectively called Snowdonia in sight of her highest mountain. De Quincey estimates that nine nights out of fourteen he slept on the ground among the ferns or furze. Sleeping in that variable climate, with only a frail umbrella-like canvas as protection against wind and rain, was enough to impair the health of even a seasoned soldier. Bronzed Uncle Penson himself might have suffered. The October nights were chill and the frosty stars looked down in pitiless beauty upon the face of the uneasy dreamer on the Cambrian hills. From time to time, on his infrequent sojourns at wayside inns, he made the acquaintance of travelers. They were impressed by his extraordinary conversational gifts and the range of his knowledge. Little congenial circles were formed, centers of diverting discussion. Amid the privations of Vagabondia the inspired tramp made friends, had Iiis triumphs now and then in the cosy warmth of indoors. Likewise with residents in the sequestered valleys he had happy comradeship. A kindly German introduced him to the language

28

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

and literature of his native country. A literary lawyer let him browse at will among his books. Another opened for him the antique treasures of his provincial library. Perhaps he fingered the leaves of an "uncastrated Decameron" or of a Shakespeare folio as yet undiscovered by bibliophiles. At a hillside cottage the roaming youth was for several days an entertaining and useful guest. The sons and daughters were in charge while the parents were off at a religious revival. Could he do anything for them? The accomplished visitor might be handy with the pen; would he write some letters? For the brothers he indited business missives and for the sisters long epistles to their sweethearts. Blushingly and haltingly in this rustic confessional the tale of love was told, and the wandering scribe was happy in their confidence. The return of father and mother, solemn with religious zeal, put an end to the charming little household comedy. Like the wary Bishop of Bangor, they had no mind to entertain errant strangers. Cold weather was approaching. The prospect of a winter in Wales was disconcerting. The boy was entirely dependent upon friends for food and lodging, and he feared he might wear out his welcome. Would they lend him a few guineas to pay his way to London? Ever since his three hours' visit two years ago, he had wanted to see that vast city again. There he might raise some money on his expectations and live like a philosopher. He was seventeen and in another year would be old enough for Oxford. As to going back home, he had no thought of that. His little circle of admirers in Wales, men whom his extraordinary talents had won, accommodated him with a loan of twelve guineas. He was

VAGABONDAGE

29

off on his long walk to Shrewsbury. It was a brilliant late November day. That night the winds roared round his luxurious inn, harbingers of winter on the wild uplands, lately his bed. Long before dawn Thomas D e Quincey boarded the fast mail-coach for London. While in Wales he had written to a certain moneylender in London. He had explained in some detail his financial prospects at his majority, when he would enjoy a small inherited annuity. W o u l d the J e w accommodate him with a loan of, say, two hundred pounds in several annual instalments on his personal security? T o this letter the J e w had not vouchsafed a reply. Thomas determined to confront him and get a positive yes or no. The young stranger from Wales might as well have sought an interview with the king. The moneylender dealt with his clients only through an agent. That elusive functionary did business in a dingy unfurnished house in Greek Street, Soho. There, with his clerk and a mysterious, half-famished girl of ten, he spent his days. Thomas soon discovered that a friendless youth in London, w h o would a borrower be, suffers terribly from the law's delays. D a y after day he waited on the agent in Greek Street. The evasive attorney was more interested in discussing literature than business with his waiting petitioner. Like his chief he regarded the youth's expectations as of doubtful validity. A pleader so learned and eloquent was suspect. After weeks of waiting his suit was still as uncertain as a case in chancery. Those twelve guineas furnished by his Welsh friends had dwindled to a f e w shillings. He was reduced to the meagerest fare and to the ground for a bed. Without food and shelter, he asked permission to spend the

30

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

nights in the gloomy house to which he daily returned in vain expectancy. His request was granted. Here, then, Thomas De Quincey existed during the winter of 1802-03, eating scraps left from the master's scanty breakfast, after a night of broken sleep in the rat-infested dwelling. His sole companion was the hunger-bitten child of ten. Exile and outcast in the heart of the multitudinous city, they huddled together against the cold under a threadbare blanket, the accomplished son of Elizabeth Quincey and the nameless waif of Soho Square. Often at night the penniless youth mingled with the throngs in Oxford Street. There he found diversion and a fleeting human contact. Long walks on winter evenings afforded him a little of the warmth which indoor cheer and a satisfying supper bring to more fortunate mortals. In all that moving crowd he knew not a living soul. Sometimes he sat drowsily on doorsteps under porticoes, deferring his return to the gaunt, unfriendly house. On one of these evening walks he made the acquaintance of a young woman later immortalized by him as "Ann of Oxford Street." She confided to the sympathetic boy the story of her sufferings. Wronged and defrauded, she was now a creature of the streets. For this unfortunate girl he came to have a brotherly regard. One night as they were sitting side by side in a doorway, he suddenly fainted from bodily weakness. She ran to a wine shop and from her slender purse bought a glass of port; he drank and was revived — saved from death, he always gratefully asserted. A few days later he was offered an opportunity for a trip to Eton. At the very spot where they parted in tears they agreed to meet in five days. He returned

VAGABONDAGE

31

and hastened to the place, but she was not there. His search for her was fruitless. Ann of Oxford Street he never saw again. In his memory Ann became the good angel of that dark London winter, purified and ennobled by unselfish devotion. She had vanished from his sight only to be canonized in his dreams. Shortly before his last sight of Ann, he chanced to meet one day an old friend of his family. This beneficent gentleman, guessing the plight of the young vagabond, gave him a ten-pound note. Here was a windfall indeed. Out of it he could pay a fee to the obdurate agent and so hasten the longawaited loan. He would buy some clothes and call on his friend Altamont out at Eton. Perhaps his lordship's name might charm a few shekels from the pockets of the Jew. The tired boy was lulled to sleep by the motion of the coach and carried past his destination. He started to walk back to Eton, but, again overcome with weariness, he fell asleep by the roadside. He awoke at dawn conscious of a forbidding face curiously regarding him, and hastily made his way into the town. Lord Altamont had gone to Cambridge, but his friend Lord Desart was at home. Breakfast was just ready: would Mr. De Quincey partake? The long underfed youth did his best, but he was quite unequal to the substantial meal. Casually the dyspeptic guest mentioned that wine on more than one occasion in his recent wanderings had proved a tonic to his depleted system. Wine was not ordinarily served at breakfast, but custom might be waived in favor of a delicate stomach. Thomas drank freely and was stimulated into a recital of his woes. His lordship was moved. Under certain conditions he would be security for his guest. Back in Lon-

32

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

don, the heartened youth renewed his negotiations. Would the moneylender accept the nobleman's terms? He would not, Thomas found after an eloquent exposition of them. He was at last convinced that nothing could extract a loan from that preternaturally cautious individual. The tenpound note was spent and he was still an impecunious philosopher in the city streets. His plan had ingloriously failed, had indeed never been tried. There was no prospect of fifty pounds a year for plain living and high thinking in London. During these months of acute privation he had for the first time faced the stark realities of life; he had consorted with outcasts; he had waited on the whims of usurers; he was weary in mind and body. One thing he had gained — he had escaped the ignominy of a forced return to school. That danger past, the chastened young rebel might welcome an invitation to return to the bosom of his family. And what did that maternal circle at Chester think of his prolonged revolt from the salutary disciplines of home and society? Were they making any move to reclaim the erring one? From time to time he had been in communication with his friend Mrs. Best of Everton, Liverpool, at whose house he and his mother were guests a year or two before. Through her Mrs. Quincey would learn of him. It is conceivable also that some acquaintance of the Quinceys, possibly the donor of the ten-pound note, may have reported to St. John's Priory. That blessed abode would be a haven of rest after the turmoil of Oxford Street; a complete reconciliation might even be in store for the wanderer. Early in January, through Mrs. Best, he had sounded his chief guardian, Mr. Hall of Manchester. That

VAGABONDAGE

33

indignant worthy, after a tart reference to his revolt from duty, informed him that his guardians had no new propositions to make. If, however, he had any plans in agitation that seemed entitled to notice, they would be given serious consideration. His guardians indulged the hope that he had learned a valuable lesson, that he would renounce his errors, and by correct behavior remove the impression of former misconduct. At last the way was clearing for a return to reason and his mother. Not until March, however, did the efforts at reconciliation attain success. Then he left the streets of London for the peace of St. John's Priory.

IV

Cloistered Life HOMAS'S stay at his mother's house was brief. Perhaps Mrs. Quincey still feared that her rebellious son might corrupt his brothers by his dangerous notions of personal liberty. Or it may be that Thomas, subjected to reproaches and moral exhortation, wished to dwell for a season without the family precincts. At any rate, it was arranged that he should spend a while with Mrs. Best at Everton, pending a decision as to his future plans. The entire region was familiar to him. Two years ago he had been admitted as a visitor to the literary coterie of Liverpool. He wondered whether that company of professional men, whose avocation was authorship, was still flourishing. He recalled their conventional discussions, relieved by the racy talk of a witty tailor and the buffooneries of a certain clergyman, occasions which furnished him material many years later for a magazine article that scandalized the Liverpool press. Well, here he was again in dear old Everton, dining at Mr. Cragg's, and seeing familiar faces every day. It was easier to forget the London tribulations here than at St. John's Priory. Reading Aeschylus on the heights at sunrise with his banker friend Mr. Clarke was a pleasant prospect. Debates with Mr. Cragg on the merits and demerits of the Odyssey might be renewed. He would drink tea with the Wrights and the Merritts, talk

CLOISTERED LIFE

35

literature and the Napoleonic wars with any who had intelligence and leisure. As for himself, he had plenty of time on his hands. He was rusticating. It was a matter of indifference whether school kept or not. For two months or more he kept a diary. In this adolescent journal he recorded his mental states and literary impressions. The seventeen-year-old boy had attacks of melancholy, was often silent at meals, ate sparingly, walked at twilight in the churchyard, and found in misery an exquisite relief. Sometimes he regaled sympathetic ladies with a recital of his symptoms. Occasionally dining out, he would eat imprudently, drink freely of wine or coffee, and later dream the weirdest dreams. "Facility of impression," he said, was a leading trait of his character. He was alternately moody and ecstatic, depressed or elated by trivial circumstance. His sensitive mind responded to all the nuances of the spoken or written word. He lived at times in an emotional tempest that drove him from men to the consoling solitudes of nature. One Sunday morning he went to church and "heard an ass preach." He fled from the sermonizer to the woods and then to the sea that he might worship God in the midst of His handiwork. Reading Shakespeare and Southey, he passed into a state of lyric wretchedness. His sensations and tastes marked the young diarist as a thoroughgoing romantic. Among the works he intended to write he mentioned pathetic ballads and wild poems on shipwrecked men. In the diary he looked within and ahead, but not backward. There is found no word of his recent unhappy months in London. They were too near and too painful for intrusion here. Silently treasured in memory, these harrowing scenes

36

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

would await the mellowing touch of time to ripen into speech. The diary contains, among the many names of books and authors, a list of favorite English poets. It begins with Spenser and ends with Wordsworth. In the light of earlier and later utterances, the arrangement is significant. Young De Quincey still dreamed of meeting Wordsworth. His enthusiasm for the Lyrical Ballads had not waned, and the Lake Country was a land of enchantment whither he would fain have fled from Manchester. In the leisurely life at Everton his mind again turned toward Grasmere. He accordingly drafted a letter to the poet, patiently wrought it into an epistle of lofty adulation, and posted it to the great man. He informed the Westmorland bard of his passion of more than two years' standing. At a respectful distance he now prostrated himself before that august spirit, and offered up a petition. He hardly dared to expect that praise from so humble a suppliant would please one whose moral dignity set him above the vanities of the world. The poet should know, however, that "in the sad and dreary vacuity of worldly intercourse" the hope of winning his friendship had saved his devotee from despair. The singer of Grasmere would never find a more devoted admirer or any other mortal, of high or low estate, more eager for his happiness or more zealous to promote it. The poet replied with a mildly deprecating gesture. He was gratified of course that his poemi had impressed a stranger with favorable ideas of his character. His friendship, however, it was not in his power to bestow. Friendship is the growth of time and circumstance. The unreasonable value that his ingenuous admirer assigned

CLOISTERED LIFE

37

to his writings, compared to those of others, especially the illustrious names of the past, gave him .great concern. He should be sorry to stand in the way of the proper influence of other writers. The poet concluded by cordially inviting De Quincey to Grasmere. That was indeed an achievement. The letter from Everton had accomplished his heart's desire. As the weeks passed, however, the boy grew restless. His future was uncertain. He was drifting, drifting. Over at Chester Mrs. Quincey was increasingly concerned about her son's life at Everton. It was empty and aimless. She wrote that she had been trying to get him accommodations at Oxford, but without success; suggested that he appeal in person to his chief guardian to permit him to enter the university "fairly," that is, with an adequate allowance. At any rate, Thomas must write to Mr. Hall a conciliatory letter. She warned her headstrong son that he should treat that reverend gentleman with respect. He obeyed. His letter breathed a spirit of deferential regard. His previous letters, he had heard, were interpreted as contemptuously insolent. A mistake. The expressions so unfortunately construed were aimed, not at his dear guardians, but at the boys of the Manchester Grammar School. His esteem for Mr. Hall in particular was as strong as ever. He was now ready to give assurance, without an absolute promise, that he would go in for a profession. Such was the condition on which he could hope for an allowance. He was almost eighteen, the minimum age for matriculation at the university. Before his guardian replied, De Quincey returned to St. John's Priory. Colonel Penson was still there. The military man had brought with him from India several fine horses, one of which slipped on

38

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

the November ice and broke her master's leg. Colonel Penson was in bed for a month. Thomas and Mrs. Quincey took turns in reading to the invalid. One day in a moment of irritation growing out of defeat in an argument, the uncle sharply reproached the nephew for his idle and purposeless mode of life. No young man should waste his precious time as Thomas was doing. True, but his annual allowance of one hundred pounds was hardly enough for a gentleman's education. But might he not, with severe economy, manage to get along on that amount at college» Probably so. Mrs. Quincey acquiesced. A few days later Thomas De Quincey left his mother's home for Oxford. When he got off the coach in the old university city one snowy December night in 1803, he had not decided which was to be his college. Perhaps his young acquaintances at the university would advise him about the relative advantages of its colleges. After spending several days in consultation and considerable of his initial stock of fifty guineas in entertainment, he was inclined toward Christ Church. That was the largest college and in some respects the most famous. Among such a great number of students an impecunious scholar would be less conspicuous and would probably have more liberty. Moreover, the chapel had an organ, with the full cathedral service. He called upon the dean. There was not so much as a dog-kennel then untenanted in his college, the dean regretted to say. If Mr. De Quincey's guardians had only notified him of their intention to send their ward to Christ Church, such a state of affairs would have been avoided. The disappointed applicant hastened to absolve his guardians from blame; his presence there was of his own in-

CLOISTERED LIFE

39

clining. The little interview with Dr. Cyril Jackson he always remembered. The gracious manners of the elder scholar had put him at ease, while the unusual knowledge and fluency of the eighteen-year-old visitor favorably impressed the kindly official. Even if a place had been found for De Quincey at Christ Church, there would have been the "caution," or entrance money, which was more than he could pay. This fee happened to be very much less at Worcester College. Besides, he understood that the discipline at Worcester was in general less rigid. Economy was necessary, and freedom was as the breath of life to him. Worcester College he accordingly chose. His rooms were at first in the ancient part of the quadrangle and later in the modern and more spacious buildings. The lovely gardens of Worcester and the open fields beyond were ideal places for walks, reading, and meditation. De Quincey's studious habits, however, kept him much within his rooms. He estimates that for the first two years of his Oxford residence he spoke fewer than one hundred words. Once he was greeted in the quadrangle by his tutor. The conversation consisted of three sentences, two of which were spoken by the tutor. The economical student gave no parties nor did he attend any. What little money was left after paying necessary expenses went into books. They were more essential than clothes. On more or less public occasions he trusted to his gown to conceal the scantiness or threadbareness of his dress. Dining one day in hall without a vest, he had buttoned his coat close around his neck. That garment and his gown, he supposed, would effectually hide his vestlessness. Vain expectation. His neighbor at table solemnly

40

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

asked the student opposite whether he had seen in the last Gazette an official order against the use of waistcoats. With equal seriousness the young man replied that he was gratified to learn of such a sensible inhibition. He hoped the ban would soon be extended to include breeches, for they were harder to pay for than waistcoats. The pointed rebuke, silently acknowledged by the victim as just, was powerless to divert the meager flow of cash from books to attire. Books De Quincey would have, though his clothes might wear out and his debts accumulate. He had read more English literature than most Oxford students and he was extraordinarily versed in the classics. There was little need of a tutor for a youth who was familiar with authors of whom an Oxford don had probably never heard. The more prominent writers in his own and the classic tongues he continued to read without personal guidance; what he especially wanted at Oxford was leisure for enlarging his knowledge of other literatures. A young German became his unofficial tutor. He instructed De Quincey in Hebrew and improved his pronunciation of German. German literature, which he had begun to read in Wales, now became a fascinating field of study. He was particularly interested in the philosophers. Kant he diligendy read and later expounded at considerable length. In the first flush of his enthusiasm the young Englishman had a mind to dedicate his life to philosophy. He would busy himself for several years at Oxford in probing the depths and scaling the heights of German transcendentalism. Then he would retire to Canada, build him a cottage in the woods, and quietly revel in metaphysical bliss. But further study of Kant led to the

CLOISTERED LIFE

41

conviction that his philosophy was negative, essentially destructive, and ultimately barren. A classically trained youth, however romantic, likes form, positive conclusions, and clear ideas. Kantian speculation was depressing. It might, if long pursued, make him misanthropic. He could not live with abstractions and be happily human. His Canadian project of sylvan isolation was abandoned in favor of continued reading and dreaming in England. This disenchantment happened in his twentieth year, but his subsequent study of German philosophy was destined to bear literary fruit. In after years he would look back upon his earliest explorations in that higher realm of thought as one of the exciting adventures of his youth. For the present he determined to vary his devotion to intellectual pursuits by an occasional visit to London or to his kindred and friends in the West. He went up to London for a few weeks. It was his first visit since entering Oxford, or indeed since his terrible experiences in the metropolis the year before. He needed relaxation. Moreover, love of travel was in the Penson and Quincey blood. He rejoiced in the familiar sights and sounds of the great city. His days would be spent visiting the bookshops, the museums, and the parks. In the hurry and excitement, with every hour filled, he forgot one day to plunge his head into cold water, his invigorating daily practice of many years. He did so that night, jumped into bed, and went to sleep at once. He awoke next morning with excruciating neuralgic pains. For two or three weeks he endured the agony. Roaming the streets in desperation one rainy Sunday, he chanced to meet a college friend. Did he know of any remedy for facial neuralgia or toothache? Yes, he would

42

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

strongly recommend opium. Any druggist would accommodate the sufferer. A blessed apothecary in Oxford Street sold the young Oxonian for an absurdly small sum the celestial drug which within an hour banished his infernal pain. It was wonderful what heavenly relief a little laudanum had wrought, marvellous the radiant happiness which swiftly ensued. He knew wine very well, with its temporary stimulation and subsequent deadening of the sensibilities, but opium, tried now for the first time, actually quickened the mental faculty, brought exhilaration without intoxication and serenity attended by ineffable dreams. He had no thought of frequent indulgence. There were certain times, however, when the brownish-red liquor induced a mood for the perfect enjoyment of life and also of art. This happy mental effect led De Quincey to indulge on subsequeiit visits to London. An abstinence of two or three weeks was usually followed by a mild debauch, which was apt to occur in the opera season. Grassini was singing twice a week. A little of the magic elixir taken before the performance heightened for him the lady's beauty and enriched her divine contralto. Around him were hundreds of Italians, known by their rippling speech, a concourse of heavenly sound between the numbers. He was ravished with delight. He went often to hear the enchanting diva pour out her soul in song. Five shillings, the price of his gallery seat, had never yielded such rich returns. Sometimes he would seek humbler diversions than the lyrical Grassini, pleasures in which his sharpened powers of observation had full play. On Saturday nights, ecstatically drugged, he would stroll through the markets and mingle with the common people bargaining for

CLOISTERED LIFE

43

their Sunday supplies. Their homely talk was full of good sense seasoned with cheerful resignation to their lot. Unobtrusively he would take part in their chaffering, offer an opinion on the price of bread and onions. His sympathies were with the buyers. He had himself been poor and hungry in the streets of London, bent on getting the most for his shilling. Here at the street stalls was the microcosm of lowly urban life, a study which interested him no less than the higher ranges of humanity. A visit to the versatile city was a restorative for mind and body. He returned to bookish Oxford with renewed vigor. And in his pocket was a phial from the accommodating chemist of Oxford Street. Once or twice a year De Quincey visited his mother. She had sold St. John's Priory and was now living most of the time in Somerset. Architecture and religion were her passions. Her brother, Colonel Penson, was building for her a handsome house in Wrington Valley near the estate of the pious Hannah More. Mrs. Quincey was glad to have Thomas at home. She had written tenderly solicitous letters to him at Oxford. Mother and son were on closer terms than in his troubled pre-collegiate days. The rebellious behavior of Richard, Thomas's younger brother, moved her to be more demonstrative toward her eldest son. They talked much of "Pink," pet name of the handsome boy. Some years before this he had run away from school, enlisted on a sailing vessel, and had passed through enough adventures in two hemispheres to make a volume of pirate stories. He was still wandering, lost to his family despite repeated efforts to locate him. Twice he had returned to England without disclosing himself, then vanished again into the unknown. Once, pen-

44

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

niless and footsore, he had stopped in Oxford. Thomas was in residence at the time, but the truant, unaware of his brother's nearness, accepted alms from a kindly collegian and went his way. As the mystery of Richard's whereabouts deepened, Mrs. Quincey's anxiety about her errant son grew more acute. Thomas himself, reflecting later upon his young brother's revolt from authority, remarked upon his own "obstinate recusance" which, perhaps without directly influencing Richard, had at least set him a bad example. This was in fact the accusation of his guardians. But Richard's revolt, like his own minor offence, was more likely the outcropping of a romantic taint in the family blood. T o Mrs. Quincey the errancy of Richard was a mysterious dispensation of Providence. Since it served to increase her love for Thomas, furnishing them a theme of common interest, something of divinity belongs to Richard's rebellion. Through the early Oxford years De Quincey still dreamed of meeting Wordsworth. The Lyrical Ballads held for him the supreme place in contemporary verse. This joint production of Wordsworth and Coleridge had stood the test of six or seven years and had won praise from the discriminating. These poets were the young Oxonian's heavenly twins. But Wordsworth was the first-born in his affections. The thrill of that first letter had touched with excitement the unsettled days at St. John's Priory. And now there came another. The poet hoped his youthful friend had not been seduced into unworthy pleasures and pursuits; commended to him virtue, temperance, and chastity, the love of nature and of books. Just then he was writing a poem on his college life, to be followed by a long moral and philosophical work.

CLOISTERED LIFE

45

He was particularly gratified that his admirer at Oxford was impressed by the moral value of his teaching. The boy was flattered by the confidential matter about the poet's work, and welcomed the sage advice. He started off for Westmorland resolved to accept the good man's invitation to visit him. He got as far as Coniston, eight miles away. Then his heart failed him. It was enough for the present simply to look toward the promised land. Once more he journeyed toward the Lakes, gazed upon the blessed valley, even descried at a distance the whitewashed cottage of his hero, faltered panic-stricken, and turned back toward Oxford. He was not yet ready to exchange his dream for reality. His other literary idol he had the pleasure of meeting in the summer of 1807, during a visit to his mother at Bristol. He learned that Coleridge was at Bridgewater, about forty miles distant. Thither he went and was rewarded. Coleridge was standing in the gateway of a friend's house gazing dreamily into space. Brought to earth by a voice, he courteously acknowledged De Quincey's greeting, invited him in, and soon began one of his characteristic monologues. The talk was mostly metaphysical. Sublunary things interested him little; he soared above the clouds, fetched vast circuits in the empyrean. The average listener quickly lost him in these excursions, but the Oxonian enthusiast, used to the tenuous ways of German philosophy, followed him through the maze of relevancies and irrelevancies. De Quincey considered the transcendental talker logical, and when his wheeling flights came full circle, was duly edified by his thought and method. He had talked three hours on a stretch. In one of his rare pauses De Quincey made some remark about opium and

46

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

toothache. Coleridge feelingly warned him against the drug whose potent spell even then held the poet in thrall. Unable to sleep, the agitated youth journeyed the forty miles that summer night to Bristol. For days his thought was on the extraordinary man he had just left and the great projects he had in mind. He would like to do Coleridge a service by freeing him from financial concern for a year or two. N o w that De Quincey had attained his majority, he had for once more money than he needed. The surplus might be presented to this chronically moneyless poet and philosopher. It was pleasing to think of himself as the liberator of genius, the benefactor of those young Englishmen who were looking to Coleridge for light and leading. A little help at this critical time would ease the parturition of great ideas in the philosopher's brain. At Bristol he looked up Joseph Cottle, Coleridge's friend, and proposed a gift of five hundred pounds. Cottle thought it too large a sum and persuaded De Quincey to reduce it. Accordingly, with the compliments of an anonymous admirer, the bookseller handed over three hundred pounds to Coleridge, who was graciously pleased to accept. A few weeks later De Quincey met the Coleridges at Bristol Wells. Mrs. Coleridge and the children were contemplating a visit to the Southeys at Keswick. Since Coleridge was booked for a series of lectures in London, De Quincey promptly offered to be their guide and protector on the journey northward. He welcomed another trip to the Lakes. This time he might actually see Wordsworth. They entered the region at Kendal and went on to Ambleside and Grasmere. On the hill above the lake De Quincey and Hartley

CLOISTERED LIFE

47

Coleridge jumped from the chaise and ran down toward the village. There again before him, closer now, was the white cottage glimpsed the year before. The Coleridge boy headed for it and he followed. Through the gate and up the walk he hastened, fascinated. Mrs. Coleridge and the carriage were forgotten. The door opened and the Olympian stood before him, stately but kindly, with extended hand. A little later he was listening to the sage of Grasmere, was having nectar and ambrosia, vulgarly called tea, among the celestials. O n the third day the Coleridges left for Keswick, but De Quincey, charmed with the simple life at Dove Cottage, stayed longer. The master's talk was deliberate, solemn, majestic. It had a strong local flavor, with moral and mystical infusions. The tempo of life was pedestrian. Long walks, mountain-climbing, journeys through the valleys in a rustic cart, were daily diversions. Sometimes the poet's sister Dorothy accompanied them on these jaunts. Quick of movement, sympathetic, intelligent, she and the young Oxford student got on famously together. Perhaps De Quincey would like to meet Southey? O f f to Greta Hall at Keswick, thirteen miles away, he and Wordsworth tramped. The little man from Oxford had exercise aplenty keeping up with this meditative mountaineer striding over misty hill and dale. He returned to Oxford invigorated. Lakeland was in his heart. He would like to live there. The gardens of Oxford, the Isis, and the Cherwell had a quiet beauty, but Westmorland had cast its wilder spell about him. The spirit o f freedom and poetry was wooing him toward the heights. The cloistered life was insensibly losing its hold upon him. He had been at Oxford five years, had got all the university

48

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

could offer him, and now he was growing stale. An occasional opium indulgence brought some transient happiness. He would remember those gorgeous dreams about Levana and her attendant ladies of sorrow, dreams that had stirred his heart more than any realities at Oxford. Yet Oxford would ever be dear to him because there he had found an opportunity for reading and thinking. As for knowledge, Oxford had taught him little outside his private endeavors. His social pleasures had been few. Friendships cost more time and money than he could afford to spend. He had been virtually a recluse. Among the few who knew him he was regarded as a clever young person of unusual learning, a trifle eccentric perhaps. The head of his college esteemed him for his quiet devotion to study at a time when Worcester had a reputation for loose discipline and low intellectual standards. De Quincey, the officials said, was just the sort of man to come up for honors. The idea pleased him. The examination, he understood, was to be held in two parts, on Saturday and Monday, the first written, the second oral. He had heard that questions in the oral were to be in Greek and that the subject matter was to cover a wide range in Greek philosophy and literature. Later he was informed that the original plan had been modified: questions and answers were to be in English and on a narrower field. This change confirmed his suspicion of the very limited knowledge of the examiners. On the first day he was tested in Latin, with brilliant results. News of his triumph was spread abroad. If he passed the Greek examination with such distinction, his name would be memorable in the annals of Oxford colleges. Monday came, the examin-

CLOISTERED LIFE

49

ers met, but De Quincey was nowhere to be found. Tradition has it that either the prospect of an oral performance frightened him, or that after the first examination he went on an opium spree and was in no condition for the second. But De Quincey, referring to the matter in after years, declared he was disgusted at the proposed method of examination and the ignorance of his examiners. On Sunday he packed up his things and left Oxford without honors and without a degree. His informal departure was quite in keeping with his temperament and habits of life, for neither in youth nor in manhood was De Quincey subject to the canons of regularity or conformity. He had been a rebel at Manchester, and at Oxford, though in a milder way, he still revolted at the tyranny of custom.

