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Autobiographic Sketches

T >> Thomas de Quincey >> Autobiographic Sketches




For what had we come? To see London. And what were the limits within
which we proposed to crowd that little feat? At five o'clock we were
to dine at Porters ----, a seat of Lord Westport's grandfather; and,
from the distance, it was necessary that we should leave London at
half past three; so that a little more than three hours were all we
had for London. Our charioteer, my friend's tutor, was summoned away
from us on business until that hour; and we were left, therefore,
entirely to ourselves and to our own skill in turning the time to the
best account, for contriving (if such a thing were possible) to do
something or other which, by any fiction of courtesy, or constructively,
so as to satisfy a lawyer, or in a sense sufficient to win a wager,
might be taken and received for having "seen London."

What could be done? We sat down, I remember, in a mood of despondency,
to consider. The spectacles were too many by thousands; _inopes nos
copia fecit_; our very wealth made us poor; and the choice was
distracted. But which of them all could be thought general or
representative enough to stand for the universe of London? We could
not traverse the whole circumference of this mighty orb; that was
clear; and, therefore, the next best thing was to place ourselves as
much as possible in some relation to the spectacles of London, which
might answer to the centre. Yet how? That sounded well and metaphysical;
but what did it mean if acted upon? What was the centre of London for
any purpose whatever, latitudinarian or longitudinarian, literary,
social, or mercantile, geographical, astronomical, or (as Mrs. Malaprop
kindly suggests) diabolical? Apparently that we should stay at our
inn; for in that way we seemed best to distribute our presence equally
amongst all, viz., by going to none in particular.

Three times in my life I have had my taste--that is, my sense of
proportions--memorably outraged. Once was by a painting of Cape Horn,
which seemed almost treasonably below its rank and office in this
world, as the terminal abutment of our mightiest continent, and also
the hinge, as it were, of our greatest circumnavigations--of all, in
fact, which can be called _classical_ circumnavigations. To have
"doubled Cape Horn"--at one time, what a sound it had! yet how ashamed
we should be if that cape were ever to be seen from the moon! A party
of Englishmen, I have heard, went up Mount Aetna, during the night, to
be ready for sunrise--a common practice with tourists both in
Switzerland, Wales, Cumberland, &c.; but, as all must see who take the
trouble to reflect, not likely to repay the trouble; seeing that every
thing which offers a _picture_, when viewed from a station nearly
horizontal, becomes a mere _map_ to an eye placed at an elevation of
3000 feet above it; and so thought, in the sequel, the Aetna party. The
sun, indeed, rose visibly, and not more apparelled in clouds than was
desirable; yet so disappointed were they, and so disgusted with the
sun in particular, that they unanimously _hissed_ him; though, of
course, it was useless to cry "Off! off!" Here, however, the fault was
in their own erroneous expectations, and not in the sun, who, doubtless,
did his best. For, generally, a sunrise and a sunset ought to be seen
from the valley, or at most horizontally. [3] But as to Cape Horn, _that_
(by comparison with its position and its functions) was really a disgrace
to the planet; it is not the spectator that is in fault _here_, but the
object itself, the Birmingham cape. For, consider, it is not only the
"specular mount," keeping watch and ward over a sort of trinity of
oceans, and, by all tradition, the circumnavigator's gate of entrance to
the Pacific, but also it is the temple of the god Terminus for all the
Americas. So that, in relation to such dignities, it seemed to me, in the
drawing, a makeshift, put up by a carpenter, until the true Cape Horn
should be ready; or, perhaps, a drop scene from the opera house. This was
one case of disproportion: the others were--the final and ceremonial
valediction of Garrick, on retiring from his profession; and the Pall
Mall inauguration of George IV. on the day of his accession [4] to
the throne. The utter _ir_relation, in both cases, of the audience to
the scene, (_audience_ I say, as say we must, for the sum of the
spectators in the second instance, as well as of the auditors in the
first,) threw upon each a ridicule not to be effaced. It is in any
case impossible for an actor to say words of farewell to those for
whom he really designs his farewell. He cannot bring his true object
before himself. To whom is it that he would offer his last adieus? We
are told by one--who, if he loved Garrick, certainly did not love
Garrick's profession, nor would even, through _him_, have paid it any
undue compliment--that the retirement of this great artist had "eclipsed
the gayety of nations." To nations, then, to his own generation, it
was that he owed his farewell; but, of a generation, what organ is
there which can sue or be sued, that can thank or be thanked? Neither
by fiction nor by delegation can you bring their bodies into court.
A king's audience, on the other hand, _might_ be had as an authorized
representative body. But, when we consider the composition of a casual
and chance auditory, whether in a street or a theatre,--secondly, the
small size of a modern audience, even in Drury Lane, (4500 at the most,)
not by one eightieth part the _complement_ of the Circus Maximus,--most
of all, when we consider the want of symmetry or commensurateness, to any
extended duration of time, in the _acts_ of such an audience, which acts
lie in the vanishing expressions of its vanishing emotions,--acts so
essentially fugitive, even when organized into an art and a tactical
system of _imbrices_ and _bombi_, (as they were at Alexandria, and
afterwards at the Neapolitan and Roman theatres,) that they could not
protect themselves from dying in the very moment of their birth,--laying
together all these considerations, we see the incongruity of any
audience, so constituted, to any purpose less evanescent than their own
tenure of existence.