ν The Master of Dove Cottage Ε Q U I N C E Y was going out into the world without a profession. He was now twenty-three. He had a small inherited income, an extraordinary fund of literary knowledge, but no prospects or definite purpose in life. For awhile, indeed, he seriously thought of going into law, and with this in mind he had, before quitting Oxford and immediately afterwards, "kept terms" in London at the Middle Temple. Though eating with future barristers, he consorted with men of letters, and literature won. Literature of one sort or another, for better or for worse, was to be through life his spiritual spouse. In his second year at Oxford, armed with a letter of introduction, he had called on Charles Lamb, then a clerk at the India House with rooms in the Temple. Lamb invited him to tea and introduced him to his sister Mary. When the conversation touched on the new poetry, De Quincey referred in glowing words to "The Ancient Mariner." Lamb's cynical response chilled him. He protested against his host's criticism of the sacred verse, and in spite of Miss Lamb's efforts to placate him, soon departed, mystified and disappointed. On a subsequent visit he met other celebrities. Coleridge was then in London lodging over the Courier office in the Strand. De Quincey saw him often. The poet recalled their

THE MASTER OF DOVE COTTAGE

51

meeting in Somerset the year before and was now aware of his debt to this admirer. He promptly claimed De Quincey for a friend and wrote to him in Northumberland Street requesting that he speak his mind about Coleridge's writings. Frank criticism, he declared, was the best proof of friendship. If De Quincey expected to write to Grasmere, Coleridge wished to be remembered to his friends there. He was now too unwell and busied with lecturing to write, but he hoped before long to journey thither. Coleridge gave De Quincey a ticket to his lectures, commissioned him to purchase certain books, and occasionally did him the honor of borrowing small sums of money. The bard was depressed in mind and body from heavy indulgence in opium, but old friendship and his gift of discourse drew to his dingy rooms such men as Lamb, Sir Humphry Davy, and William Godwin. Into this circle young De Quincey was admitted. He was deeply grateful to Coleridge for the privilege. The philosopher was paying his dues in coin acceptable to his creditor, the brilliant talk of a company of distinguished men. To an unknown man in the morning of life this was a fair exchange. There was, moreover, another favor the impecunious poet could bestow in lieu of pounds sterling. Coleridge would soon be going to the Lakes and through his attachment to Wordsworth might be pleased to seal the alliance between his young friend and the Westmorland sage. In the autumn of 1808 De Quincey paid his second visit to the Wordsworths. The family had lately moved to Allan Bank, a more spacious house in Grasmere village. Wordsworth was just then busy preparing for the press a pamphlet, or "tract," with the rather long title, "Concerning the Re-

52

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

lations of Great Britain, Spain, and Portugal, to each other, and to the Common Enemy, at this crisis; and specifically as affected by the Convention of Cintra." This pamphlet was an eloquent and forceful indictment of the British Government for the recent withdrawal of the allied armies from the Spanish Peninsula. De Quincey expressed his interest in the project and offered his services toward getting the Cintra pamphlet in print. He was eager to help the poet in any way and to establish himself as a friend of the family. Wordsworth gladly accepted the proffered assistance of his accomplished guest. De Quincey's task was annotating the text, punctuating it (a matter in which the poet was not expert), proofreading, and preparing the appendix. The annotation and appendix were finished early in February and De Quincey was commissioned to go to London and see the pamphlet through the press. Before he left Allan Bank, however, De Quincey reached an important decision. He determined to make Grasmere his permanent abiding place. There he would enjoy indefinitely the society of Wordsworth's family and that of other Lake dwellers. Hearing that Dove Cottage, Wordsworth's home for seven years, was for rent, he leased it for a like period. Dorothy Wordsworth volunteered to superintend the furnishing. On his return from London the little hillside house would be all ready for him. Proofreading, begun at Allan Bank, was De Quincey's labor of love in London that spring. It was a slow process, for sheets had to be sent to Grasmere and returned, and there was much letter-writing back and forth. Moreover, De Quincey was both dilatory and meticulous; and his sys-

THE MASTER OF DOVE COTTAGE

53

tem of punctuation, his alterations, and omissions in the returned proofs almost drove the printers to distraction. Wordsworth himself betrayed irritation at the slowness of the printing, being much less concerned about certain niceties of expression than De Quincey. The latter gave as one of his explanations of the delay the drunkenness of a compositor. This was accepted by the author, who exonerated De Quincey from blame, though Coleridge, then in London, did not. As to De Quincey's changes in the text Wordsworth generously wrote: " M y dear friend, all your alterations are amendments." Indeed, the author himself had also made changes and had impeded progress. At long last the pamphlet was ready and in May the Wordsworths were reading copies sent posthaste to Grasmere. In spite of a few errors, they were pleased with the work. They were "most grateful to Mr. De Quincey for all his trouble." The poet expressed his satisfaction in a letter and was apologetic for the vexations to his young friend in getting his essay through the press. But in his preface there was no acknowledgment of De Quincey's help. Nor was there any indication that the essay-postscript on Sir John Moore's Letters was written by De Quincey, an essay which is particularly interesting to the lover of De Quincey because it is his earliest known piece of published prose. B y his labors on the "Convention of Cintra," De Quincey had realized his boyish ambition to know the Grasmere poet. But it must be said that, in spite of appreciative expressions between Wordsworth and De Quincey while the pamphlet was in press, the master of Allan Bank had, perhaps unwittingly, wounded his devoted disciple. Certainly he was now a less heroic figure. There was a mem-

54

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

ber o f his family, however, with w h o m De Quincey had far more human communication than with the philosophic author o f the "Convention of Cintra." During these months in London De Quincey received charming letters from Dorothy Wordsworth. She wrote much about the Wordsworth children, who were already fast friends of De Quincey. Johnny, for instance, sends a message to him about the mysterious movements of a mouse which sometimes appears from under the dining-room grate and as strangely disappears, for no hole is there. He himself thinks it is a Fairy in the shape o f a mouse, but he calls upon his absent friend to reflect on the matter and to favor him with his conjectures. The man in London is remembered nightly in the child's prayers, which include a petition for his return. He wants to hear Mr. De Quincey talk. His aunt incidentally remarks that Johnny's manners were gready improved last winter by his daily association with that polite and accomplished gentleman. Absorbed though he was in his task in the distant city, De Quincey was not forgetful of the children at Allan Bank. He wrote to them and sent them pictures. He even thought of purchasing a carriage for them, a proposal which Dorothy promptly vetoed. His cottage, she reports, is painted, furnished with mahogany, and ready for his books. Mrs. Wordsworth wrote also later in the summer. They had inspected the cottage, and had drunk tea in the parlor to the absent owner's health. Baby Catherine looked everywhere for "Kinsey" and even pulled off the counterpane to see if he was in the bed. He was eagerly awaited at Allan Bank, whence he would be led in triumph to his own house at Town-End and properly installed.

THE MASTER OF DOVE COTTAGE

55

Letters also came from his sister Jane in Somerset. She had not received his promised letter in answer to her dozen and a half. It was high time he was coming to Westhay to see them in their new villa. If he expected to furnish a cottage she would like to assist, unless that "beautiful and wild hearted girl" was going to do it. In imagination Jane had been furnishing the most enchanting cottage for him. He must not marry, though, for he was just the person to be taken in by some designing angel only to learn too late the melancholy truth. Besides, the cottage would be too small to accommodate a wife and a dozen small children who, poor things, must all learn to live on air and philosophy. While Jane was still rallying her dilatory brother in playfully humorous letters, he decided to visit his family in the West. One visit would answer many letters. He had already asked for the ground plan of his mother's new house, illustrating to Jane's surprise that monstrous incongruity — a metaphysician and an architect. She would as soon have thought o f sending him the newest and most approved plan for making a petticoat. He lingered on into the autumn at Westhay, "playing truant amongst the valleys of Somersetshire," and it was November when he reached Grasmere to take possession o f his cottage. He still delayed, characteristically enough, the occupation o f his new home, and stayed on four or five weeks at Allan Bank. His cook had been installed in the kitchen, but his books were still arriving, and he could not live by bread alone. Only ten boxes o f books had come; nineteen more were on the way. Little D o v e Cottage, after seven lean years with Wordsworth, was n o w facing more than seven

56

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

fat years of book lore. The deal shelves and mahogany tables would soon be groaning under the weary weight of all that unintelligible load. Meanwhile the young master was being introduced to Lake society by the Wordsworths. Dorothy had already written to a friend of the extraordinary newcomer, "like one of our family, you know." Loving, gentle, and happy, a very good scholar, and an acute logician. Rather diminutive unfortunately, but with sweetness in his eyes, which soon makes you forget that he is such a little man. D o v e Cottage was less than a mile from Allan Bank, and the intercourse between the two was informal and frequent. Coleridge was again visiting the Wordsworths that winter. His presence was an added attraction for De Quincey. He was then editing his latest journalistic venture, the shortlived Friend, and he required many books. The coming o f De Quincey was a godsend. N o sooner had those twentynine cases of books been unboxed than Coleridge began borrowing them. So omnivorous was his reading that at one time he had accumulated five hundred of D e Quincey's volumes over at Allan Bank. He scrupulously returned all the books, however; the only inconvenience to their owner was the labor he had in erasing the title "Esquire" which Coleridge with chivalrous intention had written after D e Quincey's name in every book. In De Quincey's earlier years at Grasmere another friend of the Wordsworths was often at Allan Bank. This was John Wilson. De Quincey and Wilson had been contemporaries at Oxford in different colleges, but had never met. N o t to have heard of Wilson at Oxford argued oneself unknown there. He had w o n fifty guineas for a short prize poem, was

T H E M A S T E R OF D O V E C O T T A G E

57

rich, and much sought after socially. De Quincey, a poor hermit without athletic or social interests, was quite ignorant of Magdalen's prominent gownsman. There was one thing, however, they had both been doing at the university, namely, reading Wordsworth. And now at Allan Bank, drawn thither by similar motives, the two young men were introduced to each other by the great poet himself one morning on De Quincey's second visit. Seated in the breakfast room as De Quincey entered was a tall, florid, yellow-haired chap. "Mr. Wilson of Elleray," said Wordsworth impressively, and so inaugurated a classic friendship. Wilson lived at Elleray on Windermere, nine miles away, a commanding site where he had bought a rambling cottage overlooking the lake and lovely valleys. The liking between the giant Scotsman and the pygmy Englishman was instant and lasting. Different as they were in person and habits, they were both great book-lovers and great walkers. Wilson was already a social lion as well as a notable sportsman. He loved dancing and was engaged to the belle of the district, Jane Penny, whom he shortly afterwards married. He excelled in wrestling, rowing, hunting, and other manly exercises, accomplishments that won him fame and affection among the dalesmen. One of his exciting bull hunts De Quincey witnessed in a nocturnal ramble. The fleeing animal, pursued by Wilson and his "merry men," as Wordsworth called them, came toward him. "Turn that villain, or he will take to Cumberland!" imperiously called out Wilson, riding furiously, to the contemplative little pedestrian.1 Such sports delighted this young Hercules, who had the versatility of an 1

De Quincey says he turned him.

58

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

Athenian of the Golden Age. Of his less heroic virtues there are glimpses in Dorothy Wordsworth's letters. She wrote to Lady Beaumont about a Christmas visit which she made to Elleray in company with Coleridge and De Quincey that there was "a pleasant mixture of merriment and thoughtful discourse." And much in her austere brother's vein she observed that this bachelor lived in a very regular, orderly way, and had "entirely left off wine and many other follies." De Quincey's social pleasures were limited to the companionship of a few understanding souls. The bachelor of Dove Cottage occasionally had members of local society and their visitors to tea or took them sight-seeing. But they cared little for Wordsworth and his poetry, agreeing with the Edinburgh Review that the new romantic verse about nature and peasants was sad stuff. With all such supercilious critics De Quincey had no sympathy. Coleridge had left the Lakes after the failure of The Friend, ironically referred to as The Enemy or The Delphic Oracle by society ladies and gentlemen. Southey was grinding away at his metrical mill over at Keswick and turning out quantities of prose also, but he and the Grasmere poet were not congenial; and De Quincey, though honoring him for his character and his kindness to Coleridge's family, saw little of him. Southey, for his part, experienced in the ways of one opium-eater, was doubtless willing to forego the society of another. Outside of the Wordsworth family and the magnetic master of Elleray, De Quincey cultivated only one person. This was Charles Lloyd. On his first visit to Grasmere, he and Dorothy Wordsworth had broken their long walk one day by stopping at Lloyd's attractive house. De Quincey was at once

THE MASTER OF DOVE COTTAGE

59

drawn to this romantic poet. In the months that followed the two talked literature many a night until the morning hours. Lloyd had read widely in the sentimental productions of Rousseau and Madame de Stael. His health was frail, and literature touched with beauty and faintly tainted with decay appealed to him. His own verse lacked vigor, was correct but pale, and Wordsworth esteemed it not. He had come to the Lakes not through admiration of Wordsworth, but in quest of natural loveliness and quiet. For a f e w years his house was the scene of happy social gayeties of which his pretty wife was the center. Wilson was generally a prominent figure among those dancing, whereas Lloyd and De Quincey were content to look on. Such joyous evenings, viewed in retrospect by D e Quincey, served by contrast with his friend's subsequent insanity to heighten the pathos of his tragic life and its defeated hopes. Since D e Quincey had taken a cottage and become a housekeeper, his mother had often expressed a wish to visit him. She was an authority on houses, having built or remodelled at least three, and travel was one of her foibles. Thomas's infrequent letters threw little light on his domestic menage. Aside from her maternal curiosity about the young bachelor's establishment and associations, Mrs. Quincey had long wanted to see the famous Lake Country. N o t that she shared Thomas's enthusiasm for Wordsworth and Coleridge; Cowper's poetry was good enough for her. But the lakes and valleys, God's handiwork, would refresh her soul. And the poor folk among those isolated mountains excited her missionary zeal. Just the other day she had talked with her neighbor, Mistress Hannah More, on the subject. That de-

6o

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

vout lady, she wrote Thomas, was sending a box of tracts for distribution by the Grasmere curate. There were infidels abroad whose insidious doctrines must be met. Mistress More had recendy received a terrible pamphlet from an expelled Oxford student entided "The Necessity of Atheism." She understood the author was Percy Bysshe Shelley, a baronet's son. The impudent creature had written to Hannah More expressing the hope that she would not hinder the circulation of his tract by "her intolerant religion"! While her contemplated journey to the Lakes was, of course, for the express purpose of seeing Thomas, she might at the same time be the humble instrument of Providence in helping others. That visit of Mrs. Quincey and her two daughters in the autumn of 1811 was always a happy memory. There were walks with Dorothy Wordsworth over the hills and picnics by the clear streams. Afternoons at the Vicarage were enlivened by tea-drinking and by talk about local missionary effort. Wordsworth gave them hints on planting fruit trees and presented them with the roots of a royal fern for their villa at Wrington. Mrs. Wordsworth commissioned them to buy cotton goods for her on their return through Manchester. Thomas's cook, Mary Dawson, also figured in their recollections of Grasmere. They went home laden with jars containing her finest concoctions for the Quinceys and the Mores. Such a sweet young man, the home folk thought, to remember his mother's dependents and neighbors. One of them had even talked with a gentleman who had seen Dove Cottage which "belonged to Mr. De Quincey, a poet." His mother and sisters still longed for Mary Dawson's brown bread and mashed potatoes. Mrs. Quincey sent word that if

THE MASTER OF DOVE COTTAGE

6l

Thomas really thought of moving to London, as he intimated, she would like to have at Westhay such a rare culinary genius as Mary Dawson. Mary and Jane Quincey wrote that they talked and dreamed of Grasmere constantly. Mary was visited at times with lively visions of particular scenes in Thomas's sweet country. Some kind fairy, she said, seemed to transport her back to those enchanting places. The following summer proved to be an unhappy one for De Quincey. In the spring he had gone on his annual visit to London. On leaving Grasmere he was momentarily disturbed by a strange presentiment of death in his little intimate circle. The fleeting apprehension had vanished from his mind until one night a dog howled dismally before his lodging. The animal howled three times and then passed on. In vain he listened for a fourth ululation. He was not superstitious, this calm student of philosophy, accustomed to weirder noises by night than the howling of a dog. Nevertheless, the incident troubled him. If it were an augury of evil, which of his loved ones was involved? The number three must be significant. Could it be little Kate Wordsworth, three years old and very frail of late, the fairylike child who was his playmate; she that would run in and out of his cottage like a wood sprite with her tiny basket of wild flowers, calling "Kinsey, Kinsey"; Somehow he was not surprised when a few days later came a letter from Dorothy Wordsworth, sealed with black wax. "The disease," wrote her aunt, "lay in the brain, and if it had been possible for her to recover, it is much to be feared she would not have retained the faculties of her mind." She had died suddenly as the day was dawning. De Quincey returned to Grasmere,

62

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

and in frenzied grief threw himself night after night upon the child's grave. It was June, the season of his earliest sorrows. This present loss was like a renewal of that first affliction of his childhood, the death of his sister Elizabeth. The effect was utterly devastating to his health. The doctors sent him south to Somerset and Devon, where sunshine and healing waters slowly restored him. Months afterward when he returned to Grasmere, his grief was gone, and the image of little Kate Wordsworth lingered in his memory as a flower, symbol of the transient but immortal loveliness of summer. Among his books again, De Quincey resumed his reading of German philosophy. He had, indeed, taken it up in earnest the preceding year. This reading, he vaguely hoped, might stimulate creative activity. A system of philosophical thought might be developed for his own satisfaction and as a stepping stone to authorship and fame. He had no profession, no business, and thus far he had written nothing. Sometimes he considered the law again as a possibility. Not that he cared for that desiccating study, but a call to the bar promised, sooner or later, a steady income. Money meant more books, the opportunity to carry on his philosophical and literary studies, which in time he would crown with a lasting achievement. His patrimony was dwindling. Without some other source of income he would be reduced in a few years to indigence. He should hesitate to call on his mother or uncle for assistance. Poor relations, he reflected, were unmitigated nuisances. By his neighbors, on the other hand, De Quincey was doubtless regarded as a young man of private fortune and literary prospects. That constant reading and note-taking at Dove Cottage, those prolonged visits to

THE MASTER OF DOVE COTTAGE

63

London, those walks and talks with John Wilson, must have some definite purpose. But peripatetic philosophers are notoriously impractical. The bachelor of Dove Cottage had no definite aims. The years were much the same: reading and walking at Grasmere; visits to London and Somerset; back to the Lake Country with more walks and talks. This had become his routine. In this year of eighteen hundred and thirteen De Quincey became a confirmed opium-eater. After nine years of intermittent indulgence, he was now a daily consumer of the drug. The amount rose steadily through three years to the high laudanum-mark of eight thousand drops a day, and then declined. Some painful ailment of the stomach is alleged to have been the physical cause of this systematic indulgence. A certain "melancholy event" was also responsible. Another Wordsworth child had died late in the preceding year. The passing of the children left a void in the lonely bachelor's life. Moreover, the failure of a business house, in which a part of his diminishing patrimony had been invested, depressed him. The young philosopher of Grasmere was no stoic. He was rather a romantic eudaemonist, abhorring pain. Opium unlocked for him the house of happiness. He kept the celestial nepenthe in solid and liquid form, and on occasion dispensed it generously. The story about the turbaned Malay, greeted one day by the master of Dove Cottage in Homeric Greek and presented with a huge piece of opium, which he avidly bolted without subsequent harm, is a classic confession. That day East and West paid homage to the divine drug. During an exhilarating triennium De Quincey still went

64

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

his rounds. In London he met his roving brother Richard» w h o m he had missed at O x f o r d and later in Westmorland. A t an exhibition of pictures he introduced " P i n k " to Charles Lamb. A n outspoken criticism by Richard of one of Salvator Rosa's paintings, which it was the fashion to rave over, w o n Lamb's good will. Richard had shocked his milder brother by the remark, emphasized by spitting a quid of tobacco on the gilded frame, that he could beat the fellow himself. The thing amused Lamb as if it had been the act of an Elizabethan buccaneer protesting against some unreality in art. In Somerset during the early months of 1 8 1 5 , D e Quincey was again an occasional visitor at Barley W o o d , the cottage of Hannah More, his mother's particular friend, w h o m he called "holy Hannah." From previous discussions with that distinguished moralist he had come to regard her as a shallow pretender to historical and philosophical knowledge. She had got the idea that he was an infidel because of his enthusiasm for Kant and other German thinkers, and essayed unsuccessfully to argue with him on his own ground. She had offended him by announcing that French generalship was superior to English, and still further provoked him by superciliously associating poetry with pink ribbons. This analogy one day provoked a spirited protest from a young lady in the room. He could have kissed the pretty girl for asking Mistress More if she thought Milton and pink ribbons belonged in the same category. This final visit to Barley W o o d was memorable for his meeting with the great Mrs. Siddons, w h o m he had seen on the stage. The actress read the sleep-walking scene from Macbeth and told her favorite anecdote of Dr. Johnson and her visit to Bolt Court. Many

THE MASTER OF DOVE COTTAGE

65

years later De Quincey was to entertain his readers with these recollections in Tait's Magazine. De Quincey's interest in the Somerset and Liverpool circles was fading. The family group at Westhay remained his only point of attachment to that part of England. His heart was in Westmorland, which had been his home for five years or more. Conditions were changing there, however. He saw less of the Wordsworths, as the poet became more and more absorbed in nature and himself. The bond between De Quincey and John Wilson, himself a recognized poet, had grown stronger every year; but Wilson had lost his fortune and was reading law in Edinburgh, driven by financial straits into a profession. De Quincey had managed to raise two hundred pounds for his friend, a strong proof of friendship in view of his own depleted exchequer. From Edinburgh Wilson occasionally wrote to him. Once he appealed in an intellectual emergency. Would De Quincey help him in the forthcoming public debate at the Speculative Society? "You will oblige me," he wrote, "by giving me weapons of any kind to wield against the rawbone regiment who will attempt to deprive me of ratiocination in this inquiry." The Grasmere philosopher sent metaphysical munitions which helped to turn the tide of battle against the rawbone regiment. He missed the walks and talks with Wilson, and nothing pleased the bachelor of Dove Cottage more than a visit from his friend. Wilson would drop in quite informally, as of old, when he happened to be staying for a few weeks at Elleray, which he still owned. Once he appeared at Dove Cottage after midnight and finding the master away from home, went to sleep in his bed. At three

66

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

De Quincey returned, not, as Wilson supposed, from one of his nocturnal rambles, but from Nab Cottage, where John Simpson the dalesman lived. His lonely friend, mused Wilson, must be attaching himself to the yeomanry. He would have to look into the matter. Meanwhile, he would again invite the dear fellow to visit him. De Quincey consented at last to spend the winter with Wilson in Edinburgh. It was his first formal introduction to literary society. He became acquainted with William Hamilton, R. P. Gillies, William Allan, and J. G. Lockhart. Lockhart met De Quincey one night at Sir William Hamilton's and commented on him in a letter to J. H. Christie: "After dinner he set down two snuff-boxes on the table; one, I soon observed, contained opium pills — of these he swallowed one every now and then, while we drank our half-bottle apiece." Wilson had heralded among the coterie of young writers the coming of his gifted friend from Grasmere, and they were prepared for a display of learning in fluent talk. They understood young De Quincey had the gift of tongues. They were rather surprised at his boyish face and figure. What astonished them most, however, was his voice. It was low and musical, exquisitely modulated, even cadenced when he warmed up in his discourse on any high theme. His language then took on a diffused coloring and a steady glow. His tones would become lyrical as if translating far off memories or dreams into speech. Spoken prose often trembled on the verge of poetry. And what an extraordinary memory! Without hesitation he would repeat lines from the Greek poets, stanza after stanza from the English. He was quick to supply a hesitating guest with the missing word, to

THE MASTER OF DOVE COTTAGE

67

cite illustrations from history, literature, philosophy. "Wilson had brought to old Edinburgh a vocal encyclopaedia. Certainly since Burns no literary visitor had made so favorable an impression on his first appearance in Edinburgh. Very different types, of course, a peasant without learning who sang his way into all hearts; an English gentleman who talked himself into the admiration of scholars. De Quincey would be remembered by the Edinburgh set as an interpreter of classic and modern thought in new combinations. He illuminated rather than originated, and when he did write something, it was sure to have charm of style. His own personality gave assurance of that. From the stimulating contacts of Edinburgh De Quincey returned to Grasmere and financial depression. He was almost a moneyless man. That generous gift to Coleridge was the first considerable cut into his small patrimony. Seven or eight hundred pounds had gone for books. The rest had recently been lost through the business failure of the family agent at Manchester. His only income now was a trifling sum derived from rents. In the last few years Uncle Penson had sent him a hundred pounds from India. His mother, who was trying by economy to restore to the estate her agent's loss, could do little at present for her son Thomas. There was no one at the Lakes to help him. Wilson had also suffered reverses. Some new source of revenue was desperately needed. Philosophy was powerless to bring relief. Frequent draughts of his reddish-brown elixir failed to wing him with resolution to surmount his menacing ills. Exhilaration brought clarity of mind and brilliant talk, but neither meditation nor eloquent discourse buttered any parsnips.

68

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

More than once o f late, in his extremity, the idea of utilizing his knowledge had come to him. Now that he had relinquished all thought o f the law, he might eke out a living by his pen. Many political and philosophical subjects, long germinant in his fertile brain, awaited development. But he was afflicted with indecision. Procrastination had left inchoate these potential articles for newspaper and magazine. Dorothy Wordsworth had hoped he would review two new volumes of her brother's verse. "Mr. De Quincey," she wrote to Mrs. Clarkson, "notwithstanding his learning and his talents, can do nothing; he is eaten up by the spirit o f procrastination." Like those promised letters about which his mother and sister taunted him, his formal contributions belonged to the realm of good intentions. Another weakness was his love of the scholar's leisurely life. The time had come, however, for taking thought o f his future. He had a presentiment o f grave responsibilities, a feeling that crucial days were just ahead. The year of eighteen hundred and sixteen was one o f mental restlessness for the master of Dove Cottage. The village o f Grasmere saw little of him. The Wordsworths had moved to Rydal Mount, several miles away. Though they were still near, as Lakelanders counted distance, he seldom visited them. In April Wordsworth wrote to Gillies in Edinburgh: "Mr. De Quincey has taken a fit o f solitude. I have scarcely seen him since Mr. Wilson left us." But De Quincey was less solitary than the poet supposed. New ties were forming. He had been continuing his calls at Nab Cottage since that early morning when he returned to find Wilson in his bed. John Simpson, householder at the Nab, was far more intel-

THE MASTER OF DOVE COTTAGE

69

lectual than most men o f his station. He read Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, Addison, and of course the Bible. De Quincey found the sturdy, well-read yeoman interesting. His daughter was often present at the fireside conversations of her father and their Grasmere neighbor. She took little part in them; it was enough for her simply to listen to the young gentleman's fascinating talk. His musical voice still more impressed her, and she had never beheld such beautiful manners. De Quincey liked the intelligent farmer and his handsome daughter. In September ofthat same year he had another letter from his mother. She had been grievously disappointed because of her failure to see him in London. It had been a long time since he was at "Westhay. He was reminded of that promised letter to his dear uncle. The copy of the Courier, by the way, for which she understood he was preparing a paper, had not come. Certain matters of domestic and political interest were touched upon. And then, as if an afterthought, a postscript disclosed the real reason for her writing to him. She had heard a rumor which she hesitated to repeat, for she was sure there could not be any truth in it. It had come to her on high authority that he was about to marry. Nothing short of an oracular voice could make the family listen to the tale, considering his want of means. If the rumor were true, however, she warned him not to overlook, in his delusion of fancy, those congruities in marriage which would be indispensable to a man o f his class and temperament. She heard, moreover, that the sober judgment o f his friends could not approve the step he might be contemplating; and while she could abate much o f what the world demanded, she could not reconcile

70

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

herself to the wrecking of his peace and comfort. The bachelor of Grasmere must have read this part of the letter with mingled emotions. He was just then so concerned about an imminent personal event that he neglected to answer his mother's letter. Late that autumn, a son was born to him and Margaret Simpson.

VI

Authorship

and Fame

F THE friends of Thomas De Quincey had been disturbed at the prospect of a mesalliance, they were shocked at his departure from convention. But for his temperamental inability to face an unpleasant situation and by decisive action end it, his present embarrassment would have been avoided. What might have passed for a regrettable indiscretion had by delay become an occasion for scandal. Though the Wordsworths had not looked with favor upon the association of De Quincey and the yeoman's daughter, they now regarded a marriage as imperative. And so they joined with the Simpsons in an effort to bring it speedily to pass. But the bridegroom was elusive. The opium-eating philosopher, as was his wont, procrastinated. And, moreover, he had for months been drinking heavily. At last, on February 15,1817, Thomas De Quincey and Margaret Simpson were married in Grasmere Parish Church in the presence of John Simpson and George Mackereth. He was thirty-one and his bride at least ten years younger. When a rumor of the marriage reached London, Charles Lamb is reported to have asked in some surprise: "Has the little animalcule crawled over the rubric at last?"

I

T w o weeks after the marriage Dorothy Wordsworth wrote to her friend Mrs. Clarkson that she feared De

72

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

Quincey was ruined by this alliance. T o her the whole affair was "a melancholy story." She could not understand his raptures over a girl who "was reckoned a Dunce at Grasmere School," and she predicted "that all these witcheries are ere this removed and the fireside already dull." "They have never been seen out of doors except after the day was gone," she wrote. "As for him, I am very sorry for him — he is utterly changed in appearance and takes largely of opium." According to De Quincey's own reminiscences, there was happiness in Dove Cottage during the spring and early summer of his wedding year. The teapot was sharing honors with the laudanum decanter. Whether fact or fancy, the picture later drawn by the Opium-Eater of those evenings at home is engaging. The scholar represents himself as at ease among his books and his domestic life as roseate. He was again developing his projected system of philosophical thought which he fondly hoped might bring renown. His wife, her infant asleep and household duties done, began reading aloud to him pages of Spinoza and Ricardo which must have been quite unintelligible to her. On occasion she would act as Iiis amanuensis, faithfully recording long stretches of discursive comment, no less cryptic than the text. Long after she had gone to bed, he continued his reading and tea-drinking. If only he might shape his shining fabric of philosophy, the coming summer days promised to be ripe with fulfillment. Toward morning he fell asleep shepherded by radiant dreams of achievement. These golden dreams came to nothing. B y midsummer De Quincey's creative energy was waning because of his in-

AUTHORSHIP AND FAME

73

creasing indulgence in opium; by autumn the ruby-colored liquor had become for him the quintessence of ill. That winter he entered upon a debauch which, with slight intermissions, prostrated him for months. Stupefied by the deadly drug, he lay in bed day after day incapable of thought or motion. His faculties went into a protracted eclipse. At the same time a change came over both the form and spirit of his dreams. Fantastic pictures emerged from the hidden depths of consciousness, distorted survivals from his years of reading. Ghastly faces from hell mocked him; the tramp of Roman legions sounded in his ears; sacrificial processions of priests and their garlanded victims flashed in view. Grotesque and arabesque traceries in dress and architecture confused him. Crocodiles snapped at him on the banks of the Nile and yawning gulfs swallowed him. He was tortured on Ixion's wheel and in Dante's infernal pits. The weight of twenty Atlantics oppressed him. Each day was a long nightmare, and every night a lifetime. Margaret D e Quincey was his good angel. Uncomplainingly she nursed her besotted husband through those dark months of agony, and was rewarded by his slow emergence into sanity. Thomas De Quincey, rescued from the pains of opium, greeted with paternal affection his first-born son William and his newborn daughter Margaret, and resolved to earn a living for his family. A n opportunity was soon offered. The

Westmorland

Gazette, a weekly paper recently established at Kendal, seventeen miles distant, required an editor. This T o r y organ ardently supported the party's parliamentary

candidate

against the W h i g nominee and his paper, the Kendal Chron-

74

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

icle. De Quincey was a Tory by inheritance and conviction. Several prominent Westmorland Tories decided to recommend the Grasmere scholar for the vacant editorship of the Gazette, for which, at Wordsworth's suggestion, he was an applicant. He had already contributed articles of a political and philosophical nature, and would doubtless prove an eloquent exponent of party principles. Would Mr. De Quincey undertake the editorial direction of the paper at one hundred and sixty pounds a year? If he found it impracticable to reside in Kendal, perhaps he might engage an assistant out of his salary who would drudge in the office while the editor wrote at home. De Quincey accepted. At first he visited his journalistic headquarters with fair regularity, but he soon lapsed and became more and more an absentee editor. The Westmorland Gazette was a four-page newspaper made up of local and foreign news, editorial notes, and a liberal sprinkling of advertisements. The new editor promptly reduced the local and London news to a minimum and proceeded to fill the paper with reports of murder trials and essays on politics, philosophy, and philology. Dalesmen and housewives scanned its columns in vain for the beloved contributions on crops and poultry-raising. Gone were the old household remedies and in their place appeared dubious prescriptions. For pains of the stomach, for instance, take sixty drops of laudanum in hot or tepid water, a cure which the editor was prepared to recommend. The noteworthy feature of the Gazette under the new editor was the weekly detailed report of criminal cases in the courts, sketches which were later developed into articles on robberies and murders con-

AUTHORSHIP AND FAME

75

sidered as fine arts. T h e farmers o f Westmorland must have rubbed their eyes and wondered what had become o f the personal column, the market reports, the price o f cattle in Kendal last week. W h y were these demoralizing stories of theft and bloodshed allowed to stain the pages o f a family paper? W h a t was all this tiresome stuff on somebody named Kant? W h a t did they care about Potosi? A n d w h o was this Plato that the editor said w o u l d attract less attention in London than a chemical juggler? T h e W h i g Chronicle across the street satirically attacked D e Quincey's political c o m ments in a special department headed " Q . in a Corner." " Q . " replied b y lecturing his rival on language and government, caustically exposing his ignorance on fundamentals. T h e proprietors o f the Gazette viewed with alarm the g r o w ing bitterness o f this controversy. Alarming too were the complaints w h i c h came to them f r o m subscribers about the changed content and spirit o f the journal. In solemn conclave the directors met and passed a formal resolution requesting the editor to restore local and London news, and expressing the hope that he w o u l d "abstain f r o m direct remarks on any productions or observations which may appear in the Kendal Chronicle."

A f e w months later they

politely informed M r . D e Quincey that his irregular attendance at the office was detrimental to the paper. M r . D e Quincey was convinced that regular attendance was incompatible w i t h the habits o f a philosopher. He accordingly resigned. This editorial experience o f sixteen months on a provincial newspaper started D e Quincey on his lifelong career as a periodical essayist. It was his apprenticeship. W h i l e he was

76

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

meditating on the prolegomena to a system of political economy, and still hesitantly regarding the profession of law, grim circumstance disclosed his true vocation. For a year or more he had earned a little money b y his pen, and until he could find a magazine market for his literary wares, he must borrow or beg. Before severing his connection with the Westmorland Gazette he wrote to his mother soliciting aid. There had been little or no communication between them since his marriage and he had much to relate. Mrs. Quincey was informed of the merits of his wife, who, though a farmer's daughter, was all that he could desire. The coming of his two children, his own long "illness," and the expenses incident to maintaining his modest household had exhausted his resources. Moreover, there were debts. If he might have a yearly allowance f r o m his mother, he would escape the debtors' prison, and be in a position to take his family to London and find work. Uncle Penson in India was also appealed to. That practical gentleman was told of prospective articles for Blackwood's

Magazine

and

The

Quarterly Review. Meanwhile, D e Quincey was sending him complimentary copies of the Gazette. The Colonel might see for himself that his nephew could write. A little assistance would reestablish him for life. Mrs. Quincey replied sympathetically. The suggested move to London she did not approve. She would supplement his income with a small annual allowance, and so would his uncle. Besides, she would advance him money to relieve his present embarrassment. As to his wife, she was quite satisfied from his report that her condition in life was a happy and respectable one, and that she had dignified it by her conduct. Thomas D e

AUTHORSHIP AND FAME

77

Quincey, rescued from his creditors and reconciled to his mother, was undismayed by his newspaper adventure. Edinburgh and London lured him. The metropolitan magazines might open their columns to him, and for them he would henceforth do his writing. Blackwood's Magazine, then in the first flush of popularity, was challenging the supremacy of Jeffrey's Edinburgh Review. Blackwood had turned his magazine over to a trinity of young literary Tories, John Wilson, or "Christopher North," John Gibson Lockhart, and James Hogg, the "Ettrick Shepherd." A joint contribution, conceived one evening after dinner at Wilson's in an hour of uproarious merriment, had both amused and shocked local society. This satirical skit, entitled "The Chaldee MS." and purporting to be the translation of an ancient document in a Paris library, was couched in Biblical language and abounded in thinly veiled allusions. All the victims except Sir Walter Scott took offense. Backed by their sympathizers far and near, they either threatened or actually brought suit for libel. The jeu d'esprit had for the time completely redeemed Blackwood's from the charge of dullness and had immensely increased its circulation. The Tories now had a lively, interesting organ, more varied in reading matter than its didactic Whig rival, the Edinburgh Review. The leading spirit of the new magazine was "Christopher North," poet, briefless advocate, and friend of Thomas De Quincey. In this first lustrum of Blackwood's popularity the ex-editor from Grasmere came to Edinburgh seeking an entree to the charmed circle of periodical writers. John Wilson introduced De Quincey to William Blackwood, who graciously

78

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

invited him to become a contributor to his magazine. During that winter of 1820-21 he renewed his associations with the Edinburgh coterie and fiftully practised the art of hack writing. Prodded by his employer for delay in delivering promised articles, he was fertile in excuses. He assured Blackwood that never in his whole life had he worked so hard. Time was taken neither for sleeping nor eating. One single half-sheet of an article had cost him fourteen hours. Would Mr. Blackwood advance ten guineas to enable him to meet a debt? Tomorrow the article should be ready. When writing wittily, he moved slowly. Dull reviews and moralizings like those in the December number he could produce rapidly. Really, if that sort of thing were likely to continue, he must become "the Atlas of the Mazagine" and write it all himself! He hoped to God that one supremely stupid contributor might meet with a halter, even if it were his dear friend Wilson. The Scotsman failed to enjoy the Englishman's humor. This untimely banter from Blackwood's hired man provoked a sharp reprimand. The letter could be excused, wrote William Blackwood, only on the supposition that he was hardly awake when he composed it. As for Mr. De Quincey's proffer to become the Atlas of the Magazine, it was time enough to undertake that burden when he should be requested to do so. The offender, stung by the retort, replied that hereafter he would not trouble Mr. Blackwood with any notes at all, sleeping or waking. It was a rash promise for so prodigal a note-writer as Thomas De Quincey. Upon the whole the start as a Blackwood's contributor had not been auspicious. During the winter he had seen much ofJohn Wilson, now

AUTHORSHIP AND FAME

79

Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University. T o him De Quincey was indebted for many favors. As a partial return he had helped the professor with some of his lectures on Greek philosophy out of his own vast stores of knowledge. But literary collateral is not legal tender of the realm, and the latter was needed by Wilson in settlement of an old obligation. A year or two after De Quincey's marriage Wilson raised for the Westmorland scholar some money on a promissory note. There could hardly have been a stronger proof of Wilson's friendship than his willingness to procure money on De Quincey's notes. They were not paid on maturity. T o meet the overdue bills Wilson had to borrow from various sources and even to sell a number of valuable books. But his attachment to his irresponsible friend survived the shock. His letter to the delinquent debtor is almost apologetic in tone. "If I know anything of my own heart at all, I know my affection and gratitude to you. . . . Pardon me if I have said anything to hurt you, for God knows that I love you and would assist you to the last farthing of what I have." It was only after De Quincey continued to draw on him that Wilson wrote a letter of mild warning. "I hope that hitherto I have behaved according to the best laws of friendship regarding the bills you have been forced to draw upon me. I have subjected myself by paying them to the greatest indignities and degradations. I say no more. Should I some day or other refuse to accept a bill of yours, I trust that you will do justice to my motives. I have suffered for your sake that which I would not have voluntarily suffered for any other man alive." Edinburgh was the magazine center nearest to Grasmere

8o

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

and De Quincey had hoped that his engagement with Blackwood's might be profitable and permanent. But, alas, he and the publisher had failed to hit it off, and so his loose connection with the magazine was broken. Sometime he would like to return to the castle-crowned city when Blackwood's had more need of him. Meanwhile, there was nothing to do but to try his fortune in London. His income was pitifully small for supporting a wife and three children, and his debts were accumulating. The call of London had been in his blood since boyhood. Of the three literary men left in the Lake Country since Coleridge and Wilson had gone, De Quincey was the most urban. The unsocial Wordsworth was wedded to the country, and Southey in his study over at Keswick ground out books with uninspired regularity. But the scholar of Grasmere required the constant stimulus of literary activity around him and the orders for articles which he could find only in the great city. With these definite aims Thomas De Quincey came to the metropolis in the summer of 1821 and rented a little back room at Mr. Bohn's in York Street, Covent Garden. Fortunately for De Quincey his old friends Charles and Mary Lamb were then living in this region. De Quincey called and their former relations were renewed. He had known Lamb for many years, but not until this visit did he come unreservedly to like him. At first Lamb's peculiar humor — the cynical badinage, the punning, the mock seriousness — had grated on De Quincey's acute sensibilities. Now he understood the "gentle Elia" better, counted him indeed as a friend. Lamb for his part was eager to do De Quincey a favor. He proposed to introduce his friend to

AUTHORSHIP AND FAME

81

the editors of the new London Magazine in which his own Elian essays were then running. This periodical, founded in 1820, was more literary than Blackwood's and quite as modern in spirit as its northern rival. Its first editor, John Scott, who had recently met an untimely death in a duel, was an appreciative interpreter of the new literature. He had praised Keats while the Quarterly was damning him, and had welcomed to his columns such men as Lamb, Hazlitt, and Talfourd, along with lesser lights like Allan Cunningham and John Clare. Around the London Magazine a brilliant circle had formed, to which De Quincey hoped to gain admission. Another attraction was the liberal payment of contributors. De Quincey declared many years later that he would probably never have written for the press but for his poverty. He was possessed of rare personal experience and acquired knowledge, and was quite ready under the spur of necessity to make copy of both. At this critical juncture Charles Lamb presented his Westmorland friend to Messrs. Taylor and Hessey, editors and proprietors of the London Magazine. At the same time he was commended to these gentlemen by Talfourd, to whom De Quincey bore a letter from Wordsworth. The result of these overtures was that he was invited to become a contributor to the magazine. And so at last De Quincey had found a way to mend his fortune and assure his fame. The subject on which De Quincey could speak most feelingly out of an experience of seventeen years was opiumeating. On the use and abuse of the drug he was an authority. There was only one other man of genius in England who might say more, but Coleridge, voluble enough on philoso-

82

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

phy, had written nothing on opiates. The theme awaited literary treatment. There is evidence that De Quincey, even before he went up to London that summer, had begun an essay on his celestial drug and its effects. Months before in Edinburgh he wrote to William Blackwood that he was working on an "opium article," presumably for Blackwood's Magazine. "This article," he continued, "I execute with pleasure to myself." His dilatory habits and painstaking method of composition left many pieces of writing in various stages of incompleteness. He must have brought with him to London a pocketful of notes. Now that he was accepted as a contributor by Taylor and Hessey, he would naturally develop the paper already begun "with pleasure" to himself. Most of the work was done in that little back room in York Street, from which was borne to the magazine office in Fleet Street the first important product of his peculiar genius. In the September number of the London Magazine, 1821, appeared "The Confessions of an English OpiumEater; Being an Extract from the Life of a Scholar," and in the October number appeared the second part of the long article. An editorial note warmly praised the anonymous contribution and promised a third part, but the confessor had exhausted his golden vein. For this famous child of his brain the author received the sum of forty guineas, approximately two hundred dollars. Readers of the London Magazine asked themselves and others whether the entertaining Confessions were real or imaginary. Who was this revealer of intimate experiences, this teller of a tale that read like truth; Literary men in London, Edinburgh, at the Lakes, had no trouble in identifying

AUTHORSHIP AND FAME

83

the author and vouching for the dream-invested facts. Others were mystified. T h e poet James M o n t g o m e r y , for instance, reviewing the Confessions in the Sheffield Iris, intimated that the fascinating narrative was fictitious. There were critical skeptics w h o wrote to the u n k n o w n author through the magazine office. He replied in a lengthy letter signed X Y Z and addressed to the editor. T h e papers, he asserted, " w e r e drawn up w i t h entire simplicity and fidelity to the facts." T o the criticism that his pains o f opium were themselves pleasurable, he answered that it had been difficult for him, writing in haste with scant memoranda, to do full justice to his sufferings. A third paper w o u l d rectify that error in emphasis. T h e b o o k f o r m o f the Confessions, issued the next year b y T a y l o r and Hessey, contained an appendix analyzing the author's experience with the drug, which reads like a medical report. W i t h this statistical exposition b y the Opium-Eater, in lieu o f the promised third article, his readers had to content themselves. Subsequent revisions of the original Confessions added nothing comparable in beauty or magic to those papers rapidly composed in the dingy little r o o m o f f Y o r k Street. T h e y had immediately established Thomas D e Quincey as one o f the foremost writers o f contemporary prose and had w o n for him the lasting sobriquet o f " T h e Opium-Eater." A t Taylor and Hessey's monthly dinners to their contributors the Opium-Eater was an irregular guest — a short, sallow, invalidish man o f thirty-six, o f vast knowledge and extraordinary conversational charm. T a y l o r w o u l d ask a question about his personal history or make some literary reference, and D e Quincey was set going for hours in his

84

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

soft, half-dreamy tones. His prodigious memory furnished scores of apt quotations from poets and philosophers which he declaimed in a manner less pleasing than his ordinary colloquial utterance. He was at his best when he talked of himself, of his friends, of his reaction to literature and life. His fancy played upon his garnerings from life and letters, leading him into long excursions, from which he deftly returned to the point of departure and logically closed the circuit. The night was far advanced when these magazine dinners came to an end. Sometimes the Opium-Eater walked home with a fellow-contributor and spent the rest of the night talking. But occasionally he was silent for hours, nursing like a hurt child some real or fancied offense. One evening Lamb made a playful allusion to the Oxford Street passages in the Confessions. There were periods in his life which De Quincey held too sacred or painful for raillery, and Lamb's efforts met with no response. The subject was changed, but the Opium-Eater, lost in reverie, was again communing with Ann across the chasm of the years. The author of the Confessions had become a popular writer. If he had anything more to confess, the public would welcome it. So would the London Magazine. Anything indeed by the Opium-Eater would be acceptable. De Quincey had no further personal offerings for the present, but from his wide reading of German literature he was prepared to contribute essays and translations. There was considerable interest in Teutonic legend and philosophy, thanks to Coleridge's metaphysical rambles in that field. The young Carlyle was also busying himself with the subject. But the Grasmere essayist had been reading and making notes on

AUTHORSHIP AND FAME

85

German writers since his Oxford days. And now he proposed to introduce the readers of the London Magazine to the littleknown lore of their continental kinsmen. He presented Richter in a whimsically learned letter to an imaginary inquirer, signed with mock impressiveness "Grasmeriensis Teutonizans." This was followed by several pages of analects, or fragments, from Richter's works. There is no doubt that the public preferred De Quincey to Richter, but were perfectly willing to read anybody sponsored by him. An announcement that an article was by the author of the Confessions of an English Opium-Eater was a sufficient recommendation. He went back to Lakeland at the close of his successful half-year in London assured of a steady demand for his productions. The De Quincey family, crowded out of little Dove Cottage by books and babies, were now living at Fox Ghyll near Rydal. The tenure was uncertain. "I do not understand Mr. De Q," wrote the troubled landlord to Wordsworth; "he has promised by two different letters to pay his rent. . . . Next week I must write him if it does not arrive." The Opium-Eater was resting, fitfully writing, draining his decanter after those active months in London. He was not well. Let the heathen rage. Dorothy Wordsworth wrote to Quillinan, later the poet's son-in-law, that De Quincey was at Fox Ghyll, "shut up, as usual; the house always blinded, or left with but one eye to peep out of; he probably in bed; we hear nothing of him." About the same time Mrs. Wordsworth communicated this news item: "The Seer continues in close retirement." The philosophic lord of Fox Ghyll declined to parley with friends or creditors. His long walks

86

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

were suspended. The family reunion was complete. The portcullis of his stronghold by the Rothay was down for the winter. The next year proved to be fruitful in publication. A n other son was born to him in February. Creditors were clamoring. Six people at Fox Ghyll had to be clothed and fed, and an intransigent landlord must be appeased. Shaking off his lethargy De Quincey started for London. He took along his bag of notes, found an obscure lodging-place, and soon deluged the London Magazine with contributions. The popular Opium-Eater seemed determined to surfeit his readers with treasures new and old. They varied all the w a y f r o m "Letters to a Y o u n g Man whose Education has been N e g lected" to " M r . Schnackenberger: or T w o Masters for One Dog."

Reminiscences,

romances,

philosophy,

political

economy; odds and ends of comment; "notes f r o m the pocket book of a late Opium-Eater." O f all this miscellaneous assortment which astonished, and presumably delighted, Taylor and Hessey's subscribers that prolific year of 1823, only one essay attained immortality, " O n the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth." This inspired scrap, which he expected to enlarge, was one of D e Quincey's "notes from the pocket book." It was probably suggested by his interest at the time in a series of mysterious murders by one Wilhams, out of which was later developed the extravaganza, "Murder Considered as one of the Fine Arts." In one of the Wilhams murders there was a knocking at the door of the shop immediately following the deed. The effect on the murderer, D e Quincey thought, must have been peculiarly awful and solemn. Such was the feeling he himself had from boyhood

AUTHORSHIP AND FAME

87

in reading the similar situation in Macbeth. He concluded that only through the emotions is one able to comprehend a murderer's reaction to the sudden invasion of his guilty privacy. This comprehension is not a matter of reason but of intuitive perception. " T h e Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth" remains one of the most acute pieces of psychological interpretation in D e Quincey's essays. It illustrates his lifelong fondness for exalting emotion over mere understanding. Throughout the following year there was no abatement in productive energy. The Richter translations were continued, ending with the German dreamer's mystical "Vision of the Universe," whose spectral imagery De Quincey translated into speech more musical than the original. There were additional articles on Education, essays on Ricardo the economist, and further translations or adaptations from Kant. Into the London Magazine he was pouring the accumulation o f years. Once in Edinburgh he had offended an editor by o f fering in jest to be his Atlas. Well, he was proving himself the Atlas of Taylor and Hessey's tottering periodical. Lamb and Hazlitt were deserting it, crampcd, they said, by T a y lor's illiberal policies. A rival had sprung up in Knight's Quarterly and was surpassing the London. The latter's brilliant career was ended, though the magazine lingered several years longer. De Quincey's connection ceased in 1824, and his last article that year went to Knight's

Quarterly

Magazine. De Quincey's long sojourns in London were far from happy. Separation from his family for months at a time wrought upon him. His frequent notes to Hessey, hastily written at odd hours of the day and night, harp on this

88

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

theme and on that other chronic concern, the immediate need of money. He had sacrificed the comforts of home for the discomforts of London — " a Westmorland valley for a London alley." Threatened with a suit in chancery, he feared he must quit England "in order to avoid a series of nearly a dozen arrests." Somebody at home had swindled him by demanding settlements of bills already paid. He had to spend days at Fox Ghyll and Grasmere "reading up among bills" for ten years back, among thousands of receipts and other business papers. The charge in one of Hessey's letters that he was a cruel, ungrateful man was indignantly denied. He would say boldly, in the teeth of all opposition, that he was the most benignant man that had appeared perhaps since the time of St. John. Since he had known the magazine proprietor, he had been compelled to struggle with difficulties more like cases of romance than of real life. Hessey complained of his procrastinating habits, did he? Well, Hazlitt and Reynolds had put him to a thousand times more inconvenience in a single month than De Quincey in a year. And what were their excuses? "That they got drunk, went to the play, had a cold, gave a party, or any other reason why." While he in his lonely lodging, far from home, with no help from his mother and uncle, sick and miserable, hunted by creditors, was toiling through the night for the London Magazine. Would Mr. Hessey send him at once five pounds? His landlady was dunning him, his washer-woman kept watch at his door. That promised article would be ready at 6 A.M. tomorrow. Hessey might count on that. Hessey's businesslike letters chilled De Quincey's sensitive and unworldly spirit. In them the homesick contributor read

AUTHORSHIP A N D FAME

89

rebukes on his own incompetence in practical affairs. In his effort to escape creditors he often vanished from his regular lodginghouse for days, lost to friends and foes. He besought the magazine proprietor to keep secret his hiding place, at present an obscure den on the Surrey side. Lonely and depressed, he read medical books and imagined himself a very sick man. He would grieve to die, but he did not fear death. His chief reason for wanting to live was his desire to tell the world some very important things. Cheered by a timely remittance from the publisher, he was childishly happy again and viewed his misfortunes, real and imaginary, with resignation. "What cannot be recalled, must be borne; and my philosophy, which passes all understanding, enables me to bear it." For a year or two De Quincey had rooms in Chelsea, the region which a little later was the abode of Carlyle, Leigh Hunt, Rossetti, and other men of letters. Here he met the lawyer Matthew Davenport Hill whose cottage was near the picturesque old church. Hill had guessed that the author of the Confessions was his neighbor and had called on him. Many an evening did the lonely journalist spend with the Hills, delighting them by his learning and ready wit. "His language was so accurate," wrote his Chelsea friend long afterwards, "that if it had been taken down by a shorthand writer it might have gone to press without the slightest correction; and yet, which is truly marvellous, such was the ease of his delivery that no suspicion of labor on his part entered the minds of his hearers." Hill, who had read most of the earlier papers of De Quincey, declared that "his works are more completely himself" than those of any other author

90

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

he had known in the course of a long life. But De Quincey's great knowledge was of no avail when he tried to apply it to practical affairs. There he was a child. He had not the means to supply himself with even a modest library. Visitors to his lodgings, noting the scarcity of books, wondered at the phenomenal memory from which the Opium-Eater drew his illustrations for those brilliant articles in the London Magazine and Knight's Quarterly. Charles Knight, to whose magazine De Quincey had contributed an article or two, had taken a great fancy to him. At Knight's house in Pall Mall the shy little man was sometimes a guest for days. He talked himself into the hearts of his host and hostess. They found him a most considerate visitor, extremely observant of the proprieties. One evening Knight found him in his room sitting by a window, shirtless. All his shirts were soiled. W h y didn't he call the servant and order them sent to the laundress; asked his host, alarmed lest he take cold. Ah no, he would not presume to do that in Mrs. Knight's absence. Knight would help his impractical guest in occasional business dilemmas. De Quincey had received a draft from his mother, or her agent, which was to pay his way back to Westmorland. The Lombard Street banker, whom he politely and diffidently approached, declined to cash it before maturity. Rather than trouble his friend, De Quincey returned to his den across the river and hid the precious paper in his Bible. There Knight found him. To the payee's amazement Knight cashed the draft. He was rewarded by profuse thanks couched in elegant English. With money in his pocket, the absentee tenant of Fox Ghyll set out for the North.

AUTHORSHIP A N D FAME

91

Earlier in that same year he had received an important letter from his mother at Wrington. She agreed to allow him henceforth one hundred pounds annually, the amount paid to Henry, his only surviving brother. She had in the past sent him such amounts as her diminishing income warranted. Soon after the appearance o f the Confessions she had written to him, in reply to a happy account of his new honors, that n o w he would hardly expect frequent remittances from her. He was doubtless making money. While regretting his illnesses, she was convinced, whatever the doctors might say, that his stomach was "miserably injured by the opium he had swallowed." In her last letter she had made it clear that he might expect no more help from his uncle, n o w returned from India far short o f a Nabob in estate. As to her son's magazine writing, Mrs. Quincey found his literary productions lacking in moral tone. She recognized, however, that he must please his readers. Little was required to do that, and unfortunately much would be lauded to the skies which was at variance with Christianity, and that by Churchmen too. She was glad to learn, for the sake o f his children, that he had not settled in London. And she would like to know h o w many he had. Meanwhile Fox Ghyll had been sold, and it was a question in the neighborhood whether the De Quinceys would be ejected. They were given further time, pending the expected arrival of the head o f the family from London. He reached home in the summer or early autumn o f 1825, many weeks after the appointed time. Again the De Quincey family occupied D o v e Cottage. B y this time there were five children to share that diminutive mansion with parents and

92

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

books. Doubtless the family overflowed from time to time into Mrs. De Quincey's old home, Nab Cottage, on the Ambleside road. It behooved Thomas De Quincey to proceed with his periodical labors either in London or in Edinburgh. Before quitting London, he had written to his old friend John Wilson about "the weight of wretchedness" that oppressed him. Hack-writing was reducing him to despair. He had not a place to hide his head. If he might only find a good publisher and leisure to "premeditate" what he wrote, he would yet pay his debts, educate his children, and retire from the world. Toward the end of that troubled year came a reply from the faithful Wilson, playfully beginning " M y dear Plato." He and Lockhart were preparing a literary miscellany in one volume, for which De Quincey had promised a contribution. If that was not forthcoming, he might send something on Kant to the Quarterly Review in London, of which Lockhart was the new editor. But the Opium-Eater accepted neither offer. Perhaps he had guessed that Scott's son-in-law had no great liking for him. To the one man whose friendship never failed him, John Wilson, he was again grateful for encouragement. The way was opened for a renewal of his connection with Blackwood's Magazine. He would divide his time between Edinburgh and Grasmere. Except for his wife and children, De Quincey had no attachments in Westmorland. He and Wordsworth were estranged. Writing of the estrangement in later years, De Quincey declared that Wordsworth's habitual arrogance and pride had long irritated him. The younger man, who had strong convictions himself, grew weary of meekly accepting the dogmatic dicta of the Sage of Rydal while his

AUTHORSHIP A N D FAME

93

own observations on nature and life were serenely ignored. There were other reasons, however, for the alienation. De Quincey's opium-eating and irregular habits naturally irked so temperate and systematic a man as Wordsworth. But to the sensitive Opium-Eater the most poignant cause of the break between him and his old idol was the latter's indifference to Mrs. De Quincey. Of this De Quincey wrote bitterly. The reader of De Quincey's reminiscences of a faded friendship may well wonder at the great poet's lack of charity. Had he forgotten an early romantic adventure of his own that ended less happily than De Quincey's? It is worthy of note that De Quincey did not include the women of the Wordsworth household in his censure. Though they shared the poet's disapproval of his unequal marriage and expressed themselves more emphatically than Wordsworth, it is certain that Dorothy Wordsworth was an occasional caller at Dove Cottage after the name De Quincey had disappeared from the social calendar of Rydal Mount.

VII

Fugitive

Debtor

O W that De Quincey had won his spurs, Blackwood's Magazine was eager to profit by his learning and fame, while the prospect of steady employment was a boon to the harassed essayist. His stock of material old and new seemed inexhaustible. Critical essays on German philosophy alternated with subjects nearer home. Those reports of criminal cases in the Kendal newspaper which had bored or scandalized provincial readers, the ex-editor vividly remembered. The amazing adventures of John Wilhams, notorious murderer of the early nineteenth century, fascinated him. Out of all this dramatic material grew his ironical paper, "Murder Considered as one of the Fine Arts," one of the most urbane and subtle pieces of criminal philosophizing in the literature of roguery. Another paper, personal and genial, was his appreciative sketch of the literary lion John Wilson, contributed to the Edinburgh Gazette in the form of a letter addressed to an American friend. The variety of his productions during those four years of alternating urban and provincial residence is unique. W i t h his right hand, as it were, De Quincey busied himself on philosophical subjects; with his left he wrought on personalities in lighter vein. He had become a professional periodical essayist, passing with ease from learned dissertations to familiar portraits, etched with gossipy frankness.

FUGITIVE DEBTOR

95

His long absences from home were relieved by an occasional letter from his old neighbor Dorothy Wordsworth. Miss Wordsworth was calling one day on Mrs. De Quincey at Grasmere. In response to her lament over the enforced separation from her husband, Dorothy suggested permanent residence in Edinburgh, and at Mrs. De Quincey's request wrote to him. " Y o u must know," declared his friend, "that it is a true and faithful concern for your interests, and those of your family, that prompts me to call your attention to this point." She expressed the opinion that he could never regularly keep his engagements while living at so great a distance from the press. He agreed with her in principle, but he hesitated to undertake an expensive move and readjustment. Several years indeed were to pass before he could make up his mind to leave Westmorland. Meanwhile the Wilsons were making De Quincey's months in Edinburgh comfortable. He called at their house in Gloucester Place one evening and was prevailed upon to spend the night because of a furious storm that was raging as he was bowing himself out. A room was made ready for him. He stayed on for nearly a year, treated as a member of the family, a trifle eccentric and uncertain, but to be humored as a heedless child of genius. The servants were directed to have particular care of his simple wants. In a daily audience De Quincey favored the cook with instructions on the preparation of his diet. "Owing to dyspepsia afflicting my system, consequences incalculably distressing would arise, so much so indeed as to increase nervous irritation and prevent me from attending to matters of overwhelming importance, if you do not remember to cut the mutton in a diagonal rather

96

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

than in a longitudinal f o r m . " The dazed domestic listened in awed silence. Later she unbosomed herself to the kitchen: " T h e bodie has an awfu' sieht ο' words. Mr. D e Quincey would mak' a gran' preacher, though I'm thinking a hantle ο' the folk wouldna ken what he was driving at." The privileged visitor had perfect freedom of movement. He came and went at odd hours. Going downstairs at seven in the morning Wilson often met D e Quincey coming up, candle in hand. D a y was his sleeping time, night was for work and talk. Occasionally Wilson invited friends for an after-midnight stag party, the time when D e Quincey was most brilliant. The opium haze had cleared then, and his mental processes were swift and luminous. With the dawn he slept from sheer exhaustion. Stretched out on the rug before the fire, his head resting on a book, his hands folded on his breast, the opium-dreamer lay. Except for the small literary gatherings at Wilson's, D e Quincey saw little o f society. N o w and then he called on the Carlyles at Comely Bank. In his Reminiscences the Sage of Chelsea recalled D e Quincey as "one of the smallest man figures I ever saw; shaped like a pair of tongs, and hardly above five feet in all. When he sate, you would have taken him, by candle light, for the beautifullest little child; blue eyed and sparkling face, had there not been something, too, which said 'Eccovi' — this child has been in hell." And Mrs. Carlyle thought it would be a fine thing to have the little creature in a box and take him out to talk. After leaving Edinburgh the Carlyles invited him, in a long and cordial letter, to visit them at Craigenputtock in the Dumfriesshire moors. Would D e Quincey come and be king over them? If so, the B o g School

FUGITIVE DEBTOR

97

m i g h t snap its fingers at the Lake School. H e must have had a little thrill o f pride at this recognition b y Carlyle, w h o s e earlier article on Goethe he had savagely criticized; but the toiling magazinist had n o w n o leisure for either bogs or lakes. It was during those earlier years in Edinburgh as a regular writer for Blackwood's that D e Q u i n c e y became an object o f curious interest to students at the old University. Samuel W a r r e n , later famous as the author o f Ten Thousand a Year, was one o f these. O n e night he called b y appointment at Professor Wilson's to see the much-talked-of Opium-Eater. Standing near the d r a w i n g - r o o m door was "a little slight man, dressed in black, pale, careworn, and w i t h a v e r y high forehead." T h e giant W i l s o n whispered to W a r r e n : "It will be a queer kind o f w i n e that y o u will see him d r i n k i n g ! " A t dinner the student observed that the decanter b y D e Quincey's plate contained a beverage exactly resembling laudanum, o f w h i c h the celebrity freely partook as he v i vaciously

discussed

with

Wilson

the

impossibility

of

"forgetfulness." N o t only for his learning and conversational powers was he k n o w n , but also for his extraordinary record as a fugitive debtor. M a j o r B l a c k w o o d , son o f the founder o f the m a g a zine, recalled his introduction as a b o y to D e

Quincey,

effected under v e r y unusual circumstances. H e was "getting his lessons" in the bathroom o f his uncle's house w h e n the servants ushered in a flurried little gentleman. T o o agitated to stand on ceremony, the visitor sprang w i t h surprising agility into the e m p t y bathtub, and begged that a cover be d r a w n over him. T h e pursuing bailiffs entered and vainly

98

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

searched the house for their prey. Diogenes was lost in his snug retreat, nor did he emerge until he was assured that his enemies had left the premises. Back in Westmorland conditions were becoming desperate for Mrs. De Quincey. Her father, John Simpson, was heavily involved. Nab Cottage was mortgaged and steps must be taken to save it. De Quincey was appealed to. He devised an ingenious scheme whereby he would nominally purchase the place. He proposed to raise enough money from his old agent in Manchester to relieve John Simpson, and at the same time to secure a tidy sum for himself. Obligation to pay the interest was assumed by the casuistical philosopher. Out of the transaction, which was only a fictitious purchase, De Quincey got five hundred pounds and his father-in-law nine hundred. About the same time his mother, solicited as usual in an emergency, sent another hundred pounds to her harassed son. Elated over such a sudden access of fortune, De Quincey invited his London friend Charles Knight to come and revel "in an Eldorado of milk and butter." But Margaret De Quincey well knew that the specious proceeding of her impractical husband meant future trouble for the De Quincey and Simpson families, and that Nab Cottage was not really saved. How could the interest be met? The whole matter weighed upon her mind. Her struggle with poverty aggravated the burden of family cares. In that troubled year a seventh child was born. Her worries were increased by the nagging demands of a small creditor, between whose children and her own hostilities had broken out. This was the last straw. She wrote her husband late in 1830 an alarming letter in which there was a

FUGITIVE DEBTOR

99

threat of suicide. She had already made one attempt upon her life. De Quincey appealed to William Blackwood for an advance on promised articles in order that he might move his family to the city. The magazine proprietor responded favorably, and by Christmas De Quincey's wife and children were with him in Edinburgh. More than twenty years had passed since Thomas De Quincey had moved to Grasmere, drawn by the spell of Wordsworth and his region. His life there had been in turn happy and miserable, alternately productive and futile. There he had married and among those hills seven children were born to him. One lasting friendship had been formed and one had waned. Of the several domiciles that had sheltered him Dove Cottage, anciently an inn crudely signalized by the bird of peace, was the first and last. Legally it was his residence several years longer, but actually the hillside house of Town-End was never again to know the Opium-Eater. Though he was tenant much longer than Wordsworth, the poet spiritually dispossessed him and still dominates Dove Cottage and the country round about. The truth is, De Quincey never identified himself with Lakeland. He knew too much of foreign cultures, lived too much in spirit and in fact away from Westmorland, to be one of her people. It was the same at Oxford, where he mingled even less with Oxonians. He was not of the mingling kind. Nor indeed was Wordsworth, but his avocation of stamp-distributing and his solidity of character made the poet a familiar figure as well as a symbol of moral stability. Over the hills and through the valleys he went "bumming his verse," seen and heard of men. The spritelike De Quincey, sleeping by day,

100

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

flitted by night along the lakeside, startling a belated native homeward bound. His presence always seemed a little shadowy, like one of the figures in his dreams. Now that he was gone, Lakelanders would find it hard to reconstruct his image. The De Quinceys had moved to Edinburgh, but it would hardly be correct to say that they were settled. One locality after another in the old city and its environs afforded them shelter during the years that followed their migration from the Lakes. De Quincey himself was less stationary than his wife and children. For him there was no security in the bosom of his family. He must continue the familiar game of hide-and-seek with his creditors. Sometimes he had to leave the city for days to avoid arrest. "Do not let it be known that I am in Edinburgh," he wrote to Blackwood on his return. His son would bring him any necessary letters. "It would be dangerous to me that any servant should know where I am." There was no truce from the enemy even in the hour of bereavement. At the funeral of his little son Julius the father was spied upon and had to leave home suddenly under "serious expectation of arrest." Hard pressed for funds, he was selling his books, letting them go to secondhand dealers at thirty for a shilling. Meanwhile he was writing an article here, a chapter on a romance there, snatching up a handful of sheets and leaving others at some transient lodging when the creditor or bailiff was hot on his trail. Fragments of De Quincey manuscripts were accumulating, fliegende Blaetter, in sundry obscure nooks of Edinburgh. The peripatetic philosopher of Grasmere had become the elusive urban debtor, in worse case than in London. All this time he

FUGITIVE DEBTOR

ΙΟΙ

was supporting by his pen a household o f eleven or twelve persons, his own and his wife's family. Nab Cottage had passed from De Quincey's factitious ownership, and John Simpson and "Idiot Park," the late Mrs. Simpson's brother, had come to live with the De Quinceys. Margaret De Quincey, in a final effort to save her childhood home, had written a pleading letter to the Manchester solicitor. If he would only delay action, the interest would be paid on the mortgage, every penny o f it, and her husband would never again be in arrears. De Quincey hurried south to see his mother about another "loan." The solicitor also wrote to her, and Mrs. Quincey again came to the rescue. The interest was paid, and John Simpson's little estate was spared, but not for long. Another year of default ended with the sale of Nab Cottage to Lady Fleming o f Rydal Manor. For generations it had belonged to the Parks, dalesmen of character and intelligence, Margaret De Quincey's maternal forebears. With the loss of Nab Cottage the last tie with Westmorland was severed. In it Thomas De Quincey and Margaret Simpson had their romance, and in the stressful years that followed the small roadside house had often been enlivened by the prattle and play o f their children. More than Dove Cottage or Fox Ghyll, "The Nab" had been Margaret De Quincey's sentimental home. With her now in Edinburgh were husband, children, father, and uncle, all her family. There was litde time for looking backward, but in the few pensive moments o f Margaret De Quincey's overburdened life old Nab Cottage was no doubt a recurrent picture. The privations o f those earlier Edinburgh years were

102

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

happily relieved by an occasional unsought benefaction from De Quincey's mother. Once Mrs. Quincey sent her son a big chest of clothing and silver plate willed by the late Colonel Penson to his nephew. This gift was preceded by a long letter setting forth some "uneasy thoughts" about the possible disposition of the contents of the box. She recollected that when her unstable son was projecting one of his migrations he spoke of selling his goods and chattels as an "agreeable expedient." If he should scorn his uncle's memory by selling his plate and linen, it would add to her bitter regrets. In the goodness of her heart she had packed in the chest other articles for her son and his family. At the bottom were certain books: for little Margaret one of Charlotte Elizabeth Browne's edifying stories, sent "with a grandmother's love"; a large Bible, a commentary, and a volume of prayers featured with Scotch words and phrases for her son who neither wrote nor spoke Scotch. Mrs. Quincey took this opportunity to explain that Colonel Penson had left his nephew, besides the plate and linen, the sum of one hundred pounds a year, and that at her death her own small income from her brother's estate would be divided between Thomas and his sister Jane. There were other matters she felt it her duty to mention. She had just seen his article on Coleridge, lately dead, in that disreputable Tait's Magazine; and she could not for the life of her understand how, after writing so movingly of poor Coleridge's dying opium-misery, he persisted in using the dreadful drug himself. Those sketches in a sensational magazine, on subjects and in spirit so afflicting to his real friends, must have been the result of opium delirium. So it was reported. An even more serious report

FUGITIVE DEBTOR

103

had reached her. He was neglecting his children's education. He was bringing up his sons in idleness. What could be worse than idle ignorance? If he would engage a governess, Mrs. Quincey would pay for her services. She hoped her son would not be angry at hearing the truth. The elderly widow was unduly alarmed about her grandchildren in Edinburgh. The De Quincey boys and girls, though irregularly trained, were not growing up in ignorance. Of formal education they had less than their father and more than their mother. De Quincey himself conscientiously tutored his sons. His absorption in reading and writing, on which depended his family's daily bread, often brought separation, but never alienation, from his household. Whether he was hiding away from home for debt or temporarily inactive from opium, his children were in his thoughts. They visited him in his rooms and acted as messengers between his lodgings and magazine offices. When he was with his family, he was both playmate and schoolmaster. "Come now," cried little Emily, appearing from under the dining-room table, "it's time to chop logic." One of the boys informed Jane Welsh Carlyle that "he would begin Greek presently, but his father wished him to learn it through the medium of Latin, and he was not entered in Latin yet, because his father wished to teach him from a grammar of his own, which he had not yet begun to write." Nevertheless, the De Quincey boys picked up considerable Latin and Greek while they were waiting for their father's grammar, and William had systematic instruction. The girls, as their letters and conversation subsequently proved, suffered no neglect in their mother tongue. De Quincey's

104

DE

QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

manuscript fragment, "Letters from a Modern Author to his Daughters on the useful Limits of Literature considered as a Study for Females," is autobiographical. The first months of domestic life in Edinburgh gave promise of happiness to De Quincey. His wife's health had improved, and another daughter, his eighth child, had arrived. The reunited family had hardly adapted themselves to their new surroundings, however, when the circle was broken by the death of four-year-old Julius. Deaths of little children had always strangely affected De Quincey. The early vanishing of innocence and beauty from the world seemed to him an inexplicable perversion of justice. Such a pathetic event raised questions for which his philosophy had no answers. The loss of his own child was an experience that could find no relief in emotional outbursts or metaphysical speculation. A worse blow was in store for him. In 1835 his oldest son William, a youth of extraordinary ability and attainments, was stricken with a brain disease that baffled the skilled medical men of Edinburgh. Complete deafness and blindness accompanied the lingering agony. Night after night De Quincey and his wife watched the ebbing life, sleepless in their heartbreaking anxiety. The death of this brilliant boy at the age of eighteen was a lasting sorrow. De Quincey called him "the crown and glory of my life." There was no anodyne for this wound but work and the healing balm of time. Courageously he set to work, resolved by unremitting labor to banish the menacing cloud of despair. "In the course of any one month since that unhappy day," wrote De Quincey, "I have put forth more effort in the way of

FUGITIVE DEBTOR

105

thought, o f research, and o f composition, than in any five months together selected f r o m m y previous life." For Margaret D e Quincey the death o f W i l l i a m was the beginning o f the end. He was her first child, born at N a b Cottage before the romance o f her y o u n g life had faded. O f all her children he had shown most intellectual promise. His seniority as well as his natural qualities o f leadership made him, in his father's absences, the protector o f the household, the guardian o f her infantile brood. He was eminent also among his playmates. D o r o t h y W o r d s w o r t h had once proudly written to his father o f seeing him at the head o f the Grasmere schoolboys. N o w that he was gone, Margaret D e Quincey's responsibilities were heavier and her health unequal to the strain. T h e dalesman's daughter, w h o m fate had joined to the odd little man o f genius twenty years ago, was sick and weary in an alien city. It had been her lot to stay at home and bear children, to k n o w sacrifice for them and for her husband. T o her devotion he had paid loving tribute in Iiis Confessions, and later he was to record in certain lyrical passages his memories o f their earlier rambles hand in hand among the Westmorland hills. T h e f e w outsiders w h o had k n o w n the retiring wife o f Thomas D e Quincey spoke o f her gracious manners and beauty

of

countenance. Her poise and character were reflected in her children. She left no written record o f herself, but t w o or three extant letters bear witness to her intelligence and g o o d ness o f heart. W h e n Margaret D e Quincey was laid to rest in St. Cuthbert's churchyard that day in 1837, the mourners were f e w , for she was little k n o w n in the city o f her adop-

Ιθ6

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

tion; but the man whom she had loved through years of unremitting struggle sorrowed in his heart at the passing of a faithful woman. The bereft husband had little time to indulge his grief. His work for a large household of dependents had to go steadily on. Margaret, the eighteen-year-old daughter, was now the mistress of her father's rather helpless menage, and right nobly did the girl assume her new duties. She had already served an apprenticeship under her competent mother. Domestic interruptions and the frequent invasions of creditors made separate lodgings preferable for De Quincey. He communicated with the magazine office through his daughter Florence or one of the older boys. He could not, indeed, be sure of immunity anywhere. His many little notes, sent with his manuscript to Blackwood's, furnish a grimly humorous commentary on his shifts and evasions. " B y information which I had on Sunday I was obliged to leave my lodgings on that night. Hence for two days I have failed to meet my little daughter. I can now only see her out of doors." He was forced to sudden flight, leaving his papers behind, and he lost two or three days "searching for a place to write in." " I am utterly aground," he wrote, "without even paper or pen." Sometimes he was compelled to do his writing in the streets. Composition in such circumstances, he philosophically remarked, assured conciseness. He had received no replies or remittances for three weeks. His youngest child was without food for fourteen hours. Six months later he wrote that his children's diet was reduced to one meal a day. He himself needed meat to give him strength to finish certain promised articles, on one of which he had

FUGITIVE DEBTOR

107

been working all night. If Blackwood would at once send him money by the little bearer, he might rest assured of a millennium of relief from his letters. "I am driven to the last gasp for my children." From the first to the twelfth of each month they received from their grandmother enough to pay for clothes, schooling, and rent. On the thirteenth eight persons "fall upon me with their total weight." There was one place of safety for bankrupt debtors. In the precincts of old Holyrood Abbey they were secure from arrest for six days, and on Sunday until midnight they might leave the Abbey grounds unmolested. On the holy Sabbath in the religious city of Edinburgh there was a truce between the minions of the law and its violators. At Miss Miller's lodginghouse De Quincey lived at different times, with his family and alone, in sanctuary. He was here for months in the first year of his widowerhood when he was writing for Tait's Magazine. From this retreat he communicated with the office by any person whom he might persuade, either with eloquence or a shilling, to act as messenger. One day a woman entered Tait's establishment and, throwing on the table a small package of manuscript, exclaimed with relief, "There!" It had come to her, she said, from a policeman, to whom it had been handed by his neighbor, who got it from somebody else. And where did this first individual get it? "Why, from the little man, Sir, that makes the fine speeches and lives down yonder." Or a coachman, driving a party of visitors through the Abbey grounds, might be prevailed upon to deliver a roll of copy to the press. A young actor, living near Miss Miller's, once carried the precious bundle over to Princes Street at De Quincey's polite request. Cir-

io8

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

cumstances, he said, over which he had no control, and into which he need not enter, precluded his going up to town for a few days. The youth understood the delicate situation: the great man was "in sanctuary." The author himself occasionally took his chance of eluding bailiffs and appeared at the magazine office with his contribution. He shyly deposited it on the desk and delivered a speech of comment. When he had left, Tait would remark after glancing through the essay, "It's very good, but not so good as his talk." Sunday midnight did not always find De Quincey safe again within the Abbey precincts. One of those free evenings he overstayed his time at a friend's house in the city. Two watchful bailiffs called and asked to see Mr. De Quincey. Supposing them to be his friends, the lady of the house invited them into an adjoining room to wait until he and her husband had finished their conversation. A long time they waited. When he was leaving, they arrested him despite his elaborate defense. His host paid the claim and saw his guest released. De Quincey indignantly explained to his deliverer that he had tried the two men on every subject under heaven, but they did not seem to have an idea in their heads unconnected with their base and brutal profession. Two or three years after the death of Mrs. De Quincey, it was decided that a cottage in the country near Edinburgh would be a more economical residence for the family than quarters in the city. The country would also be safer and more healthful for the children. De Quincey, "tied to the press," could work better in town, free from domestic interruptions. Seven miles away, between the village of Lasswade and Polton, a place was found and leased. This rural

FUGITIVE DEBTOR

109

retreat had the poetic name of Mavis Bush, and there the little De Quincey tribe settled. It was on a quiet lane in a broken landscape, near the small gorge through which flows the Esk. The distance from the city was only half of De Quincey's daily constitutional of fourteen miles. At Mavis Bush the tired essayist hoped he might from time to time join his children. They, at any rate, would be free from the annoyance of his pursuers. Their rent should be paid first. They should not be ejected by importunate landlords. Of landlords in general De Quincey stood in dread; from one in particular he suffered frequent alarms. This was Thomas Mclndoe, the lawyer, at whose house in Princes Street he lodged for some time. De Quincey's involved financial statements drew from the pragmatical Scotsman a curt request for shorter letters. He had no time for reading elaborate explanations in Heu of payment. His dilatory lodger, he felt sure, had an extravagant family. He suspected, indeed, that money owed to him had gone for young ladies' bonnets. If De Quincey did not at once make a payment on that balance of twenty-six pounds, out he must go. His accumulation of manuscripts would either be held for ransom or destroyed. Those papers were De Quincey's dearest possessions, his productive assets; to lose them would be a calamity indeed. Thus the giant held the pygmy fast in his castle. In his room, littered with books and written sheets, De Quincey sat composing his articles and guarding his literary treasures. He would fain have escaped to his isle of safety, the Abbey lodging of Miss Miller, who liked and indulged him in spite of his debts to her. As if "in sanctuary" he would write to his friends for books, optimistically en-

no

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

gaging to return them promptly. From the Abbey he had written to Mr. Burton, advocate of Wariston Crescent, "Be not afraid of my giving you any trouble by needless detention of the books: my habits in that point, as in all other forms of procrastination, are as much altered as my state of health." Few except his children saw the prisoner at Mclndoe's. At intervals a hand would emerge from the door of the mysterious room to receive food. So reported a University student, kinsman of the Mclndoes, who was occasionally admitted to hear the inmate talk in his low-toned musical speech. A visiting child was once pulled in by De Quincey's little daughter and gazed awestruck at the kindly celebrity. Since 1833 De Quincey had been a contributor to Tait's Magazine. It was not until 1837 that he resumed his connection with Blackwood's, and even then he occasionally wrote for the newer magazine. So pressed was he for money to meet the expenses of a large household and to satisfy the demands of his "enemies," that he virtually became a writing machine, turning out great rolls of manuscript to be sold to the highest bidder. As usual his room would get "snowed up" with papers, and more than once he used the bathtub as a receptacle for all sorts of documents — literary fragments, duns, invitations, and receipts. The first decade in Edinburgh was a period of feverish activity with his pen; it was necessary to cast about for new subjects. For the time, his German vein was exhausted, and in the mid-thirties when he had reached the age of fifty, he began to be reminiscential. The time had come, he thought, for a vital appraisal of the literary men he had known. For this sort of material he found a ready market in Tait's Magazine.

VIII

Literary Realism Ε QUINCEY was almost fifty when he began writing f o r the liberal m o n t h l y Tait's Edinburgh

Magazine.

William Tait welcomed to his columns men as different in opinions and style as John Stuart Mill, John Bright, De Quincey, and Leigh Hunt. According to De Quincey, Tait was a "patrician gentleman of potential aspect and distinctly conservative build." Though he was a radical in politics, he was tolerant of Tories. If, however, his Tory contributors made statements in their political articles with which he strongly disagreed, he added corrective comments in footnotes. De Quincey's essay-letter entitled "Toryism, Whiggism, and Radicalism" was liberally annotated by the editor with such remarks as: "We dissent and protest here," "We deny this in toto and maintain exactly the reverse," and "It is useless to demur at this time to the wiredrawn distinctions of this ingenious but sophistical statement." He was equally ready to defend his contributors if, in his opinion, they were unjustly attacked. De Quincey's reflections, for instance, on the "Liverpool Coterie" of his boyhood gave so much offense that a survivor ofthat circle remonstrated in a caustic letter to Tait's. Mr. De Quincey's memory, he declared, had been impaired by his slavish use of "a deleterious drug," while he, having avoided that "poison" even in its

112

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

medical application, had a more trustworthy recollection of events. In ironical comment the editor sided with De Quincey, who had accused the Liverpool group of a snobbish attitude toward Burns. Whenever a question of liberalism was involved, Tait's was always outspoken. It is remarkable, indeed, that so staunch a Tory as De Quincey was for years an acceptable writer for an ultra-Whig publication. One reason was his racy personal treatment of contemporaries whose established position had by this time made them sacrosanct. In the interest of truth, as well as for the entertainment of his readers, De Quincey decided to expose their foibles. Such a proceeding naturally aroused indignation. To say the least, his critics averred, it was bad taste in the Opium-Eater to reveal the personal idiosyncrasies of his friends and fellow craftsmen. Tait's Magazine was accordingly regarded as sensational, and De Quincey was accused of catering to lovers of polite scandal. These must have been very numerous, for never was Tait's so popular as in the years when De Quincey was contributing his reminiscences of literary celebrities. Personal impressions of half a dozen notable people formed the staple of De Quincey's contributions to Tait's Magazine. He began with Hannah More, his mother's friend and neighbor, who had recently died at an advanced age. In literary taste the good lady was a survival of the eighteenth century, an anachronism among the romantics of a new day. Religiously she was high priestess of the evangelicals and had written a small library for the edification of young ladies and the solace of elderly matrons. To her salon at Barley Wood resorted the intellectuals of local society, and thither

LITERARY REALISM

113

came visitors from afar to see and talk with the woman who had known Dr. Johnson. A quarter of a century had passed since young De Quincey had discomfited Mistress More in philosophical combats. In life she had been generally praised and after death she was the subject of laudatory notices in the press. These panegyrics moved De Quincey to draw in very different colors a portrait of his older contemporary. The article was anonymous. His mother was spared knowledge of its authorship. This sketch of frank appraisal was indeed omitted by De Quincey in the first edition of his works, though discriminating readers had recognized the literary manner of the Opium-Eater. The year after he had published his estimate of Hannah More, there appeared in the same magazine a series of articles on Samuel Taylor Coleridge "by the English Opium-Eater." Coleridge had died in the summer of 1834, and early that autumn De Quincey began his sketches of the poet and philosopher. Reverential regard for the genius to whose "Ancient Mariner" he owed his own poetic awakening moved him to tell the world what he thought of Coleridge as a man. News of the death of the marvellous talker, now forever silent, stimulated his memory of bygone days. He lived again those days and nights in Somerset, at Grasmere, in London, when he and other rapt listeners had heard the inspired metaphysician monologuing for hours on end. He had not seen Coleridge for many years, nor had the world. The recluse on Highgate Hill had long been almost a legendary figure. His death revived public interest in a man the evening of whose life was so at variance with the splendid promise of the dawn. There was need, De Quincey thought, of some

114

D E

QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

one who, having known and understood him in his prime, would portray the dead poet for another generation. It was not an easy task. Coleridge's family were still living, and so were his Lakeland associates of other days, Wordsworth and Southey, besides men and women in London and elsewhere who had long known him. Already Cottle of Bristol and Gillman out at Highgate were meditating books on Coleridge. In literary skill and experience De Quincey was better qualified than either of these to undertake a work which was sure to arouse dissent in one quarter or another. His mind was full of Coleridgeana, both personal and critical, and it was an opportune time for giving to the world his reminiscences. He accordingly rushed into print and so became the pioneer of Coleridgean raconteurs. Several matters in Coleridge's literary and personal life were discussed with frankness. One of these was his real or apparent plagiarism. This peccadillo of the English poet was first made public by himself, De Quincey asserted, "the foremost of his admirers." In several of Coleridge's poems, among them the "Ancient Mariner," he had noted unacknowledged borrowings, but regarded them as the unconscious retentions of an assimilative memory, embryonic forms that flowered into beautiful creations. But certain passages of his Biographia Literaria De Quincey had recognized as verbatim translations from Schelling, masquerading as the Englishman's own thought and expression. He had been surprised at this literal appropriation, for he well knew that Coleridge in conversation had often developed the same theme with a gorgeousness of diction and a subtlety of thought that were beyond the powers of any German thinker.

LITERARY REALISM

115

This accusation of plagiarism provoked several critical replies. The Reverend Julius Hare attacked De Quincey in the North British Magazine for bringing such a charge against a man for whom he professed friendship, and that too so soon after his death. It was bad taste, not to say treachery. He should not have been the first to expose a friend's weakness. Gillman, Coleridge's protector at Highgate, protested against De Quincey's reference to Coleridge's borrowings as "petty larceny." One might as well, he declared in a sweet but unconvincing analogy, accuse the bee of theft for gathering treasures from many flowers. De Quincey made no formal reply, but contented himself, long afterwards, with a note in his collected works, again asserting that he was the first person to point out the plagiarism of Coleridge. This he had done in pure kindness. Friendship should not restrain a man from a frank avowal of fact. To Coleridge personally he owed nothing, "but to the public, to the body of his own readers, every writer owes the truth." That Coleridge's daughter, in editing her father's works, acknowledged his plagiarism as revealed by De Quincey, was naturally gratifying. Sara Coleridge had pleaded in extenuation that "if he took, he gave." He often fancied other men's thoughts his own, wrote De Quincey, "but such were the confusions of his memory that continually, and with even greater liberality, he ascribed his own thoughts to others." All of which came in the end to this, that Coleridge had paid his literary debts and should be pardoned for palming off pages of German philosophy as his own. To Coleridge's opium habit De Quincey made references which excited adverse comment then and later. At his first meeting with the poet in 1807, it will be recalled, his youth-

Il6

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

ful admirer declared he had been feelingly warned against the drug. W h e n Coleridge read the Confessions, published in 1821, he was moved to indignation at D e Quincey's "morbid vanity" in exploiting personal experiences in a book which Coleridge was certain would seduce others. As for himself, Coleridge solemnly asserted that he had never taken the "flattering poison as a stimulus or for any craving after pleasurable sensations." That the younger man had done so was the obvious implication. D e Quincey, having no knowledge o f this statement, declared in his Tail's article that Coleridge began taking opium "as a source o f luxurious sensations." In one o f his conversations with Wodehouse and others o f the London Magazine coterie soon after the publication o f the Confessions, De Quincey had quoted Cottle to the effect that the poet was known to have drunk a quart o f laudanum in twenty-four hours. Here, then, were two great English opium-eaters pointing accusing fingers at each other. The older had taken the drug to relieve rheumatic pains, the younger to escape neuralgic agony. Neither was guilty o f pleasurable intention. The younger thought that his temperamental friend, weary of life's insipidities, had tried through indulgence in the magic elixir to recapture the ecstasy o f youth. A t any rate, whether he sought relief or rejuvenation, Coleridge "wanted better bread than was made o f wheat." W h a t he got was debility and morbidness, accompanied by weakening of memory and paralysis o f will. Coleridge's friends and apologists continued to retort, with varied emphasis on the tu quoque refrain, that D e Quincey's notorious forgetfulness and his morbid imagination showed him to be an untrustworthy reporter.

LITERARY REALISM

117

In connection with Coleridge's repeated efforts to free himself from the thraldom of opium De Quincey cited an authentic encounter which had evidently moved both his informant and himself to mirth. The philosophic poet had decided that the way to cure the habit was to shut off the supply at the source by means of private police interference. He had accordingly hired a porter to stand guard in the street which led from his lodgings to an accommodating apothecary shop. The newly commissioned officer was instructed by Coleridge to prevent him from entering the shop. He should, of course, first challenge his hell-bent employer and dissuade him by respectful argument and a mild show of resistance. If this were unsuccessful, he must show fight. The next day Coleridge, impelled by habit and the pangs of thirst, made for the apothecary's, forgetting doubtless his obstructionist arrangement. There stood his man barring the entrance. It was an embarrassing situation for the hireling who derived his authority as well as his five shillings a day from the person now threatening to violate his own law. True to his trust, however, the guard remonstrated. "You must not, Sir, really. 'Twas only yesterday you gave your orders, Sir." Yesterday was a long time ago to the abstemious poet and he insisted on passing. Here was an emergency that required prompt action. Informing the porter that if he offered violence he would subject himself to arrest, the master resumed his delegated authority, and prevailed. De Quincey was sufficiently journalistic to understand the liking of the public for literary gossip. He therefore proceeded to gratify the curious by giving his impressions of

Il8

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

Coleridge's domestic relationships. Everybody knew that the wife and children of the poet lived with the Southeys at Keswick and that he had spent the last twenty years of his singular career away from them. Any light on the causes of his marital infelicity would be welcome, either as a confirmation of popular surmise, or in further clarification of a matter which still had elements of mystery. Strangely enough, Coleridge had made De Quincey a confidant, and De Quincey after a lapse of many years reported his frank avowal. His marriage "was not his own deliberate act." He had been argued into it by Southey, who thought his attentions to the young lady of Bristol had been too persistent for an honorable retreat. The estimable but commonplace Mrs. Coleridge did not admire, nor could she comprehend, her husband's genius. On the positive side, Coleridge had once offended his wife by his daily walks with a neighboring lady of intellect who had an eye for natural scenery, but was devoid of personal charms. Chilled by his wife's misinterpretation of this innocent association and in general repelled by her uncongenial temperament, Coleridge escaped for comfort into the labyrinths of philosophical speculation. Much, no doubt, might be said in justification of Mrs. Coleridge, who entertained the common opinion that a husband should support his family, however gifted he happened to be as a talker and writer. And De Quincey, in summing up the matter, was convinced that neither Byron nor Coleridge could have lived in peace with any woman, even though she were dowered with all heavenly gifts. The expose of weakness finished, De Quincey ended his estimate of Coleridge on a laudatory note. Many memories,

LITERARY REALISM

119

literary and personal, attached him to Coleridge. In youth he adored Coleridge's poetry and in early manhood he was enraptured with the poet's divine discourse. The glamour of past days still invested as with an aura the damaged archangel's head. Along with Wordsworth he loomed in the younger man's imagination as a romantic symbol of the new era. Coleridge too had been drawn to the Lakes through admiration of Wordsworth. He also had suffered estrangement from the seer of Rydal Mount. Both continued to revere that austere poet after their affection for the man had died. In common they came to perceive in their former idol a rigidity of temper which seemed to them as blameworthy as the moral irresponsibility of which he held them guilty. They were alike in their infirmity and in their judgment of Wordsworth. Such mental and spiritual bonds of weakness and of strength forever allied De Quincey to the dead poet. And his final prediction that Coleridge would have perennial honors shown him was the wish of a literary disciple quite as much as the verdict of a critic. The success of his Coleridgean recollections led De Quincey, several years later, to publish his memories of the dominant figure in Lakeland. Wordsworth was still living, old and revered, in the peace of Rydal Mount. His earlier contemporaries, Keats, Shelley, Byron, romantic exiles to foreign climes, were dead, and the tired minstrel of Abbotsford slept with his fathers. The great Victorians were only at the beginning of their long renown. The minor bards, Southey and Leigh Hunt, were fading out. Wordsworth had not only survived the captious criticisms of the reviewers, but had attained preeminence among living English poets.

120

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

The Lake District had become tourist-haunted, and it was the desire of every visitor to catch a glimpse of the man who had written so eloquently of the neglected virtues of plain living and high thinking. Only a few might have that good fortune, and they were not satisfied with a mere glimpse. Tourists as well as the rest of the curious public were eager for more intimate knowledge of the solitary Olympian. How did the solemn moralist look; What was the manner of his life; What did he read? What were his relations with family and friends? The readers of a popular magazine, De Quincey rightly supposed, would like to have a pen picture of the poet and his family from an inside observer. He accordingly proceeded to portray Wordsworth for them as he recalled him in those twenty years of neighborly association. De Quincey found Wordsworth physically unimpressive, especially when in motion. Female connoisseurs would have condemned his legs. They had undoubtedly served him well in traversing a hundred thousand miles about the Lake District, but they were far from ornamental. A lady friend confided to De Quincey her wish that the poet might have had another pair for evening parties. His bust with its narrowness and droop at the shoulders came in for severer condemnation, particularly when brought into comparison with that of a more statuesque companion. Even Dorothy, most partial of sisters, criticized his figure adversely. Walking one day behind her brother and a friend of military build, she exclaimed, as if hurt by the contrast: "Is it possible, — can that be William? How very mean he looks!" The poet's face and head, however, impressed De Quincey more than

LITERARY REALISM

121

any he had seen, outside of portraits by Titian and Van Dyck. Indeed, so struck had Hay don been with the face and head of Wordsworth that he put the poet in his painting of Christ's entry into Jerusalem as one of the disciples. There were spiritual depths in his eyes after periods of vigorous exercise which lent to his expression a certain glow of exaltation and made one forget the gracelessness of his body. Perhaps it was comforting to the diminutive De Quincey to find the great poet so little like Apollo in physical structure. Of Wordsworth's family the Opium-Eater wrote quite as realistically. Mrs. Wordsworth, though neither handsome nor comely, had marked benignity of expression and gendeness of manner. Many called her plain and so economical of speech as to limit her remarks to "God bless you" and other terse locutions, but De Quincey had noted a native dignity and courtesy which might well have been envied by women of the great world. As for her limited conversational powers, which doubtless betokened an inactive intellect, that was to be preferred to the "bluestocking loquacity" of Mistress Hannah More. Such a quiescent temperament, moreover, was adapted to the tastes and daily comfort of her husband, who admired meekness in woman. The poet's sister was different, a bright and ardent being, of acute sensibility, with "wild and startling eyes," intellectually her brother's equal. To Dorothy, ignorant of many things, but wise and nobly generous in mind and action, De Quincey paid glowing tribute. Why had she rejected many offers of marriage — Hazlitt's among them — she who was "readiest in her sympathy with either joy or sorrow, with laughter or with tears, with the realities of life or with the larger realities of the

122

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

poets"? He who had known this rare creature in her "fervid prime" thus publicly assured Dorothy Wordsworth of his never-failing remembrance, a pledge of friendship which he hoped might brighten the gloom of her final depression. Of all the women De Quincey had known, she was the one of whom he wrote most ardently, and in his Tait articles he seemed to be sending her, alone of the Wordsworths, a valediction of undying affection. If it was surprising that Dorothy Wordsworth never married, it was, De Quincey thought, even more surprising that William Wordsworth ever did. He could not understand — and Wilson agreed with him — how the philosophic poet submitted to the "humilities and devotion of courtship." It was difficult for him to imagine the proud Wordsworth surrendering himself to the charms of any woman with romantic abandon. The idea of the poet prostrating himself as a suppliant at feminine feet, with sighs and rapturous murmurings, was an extremely incongruous picture. From his superior intellectual height he looked down on the other sex. He would inevitably have lectured rather than adored the lady. Nevertheless, he had written exquisite love lyrics, and being a poet of great sincerity he must have experienced the tender emotion.1 De Quincey wondered whether there could have been at any earlier time, perhaps in his dandyish Cambridge days or in the revolutionary ardor of his French sojourn, some disappointed passion which inspired his songs. No one knew the originals of his Barbaras and Lucys. There 1

"Wordsworth is by nature incapable of being in love, tho' no man more tenderly attached." — Coleridge's Letter to H. C. Robinson, March, 1811. Unpublished Letters of Coleridge, ed. by E. L. Griggs.

LITERARY REALISM

123

were mysterious silences in Wordsworth. His marriage, however, was a happy one because the woman of his choice was blessed with sweetness of disposition and was able to smile away her husband's fits of ill-temper. For books, De Quincey had observed, Wordsworth cared little. He had a very small library and his reading was limited. Contemporary literature did not interest him. De Quincey doubted whether he had read any of Scott's novels. The coarser stories of Fielding and Smollett, "so disgusting by their moral scenery and the whole state of vicious society in which they kept the reader moving," he read and remembered with delight. And he actually made fun of Mrs. Radcliffe's tales. Strange taste in the Lake poet to like Fielding and to ridicule RadclifFian romance, thought the squeamish Opium-Eater who himself liked and wrote unreal stories. Save for the body of English poetry and, say, Plutarch's Lives, Wordsworth was indifferent to whole libraries of books De Quincey liked. His physical handling of them was another cause of astonishment. Southey, who fondled his precious volumes with such sentimental familiarity that Coleridge referred to his library as his wife, told De Quincey that Wordsworth in a library was like a bear in a tulip garden. De Quincey recalled that once at tea in Dove Cottage the poet, catching sight of a volume of Burke on a shelf opposite, picked up a greasy knife and proceeded to cut the leaves, trailing buttery stains as he tore through the pages. Comments written in his books were generally commonplace admonitions or corrections, dogmatic opinions of his own, very different from Coleridge's inspired marginalia. Wordsworth's indifference to De Quincey's favorite works

124

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

was a grievous fault, inexplicable to the reminiscent critic of Tait's Magazine. The Edinburgh essayist chiefly concerned himself with the personal foibles of Wordsworth. His admiration for him as a poet had suffered no diminution, but the world at large scarcely knew him outside his poems, and so De Quincey turned the searchlight of inquiry upon the man. In most respects Wordsworth was very unlike his critic. His temperament was essentially moral and practical, and fortune had smiled upon him. He had never known "the miserable dependencies of debt." Whenever his domestic exchequer was running low and a deficit seemed imminent, some noble friend or kinsman was considerate enough to die and leave him sufficient money to balance the family budget. The government gave him the lucrative office of stamp-distributor, an avocation which curtailed neither his poetic activities nor his freedom out of doors. And later his grateful country bestowed upon him the laureateship and a pension for literary and civic merit. Being a thrifty man, the poet had basked in the sun of material prosperity. In contrast with the struggling little man who essayed to paint his portrait in the columns of Tait's Wordsworth had all his life been the darling of the gods. Happy and honored in his old age, he moved in an atmosphere of philosophic serenity. The sensitive and weary magazinist, dodging creditors in Edinburgh, toiling all night for capricious editors, alternately depressed and exhilarated by an insidious drug, would have been more than human to endure with silent equanimity the exaltation of his early idol. Smarting less acutely after the passage of time, he had at last relieved himself by sketching in all frankness the weakness and the strength of William Wordsworth.

LITERARY REALISM

125

There were repercussions from the Tait articles for many years. The friends of Coleridge and Wordsworth generally agreed that De Quincey had shown bad taste, beside being positively disloyal to old allegiances. The profane multitude, delighting to discover limitations in divinity, read with avidity the personal sketches in the liberal periodical. The more judicious qualified their disapproval by admitting that the offensive articles held their attention. Henry Crabb Robinson, for instance, observed in his Reminiscences that De Quincey's contributions were "scandalous but painfully interesting." Those who were immediately involved thought them libelous. Southey was one of these. Carlyle met the Keswick writer in London and by way of making conversation inquired whether he knew De Quincey. "Yes, Sir," he replied, "and if you have opportunity, I'll thank you to tell him he is one of the greatest scoundrels living." And flushing with what Carlyle called "Rhadamanthine rage," Southey continued: "I have told Hartley Coleridge that he ought to take a strong cudgel, proceed straight to Edinburgh and give De Quincey, publicly in the streets there, a sound beating as a calumniator, cowardly spy, traitor, and base betrayer of the hospitable social hearth." But poor Hartley, while agreeing that his father's "traducer" deserved a licking, had no mind to wield the big stick in Edinburgh. His sister, Sara Coleridge, was more impressed, as was Carlyle, by De Quincey's tribute to her father's great intellect than by his reflections on the poet's shortcomings. This tolerant woman wrote to a friend that she could not believe De Quincey had any enmity to her father, for he often spoke of Coleridge's kindness of heart. She furthermore declared that of all Coleridge's censors De Quincey was the one whose

126

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

remarks were the most worthy of attention, because he "had sufficient inward sympathy with the subject of his criticism to be capable in some degree of beholding his mind as it actually existed." Wordsworth's feeling about De Quincey's animadversions on himself and family, which he had not deigned to read, was naturally the reverse of cordial. Miss Fenwick, then a guest of the Wordsworths at Rydal Mount, wrote to Sir Henry Taylor that the poet forbade the entrance of the objectionable articles into his house. Copies of the periodical, however, "found their way to Ambleside, and I looked over them," continued Miss Fenwick. "They are beautifully written, and not untruthfully; it is at worst but seeing the truth with a jaundiced eye. His description of Mrs. Wordsworth I thought both true and beautiful." Visitors at Rydal Mount had been warned that Talt's Magazine was a forbidden topic in the household. One of the poet's friends, however, could not refrain from making one reference to the banned De Quincey articles. "He says," ventured the bold guest, "that Mrs. Wordsworth is a better wife than you deserve." "Did he say that?" exclaimed Wordsworth in a more than usually vehement tone. "That is so true that I forgive him almost anything else he says." The severest critic of De Quincey's recollections was the militant moralist and social reformer, Harriet Martineau, who spent her more quiescent years at the Lakes. Much of her short biographical sketch of De Quincey is a preachment against the degenerate little man who dared to requite the Wordsworths' kindness with "an exposure, in a disadvantageous light, of everything about the Wordsworths." The

LITERARY REALISM

127

agitated lady proceeded to inform the world that he wrote papers which were eagerly read, and o f course duly paid for, in which Wordsworth's personal foibles were "malignantly exhibited with ingenious aggravations... and all for the purpose o f deepening the dislike against Wordsworth himself, which the receiver of his money, the eater of his dinners, and the dreary provoker o f his patience strove to excite." But the writer consoled herself and Wordsworthians in general with this comforting reflection: " O n e good thing was, that nobody's name and fame could be really injured by anything D e Quincey could say." Very different was the impression o f Mary Russell Mitford in regard to the scandalous magazine pen pictures. "The truth and life o f these Lake sketches," she wrote, "is something wonderful." And then she added: " O f course the blind worshipers o f Wordsworth quarrel with him; but there is quite enough left to praise and admire in the bard after accepting Mr. De Quincey's portrait." Realistic portraiture, not eulogy, D e Quincey attempted in these personal sketches. His painting o f personality was accomplished much in the modern biographical manner. The Opium-Eater professed to paint his old Lakeland associates as he had known them, without fear or favor. He was a journalist, writing for money in a popular periodical; he wished to be entertaining, and he succeeded. A n impartial reader o f the Tait contributions, even if he should question the taste of intimate contemporary revelation, will find little animus in the author toward his subjects. U p o n the whole, they are presented in a spirit o f detachment. In conversation De Quincey would have discussed them colorfully, and he

128

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

wrote as he talked. He composed the sketches at the beginning of the Victorian Age when perfect realism was not a literary habit. Those about whom he wrote belonged to the great romantic tradition. He was himself of romantic temperament. Moreover, he was addicted to opium. That such an one should have drawn lifelike portraits is rather remarkable. And posterity, which judges men and their motives in a cooler mood, has found these literary portrayals essentially truthful.

IX

Lasswade Celebrity A R L Y in the spring of 1841 De Quincey decided to leave Edinburgh for a while. His creditors continued to haunt his steps, and there was for him no peace of mind in the city of his adoption. Except for one very brief period he had escaped actual imprisonment for debt, but he was virtually a prisoner in one lodginghouse or another. In Glasgow he had friends at the University, Professors Nichol and Lushington, with one or both of whom he might find security. Moreover, he was eager to question Professor Nichol about some recent astronomical discoveries of which he had been reading. An habitual walker by night, De Quincey knew the constellations. Of all the sciences astronomy was to him the most interesting because of its unfathomable mysteries. The weary magazinist might find recreation and gain a deal of satisfying knowledge in viewing the sky through Nichol's telescope and in talking to him about the stars. Accordingly he stole away from Edinburgh in March, leaving his family at quiet Lasswade. He would continue under happier conditions his contributions to Blackwood's and Tait's, and he might find a market for his wares in some Glasgow paper.

E

He lived for a time alternately at Professor Nichol's and at Professor Lushington's. When the astronomer's scientific

130

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

apparatus overflowed into the guest rooms, De Quincey would move over to the home of the classical scholar and converse about Plato. For the most part, however, he preferred to be with the astronomer. His interest, outside of his periodical compositions, was astronomy. Charles Mackay, Glasgow poet and editor, occasionally met him at dinner in Nichol's house. After dinner De Quincey would talk eloquently on the great mysteries connected with the science in which his host was a speciahst. Nichol supplied the hypotheses and De Quincey the comments on their significance, philosophizing as was his wont on the moral aspects and relationships of human knowledge. Some of his remarks so impressed Mackay that he made a mental note of them and later reproduced the substance. "Nobody," said De Quincey, "can study the stars without a profound pity or contempt for the poor, petty, paltry religious animosities and unchristian hatreds of mankind." He went on to observe that astronomy shows us, the more we learn, how little it is possible we can ever know. "The stars always preach to me that I am a prisoner, that I am condemned, possibly for some sin I have committed in a previous but now forgotten state of existence, to do penance in this cell or dungeon — the earth; and to wear about me, until my term of captivity is ended, the penalty of a body." During these earlier months in Glasgow, when mundane worries were relieved by more ethereal meditations, D e . Quincey would sometimes discourse at length on the tenuous subdeties of telepathy. Mackay, meeting the Opium-Eater one day on the street, remarked that he had been thinking of him; De Quincey replied that his thoughts had been on

LASS WADE CELEBRITY

131

Mackay before the chance encounter. There followed a long monologue on "the possibility of spirit meeting with spirit before body meets with body." De Quincey had much to say about "spiritual atmosphere" and the mingling of personalities. His listener was doubtless flattered by the concluding assertion that the spiritual atmosphere which may envelop two telepathists is in proportion to the intellects of the participants. From the luminous mist in which the two journalists had been basking for twenty or thirty minutes they suddenly descended to mother earth when De Quincey politely requested his friend to lend him sixpence. He would like to buy a draught of laudanum from a chemist's shop on which he had kept an eye while in the rarefied state. So taken was De Quincey with the Glasgow editor that he often called at Mackay's office or dined with him during his sojourns in that city; and usually on leaving the philosopher borrowed a sixpence to celebrate, in a glassful of his favorite elixir, his hour of spiritual communion. It was, indeed, a small price to pay for an audience with "the most eloquent talker of his time. In Glasgow, as in Edinburgh, De Quincey had no fixed abiding place. On one street and another, in the neighborhood of the University, he had rooms which he kept until householders made his occupancy impracticable. One landlady got on the trail of the delinquent, burning and scattering his manuscripts in her wrathful pursuit, while he found refuge with the friendly astronomer. Invited to spend a week with Professor Nichol, he stayed six months. His irate landlady, baffled in the chase, held some of his precious papers for ransom and destroyed others. Such vengeance seemed to

132

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

De Quincey more than an economic provocation. He explained to his academic friend, with plausible elaboration, that the woman had conceived a violent but hopeless attachment for him! He lived with the Yuille family during the latter part of his stay in Glasgow. Around him books, borrowed and purchased, soon began to accumulate and manuscripts to mount. The alarums and excursions incident to a fire in the shop below caused the hasty removal and general disarrangement of his treasures, to say nothing of seven hours lost from writing. Even more irritating than this fiery interruption of Iiis labors was Mrs. Yuille's threat of eviction. Unless his long overdue rent was paid within ten days, out he must go. In this determination to eject her delinquent lodger Mrs. Yuille was ably seconded by her husband. Their daughters seem to have been more humane. They were "particularly kind and obliging," wrote De Quincey to Blackwood. Of Mr. Yuille he vehemently expressed his opinion: "He is a savage." Worst of all, his books and papers were in the barbarian's hands, confiscated and awaiting destruction. Despite some comparatively peaceful months with his friends, De Quincey's two years' visit to Glasgow was marked by privations and illness. The money he received for his magazine contributions he divided with his daughters at Mavis Bush and with the patient Miss Miller at Holyrood, to w h o m he was indebted in many ways. He repeatedly directed Blackwood to send what was due him to Lasswade, and entreated him not to reveal his present address to Edinburgh creditors. His own wants were very simple. The sparse diet of soup, rice, a little piece of tender meat, seemed hardly

LASSWADE CELEBRITY

133

sufficient to keep him going. His nervous system, one might suppose, had been wrecked by perpetual fears of arrest, the ravages of frequent illness, and constant anxiety for his distant family. "I have stripped myself for my children," he wrote Blackwood on a tiny piece of paper, the postage on which he was unable to pay. His eldest daughter, Margaret, was ill because creditors gave her no rest. The baker at Lasswade must have money to meet his own obligations. De Quincey thought of applying to his mother for help, but she was too old to understand such things. "I am booked for absolute ruin," declared her son, "so long as my mother lives." It looked, indeed, as if that good lady, then in her nineties, were coming down to posterity in person. If her harassed offspring could only manage to hold out for a few more years, he might come into an inheritance and spend his old age in peace. Meanwhile, he likened himself to a man holding on by his hands to the burning deck of a ship, about to be lost in the surging waves. For over thirty years De Quincey had been recurrently tortured by indigestion or neuralgic pains. His stomach and intestines had suffered from his irregular habits of life and from his varying indulgences in opium, which quickened his mind at the expense of his delicate body. At various times in Glasgow he was an invalid. His ailment was diagnosed as a form of purpura, for which sundry medicines, from tonics to Seidlitz powders, were prescribed. For eight weeks he lay "stretched in helplessness." At another time he could not move in his bed for sixty hours. "That long habit of tampering with the digestive organs," he wrote Blackwood, "by extravagant delays in taking medicine (which to me costs

134

D E

QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

sixpence in each separate case) has for many weeks menaced me with evil." Three months after reaching Glasgow he stated that out o f ninety days not twenty had been free of fever. At his worst he felt "as old Pelias or Aeetes or somebody expected to feel after being cut up and boiled by Medea." O f the several remedies tried, the Seidlitz powders proved the most efficacious. But not the local brand. He had given the Glasgow variety a fair trial only to despair o f their virtue. Then he wrote to Mr. Blackwood. That gentleman was doubtless surprised, on opening the letter, to find a request for medicine instead o f pounds sterling. He immediately sent his contributor a box o f choicest Edinburgh Seidlitz powders. De Quincey took six and the results were magical. Commenting on their success in counteracting the effects o f laudanum, De Quincey was almost lyrical. "Such is the peculiar effect o f opium, long since established," he wrote his benefactor, "that any cathartic medicine slight or powerfid — no matter what — meets with exceedingly torpid state o f the intestines. But no sooner does it master the resistance than, like that water-imp o f which Lucian tells so good a story, namely, an enchanted bit o f wood forced by a talismanic word to fetch water, — by Heavens, it never left off — and so with my Seidlitz powders." Better for his health than Seidlitz powders was De Quincey's dauntless will to live and work. Repeatedly he closed his notes to Blackwood with such desperate declarations as " I am at the last gasp," "I am utterly stranded," "This is the end." But the mood was transient. T o indulge it would indeed have been fatal. He found relief in writing letters about his ills, usually by way o f explanation for his

LASSWADE CELEBRITY

135

delay in furnishing promised articles. Handicapped as he gen-; erally was, he still continued to produce. "When I cease writing," he remarked in a note to the patient magazine proprietor, "you may conclude that I am in fever, probably: in delirium, and unable to rise from bed." His contributions in the Glasgow years were learned dissertations on subjects as varied as "Cicero," "Ricardo and Adam Smith," "Plato's Republic," "The Philosophy of Herodotus," "Ceylon"; very different from the sketchy portraits in Tait's a year or two before. Much of this more thoughtful composition was accomplished with few books at hand. He composed slowly, with many revisions and with fastidious attention to style. The labor involved would have been enormous for a healthy man; for one ill and depressed it was heroic. Only a few persons besides his family and Blackwood knew of De Quincey's whereabouts. He was lost to Edinburgh. Inquiring creditors possessed their souls with what patience they could command; they had to content themselves with levying on such books and papers as the fugitive debtor was unable to convey to Glasgow or to Lasswade. Once he had visited his cottage because of the critical illness of old Mr. Simpson. So violent was Iiis father-in-law's suffering that the entire family was kept in a nightly disturbance. Poor De Quinceyhad no sleep in that thin-walled house and consequently fell into arrears with his articles. Whether the Opium-Eater quieted the elder man with his own favorite drug is not stated. At any rate, his condition improved, and De Quincey returned to Glasgow. Of his movements his friend, Professor Wilson, was evidently informed, for Wilson directed an old London acquaintance how to find

136

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

him. The Londoner was Charles Knight, the magazine editor who had befriended De Quincey twenty years before. The two had met once since those days and now saw each other for the last time. Knight was surprised to see De Quincey with a beard a foot long at a time when beards were quite out of fashion. He explained to his visitor that the cultivation of it was necessary to his health. Looking like an ancient sage among his parchments, De Quincey welcomed his old friend. "Nothing," wrote Knight, "could exceed the affection with which he received me." The next month, unable to appease his obdurate landlord, De Quincey left his "parchments" as security and joined his family in the sheltered valley of the Esk. At last, at the age of fifty-eight, he was reunited with his daughters. Grandfather Simpson was dead. Francis De Quincey was in Manchester, clerk in a commercial house; Horace, officer of a Scottish regiment in China, had died the previous year in that alien land; Paul Frederick was with the British army in India. The little household at Mavis Bush was presided over by Margaret, the eldest of three harmonious and efficient girls whose domestic apprenticeship had an early beginning. The cottage of eight rooms was spacious enough for the philosopher, infinitely better for health and happiness than city lodgings. His daughters' love of books and music made them companionable to one who all his life had a passion for both. He had written to Miss Mitford the year before of this pastoral Eden and its occupants whose gaiety and laughter, "the most natural and spontaneous," gladdened him "beyond all measure." But during this first year of family reunion neither health nor happiness was his

LASSWADE CELEBRITY

137

lot. He was sick and miserable, wanting the will to live. Braced up by frequent doses of "iron tonic" (there is no mention of Seidlitz powders), he struggled through promised articles for Blackwood's. It occurred to him that he needed more physical exercise. In the little garden back of the cottage he measured off a circuit of forty-four yards and made frequent rounds of a mile each until, within ninety days, he had walked a thousand miles. The iron and the excessive exercise brought a measure of "regeneration" to his system, but still in misery of body and mind he decided to quit these ineffectual remedies for more generous potations of his habitual drug. The year 1844 marked for De Quincey an opium excess comparable to that which preceded the writing of the Confessions a quarter of a century before. Since then, to be sure, there had been brief periods of immoderate indulgence, but none so devastating as this. The earlier maximum of eight thousand drops of laudanum a day was not afterwards reached. This time he did not exceed five thousand. The effects, however, were far less pleasurable than those recorded in the first part of the Confessions; were so depressing, indeed, that he felt himself as in a whirlpool, carried headlong to destruction. He remembered Coleridge's lament that he had lost by opium "the gladsome vital feelings that are born of the blood." These he too was losing in the murky hell that imprisoned him. Physical and mental irritability was rapidly traveling over the disk of his life. The consciousness of increasing weakness brought desolation of heart, with suicidal impulse. To increase the daily consumption of laudanum, or even to continue it in any large amount, meant death; greatly to diminish the dose or suddenly to break off

138

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

so confirmed a habit would involve extreme suffering. Something in the direction of greater abstinence, at all events, seemed to the tortured man imperative. Summoning all his resolution for the experiment, he rather speedily reduced the daily drink from thousands of drops to one hundred. So dreadful were the results that for a time he returned to more liberal allowances. But efforts toward release, though attended by manifold miseries, were renewed with noble determination. " B y a long and determined weaning from laudanum," he wrote Blackwood, " I have drawn myself down for the last six weeks from purgatory into the shades o f a deeper abyss." Again he spoke of his struggles as a "sixmonths' martyrdom." Gradually descending the ladder of indulgence, he found himself at last, and permanently, on temperate ground. This notable and final relapse was not without its spiritual lesson. "Misery," he concluded, "is the talisman by which man communicates with the world outside of our fleshly control." And as D e Quincey had four times ascended into heaven and descended into hell, he spoke with more than Dantean authority. This experience was followed, as earlier excesses had been, by one or more literary creations of extraordinary beauty. In the dream world where he had lived for a season were revived scenes f r o m his childhood and youth, colored with memories of his vast reading. These he clothed in the subdued splendor of rhythmical prose. For many years he had intended to write a third part to the Confessions. He agreed with most of his readers that the work was incomplete. Moreover, it had ended on an infernal note. A sequel drawn f r o m early impressions, mellowed in the hazy light of the

LASSWADE CELEBRITY

139

years, would make the Confessions something of an idyl. So it was that he returned, after a period given to severe intellectual exercise in historical and philosophical composition, to spiritual autobiography. The afflictions of his dreamy childhood, the visions of the Oxford years when he first came under the spell of the magic drug, were recalled by the veteran opium-eater. The human brain he likened to a palimpsest. "Everlasting layers of ideas, images, feelings, have fallen upon your brain softly as light. Each succession has seemed to bury all that went before. And yet in reality not one has been extinguished." The sexagenarian of Mavis Bush had not lost the overlaid images and emotions of the vanished years. They emerged glorified from the deeps of consciousness. Forgotten now were the intervening sorrows, the struggles with poverty, the menacing bailiffs. He was a child again at Greenhay, communing with nature in his first great grief, trumphant or terrified in his tumultuous kingdom of Gombroon. He was reading Greek and talking theology with Lady Carbery at Laxton, meditating flight from Manchester Grammar School, a vagabond along Welsh byways, walking with Ann in the streets of London. He was once more a solitary youth "amidst the solemn tranquillities of Oxford," scene of those recurrent dreams of "Levana and our Ladies of Sorrow." After forty years of silent adoration he was in a mood to translate these mystic divinities into personal symbols. There were three of them. In the center of the picture was Our Lady of Tears, Madonna of his dreams. It was she who touched his head and, beckoning to Our Lady of Sighs, had spoken to her in signs which he alone of mortals could in-

140

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

terpret. T o Our Lady of Sighs, Madonna gave up her young idolater for the ultimate keeping of Our Lady of Darkness. And to this final protectress Madonna spoke: "See that thy sceptre he heavy on his head. Suffer not woman and her tenderness to sit near him in his darkness. Banish the frailties of hope; wither the relenting of love; scorch the fountains of tears; curse him as only thou canst curse. So shall he be accomplished in the furnace; so shall he see the things that ought not to be seen, sights that are abominable, and secrets that are unutterable. So shall he read elder truths, sad truths, grand truths, fearful truths. So shall he rise again before he dies. And so shall our commission be accomplished which f r o m God w e had — to plague his heart until w e had unfolded the capacities of his spirit." W h e n he· wrote this dream fantasy D e Quincey was acquainted through his own experience with all three Ladies of Sorrow. He had walked in all their kingdoms. Levana alone had figured at last in his day reveries as in his nocturnal dreams. At Oxford she appeared to him with three mysterious companions. O f these he had known the Lady of Tears in his childhood. The other two were familiar in later years. The solemn visionary trinity had been born of his congenital dreaminess. Upon him had fallen "too powerfully and too early the vision of life." His preternatural tendency toward mystic idealization had been stimulated and vastly enlarged by his first opium indulgence. It was at Oxford, therefore, that Levana and her Ladies of Sorrow began to assume more definite shapes and to impress him as symbolically related to his own life. These bodiless creations of his myth-making faculty, these phantoms born in his drug-quickened brain

LASSWADE CELEBRITY

141

haunted even his waking hours. They shadowed him and, like the chorus of Greek tragedy, spiritually interpreted his past and future. Levana's three attendants were both his graces and his fates. This dream legend, said De Quincey, rehearsed or prefigured the course of later confessions. It was his intention to elaborate and apply the Levana myth in a series of confessions profounder and more variegated than those in his earlier book. "These final Confessions," he wrote Professor Lushington, "are the ne plus ultra, as regards the feeling and the power to express it, which I can ever hope to attain." But the scheme broke down. Such vague and filmy imagery was not the stuif for a long story, nor did De Quincey have the gift for sustained narrative. As it was, he wrote a number of short sketches, autobiographical and fanciful, which he named Suspiria de Profundis. The radiant jewel among these is "Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow," the supreme prose fantasy in our literature. The incompleteness of his Suspiria de Profundis papers, as well as their somber beauty, may have been due in part to De Quincey's prolonged depression of spirit after his last great opium debauch. These sighs from the depths are the articulate and tuneful echoes of what he termed the undecipherable horror brooding night and day over his nervous system. Whatever he wrote, he went on to say in a letter to Miss Mitford, became "suddenly overspread with a dark frenzy of horror." Sheets of consuming fire, as it were, wrapt his papers, which were swept aside into piles of unfinished letters and inchoate essays. These paroxysms of unaccountable terror were endured in his room alone. He

142

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

would not trouble his daughters, dampen their natural gaiety with a recital of his agonies. Rather than becloud their happiness, he would let them make what explanations they chose of his failure to answer letters or send promised articles. They would find filial excuses for his foibles. His condition was diagnosed by critics as a horrible recoil from the long habit of using opium to excess. This he denied, stating that more than once he had been similarly afflicted in periods of temperance. Whatever the cause, De Quincey was miserable much of that year when he was writing in cadenced loveliness on the afflictions of childhood and on his own kinship to Levana and her Ladies of Sorrow. Gradually he emerged from the darkness that for months had enveloped him. Always abstemious in diet, he now became more so; his consumption of opium was moderate and regular physical exercise was resumed. His health improved and happiness returned. At Mavis Bush he felt more settled than at any time since his Grasmere days. He had one room all to himself which he might, undisturbed, clutter up with his innumerable sheets of paper. Creditors had virtually ceased to trouble him. The oldest of them had given over the hopeless chase, the more recent were paid from the assured income which De Quincey enjoyed since his mother's death, and eventually all would be satisfied. Francis, tired of his Manchester clerkship, had come home to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh. His father coached him for his examinations, and the two often walked the seven miles to the city and back. Neighbors at Lasswade and Polton called on the family, and there were frequent visitors from Edinburgh, including Pro-

LASSWADE CELEBRITY

143

fessor Wilson and Mr. Blackwood. Sometimes the Glasgow astronomer, Professor Nichol, on a lecture engagement in Edinburgh, would come out and dine with the De Quinceys. Then there would be much talk of the nebular hypothesis. In a note to his eldest daughter, written from the city to prepare her for one of Nichol's visits, De Quincey playfully commented on the favorite topic: " Y o u know, of course, what is the Nebular Hypothesis. O r if, by some strange chance you do not, then, and on that paradoxical assumption, Florence will explain it fully; or, in her default, Emily; or, if Emily should spend too many words over it, then call upon the cat; or, if he is galavanting, then perhaps the rug would have the goodness to explain." One visitor about this time who often called at Mavis Bush in the evenings remembered the animated talk on high themes. " N o house in the country," said he, "had more attractions for people who cared for cultivated conversation." One evening he made sport o f De Quincey's strong Toryism as inconsistent with the little philosopher's liberal principles. T o this badinage De Quincey smilingly replied that if he were dug up two centuries hence, he would be found a perfect specimen of a "fossil T o r y . " Despite his contentment in his rural retreat and his established reputation as a local celebrity, De Quincey was restless. He was not to be localized or stabilized. He could not be permanently domesticated. The old habit of wandering was still strong in him. His years of artful dodging had generated, so to speak, an invincible unstable equilibrium. Like the wicked, he fled when no man pursued. He would lose himself in Edinburgh lodgings, or journey occasionally to some unrelinquished rooms in Glasgow, returning for

144

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

longer and longer periods of retirement at peaceful Mavis Bush. De Quincey's second sojourn in Glasgow was for professional reasons. Tait's Magazine was to be moved there and published in connection with a projected newspaper. De Quincey was invited to follow Tait's to Glasgow and to continue his contributions in actual residence. As usual, it was necessary to domicile the erratic magazinist near his periodical to be fairly certain of his stipulated articles. He was not eager to quit the charms of Mavis Bush for urban disquiets, but the prospect of a regular engagement led him, after considerable argument, to entertain the new offer. Another consideration was the pleasure of renewed association with his old university friends, Nichol and Lushington. One deterrent, however, must be removed before his acceptance. On his previous stay in Glasgow De Quincey had been annoyed by the "noxious exhalations" from factory smokestacks; he would not consent to return unless he might have quarters free from those suffocating vapors. Sulphuretted hydrogen, he bitterly remembered, had almost done him to death. The eloquent and diplomatic envoy of the Glasgow publications, Colin Rae-Brown, who conducted the negotiations, assured De Quincey that he would find a salubrious lodging for him. So it was agreed that, beginning early in 1847, he should take up his residence in Glasgow for at least six months. While this persuasive agent of the press was interviewing the Lasswade celebrity, he was keenly observant of the man himself. He beheld a thin, short body crowned with a rather large head, which was distinguished by a high brow, pale

LASSWADE CELEBRITY

145

and almost transparent through its fine network of wrinkles. As De Quincey conversed, a faint flush tinged his intelligent, mobile face. Refinement of expression lent a sort of ethereal beauty to his countenance, was reflected in every glance from his tired, dreamy eyes, and even extended to the movement of his hands. His accuracy of pronunciation revealed high breeding and literary culture. His gentleness of manner was that of a sensitive, retiring child. Here, then, was the man whose name was mentioned with Hamilton's and Wilson's among the notables of Edinburgh, a diminutive creature whose speech and manner breathed a spirit of universal tolerance and good will. Between the glorified journalist from Edinburgh and Colin Rae-Brown, business manager of Glasgow publications, mutual esteem swiftly ripened into friendship. Were they not brothers in the craft? De Quincey had never been given to intimacies, and he was too old now to form close ties; but he was quick to sense high qualities of mind and heart in a colleague and to respond with frank friendliness. He and his new Glasgow associates on the Daily Mail and Tait's often lunched together or took long walks. When the Opium-Eater was behind with "copy," it was RaeBrown who went round to Mrs. Tosh's to interview her lodger about that overdue paper. He was likely to find De Quincey in dressing gown and stockingless, stretched out on a rug before the grate, drugged into deep sleep. "I'm sure," exclaimed Mrs. Tosh, "the puir body's deid." The good landlady thought he must have starved himself to death, for she had observed with grave concern that he did not eat as much in a week as her tiny grandson ate in a day.

146

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

She doubted, moreover, whether "Mr. Quinsey" was "in his rieht mind." A hasty search by the newspaper man ended in the discovery of the desired article, carefully done up with red tape and addressed to "The Editor of Tail's Magazine." Finished before dawn, it had been left by the exhausted author for the messenger. That evening De Quincey and his friend from Tait's might call on Professor Nichol and hear more about the progress or decline of the nebular hypothesis. As the two journalists walked home through the blinding Scotch mist, De Quincey would discourse on some humanitarian scheme for the comfort and entertainment of working people compelled to live in such a climate. Might not Winter Gardens, for instance, covered over with glass, be erected by the city, where the toiling masses might find instruction and amusement at popular prices; Thus the earlier months in Glasgow were passed in writing for the press and in friendly converse on literature or science or social reform. When Mrs. Tosh's little grandson, the same who daily consumed a De Quinceyan week's rations, was stricken with scarlet fever, Rae-Brown was deputed to effect the transfer of Tait's contributor to safer quarters. Then it was that De Quincey suddenly remembered that during the past three or four years, though absent from Glasgow, he had continued to pay rent on rooms in Renfield Street. He also recalled, not without alarm, that many valuable books and papers had been stored there. Thither he accordingly repaired for the remainder of his sojourn in the city on the Clyde. This friendship with Colin Rae-Brown was one of the bright memories of two lives. The improvident sexagenarian and the practical man of affairs, the dreamer and the realist,

LASSWADE CELEBRITY

147

were complementary spirits for a few memorable months, drawn to each other by common interests and ideals. Brief as their association was, it was kin to that of master and disciple. Two of the Tait papers during those Glasgow months are among the most vivid of De Quincey's productions. They are both on women. Catalina, the fugitive nun of St. Sebastian, had for two centuries been something of a lure for Spanish and French romantics. A Parisian magazine, early in 1847, contained a sketch of the spectacular career ofthat extraordinary adventuress, based on her autobiography and subsequent adaptations. De Quincey read the French account and was forthwith moved to pass it on, with transforming comment of his own, to the readers of Tait's Magazine. Here was a romance, professedly real and quite to his taste, which needed popularization. This was better than the Gothic stuff on which he had tried his hand in earlier years. He was no novelist, but he could make entertaining narrative out of legendary or historical material. The story of Senorita Catalina, whom he familiarly called Kate, and her thrilling escapades in Spanish America he playfully wrought into a galloping picaresque tale. For such swashbuckling vagabondage the opium-dreamer had a liking. Beauty habitually in peril on far-off strands and atop snow-clad mountains was meat and drink for that chivalric soul. If the incredible Kate of St. Sebastian stirred the lighter fancy of De Quincey, it was the sainted Joan of Arc who fired his heart with lyric transport. He had been reading Michelet and found his discussion of the Maid's last days wanting in sympathetic insight. He recalled the ribald jesting of the

148

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

cynical Voltaire and other earlier misjudgments of the peasant girl of Domremy. With a sure prescience of her ultimate beatification, De Quincey began and closed his sketch in the language of poetic apostrophe. She was likened to the Hebrew shepherd boy who kept his sheep in obscurity on the hills ofJudea. She too attained a coronation, but hers was the fiery crown of martyrdom. Her imprisonment, trial, and flaming translation into the blessed company of saints were all assembled into a final torturing revelation to the dying Bishop of Beauvais. At God's great judgment seat, she "that cometh with blackened flesh from walking the furnaces of Rouen," she alone will be found to plead for him. N o other figure ever moved De Quincey to such solemn rapture as this vision-haunted girl of France. While De Quincey was in Glasgow his daughters paid a visit to their Aunt Jane in southwestern England. For her nieces, who had lived always in the North, it was a neverto-be-forgotten trip. Mrs. Quincey never saw her grandchildren, and Jane was an old woman now, the only one of the family left except Thomas. She and her literary brother had, in his Grasmere days, kept up a desultory correspondence, but that had virtually ceased in the stressful and troubled years of his Edinburgh life. They had been congenial souls, and he was glad that his daughters might have at last an opportunity to know her as well as those regions familiar to him in the days of his youth. Bath, Wrington, Weston: what memories these names evoked! And there was London, which he was never to see again except in reverie. The visit of his children to his boyhood haunts was a vicarious renewal of happy experiences. Their father wrote to them with un-

LASSWADE CELEBRITY

149

wonted regularity from his dingy lodgings in Glasgow. Whom did they see? Perhaps they had met that old Winkfield schoolmate of his, with whom he last shook hands in the eighteenth century. They must attend the opera in London and see the other sights. And how did they like Walter Savage Landor, who had called on them at Bath in honor of their father? For the girls it was the grand tour, and for De Quincey it was a renaissance of his youth. When in November they were reunited at Mavis Bush, there was much lively talk of Aunt Jane and other figures, of sea-bathing on the southern coast, and of a thousand impressions of their newly discovered world, which was to him the old one.

χ Invictus

D

E Q U I N C E Y was again in residence at Mavis Bush, and the final decade of his life had begun. In this restful haven the veteran magazinist might dream and talk while the shadows lengthened from the west. Creditors no longer made him afraid. Beggars still found him an easy prey and regularly included him in their predatory rounds, but they were powerless to disturb his serenity. Guarded and humored by his daughters, the little patriarch might pile up his papers to his heart's content, sip his laudanum or brandy and water, quaff his nocturnal coffee, come and go at will. Of an evening, when the candles had been lighted, he loved to be with the girls in the little sitting-room, reading The Scotsman or some new book. "Papa, your hair's on fire," one of them would remark. "Is it, my dear?" he would reply, as he smothered the flame with his hand without looking up from his page. After the loneliness of lodginghouses, this intimate fireside fellowship was a balm to the spirit. It recalled the happier days at Dove Cottage when Margaret De Quincey, long ago in winter twilights, made homelike and beautiful his tiny mansion. Perhaps the friendly figure of Dorothy Wordsworth also had a place in these reveries. Such retrospections were doubtless fleeting, for De Quincey was not a man to indulge the enervating passion of memory. Nor was

INVICTUS

151

his ardor for composition greatly abated by reason of domestic comforts and relief f r o m responsibility. There was yet w o r k to be done, and he could not rest f r o m toil. His old brain had not gone barren. He was still evolving literary projects. His contributions to magazines had all but ceased. In 1849 De Quincey's last Blackwood's papers appeared. Those w h o read The English Mail-Coach, or the Glory of Motion in the autumn number of the magazine realized that the sexagenarian Opium-Eater was still the magical craftsman of the Confessions. Here, indeed, were very different chapters, drawn f r o m the experiences of earlier years. The sparkling wine of youth, mellowed in his veins by the processes of age, colors these memories of flying mail-coaches on English highways. In his Oxford and early Grasmere years the mail-coach was in the evening of its glory. W h e n he celebrated it in Blackwood's forty years later, that old locomotive institution with all its trappings and association was almost a legend. He recalled h o w young Oxonians going up to London revelled in the pomp and circumstance of m o tion. For them the place of high privilege was the driver's box. T o sit by the coachman, looking down upon the horses and ahead at the open road, dashing along at the dizzy speed of twelve miles an hour, was adventure indeed. If that lofty functionary condescended to resign the reins for a fleeting half-hour, the favored academician by his side felt himself like unto Phoebus Apollo guiding the horses of the sun. Their headlong flight was marked by episodes both romantic and terrible. He still remembered, not without a quickening of the pulses, Fanny of the Bath road, the old

152

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

coachman's rosy-cheeked granddaughter. At her cottage the Royal Mail made a momentary stop. In courtly fashion, as became a Royal outrider, he kissed Fanny's hand, and heaven only knows what declaration might have followed if the coach had only given him time. Across the years, at any rate, whenever he saw a rose in June, up would rise the heavenly face of Fanny of the Bath road. But terrible was the remembrance of that moonlight journey to the Lakes when the Manchester-Glasgow fast mail collided with the pair of lovers and their light gig. Lost to all perils of the highway they were conscious only of each other. Their drowsy nag had wandered unobserved to the left, directly in the path of the oncoming mail. The sleeping coachman was unaware of any obstruction, his horses heedless of the endangered pair. Frantically they sought to escape the rolling juggernaut. There was a crash. The boy saw arms upraised in wild despair. The coach passed on. That vision of sudden death would live forever in the reveries of his haunted brain. In De Quincey's imagination the English mail-coach had become a symbol, and the system had taken on the pictorial coloring of allegory. The unprecedented velocity of these official chariots first revealed to him the glory of motion through the twilight haze of solitary roads. The strength and beauty of the horses gave an impression of power at once terrible and beneficent. Directing them amid the perils of storm and darkness was a single intellect in London, functioning through each coachman in a vast network of highways stretching from the capital to the encircling seas. These royal equipages had, moreover, a political significance, for

INVICTUS

153

they distributed throughout the island tidings f r o m battle fronts in the Napoleonic wars. Never to be forgotten were the patriotic thrills one felt as the gaily beflagged mail went down f r o m London with victory, spreading through the countryside the glad news of Waterloo. De Quincey conceived of the mail-coach as a national agency charged with the responsibility of making known to Britons the crucial events of an epic era. In his polyphonic brain this transportation system shaped itself into a concourse of images and sounds. He likened it to a mighty orchestra, all parts of which, though seemingly independent, blended into an harmonious whole. He translated his impressions into musical speech, and concluded his reminiscences of coaching days with his splendidly incoherent "Dream Fugue." It was a gorgeous finale to his long connection with Blackwood's and the last of his inspired visions. Several months after the publication of the stage coach articles De Quincey changed periodicals. Quite unannounced he appeared one day at the office of Hogg's Weekly Instructor and informed the editor that he had decided to become a contributor. He was attracted by the Instructor's political and religious independence. From one pocket of his long cape he drew a manuscript and f r o m another a small brush. After deliberately dusting each sheet, he handed it to James Hogg, w h o n o w looked upon the Opium-Eater for the first time. So this was the great Thomas De Quincey whose Confessions the young editor had read and reread. W o u l d Mr. De Quincey have a seat; He must be tired after his long walk f r o m Lasswade. N o ; And he would walk back? O h yes, he needed his fourteen miles a day in the way of

154

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

exercise. De Quincey sat for an hour, talking of the "Riddle of the Sphinx," his first contribution to the Weekly Instructor. His new interpretation of the ancient legend gave him great satisfaction, and he elaborated with evident gusto his ingenious theory of the double riddle. James Hogg had something to boast of to the young Edinburgh intellectuals. He had not only seen De Quincey plain, but had spent an hour with him in high discourse; or, rather, had listened to him enraptured. The two hked each other. That was certain. At, the end of the visit both men hoped that this was the beginning of a closer personal and professional relationship. With Thomas De Quincey on its staff, the Weekly Instructor would be justified in its name. Persons who had never seen De Quincey, and who were never likely to see such a retiring creature, eagerly inquired of Hogg what sort of man he was. The editor replied that De Quincey's eyes had strange, unfathomable depths, as if he had known great mysteries. The oddity of his general appearance was forgotten as one became aware of his extremely refined face and prominent brow. The rhythmical tones of his voice fascinated the sensitive listener. His manners were fastidiously polite, often deferential. His conversation generally took the form of an extended exposition, "a sort of refined rigmarole," reheved by mildly humorous banter. When he was about to begin one of these halfjocular excursions, he had a way of suddenly pinching his arm as if nerving himself for an adventure. Nothing stimulated his fancy more than newspaper reports of police court trials and chancery suits. The mysterious and the whimsical particularly interested him, and murder cases had all his life furnished intellectual sport.

INVICTUS

155

The curiosity of the public might not be satisfied, h o w ever, b y a mere word-painting of Hogg's famous contributor. It was accordingly decided to publish his picture with a series of autobiographic sketches more idyllic than those which had appeared in other periodicals. D e Quincey was finally prevailed upon to go with H o g g to a photographer's in Princes Street. From the daguerreotype an engraving was made and submitted to the author and his family for approval. D e Quincey wrote playfully to the editor about the picture. He was convinced that the engraver had done his part ably. His daughters thought the mouth too long, but that error may have been a solar distortion, and it was not lawful for mortals to complain of the Sun-god. Apropos o f the memoranda of his childhood accompanying the picture he took occasion to express an opinion on conventional life-writing. Nothing made such dreary and monotonous reading as the old chronological array of inevitable facts in a man's life. " T h a t the man began by being a boy — that he went to school — and that by intense application to his studies he rose to distinction as a robber of orchards, seems so probable, upon the whole, that I am willing to accept it as a postulate. That he married — that, in fulness o f time, he was hanged, or (being a humble, unambitious man) that he was content with deserving it — these little circumstances are so naturally to be looked for, that any one life becomes, in this respect, but the echo of thousands." D e Quincey assured H o g g that he would avoid commonplace details. In his sketches for the Weekly Instructor he proposed to emphasize the psychological aspects of his childhood experiences. Only by a narrative of impressions

156

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

w o u l d he be able to reveal the child w h o was potentially the original o f the accompanying portrait. D e Quincey's professed intention embraced more than self-portraiture. H e hoped that the experiences related in these sketches w o u l d be interesting in themselves, quite apart f r o m their connection w i t h a particular individual. He had sought to portray childhood rather than a certain child. T h e reader, he asserted, should think o f the incidents recorded as independent o f all personal bearing; he should regard the author as "profoundly anonymous." Expectation and explanation were alike vain. Neither the editor nor the readers o f Hogg's Instructor found the reminiscences impersonal. T h e y were published, indeed, because they were charmingly intimate revelations o f a noted man's infancy. T h e y were accompanied, moreover, b y the likeness o f the wrinkled veteran in whose eyes still lurked the imperishable dreams o f childhood. A n d every subscriber to the Edinburgh w e e k l y lived over with him the j o y s and sorrows o f a longlost K i n g d o m o f Gombroon. After t w o numbers o f the autobiographic sketches had appeared in quick succession, months passed without a third. T h e editor received many letters f r o m impatient readers. W h y had those entertaining papers ceased and w h e n w o u l d they be resumed? Surely the writer did not mean to leave the narrative incomplete? H o g g sent some o f these inquiries to his dilatory contributor, whose m o o d had changed, his senses perchance lulled into forgetfulness b y indulgence in Lethean liquor. T h e better part o f a year elapsed before he roused himself for another creative effort. T o the third instalment he prefixed an apologetic introduction. Certain o f

INVICTUS

157

his readers, he understood, thought him "an irreclaimable procrastinator, amiably inclined to penitence, though constitutionally incapable o f amendment." Others regarded him as a deliberate defaulter. These evidently looked upon themselves as creditors and upon him as an absconding debtor. Manifestly they were confusing the sketch and the story. They expected a plot, unfolding itself through regular stages to a satisfying conclusion. But he was not telling a romantic tale o f entangling adventures, to be resolved at last by rescuing hero and heroine from an Irish bog o f tragic circumstance. N o ; he was writing sketchy reminiscences, and a sketch is by nature fragmentary; like a torso, it may lack head or feet or arms, and still be a marketable piece o f sculpture. There could be no completeness to these varied incidents recalled at random from the imperfect impressions o f a half-forgotten childhood. The resentment o f his readers involved a compliment to the author. He was convinced that, after all, Hogg's subscribers had a sccrct admiration for the procrastinating biographer; and hereafter, when he was accused o f criminal delay, he would retort that their censure was really a tribute to his work. He would do his best to supply a conclusion which they, and not the nature o f the subject, demanded. Characteristically enough, he never did. Mavis Bush was too far from the press for prompt delivery o f manuscript and return o f proof. Moreover, De Quincey's fame had brought to his cottage at Lasswade such a steady stream o f visitors that his literary labors were seriously impeded. All his life he had worked best in urban lodgings in convenient reach o f his publishers. For ten years

158

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

or more he had retained rooms at 42 Lothian Street and had occasionally occupied them. They were on the second floor, in the apartment of a Mrs. Wilson and her sister, Miss Stark, up the winding stone stairs from the dingy old thoroughfare near the University. There he returned for longer and longer periods. Hither had been conveyed through the good offices of Wilson and Hogg a large number of books and papers which had been held by mercenary landladies at former lodgings. The collection, filling shelves and cupboards, steadily overflowed to chairs and tables and even into a handy bathtub. As at Mavis Bush and everywhere else in his long pilgrimage, he was getting completely "snowed up." Fortunately he had fallen into the hands of two sympathetic women w h o indulged his whims and looked after him with affectionate solicitude. The angular but kindly Miss Stark, in particular, treated him with sisterly concern. Between his daughters, seven miles away, and his landladies in Lothian Street relations were most friendly. De Quincey would now and then hire a carriage and take Mrs. Wilson and Miss Stark out to Lasswade to spend the day. The Misses De Quincey sometimes came to town to join their father and the Lothian Street ladies for an evening at the opera. C o m munication with his cottage, both in person and by letter, was frequent. For him Mavis Bush was in easy walking distance and Lothian Street was close to the printing press. This residential duality was an ideal arrangement for a peripatetic philosopher. Socially De Quincey was "at home" in the country. Visitors to Mavis Bush were welcomed by his warmhearted daughters, who were generally able, after some delay, to

INVICTUS

159

produce the head of the household. Those who had never seen the Opium-Eater were likely to be shocked at his slovenliness of dress. They were certain to be enchanted by his manners and conversation. Some friends of Mary Russell Mitford, who had visited De Quincey, wrote her that he was the strangest mixture of beggar and prince. When he began to talk, they forgot his unkempt appearance. Harriet Martineau, after listening to him through her ear trumpet, beamed with pleasure. She told Miss D e Quincey, on leaving, that she had never heard so musical an utterance. Other talkers bawled at her, but she perfectly caught the clear, lowpitched tones of De Quincey's voice. D e Quincey, impressed by her size and bearing, called Miss Martineau the gentle lioness. It was only after his death that she roared at him. The novelist and editor, James Payn, was more struck by D e Quincey's eyes than b y his voice. In periods of animation they lit up his face like radiant stars. At luncheon the young visitor was about to help himself from a neighboring decanter. Margaret whispered a warning. Presently De Quincey poured from it a glass of laudanum, and during the meal several more. The fascinated guest observed the old Opium-Eater with as much amazement as, years before, the young De Quincey had watched the errant Malay bolt his opium cake. The liquor heightened the luster of his eyes and stimulated his tongue to finer eloquence. At other times its effects were so stupefying that he sat in silence, lost to his surroundings. So queer a being was incomprehensible. N o wonder that in Edinburgh he was an object of legendary interest. Strangers who caught a glimpse of him in Princes Street, or saw him lean forward in his box at the opera listen-

l6o

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

ing eagerly, only to drop back suddenly when observed, had their shallow curiosity gratified. Only the family, their favored guests at Mavis Bush, and the beggars of the neighborhood knew something of the real De Quincey, but all these combined were unable to pluck out the heart of his mystery. There were many stories current about his eccentric ways. Old inhabitants of Lasswade and Polton long remembered an occasional sight of the diminutive figure flitting eerily at dawn across the fields, homeward bound from some nocturnal ramble. He would avoid the beaten track for fear of getting involved in conversation with some stupid wayfarer, whom he was too polite to snub. Laborers along the highway greeted him with questions about the weather and his health, two matters which belonged to his category of uncertainties; and if he paused to say a kindly word, they inflicted upon him long-winded narratives on their experiences martial and rheumatic. Rather than expose himself to the banalities of passengers, he refused to take the coach to Edinburgh or to Lasswade, no matter how inclement the weather. He never forgot the old woman at the dock on Loch Lomond who, as the steamboat came in, accosted him with "La, sir! if you and I had seen that fifty years ago, how wonderful we should have thought it!" It was no easy task to get him out to dinners or to other social functions. He might promise, but unless his host went to fetch him, he would either forget or ignore the engagement. De Quincey once said of Coleridge that it was hard to start him to talking, but still harder to get him to stop. Of De Quincey it was commonly remarked that the first difficulty was to induce him

INVICTUS

x6l

to visit you and the second to reconcile him to leaving. He preferred intellectual frolics beginning at midnight. An occasional visitor from across the sea was entertained at Mavis Bush. The Boston publisher, James T. Fields, whose firm issued the American edition of De Quincey's works, was most cordially received by the Opium-Eater himself at the garden gate. Fields never saw a great man so small and pale, with such an impressive head. His face had the alabaster shine and his body the restlessness of chronic opiumeaters. Solemnly and deliberately De Quincey described the habits of a nondescript animal gnawing at his vitals. Walking afforded some measure of relief. The American and the Englishman accordingly started on the latter's daily stint of fourteen miles. De Quincey talked of his defeated hopes in regard to a projected work on the human intellect. He grew confidential about his literary associates, spoke tenderly of Lamb and Southey, and with deep emotion of Wilson. O f American geography he showed a surprisingly accurate knowledge. At times his manner was nervous and startled, as if he saw ghosts; his voice then became awesome and over his countenance there flitted an expression of sorrow. His visit over, Fields wished to say farewell at the door, where the carriage had long been waiting to take him to Edinburgh. But his host would not let him go alone. The two walked ahead of the empty vehicle for many miles through the misty night, De Quincey talking, talking, on what he called "the conquest of sorrow," a subject suggested by the ruined houses along the way. It was almost dawn when they parted under the hills near Edinburgh. The American looking backward glimpsed the flitting figure,

162

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

alternately vanishing and reappearing, on the winding road toward Lasswade. After his return to Lothian Street, De Quincey's health was for a time seriously impaired. He had considerably reduced the consumption of opium, and had then suddenly broken off in an unsuccessful effort at total abstinence. A moderate use of the drug, he again found, was necessary. Despite his old dependable tonic, he was utterly miserable. The mysterious "gnawing at the stomach" increased. He all but starved himself in the hope of curing his gastric malady. There was no relief. Alternately sleeping and feeding, the internal animalcule kept at his ghastly work, implacable. Obsessed by this notion, De Quincey was becoming morbid. Something must be done. Dragging himself to Professor Wilson's, he discoursed mournfully to him. The great Christopher, whose native resourcefulness philosophy had not quelled, solemnly addressed him: "De Quincey, I am really surprised and shocked. You are generally the most considerate of mortals, but this is a case of downright cruelty to animals. You say he gnaws you. Why shouldn't he? Feed him, man, feed him, and he won't bother you. The poor fellow is hungry. Come, let's give him some hare soup at once." Whereupon, Wilson promptly ordered the soup and made De Quincey swallow it. The big man was not to be resisted by the little valetudinarian. De Quincey improved on the new tonic, the worm was appeased, and literary labor was resumed in Lothian Street. Wide recognition of his achievements encouraged De Quincey to make available for readers in Great Britain an authentic edition of his works. Hogg had been urging him

INVICTUS

163

for some time to do this. Such an edition was appearing in America. Letters from admirers across the sea gladdened the author's heart. A young woman wrote f r o m Providence, Rhode Island, that he was "more honored by all w h o are capable of appreciating him than any other English writer dead or living." She herself entertained an homage for him that far surpassed "anything he could have felt for the idol of his young affections." She fell in love with the noblesouled boy of the Confessions, and had read everything from his pen. An exuberant father in Charleston, South Carolina, desired permission to name his first-born son Thomas De Quincey. He requested, moreover, one line from the great man "that will contain one truth, one fact, or one great thought which I can give to him when he begins to blossom as a human thing." Fields's recent assurance that De Quincey was all the rage in America was confirmed by these ecstatic letters. It was surely high time that British readers had access to a home edition of his writings. These were scattered in various magazines over a period of thirty years. The task of collecting and revising them would be formidable. D e Quincey was sixty-seven, weakened by illness and opium, and notoriously irresponsible. W o u l d he begin the undertaking with his customary initiatory enthusiasm, only to drop it after a while in order to chase some phantom of his fertile brain? Throughout life he had dreamed of some voluminous philosophical achievement, and he had more than once mentioned to Hogg his intention of writing a history of England in twelve volumes. Was his crowning achievement, after all, to be only a collection of his magazine articles» He

164

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

had written enough to fill many volumes, if he could lay his hands on all he had published. Unless he got these papers together and shaped them into a monumental edition, he would have no memorial. He would be remembered as a journalist, if remembered at all. The old man girded himself for the Herculean labor. The years had broken him, but he was future-minded, and his spirit had not wholly lost its youth. James H o g g had pledged his help in the arduous undertaking and the t w o would see it through, or one o f them would die in the attempt.

Courage!

The rooms in Lothian Street became an editorial w o r k shop in daily communication with the publishing house. D e Quinceyan notes, apologetic, explanatory, and promissory were dispatched posthaste to H o g g and the printers. He had been delayed, he wrote, by ill-health and by a visit from Professor Lushington. Letters from Lasswade in regard to unpaid taxes, threatening him with "utter ruin past all repair," so agitated him in the absence o f his daughters that he had not read all the proofs. Certain books and papers had been overlaid by others and discovered only after hours o f search. Sunk in feebleness and exhaustion, he must ask for three days more on that "appendix o f notes." A candle spark had lighted on some papers and started a fire which he finally put out with blankets. He had just set fire to his hair. He had been next to distraction all day long, having been up and writing all night. Painting and cleaning in his rooms had caused great confusion, and the revised copy of the Confessions, several hours overdue, was in a chest of drawers against which the whitewasher's scaffolding had been built. These numerous notes to the editor, while the collected

INVICTUS

165

edition was under way, were very like those of the old Blackwood and Tait days, except that creditors and requests for money do not figure in them. There is, however, a new and recurrent note, the pathetic struggle of age with physical and mental weakness. What he called sedentariness grew upon him. The strain of stooping in the search for papers "lying on the floor, entangled with innumerable newspapers," repeatedly made him ill. He could not remember where he put certain memoranda. He was partially delirious from want of sleep and from opium. But in his pain and amid the chaos of his little Lothian kingdom his essential clarity of mind survived. And the indomitable will of the old povertystricken years was still strong at evening when he needed not to toil.

XI

Evensong

W

HILE De Quincey was busy with his editorial labors in the city, romance was fluttering hearts at Mavis Bush. Margaret had married Robert Craig, a well-to-do neighbor. The couple journeyed to Ireland and settled on the groom's newly purchased farm in the County of Tipperary. It was the first break in the little circle by marriage. De Quincey felt some concern about the two remaining sisters, left alone in the country, and often walked out to see them. Since his wife's death many years before, Margaret had been chief housekeeper and hostess for the family. Capable as were the other daughters, both they and their father had depended upon her for domestic leadership. The two surviving sons were far away. Paul Frederick, still in India with the British army, had won distinction as an officer; Francis was practising medicine in Brazil. It had fallen to the daughters to look after their father, and his natural affection for them had been deepened by intimate association. One gathers that Florence and Emily were most like him in temperament. His letters to these two often began with "Dear Flor" and "Dear Em."

Their first visit to Ireland was made the following year, just before a child was born to the Craigs. Emily announced

EVENSONG

167

that important event to the expectant grandfather in Lothian Street. His reply was prompt. He was glad that it was a girl. The "little Tipperary thing" would in ten or twelve months be one of the liveliest of playthings, whereas a boy was a surly, sulky creature that had no tongue for five or six years, but expressed itself pugnaciously with the fists. A grandchild of De Quincey was expected to talk and also to keep the peace. Getting a name for the little heiress was of the utmost consequence, for anonymity was awkward in drinking a toast at a dinner party. Nomenclature was a favorite sport for so incurable a philologist as this grandfather, and he wrote a long letter to Emily on the romantic connotations of Eva, the name finally decided upon. He promptly cited two novels with that title, one by the English Bulwer-Lytton and the other by the Irish Maturin. The latter's Eva had shaped herself to his symbolizing fancy as the image of a white rose in a solitary garden seen mistily at earhest dawn in June. And so on, in a mock heroic rigmarole, his Tipperary Eva inevitably found herself in the aboriginal garden of the race. A month later he informed Florence that ten days before he had written an eleven-page letter to her and also one to Emily, but that both were full of nonsense, and so he had not mailed them. He had saved them to be read at home. For the present he would confine himself, first, to an exposition of the Roman significance of the name Eva, and, second, to announcing that the fourth volume of his revised works had come from the press. As they might like to see his revision of the famous Williams murder cases, he would forward them a copy. A few days later he dispatched a letter felicitating Margaret on her re-

ι68

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

covery, wherein he celebrated the advent of Eva with a metaphysical flourish of trumpets. After sentiment, business. The next letter was a mild plea for the return of his two daughters. He needed them at Mavis Bush. There were certain papers in the house he soon must have for his next volume. With elaborate detail he apologized for suggesting the breaking off of their visit. He would send nine pounds, his accumulated debt to them, if they wanted something for the Craig servants. If not, he would pay it when they got home. The fact was, he was spending a pound a week in Edinburgh, washing included, to say nothing of laudanum, brandy, and library fees. He had bought some heavier clothing, for it was very cold; and his total expenditure, after rigid economy, would be thirty pounds since they left. Thank heaven, he owed not a penny. But it was not in the De Quinceyan temperament to write business letters. A subsequent epistle dealt with a dream about Florence. So vivid was this dream that De Quincey illustrated it by a drawing. Through an open door in a spacious chamber a voice announced: "Florence and Emily." The first entered in a walking dress and a pretty bonnet, which probably cost half a guinea (unless they charged higher for headgear in dreams), but no Emily. Her sister made for an adjacent garden rich with flowers, and would not stop, the unfilial girl! The garden and the maiden suddenly melted away, and the dreamer awoke to the drab reality of Lothian Street. Not long thereafter the real Florence, accompanied by Emily, returned to Mavis Bush and its garden, and the three were reunited.

EVENSONG

169

Letters to his daughters continued on their return. In his old age D e Quincey had become quite addicted to this f o r m o f relief f r o m strenuous professional writing. In earlier years he had been a prodigious note-writer, and he was still fairly prolific in short communications to editors and printers on diacritical matters, but he was never given to formal literary correspondence. T o members o f his o w n household, and occasionally to some neighbor at Lasswade, he wrote in a vein o f playful humor which, though wanting the drollery o f Lamb, was quite as charmingly whimsical. He wrote to Florence soon after her return, inviting her to come in to see h i m and try his cure for toothache, namely, some g o o d roast beef and a bottle o f port. N o t for vain carnal gratification did he rehearse what this diet had done for him, the least o f beefeaters, "but for thy practical conversion,

Ο

daughter o f lukewarm faith." A n d if her friend, Miss W i d nell, should chance to find a motive for coming into the city that day, he w o u l d make r o o m for her b y taking his seat on a b o x o f papers. T o Miss Craig he wrote o f the spoiled house pet o f his urban apartment. W a k i n g suddenly one morning f r o m a nap, after an attack o f influenza, he was entertained b y a dramatic incident w h i c h took place on his breakfast tray. Close to an unfinished letter lying on the table cloth was a bottle o f ink, near that a cream j u g , and dominating all the feline house pet. W h i l e stealthily making for the j u g , the intruder was suddenly alarmed b y D e Quincey's awaking movement and bounced off, upsetting, not the cream, but the ink. T h e black deluge made illegible the unfinished letter and even colored the extremities o f remote sheets. W i t h boyish delight D e Quincey referred to the incident as a

170

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

catastrophe, warning his reader that his letters in future would be somber memorials of the wretch's transgressions. Other family letters involved humorous or serious references to his volumes now coming from the press. His daughters were his confidantes. Sometimes they became his pupils again and were favored with long epistolary lectures on language or Plato. Acknowledging some accumulated mail that Florence had sent to Lothian Street, De Quincey wrote her in a strain of humorous despair about a request made by one of his correspondents. A librarian at Manchester transmitted the salutation of the trustees, with the intimation that the library of Mr. De Quincey's native city would welcome upon its shelves the four new volumes o f his works. The institution was too poverty-bitten to fulfill the wish of their hearts. The Opium-Eater was amused at "the soft velvety coercion of these gentle beggars"; he felt compelled to present the volumes requested, a tribute to the obliging incense of flattery. When the revised Confessions came out he wrote to Emily and Margaret inviting their criticism of the enlarged work. He himself doubted whether his readers would prefer it over the original edition. T o Margaret he wrote refuting at wearisome length some bluestocking's opinion that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul originated with Plato. His eldest daughter appears to have been the most learned of the three. In these letters to his daughters De Quincey revealed, as nowhere else, the many-sidedness of his personality. And in them is implicit proof that they were well-educated women, intellectually companionable with their father. De Quincey was never definitely a member of any "cir-

EVENSONG

171

cle." He was too individual in his tastes to merge with a coterie, literary or social. This was manifest during his residence at the Lakes, in London, in Glasgow, and throughout his many years in Edinburgh. He gravitated, so to speak, toward magazine offices, where the interests o f his vocation centered. True to his lifelong habits, he associated in his last years with journalists, those on the staff o f the Instructor and Titan and o f the Scotsman. T h e t w o men with w h o m he consorted most frequently were James H o g g and John R. Findlay. Occasionally he drank tea w i t h one o f the Blackwoods, and he saw something o f John Hill Burton, w h o affectionately called him "Papaverius." B u t in the main his intellectual and social relationships, outside his family, were with periodical groups. O n e evening he went to a dinner party at the home o f John Ritchie, owner o f The Scotsman. There were many polite inquiries about the Misses D e Quincey and Mrs. Craig. O n e o f the guests said to him: " W e understand, M r . D e Quincey, y o u are going to lose another o f your daughters." Taken b y surprise and not k n o w i n g the wishes o f the particular daughter referred to, he smilingly replied that he had heard such a rumor. Russel, o f The Scotsman staff, remarked that it was more than a rumor, for the British Minister at Turin, then visiting Edinburgh, had brought the news. He had it f r o m Colonel Bairdsmith, o f the British Engineering Corps in India, recently a guest at the legation. T h e secret was out. Florence was engaged to Bairdsmith, son o f the family doctor, their neighbor o f Lasswade w h o had seen distinguished service in the East. That autumn they were married in India.

172

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

Another scion o f the house o f De Quincey, the fourth out o f a family o f six, had sailed to a far country to dwell across the seas. An inherited restlessness was in their blood. Their grandfather before them had voyaged over many seas, and their grandmother moved about in England until age fixed her in one spot. Their uncle Richard had roamed distant lands. And their father, though he was never out o f the United Kingdom, had wandered much in his youth, had in Iiis vast reading encircled the globe, and conversed in spirit with men o f every clime. One o f his sons had died in China, one was in South America, another in India. The De Quinceys had spread themselves to the tropics, to the Orient. Thomas the Little had linked the hemispheres through his progeny. Left at Mavis Bush was Emily only, the indefatigable bookman being absorbed in collecting and editing scattered De Quinceyana in Lothian Street. His walks and letters to the Lasswade cottage were more frequent since Florence's departure. He was troubled about the lonely daughter in the country. A woman should not be left unprotected in a roadside house, seven miles away from him. He would fain transfer his workshop from the city to the little valley o f the Esk. But he was tied to the press. How could printers' incessant demands for copy and proof be expeditiously met two leagues away? Hogg's insatiate messengers would have no mind for rustic excursions, and he had not time for daily tours to Edinburgh. The night was coming and it behooved him to work. It was almost time for him to say with Antony, "Unarm, Eros; the long day's task is done, and we must sleep." Instinctively he felt that he would die with his armor

EVENSONG

173

on. His suggestion of returning to Mavis Bush was tactfully vetoed by Emily. It would be better to close the cottage. She might visit the Gees in Lincolnshire and make another pilgrimage to the Emerald Isle to renew her intimacy with arch little Eva. And there was the newly arrived John Craig, with w h o m she wished to establish aunthood. She would come back to Lasswade when her father needed papers there. He was in good hands at 42 Lothian Street. After all, was it not natural for Emily also, now that her brothers and sisters were gone on their journeys, to indulge her taste for the glory of motion? He labored on at his city lodgings. One Sunday morning he awoke in high delirium. Mr. Hogg was summoned from church. It was something serious that would justify the interruption of a Scotsman's devotions. The doctor was called in. His prescription was regular daily exercise. D e Quincey himself was persuaded that without his walks he would not weather many months. Dieting alone would not keep him well. Moreover, some social recreation was desirable. Accordingly he called upon the neighbors across the street. One night he stepped over for half an hour, "but practically it came to nearly four hours." He liked the family, was particularly impressed with the daughter, charming at least by candlelight. A kinsman was present who had lived much in India. There was a flow of good talk, and also excellent coffee. The gentleman from India assured the Opium-Eater, over the stimulating beverage, that he had watched the latter's literary career with interest for thirty-five years. Such pleasant flattery, as De Quincey modestly called it, was quite as refreshing as the drink. He wrote Emily that social

174

D E

QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

relaxation had done him good. N o w if she would only come back home, he would break his five or six months' imprisonment in Lothian Street for the fine air of Mavis Bush. Regular walks in his familiar haunts would completely restore his tired body and brain. He wrote to Margaret also. His new friends across the way had got up a tea-party in his honor. As the central figure of the occasion he sat in state while the other guests were presented. The patriarchal Opium-Eater wore a beard which had excited such general approbation that he was shy of mowing it. He was arrayed in a costume too gorgeous to be described in miserable prose. Only poetry could do justice to it. One suspects that watchful Miss Stark had had a hand in arraying him. His brown coat took on in his fancy a scarlet hue and his grey trousers a salmon color. Buff was his waistcoat. He sported a new pocket handkerchief of finest cashmere weave. His friend from Bengal was there, and again excellent coffee stimulated talk on contemporary events in India. The news from India was indeed disquieting. Having a son and son-in-law in service there, De Quincey anxiously scanned press reports of disturbances in that notoriously unstable part of the Empire. He was intensely pro-British. A cynical reflection on the government of Hindustan, quoted recently in the Athenaeum, had angered him. This was to the effect that if the British were to retire either voluntarily or by compulsion, no memorial of their rule would remain except a large pile of empty champagne bottles. He had begun forthwith an indignant retort. Meanwhile a special edition of The Scotsman reported a new Indian mutiny at Delhi,

EVENSONG

175

in which many British were said to have been massacred. A London paper reported an outbreak in the region where Fred's regiment was stationed. Allowing for the usual exaggeration in such dispatches, he was nevertheless troubled about his children. His nerves got so upset by prolonged anxiety that his brain gave birth to images. Night after night he dreamed the same dream. It was always a vision of children standing outside his window. They repeated in concert the dreadfully significant w o r d Delhi. The vivid dream induced somnambulism, an utterly new experience to the Opium-Eater. Every night he would awake to find himself at the window, sixteen feet from his bed. Pursuing the dream-children, who piteously appealed to him for protection, he found himself confronting the fiendish Nana, leader of the Indian mutiny. Suppose this devil should seize his Florence and her six-months-old baby; Only when the newspapers announced that the uprisings were quelled did the nocturnal illusion fade and quieter slumbers succeed his nerve-racking dream. He afterwards learned that Colonel Bairdsmith had played a decisive part in suppressing a mutiny at his station. Aside from assurances of the safety of Iiis own, there were other good tidings from India. Fred was coming home to see him, was even then on his way. The old man might sleep in peace, unless indeed he were kept awake by j o y f u l anticipation. That midsummer the bronzed man, fresh from Indian campaigns, reached England. He had stopped in Lincolnshire for Emily. She had written ahead to prepare her father. In a f e w days she and her military brother appeared at 42 Lothian Street. De Quincey reported his impressions in a

176

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

letter to Margaret. Fred had changed little except in complexion and chest-expansion. His face seemed "encaustically painted." One seemed to read a century of sunlights funded in his face. He looked a perfect apricot. His chest was exceedingly like a chest of drawers. That comparison, by the way, was plagiarized from his witty old friend Hamilton Reynolds, who had once applied it to a voluminous lady friend; in applying it to Fred he had restored it to the vocabulary of compliment. Father and son had long talks about the latter's dreadful experiences in India; or rather, the son carried on a monologue addressed to an avid listener. Incidentally his tale of the proposed butchery of children confirmed the verisimilitude of those distressing dreams. Fred had only a short furlough and naturally wanted to see his sister and her family. He made a proposal which was quite in harmony with a project that his father had been turning over in his own mind. The proposal was that De Quincey should accompany Fred to Ireland on a short visit. For a man of seventy-two it was a long, long way to Tipperary. A journey of nearly three hundred miles was a serious undertaking for the frail veteran. Then, too, there was his unfinished editorial task, which he was loath to interrupt. But he might never see Margaret again. Here, moreover, was the happy chance of going along with Fred, who would easily steer him through the discomforts of travel. And he wanted to make the acquaintance in person of little Eva and John Craig. He would go. Not, however, until he had purchased some trivial offerings to smooth his approach to those household idols. He thought of a tiger book or an elephant book or a rhinoceros

EVENSONG

177

b o o k w i t h dreadful pictures as appropriate for Eva; and f o r Johnny a rake and spade, hammer, gimlet, and bag o f nails. H e had mentioned the matter to E m i l y , w h o discouraged spades, o f which, she opined, Johnny already had more than his grandfather. Equipped w i t h some such propitiatory gifts, their humble subject m i g h t hope to w i n over his grandchildren, m i g h t in time even make them appreciate the difference between a philosopher and a cabbage. A c cordingly at midsummer he and Fred left Edinburgh for a stay o f ten days or so w i t h Margaret and her family in Erin. N e w scenes and n e w faces, old scenes and familiar faces refreshed the septuagenarian. T h e grandchildren promptly admitted him, bearing gifts, into their confidence. His stories o f animals and w e e folk charmed them. Uncle Fred's thrilling tales o f India held both y o u n g and old. T h e y fleeted the time as in the golden w o r l d . T h e visitors m i g h t not linger. T o one the great gods o f the East w e r e calling and to the other the printers' devils o f the N o r t h . In the haste and confusion o f his valedictions D e Q u i n c e y omitted the parting kiss on sleeping Johnny's Hps. H e regretted this, and e x plained it later in a letter to Margaret. N e r v o u s for fear o f missing the train to Dublin, he had left hurriedly. O d d l y enough he was habitually ahead o f time w h e n it was a matter o f catching stage coaches, boats, and trains. H e did not tarry in D u b l i n to revisit scenes associated w i t h his experiences sixty years before w h e n , as guest o f y o u n g Lord W e s t port, he had made his first j o u r n e y into the great w o r l d . It was not his w a y to w e i g h t the passing hour w i t h memories. T o be sure, he had forgotten nothing, had indeed at fifty given in Tait's a lively sketch o f three b o y h o o d months in

178

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

Ireland. There was no time n o w for looking backward. His heart was in Lothian Street where his treasures were. He bent over his books and manuscripts, glad to be back in his kingdom. And there he remained. Every ounce of strength must be conserved for the last volumes of his works. His walks had long been abandoned, and he spent much time in bed, writing and reading. Old age and illness had weakened his frame, but his eyes were strong. A n expression of weariness did not obscure their clear depths. Youth was in them still. He never used glasses. Miss Stark was untiring in her attentions. For years she had bought articles of clothing for him, and periodically essayed to bring order into the chaos of his room. She looked after his diet, cashed his checks at the bank, kept visitors away. If he were ill, she would run over to Hogg's office to report, in great alarm, that he would eat nothing, declined to see her, and gave positive orders that no one be admitted. The faithful soul would invent excuses for his failure to see friends or to accept invitations. Mr. D e Quincey was asleep, or sick, or away. If by chance he learned that a friend had been turned back, an explanatory note was at once written and dispatched, perhaps by the hands of his protectress. What Mr. Hogg was told yesterday, for instance, was a romantic fiction. He had not gone out for a walk. Miss Stark might as well have asserted that he was botanizing in the Himalayas. As a matter of fact, he was at that very time entangled in the conclusion of his tenth volume. Sometimes he sent word himself that he could not see a visitor. Would Mr. Hogg or Mr. Findlay call tomorrow? On such occasions he was most apologetic. He had been

EVENSONG

179

hunting for a lost document in a jungle of books and manuscripts amid a cloud of dust. His room was a monument to his accumulative instinct. Into it, as into a huge pocket, he thrust an infinite variety of things, receipts, memoranda, borrowed books. Some day his daughters and Miss Stark would have to sort out the heterogeneous mass. A visitor, seeking a sentiment for an album to be sold for the benefit of a local charity, was permitted to plunge her hand into his bathtub. She fished up an astonishing number of old duns and invitations. A treasure hunter would have been rewarded by stray pound notes and scattered coins. Rubbish and riches were all about the ancient sage, as he sat at his table, still at work in the deepening twilight. Was he lonely ? Did his mind revert to Lakeland days or to the bygone associations of London and Edinburgh? Was he saddened at the thought that he and Carlyle, long lost to him in far-off London, alone survived of the older fellowship? Occasionally he talked of Coleridge and Wordsworth in a detached sort of way, without emotion. They had long passed out of his life, though Wordsworth had died only a few years before. Dorothy's passing, several years later, had moved him to an expression of regret. John Wilson, his faithful lifelong friend, was gone, the one man with whom his relations approached intimacy. Really, Thomas De Quincey never had intimates among the many men who had come within his life's circumference. For this Hamlet there was no Horatio, not even John Wilson. No, he was not lonely as he worked there in Lothian Street before the sounding of the vesper bells. To those who called to see him in the summer and autumn

l8o

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

it was evident that De Quincey was failing. But he had been subject to attacks of illness for years. He always rallied with surprising promptness for one constitutionally delicate. Some simple remedy, abstinence from food for a few days, a little brandy and water, usually brought him back. Of late it had been necessary, because of recurrent pains and weakness, to take more laudanum than for several years. All these prescriptions were futile now. There was no specific ailment; he was just worn out. The clock of his destiny was striking. Or, as he would have preferred to put it, Atropos of the gloomy trinity was ready with her shears. Emily had cut short her visit to Ireland on Hogg's advice and hastened to Lothian Street. Her father rallied, and for some weeks she and Miss Stark watched by the bedside of the failing man, reading or talking to him. He spoke of his father, recited traits of his character mentioned by household servants and clerks. He regretted that he had not known his father better. There were occasional fits of delirium, and these became more frequent as the days passed. His dying visions were of children. The little ones were invited to the Great Supper. He was asked to bring them. They must be dressed in white. As he and they passed along the streets of Edinburgh certain rough men, catching sight of so queer a procession, laughed and jeered. Whereupon the children were ashamed. Preeminent among them, in shining raiment, was his childhood playmate at Greenhay. Raising his arms, he called out, "Sister, sister, sister." And then Thomas De Quincey slept amid his books and papers in Lothian Street. On that eighth of December, 1859, only a few in Edinburgh took note of his passing. His departure was as quiet

EVENSONG

i8l

as his entrance thirty years before. Neither at his death nor later did the old city pay him memorial tribute. His dearest friends were Scotsmen, and for a generation he had written for Scotch magazines. But he had not sung of Scotland. It was honor enough that this Englishman might repose under the shadow of monuments to Scotland's sons. He was borne to the West churchyard and laid by Margaret Simpson, the dalesman's daughter. There below the ancient Castle he rested, deaf to the roar of Princes Street and the music of St. Cuthbert's bells.

Epilogue H E leading editorial in The Scotsman the day after De Quincey's death caused many of its readers to wonder who De Quincey was. T o them the editor's man of extraordinary knowledge and conversational gifts was the great unknown. T o others he was but a name. They could well believe the statement that he was shy and averse to society, for they had never seen him. Certainly he was no public character like John Wilson, whom everybody had known by sight at least. Some years before, Fields, the American, had been informed, in response to an inquiry about De Quincey's lodgings, that De Quincey was dead. Intelligent visitors in quest of celebrities knew a good deal more about him than the natives. Thirty years of residence in and near Edinburgh had not served to familiarize his figure except to the few who happened to meet him in suburban ways. Since he walked more by night than by day the chance of seeing him was rare. It was not surprising, therefore, that Edinburgh in general knew so little of the strange being whose death was chronicled with appreciative comment that December morning. The city's unawareness of De Quincey was fairly typical of the country at large. One could hardly expect a retiring writer on Plato and Kant to be known of the distracted multitude. But that men at the universities and other centers of light had never heard of the author of the Confessions seemed

EPILOGUE

183

incredible. Such ignorance in high places was particularly shocking to D e Quincey's y o u n g admirers, w h o assumed that the public was generally interested in one to w h o m the years had brought renown. James Payn, after returning f r o m a visit to the old Opium-Eater at Mavis Bush, had been delighted at receiving f r o m him an edition o f his works autographed with some complimentary sentiment on the youthful poet's verse. His proud mother showed it to a distinguished High Church dean at O x f o r d . " V e r y flattering to your son, madam, no doubt," said he, "but w h o is this Mr. De Quinccy;" It might be supposed that a man w h o regularly wrote for standard magazines was k n o w n b y name at least to intelligent men and w o m e n . M a n y o f his contributions, however, were anonymous; others were on themes beyond the range o f popular understanding. It was only when he wrote personal sketches about himself and others that the generality o f readers found him interesting. O n l y then was he really journalistic. Few writers have been as autobiographical as D e Quincey, but even these revelations o f himself have left in men's minds no clear image o f him. He has been seen through a luminous, dream-colored haze which rises like an exquisite exhalation f r o m his poetic pages. It was his w a y to invest the scenes o f his childhood with weird, exotic beauty, such as hills and valleys take on b y moonlight. Individual incidents and situations o f his early life are real enough, often vivid or even dramatic, but f r o m the ensemble he himself emerges somewhat wraithlike. A n d the reader suspects that an opium-eater's descriptions o f remote, halfforgotten faces and events are partly fanciful. W h e n , h o w -

184

D E

QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

ever, his critical faculty exercised itself with Lakeland and London associates, his people bear throughout the stamp of truth. Would that Lamb or Coleridge or Wordsworth had done for De Quincey what he did for them! The handful of journalists who knew him in London, Glasgow, and Edinburgh left a few graphic pictures of the man. From these sketches and his own letters may be gathered those personal characteristics which are vaguely implicit in his literary productions. De Quincey was essentially a solitary man. He walked alone and worked alone. The qualities of leadership that marked his dominating brother William in their boyhood associations Thomas utterly lacked. Such qualities demand attrition with the crowd, and he hated crowds. At school he showed intellectual preeminence, but he had no familiars, and was without ambition to organize and direct the group. He had a temperamental urge to break away from conventional bonds, to escape, to be to himself. His temperament was that of the vagabond, which first notably revealed itself in his wanderings in Wales. At Oxford, partly from poverty to be sure, he made no friends, was indeed so much the recluse that few outside his own college were aware of his existence. In Westmorland, it has been noted, he was the nocturnal pedestrian along the lake and mountain ways while other men slept. His earlier years in Edinburgh were marked by an irregular series of flights from creditors, real and imaginary, and at the last he had two abiding-places from either of which he might escape to the other when the mood or professional necessity provoked the transfer. These habitual shifts were in the main the evasions of a shy scholar,

EPILOGUE

185

who wanted solitude for thought and expression, rather than the manifestations of a positive aversion to society. For all his solitariness, De Quincey was not unsocial. A lodge in some vast wilderness would not have held him long, for his interests were more human than the naturalist's. Books he preferred to running brooks, and he chose to read and write in the stream of the world. He might have agreed with Goethe that genius is developed in solitude, but he would have interpreted solitude as a fourteen-mile walk without companionship, or as a room full of books, with a chair and a table, himself in sole possession. The English Opium-Eater was neither a Timon nor a melancholy Jacques; he liked some men, most women, and all children. He was born in a city and died in one. His manners were urbane, and he observed the amenities of life. But toward society he stretched out only his left hand. He could hardly be called convivial. Wilson put him in the Nodes Ambrosianae, where he is represented as talking as becomes a philosopher, in contrast with the ebullient Scottish professor and his cronies. Those imaginary conversations were doubtless typical of his literary talk. De Quincey was never a social lion; his roaring was as gentle as a sucking dove's. In his senescent years he was an occasional host at Mavis Bush and an uncertain guest for dinners in town. At these formal functions he was the old prince charming though dressed like a tramp. So he impressed Emerson, who was a dinner guest with him at Mrs. Crowe's. The American had imagined he would behold a figure like the organ of York Minster, soaring and sonorous, but he was greeted by a diminutive old gentleman with features of great refinement and a soft, de-

ι86

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

liberate speech. The conversation was, as usual, on topics social as well as literary. His easy manners betokened familiarity with society rather than perfect enjoyment of it. He had about him an air of unworldliness that suggested the recluse. From hidden depths in remote regions he seemed to have emerged into company. The lights would cause him to blink and to peer into actual faces with a sort of mild surprise, faces so different from those he had left a little while ago. Adjustment from reverie to reality required a few minutes. The squint in the look of his last photograph must have come that way. Always there was something of the child about him. His ingenuousness and helplessness would time and again expose him to the designing. At that same Emersonian dinner, to which he had walked one rainy night from Lasswade, he told of his trip home a few weeks before in similar weather. Why had he not ridden in the coach, his hostess inquired. Because he had no money. He had met two street girls, one of whom relieved him of eight shillings in his waistcoat pocket, while the other took his umbrella. This experience, said Emerson, was related with the utmost simplicity, as if he had been a child of seven. Although De Quincey had read whole libraries of ancient and modern lore and had lived in great cities, he was not free from provincialism. His knowledge of other countries was derived from books and journals. He had not traveled abroad. In youth and middle age he was too poor and in later hfe he had no desire for foreign excursions. Moreover, when he was young, western Europe was torn by war. The beginnings of the Revolution in France had stirred the souls of young romanticists like Coleridge and Words-

EPILOGUE

187

worth, who had crossed the Channel, watched the reign of terror for a time, and returned disillusioned to quieter scenes. De Quincey was too much of a Tory to rejoice at the overthrow of monarchy, and the imperial madness of Napoleon, aside from its increasing menace to England, was too extreme a form of liberalism for his taste. He had never liked the French, and thenceforth regarded them and their literature with a growing prejudice. The reason was at bottom moral, not political. French literature, particularly comedy, shocked De Quincey by its flippancy and salaciousness. The English Restoration comedy, which resembles the French in these respects, he enjoyed for its brilliant dialogue. He did not hold with Pope that English literature was much indebted to the French. Moreover, as an Englishman he was more indulgent to the Gallic spirit on his side of the Channel. Certain qualities in German literature also irked him. Though he liked and imitated German romance of the Gothic type, he failed to do justice to the great Goethe. Goethe's amoral temperament and, specifically, his paganism offended De Quincey, who was strongly Christian in his convictions. Comparing Goethe with Coleridge as to literary longevity, he made the astounding prediction that the German Olympian would sink to a lowly estate among forgotten gods. A certain parochial squeamishness was in De Quincey's blood. All his learning and worldly experience could not utterly change it. Coarseness, even healthy coarseness, offended his refined spirit. The robust indecencies o f the Elizabethans made Charles Lamb smile; were they not holding the mirror up to nature? De Quincey liked the Eliza-

ι88

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

bethans for the splendor of their fancy and for their virile philosophy, not for their arrant realism. Fielding and Smollett amused the moralizing Wordsworth. They disgusted De Quincey. Not that he cared for pious novels and plays, with their vapid preachments, or for the feminine domesticities of Cowper. Any physical excess hurt his fastidious soul. The French he condemned for gesticulations and facial contortions. They were gossipy and garrulous. The Germans and the French were the most gormandizing nations in Europe. The English had the best manners, with some notable exceptions. He was critical of Boswell's hero. He liked the old bear's wit, but his brutality of manner and speech grated. It was an indecent spectacle, declared the Opium-Eater, to see Dr. Johnson at dinner. To a dyspeptic, gluttony was as abhorrent as Rabelaisian mirth. De Quincey was less effective as a critic of manners and morals than as an interpreter of men. Systems of philosophy he expounded with clarity and a wealth of illustration, but he was more interesting when he kept his eye on the philosopher himself. A painter of personality, he was essentially a modern biographer. From the ancient world he sketched portraits of Plato, Cicero, the Caesars; from the mediaeval and modern he presented Charlemagne, Kant, Bentley, Richter. They were studies in interpretation, illuminating vistas cut through the tangled uplands of history. These philosophers, imperialists, scholars, and dreamers were not used to point a lesson or to exploit the heroic. De Quincey disliked moralizing and fulsome eulogy. In these men he simply saw traits with which he himself had intellectual or temperamental affinity, and he found a spiritual satisfaction

EPILOGUE

189

in analyzing them. His first philosophic love was Kant, and to him he kept returning for new evaluations. Throughout life De Quincey had in mind a series of volumes on the human intellect, in which he would synthesize all philosophies. Actually, however, he got no further than a few individuals in his imperial scheme. Whatever he dreamt of as a vast abstraction always ended with the individual, the vital entity in his universe of thought. He drew with far more sureness when he sketched his men from life. Interpreting the Caesars, Charlemagne, and Kant was at best a hazy business. Bentley he saw more clearly; he was an Englishman, and De Quincey was very English. The nearer the English Opium-Eater got to London and the Lakes the more vivid his portraiture became. Lamb and Coleridge in London, Wordsworth and Southey in Westmorland and Cumberland, Wilson and Hamilton in Edinburgh, he had seen with his own eyes. N o traditional mist enveloped them. Contemporaneous stuff is the true grist for the journalist's mill. Direct impressionism may be nearer the truth than historic. After all, does not the remote interpreter of men famous and dead have to rely on contemporary estimates of them? Conversations about one's coevals is spicier, more dramatic, richer in entertainment, than imaginary dialogues of the Landor type. The nearest to De Quincey's oral discourses are his accounts of men and women he knew; and we are assured, with most impressive iteration, by those acquainted with him, that his tongue was like his pen. His pen pictures of contemporaries, it may safely be concluded, have preserved for posterity both the literary and social De Quincey. In portraying other souls he revealed his

190

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

own. More than most psychographers he mirrored himself, was inevitably autobiographic. Like all men of lyrical temper, whether formal poets or only such in spirit, De Quincey had a good deal of the feminine in his nature. A fine gentility tempered the robustness of his mind. It shone in his features, graced his behavior, and flowered in his speech. So marked was this grace of personality that visitors quickly forgot his plain, careless dress and his pygmy stature. At critical times in his life he had found in women a readier understanding of his perplexities than in men. And if he found ungentleness in women, he held it to be a monstrous perversion in nature. Lady Carbery, Ann, Mrs. Best, Dorothy Wordsworth, Margaret Simpson, Mrs. Crowe, Miss Stark, his daughters, these were his good angels. Except for a landlady or two he was singularly exempt from bad angels. One Mrs. MacBold of Edinburgh, large-limbed and redheaded, so terrorized him for several years that he solemnly spoke of her as his evil genius. From this incarnation of all the furies Mrs. Crowe had helped to rescue him. If in his dreams he saw harpies, he also beheld Levana, her mystic sisters, and the blessed maid of Domremy. His intuitive sensibilities, so exquisitely feminine, were counterbalanced by the more virile capacity for sustained logical reasoning and laborious devotion to literary creation. It was not the logical De Quincey, however, that won hearts. It was the whimsical talker, the poetic interpreter of life, the magical word artist. He has been at great pains to explain the difference between the literature of knowledge and the literature of power. "The function of the first," he said, "is to teach; the function of the second is to move; the

EPILOGUE

191

first is a rudder; the second an oar or sail. The first speaks to the mere discursive understanding; the second speaks ultimately, it may happen, to the higher understanding, or reason, but always through affections of pleasure and sympathy." His own fame rests largely on the latter. The white light of reason shines abundantly, it is true, through the fourteen volumes of his work, but it is mainly the moral and emotional nobility of his prose that immortalizes it. To his own generation, who read him in magazines, his knowledge was amazing, and his ability to transmit salient aspects of it not less so. Graces of style made it easy for intelligent readers to follow the inspired vagrant along the highways and byways of human learning. But disquisitions on Malthus, Ricardo, the Essenes, left them cold. Were these abstruse and technical productions really the Opium-Eater's? The manner was his. A very different vein, though, from the Confessions, the autobiographic sketches, the personal impressions of philosophers and poets. The judgment of his contemporaries has been justified. What De Quincey brought back from his excursions among the economists and casuists has left posterity unmoved, serenely ignorant of its very existence. The name De Quincey connotes the literature of power rather than the literature of knowledge. W h e n he looked into his heart and wrote, he was sure of remembrance. To satisfy his insatiate curiosity and the calls for copy, De Quincey ransacked every age and country. Through golden realms and leaden provinces he wandered pillaging. Like Moliere, he took his own wherever he found it. His creations are veined with alien ore. So allusive is he that

192

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

hardly a page is free from borrowings or echoes. But he was no plagiarist. Far from it. What he got in his years of literary vagabondage he transmuted into something very different and often superior. Since general familiarity with sources was improbable, he conceived it desirable to hold up his readers by serious or playful commentaries. After one of these didactic excursions he once remarked that it killed him to write explanatory notes. If so, he suffered many deaths. He simply could not resist an opportunity to stop and teach his readers. His letters to his daughters abound in little pedantic excursions. Let him use a technical or unusual word, a learned phrase, and he is off on a long paragraph about language or Plato. And yet his mother thought his children's education was neglected! As he instructed his children, so he taught his readers, and the passion to impart did not wane. The years brought to him no intellectual satiety. Age found him valiant in the quest for knowledge and diligent in the spread of it. He had the provoking habit in his compositions of wandering far afield. In the middle of an essay he liked to fetch a wide circuit. Digression grew upon him until it became transgression. In conversation he was wont, when with friends, to express himself in rigmarole fashion. His leisurely soliloquy developed, with gentle irony, some topic suggested by one of the company. It might be a criminal case, a queer will, a political speech. Interruption he courteously allowed. That, however, might only send him off on another trail. Colloquial divagation may be pleasing enough; if not, a look, a gesture, a question can put an end to it. Unfortunately, in his written discourse De Quincey had nobody to

EPILOGUE

193

interrupt his meanderings. He wrote from a full mind and a ready memory. Once started on a philosophic or historical theme, legions of facts and illustrations came to him. An event here, an anecdote there, would beget disquisition. He was moved to record all the thoughts that arose in him on every phase of his theme. To do so involved excursions into related fields, mental journeys as erratic as walks in Wales and Westmorland. They covered centuries and continents. De Quincey's discursiveness was the inner satisfaction of his wanderlust. The romantic instinct in De Quincey made him a trifle picaresque in literary manner and matter. His interest in the Spanish Catalina and her adventurous vagabondage resulted in his lively reconstruction of her life. There was also something Gothic in him. He liked darkly romantic tales from the German, and composed several himself. Of murder stories, real and feigned, he was notoriously fond. He had, indeed, more of the novelist's genius than the historian's. One can never be certain that his autobiographic narratives, for instance, are entirely truthful. "With my grandfather, you know, a story never lost anything in the telling," said Miss Bairdsmith in significant understatement. When his errant fancy was playing over half-forgotten experiences, who could say whether the entrancing record were mostly fact or fiction? To it he might have applied the Goethean nomenclature of Dichtung und Wahrheit aus meinem Leben. A whole volume of purely imaginative narratives, original and translated, attests his kinship with his American contemporaries, Poe and Hawthorne. His liking for "the dark sublime" in literature is asserted in the childhood reminiscences. Tieck's

194

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

tragic tales of magic and mystery evoked enthusiastic praise and the flattery of imitation. Vicariously he satisfied, in all this reading and romancing, the Bohemian cravings of a restless spirit. Undue attention has been paid De Quincey as a damaged soul. Too much has been made of his opium-eating in efforts to account for his artistic triumphs and his personal delinquencies. Analysts of pathological bent have found in opium the fountain of his inspiration and the source of his failures. Out of the corrupted current of his life flowers sprang and noxious weeds, lilies and the deadly nightshade. To consider so is to consider too curiously. Opium has no originating power; it only deadens or quickens. It merely modifies what is inalienable in genius. In the case of Coleridge, for instance, De Quincey believed the drug brought unhappiness and early killed the poet in him. Poetry, argued De Quincey, is impossible in depression. The effect of opium on Coleridge was so terrible that he implored the younger man not to use it. With De Quincey, however, the drug, when taken in moderation, had an exhilarating effect. It stimulated his conversational powers and quickened his creative faculties. Several excesses were followed, after an interval of suffering, by short masterpieces of great beauty, which are tissues of dreamy memories. But his longer, more sustained pieces of writing, such as his autobiographic sketches, literary portraits, and critical essays, did not follow prolonged indulgence. De Quincey's weakness and strength were inherent. Opium doubtless modified but did not essentially change his nature. It made more splendid and terrible the dreams of one who was congenitally a dreamer; it released from his highly sensitized brain images long dor-

EPILOGUE

195

mant there. De Quincey was a perfectly sane person, capable of stimulation into the mild ecstasy of a lyric poet. He was without morbidness. Neither his letters nor his formal writings, neither his conversations nor the recollections of his friends, reveal anything abnormal in him except his genius. And certainly in his opium-eating is to be found no satisfying explanation of that. At first opium was De Quincey's anodyne and afterwards his tonic. He soon discovered that an agreeable exhilaration followed the release from pain. His brain was clarified and energized. At the opera and in the market place he responded with a keener interest. He read with livelier zest. The happy influence of his anodyne carried over into sleep. If there were any disagreeable after-effects, these were outweighed by the efficacious charm of the drug. What he at first sought was freedom from suffering. He was later on convinced that opium promoted digestion if taken along with his food. De Quincey took laudanum as others take wine, for the stomach's sake, to tone up that weak organ of his, from which he endured a microcosm of woes. Indeed, he felt certain that the drug was prolonging his life. After the success of his Confessions of an English OpiumEater, De Quincey often referred to his use of the drug. Professionally the habit became something of an asset, and he made copy of it, as he made copy of other experiences. The poppy was a friend: why not celebrate what its juice had done for him? He never recommended it to others or seemed to think that his Confessions would incite youth to follow his example. As a matter of fact, he was quite surprised at Coleridge's outburst on the corrupting influence of his little opium book. When he wrote of his bad habit, which was

196

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

generally condemned though not uncommonly practised in secret, he set forth the physical benefits which the consumption of the drug brought to him. He had the satisfied consumer's point of view. The diagnosis of his case he left to the doctors and the criminality of it to the moralists. Confirmed opium-eaters were not expected to live long or to accomplish much. The insidious drug, besides robbing its victims of ambition, was sure to shorten their days. For a little while they might dwell in a fool's paradise and dream of impossible achievements. Incapable of sustained labor, they would complete nothing. To literature their contribution would be a few fragments that collectively might furnish a melancholy commentary on inspired weakness. Such, no doubt, were the sentiments of De Quincey's generation. When De Quincey first visited Edinburgh at twenty-nine, Lockhart watched him munching opium pills between glasses at dinner and gave him up as doomed. Thirty years later, though De Quincey had written a small library of magazine articles, Lockhart failed to recognize his success. In a letter to Ellwin he superciliously damned him as having been ruined in soul, body, and estate by opium. Carlyle, a generous colleague, was touched with pity for De Quincey at their first meeting. He also doomed him, but more charitably. He wished, he said, to do a final good turn for the starving dwarf who carried a laudanum bottle in his pocket. He would like to procure for him a substantial beefsteak before he died. A little earlier De Quincey himself, sick and discouraged in his London lodgings, had written to Hessey that he should grieve to die because he had something really important to tell the world.

EPILOGUE

197

He had something more important to tell the world than how a drug affected him. His resolution was firm on that. He had confessed, but declined to be hanged. Confession with De Quincey was the prelude, not the swan song of his life. The will to live and work was strong in him for forty years. Consider the daily exercise for rendering himself more fit, the intensity of concentration and the prolonged toil with his pen, the laborious revision of his pages. Not infrequently he rewrote a paragraph twenty times before it satisfied his fastidious taste. Extant manuscripts abound in marginal and interlinear revisions. He drove printers to desperation by his proof-sheet lectures on punctuation and etymology. All this by a man battling with intermittent pains in the stomach. He took no vacations, indulged in no relaxation except an occasional evening at the opera or a dinner with friends. De Quincey was that exceptional Englishman who had no outdoor sport, a Scottish resident who never played golf. His work was his sport. And he played his indoor game of life with zest, albeit with many groanings. In that complex game De Quincey's greatest personal discovery was the profound truth that struggle and sorrow enrich the capacities of the spirit. His long war with poverty, his fight against the intemperate use of opium, his personal griefs allied him at last with the philosophers whose teachings he had essayed to interpret. Like them he had advanced by travail of soul, had attained serener heights through tribulation. As an ancient sage viewing life's battles, De Quincey might safely rationalize his experience. If he had not realized his ambition to correlate the vast output of speculative knowledge, he had at least found his own philosophy of

198

DE QUINCEY: A PORTRAIT

life. Deeply written in the heart of it was the spiritual potentiality of conflict. This profound conviction is vividly illustrated in his own writings. He repeatedly asserts that conflict of opinion, of passion, of human interests, is necessary for a rich fruition of thought and action. Suffer and struggle if you would attain a more searching vision. This vision De Quincey had himself attained. And his brilliant contribution to our literature abundantly demonstrates the supremacy of mind over matter. His whole life, indeed, was concerned with mind. "From my birth," said he, "I was made an intellectual creature." At fifteen he was to Lady Carbery her admirable Crichton. The mystic Lady Levana of his cloistered dreams early claimed him for her own, dedicated him to pensiveness, stamped upon his brow the scholar's insignia. The few who looked upon the dead De Quincey marvelled at the bigness of his head and the insignificance of his body. The dominance of mind was symbolized by this physical disproportion. He was a notable illustration of his friend Hamilton's remark that there is nothing great in man but mind. The mind of the scholar and the way of the artist were his by birth and lifelong usage. While other men found satisfaction in things, he was supremely happy in the realm of ideas. Philosophers and poets were the companions of his spirit, and in the luminous exposition of their thought he found perpetual delight. Imagery drawn from them colors his writings even when these are most autobiographical. This distilled wisdom of the past and bits of his own varied experience and reflection form the golden tissue of De Quincey's work, the product of an essentially poetic mind.

Bibliography

BIBLIOGRAPHY Armitt, Μ . L., Rydal.

1916

A x o n , W . E., The Canon of De Quincey's Writings. 1 9 1 2 Bertram, James G., Some Memories of Books, Authors, and Events. Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine,

1893

1817-49

Bonner, Willard H., De Quincey at Work. 1936 B r o w n , Joseph, Life of Dr. W. B. Robertson. 1877 Burton, J o h n Hill, The Book-hunter.

1882

Carlyle, Thomas, Reminiscences. 1881 , Letters, 1826-36.

C . E . Norton, ed., 1889

D e Quincey, Thomas, De Quincey's

Writings. American ed., 22 vols.,

1853 , Selections Crave and Gay.

16 vols., i860

, The Collected Writings of Thomas De Quincey. David Masson, ed., 14 vols., 1890 Eaton, Horace Α., ed., A Diary of Thomas De Quincey. , Thomas De Quincey: A Biography. Emerson, Ralph Waldo, Journals.

1927

1936

1 0 vols., 1 9 1 2

Fields, Annie Adams, A Shelf of Old Books. 1894 Fields, James T . , Biographical Notes and Personal Sketches. 1881 Froude, J . Α., Life of Thomas Carlyle.

2 vols., 1884

Garnett, Richard, ed., Confessions of an English Opium-Eater.

1885

Gilfillan, George, A Gallery of Literary Portraits. 1845 Gillies, R . P., Memoirs of a Literary Veteran. 1 8 5 1 Gordon, M a r y , Christopher North: A Memoir of John Wilson. 1862 Green, J . Α., Thomas De Quincey: A Bibliography.

1908

Griggs, E . L., ed., Unpublished Letters of S. T. Coleridge. 2 vols., 1933 Hill, R . and F., Memoir of Matthew Davenport Hill.

1878

H o g g , James, ed., De Quincey and His Friends. 1895 , "Nights and Days with D e Quincey," Harper's Magazine, February, 1890

202

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hogg's Weekly Instructor and Titan, 1850-58 Japp, Alexander Η. (H. A. Page, pseud.), Thomas De Quincey: His Life and Writings. 2 vols., 1877, 1890 , ed., De Quincey Memorials. 2 vols., 1891 , "Early Intercourse of the Wordsworths and De Quincey," Century Magazine, April, 1891 Kilpatrick, J . Α., Literary Landmarks of Glasgow. 1898 Knight, Charles, Passages of a Working Life. 1865 Knight, William, ed., Letters of the Wordsworth Family. 3 vols., 1907 Knight's Quarterly Magazine, 1824-25 Lang, Andrew, Life and Letters ofJohn Gibson Lockhart. 2 vols., 1897 L'Estrange, A . G., The Life of Mary Russell Mitford. 3 vols., 1870 London Magazine, 1821-24 Mackay, Charles, Forty Years' Recollections. 2 vols., 1877 Martineau, Harriet, Biographical Sketches. 1869 Masson, David, De Quincey. English Men of Letters Series, 1899 Mortimer, John, Some Notes on Thomas De Quincey. 1900 North, Christopher (John Wilson), Noctes Amhrosianae. 1855 North British Review, 1848 Oliphant, Mrs. M. O. W . , Annals of a Publishing House: William Blackwood and Sons. 3 vols., 1897-98 Page, Η. Α., see A. H. Japp Payn, James, Some Literary Recollections. 1884 Pollitt, Charles, De Quincey's Editorship of the Westmorland Gazette. 1890 Priestley, Eliza Chambers, Lady, The Story of a Lifetime. 1908 Rannie, George, Wordsworth and His Circle. 1907 Rickett, Arthur, The Vagabond in Literature. 1906 Robinson, Henry Crabb, Diary, Reminiscences, and Correspondence. 1870 Sackville-West, Edward, A Flame in Sunlight. 1936 Salt, H. S., De Quincey. Great Writers Series, 1904 , " D e Quincey and Wordsworth," Manchester Guardian, August 20, 1904 Scotsman (Edinburgh), editorial, December 9, 1859 Sellar, Ε. M., Recollections and Impressions. 1907 Stuart, Daniel, Letters from the Lake Poets . . . 1800-1838. 1889

BIBLIOGRAPHY

203

Swindells, Τ., "De Quincey and Wordsworth," Manchester Guardian, September 4, 1899 Tail's Edinburgh Magazine, 1833-51 Taylor, Sir Henry, Correspondence. Edward Dowden, ed., 1888 Woodhouse, Richard, "Notes of Conversations with Thomas De Quincey," in Hogg's De Quincey and His Friends and in Garnett's edition of the Confessions

Index

INDEX Allan Bank, 51-57, passim Ann of Oxford Street, 30-31, 139, 190 Bairdsmith, Colonel, 171, 175 Bath Grammar School, 13, 14 Best, Mrs., 32, 34, 190 Blackwood, William, 77,78, 82,97, 99, 100, 107, 132-135, 137, 143 Blackwood's Magazine, 76, 77, 8082,94,97,106, n o , 1 2 9 , 1 3 7 , 1 5 1 , 153. 165 Burton, John Hill, 171 Carbery, Lady, 17, 18, 20, 21, 23, 139, 190, 198 Carlyle, Jane Welsh, 96, 97, 103 Carlyle, Thomas, 84, 89, 96, 97, 125, 179, 196 Cintra, Convention of, 52-54 Clarkson, Mrs., 68, 71 Clowes, Rev. John, 21 Coleridge, Hartley, 46, 47, 125 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 9,44-47, 50, 51, 53, 56, 58, 59, 67, 80, 81, 84, 102, 1 1 3 - 1 1 9 , 123, 125, 137, 160, 179, 184, 186, 187, 189, 194, 195 Coleridge, Mrs. S. T., 46, 47, 118 Coleridge, Sara, 1 1 5 , 125 Confessions of an English OpiumEater, 12, 82-85,89,105,116,137, 138, 139, 151. 153, 163, 164, 170, 182, 191, 195 Cottle, Joseph, 46, 114 Craig, Eva, 167, 168, 173, 176, 177 Craig, John, 173, 176, 177

Craig, Robert, 166 Crowe, Mrs., 185, 190 De Quincey, Emily, 103, 143, 158, 166-168, 170-172, 173, 175, 177, 179, 180 De Quincey, Florence (Mrs. Bairdsmith), 106, 143, 158, 166-169, 170-172, 175 De Quincey, Francis, 136, 142, 166 De Quincey, Henry (brother), 22,91 De Quincey, Horace, 136 De Quincey, Julius, 100, 104 De Quincey, Margaret (Mrs. Robert Craig), 73, 102, 106, 133, 136, 158, 159, 166, 167, 170, 1 7 1 , 174, 176, 177 De Quincey, Margaret (Mrs. Thomas), 69, 70, 71, 73, 92, 93, 95, 98, 101, 105, 108, 150, 181, 190 De Quincey, Paul Frederick, 136, 166, 175-177 De Quincey, Richard ("Pink"), 22, 43, 44, 64, 172 De Quincey, Thomas: parents, 3 5; birth and early environment, 5; childhood impressions, 6-10; early education and characteristics, 1 1 - i 5; trip to Ireland with Lord Westport, 1 5 - 1 7 ; visit to Laxton Hall, 17-19; Manchester Grammar school, 19-23; reads Lyrical Ballads, 20; wanderings in Wales, 24-29; privations in London, 29-32; reunion at St. John's Priory, 33; sojourn at

208

INDEX

Everton, 34-37; letter to W o r d s w o r t h and reply, 36-37; enters Oxford, 38-39; early years at O x f o r d (Worcester College), 39-41; beginnings of opiumeating, 41-43; another letter f r o m Wordsworth, 44-45; meets Coleridge at Bridgewater, 4546; gift to Coleridge of 300 pounds, 46; visits W o r d s w o r t h at Grasmere, 46-47; leaves Oxford, 49; helps W o r d s w o r t h on Cintra pamphlet, 51-53; decides to make Grasmere his home, 52; friendship with Dorothy Wordsworth, 54; guest of the Wordsworths, 55-57; meets John Wilson, 57; occupies Dove Cottage, 58; entertains mother and sister, 59-60; grief at death of little Kate Wordsworth, 61-62; becomes confirmed opium-eater, 63; meets Richard in London, 64; friendship with Wilson, 65-66; visits Wilson in Edinburgh, 66-67; growing interest in Margaret Simpson, 68-69; birth of a son, 70; marriage to Margaret Simpson, 71; increasing indulgence in opium, 73; editor of Westmorland Gazette, 73-75; first connection with Blackwood's Magazine, 77-78; goes to London and becomes contributor to London Magazine, 80-81; "Confessions of an English Opium-Eater," 82-83; writes for Knight's Quarterly Magazine, 87; friendship with the Hills and Charles Knight, 89-90; renewal of connection with Blackwood's, 92; estrangement f r o m Wordsworth,

92-93; guest of Wilson in Edinburgh, 95-96; moves family to Edinburgh, 99; poverty and debt, 100-101, 106-108; death of Julius and William, 104; death of Margaret D e Quincey, his wife, 105; moves family to Mavis Bush, Lasswade, 108-109; becomes contributor to Tait's Magazine, 110; articles on Coleridge and W o r d s w o r t h , 113-128; long sojourn in Glasgow, 129132; reunion at Mavis Bush, 136; final opium excess, 137-138; Suspiria de Profundis, 139-141; life at Mavis Bush with his daughters, 142-143, 150; second sojourn in Glasgow, 144-147; final contributions to Blackwood's, 151—153; begins writing for Hogg's Weekly Instructor, 153154; series of autobiographic sketches, 155-157; lodgings at 42 Lothian St., Edinburgh, 158; visit of his American publisher, James T . Fields, 161; begins preparation of authentic edition of his works, 162-165; correspondence with daughters, 166-170, 174; m a r riage of Margaret to Robert Craig, 166; marriage of Florence to Colonel Bairdsmith, 171; return of Paul Frederick f r o m India on furlough, 175-176; visit to Margaret and her children in Ireland, 176-177; returns to w o r k in Lothian Street, 178; death, 180; estimate, 182-198 D e Quincey, William, 73, 103-105 Dove Cottage, 47, 52, 55, 56, 58, 60, 62, 63, 65, 68, 72, 85, 91, 93, 99, 101, 123, 150

INDEX Emerson, R . W . , 185, 186 English Mail Coach, 151 Farm, The, 5 Fenwick, Miss, 126 Fields, James T . , 161, 163, 182 Findlay, John R., 171, 178 Fox Ghyll, 85, 86, 88, 90, 91, 101 Gillies, R. P., 66, 68 Grcenhay, 3 - 6 , 8-12, 20, 139, 180 Hall, R e v . Samuel, 11, 12, 32, 37 Hamilton, Sir William, 66, 145, 189, 198 Hazlitt, William, 81, 88, 121 Hill, Matthew Davenport, 89 H o g g , James (senior), 77 H o g g , James (junior), 154-158,

209

London Magazine, 81, 82, 84-88, 90, 116 Lushington, Professor, 129, 141, 144, 164 Lyrical Ballads, 20, 36, 44 Mclndoe, Thomas, 109, 110 Mackay, Charles, 130, 131 Manchester Grammar School, 19, 21, 26, 37, 139 Martineau, Harriet, 126, 127, 159 Mavis Bush, 109, 132, 136, 139, 142-144, 149, 150, 157, 158, 160, 161, 166, 168, 172-174, 183, 185 Miller, Miss, 107, 109, 132 Mitford, M a r y Russell, 127, 136, 141, 159

162-164, I 7 i - i 7 3 > 178, 180 Hogg's Weekly Instructor, 153-156, 171

M o r e , Hannah, 41, 59, 60, 64, 112, 113, 121 Morgan, Dr., 13, 14 " M u r d e r Considered as one o f the Fine Arts," 86, 94

Jackson, D r . Cyril, 39 Joan o f A r c , 147, 148

N a b Cottage, 66, 68, 92, 98, 101, 105

Kendal Chronicle, 73, 75 Knight, Charles, 90, 98, 136 Knight's Quarterly Magazine, 87, 90

Nichol, Professor, 129-131, 144, 146 North British Magazine, 115

143,

" O n the K n o c k i n g at the Gate in Lamb, Charles, 50, 64, 71, 80, 81, 84, 161, 169, 184, 187, 189 Lamb, M a r y , 50, 80 Lasswade, 108, 129, 130, 132, 133, 135. 142, 144, 153, 157. 158, 160, 162, 164, 169, 171, 172, 186 Lawson, Charles, 19, 25 Laxton Hall, 1 7 - 2 1 , 139 "Levana and O u r Ladies o f Sorr o w , " 139-142, 198 Lloyd, Charles, 58, 59 Lockhart, J. G., 66, 77, 92, 196

Macbeth," 86, 87 O x f o r d , 19, 26, 28, 37-45, 47-50, 56, 60, 64, 99, 139, 140, 151, 184 Payne, James, 159, 183 Penson, Colonel, 24, 27, 37, 38, 43, 67, 76, 102 Quarterly Review, 76, 81, 92 Quincey, Elizabeth, 6, 62, 180 Q u i n c e y , Elizabeth Penson (Mrs. Thomas), 3, 4, 10, 14, 15, 17, 20,

210

INDEX

21, 24, 30, 32, 34, 37, 38, 43, 44, 59, 6ο, 69, 76, 9 1 , 1 0 1 - 1 0 3 , 148 Quincey, Jane, 6, 55, 6 1 , 102, 148, 149

Taylor and Hessey, 8 1 - 8 3 ; 86-88, 196 Tosh, Mrs., 145, 146

Quincey, M a r y , 8, 17, 1 8 , 25, 6 1 Quincey, Thomas, 3 - 5 Quincey, William, 6 - 8 , 12, 184

Westhay (Wrington), 55, 60, 6 1 , 65, 69, 9 1 , 148 Westmorland Gazette, 7 3 - 7 6 Westport, Lord, 1 5 - 1 7 , 1 7 7 Wilson, John ("Christopher N o r t h " ) , 56, 57, 59, 63, 65-68, 77-80, 92, 94-97, 1 2 2 , 1 3 5 , 143, 145, 158, 1 6 1 , 162, 179, 182, 185, 189 Winkfield School, 14, 1 5 , 149 Worcester College, 39, 48 Wordsworth, Dorothy, 47, 52, 54, 56, 58, 60, 6 1 , 68, 7 1 , 85, 93, 95, 105, 1 2 0 - 1 2 2 , 150, 179, 190 Wordsworth, John, 54 Wordsworth, Kate, 54, 6 1 , 62 Wordsworth, William, 9, 1 4 , 2 1 , 25, 36, 44, 46, 47, 51-53, 55-6O, 65, 68, 7 1 , 74, 80, 8 1 , 85, 92, 93, 99, 1 1 4 , 1 1 9 - 1 2 7 , 179, 184, 186, 188, 189

R a e - B r o w n , Colin, 1 4 4 - 1 4 6 Ritchie, J o h n , 1 7 1 Robinson, Henry Crabb, 125 St. John's Priory, 24, 25, 3 2 - 3 4 , 37, 43,44

Scotsman, 150, 1 7 1 , 174, 182 Scott, Sir Walter, 77, 123 Simpson, John, 66, 68, 7 1 , 98, 1 0 1 , 135, 136

Simpson, Margaret, see D e Quincey, Margaret (Mrs. Thomas) Southey, Robert, 35, 46, 47, 58, 80, 1 1 4 , 1 1 8 , 1 1 9 , 1 2 3 , 1 2 5 , 1 6 1 , 189 Stark, Miss, 158, 174, 1 7 8 - 1 8 0 , 190 Suspiria de Profundis, 1 4 1 Tait, William, 107, 108, 1 1 1 Tait's Magazine, 102, 107, 1 1 0 - 1 1 2 , 1 1 6 , 1 2 4 - 1 2 7 , 129, 1 3 5 , 1 4 4 - 1 4 7 , 165, 177 Talfourd, Τ . N . , 81

Wordsworth, Mrs. William, 54,60, 85, 1 2 1 , 126 Yuille, Mrs., 1 3 2