Just such in disproportion as these cases had severally been, was our
present problem in relation to our time or other means for accomplishing
it. In debating the matter, we lost half an hour; but at length we
reduced the question to a choice between Westminster Abbey and St.
Paul's Cathedral. I know not that we could have chosen better. The
rival edifices, as we understood from the waiter, were about equidistant
from our own station; but, being too remote from each other to allow
of our seeing both, "we tossed up," to settle the question between the
elder lady and the younger. "Heads" came up, which stood for the abbey.
But, as neither of us was quite satisfied with this decision, we agreed
to make another appeal to the wisdom of chance, second thoughts being
best. This time the cathedral turned up; and so it came to pass that,
with us, the having _seen London_ meant having seen St. Paul's.

The first view of St. Paul's, it may be supposed, overwhelmed us with
awe; and I did not at that time imagine that the sense of magnitude
could be more deeply impressed. One thing interrupted our pleasure.
The superb objects of curiosity within the cathedral were shown for
separate fees. There were seven, I think; and any one could be seen
independently of the rest for a few pence. The whole amount was a
trifle; fourteen pence, I think; but we were followed by a sort of
persecution--"Would we not see the bell?" "Would we not see the model?"
"Surely we would not go away without visiting the whispering
gallery?"--solicitations which troubled the silence and sanctity of
the place, and must tease others as it then teased us, who wished to
contemplate in quiet this great monument of the national grandeur,
which was at that very time [5] beginning to take a station also in the
land, as a depository for the dust of her heroes. What struck us most in
the whole _interior_ of the pile was the view taken from the spot
immediately under the dome, being, in fact, the very same which, five
years afterwards, received the remains of Lord Nelson. In one of the
aisles going off from this centre, we saw the flags of France, Spain, and
Holland, the whole trophies of the war, swinging pompously, and expanding
their massy draperies, slowly and heavily, in the upper gloom, as they
were swept at intervals by currents of air. At this moment we were
provoked by the showman at our elbow renewing his vile iteration of
"Twopence, gentlemen; no more than twopence for each;" and so on, until
we left the place. The same complaint has been often made as to
Westminster Abbey. Where the wrong lies, or where it commences, I know
not. Certainly I nor any man can have a right to expect that the poor men
who attended us should give up their time for nothing, or even to be
angry with them for a sort of persecution, on the degree of which
possibly might depend the comfort of their own families. Thoughts of
famishing children at home leave little room for nice regards of
delicacy abroad. The individuals, therefore, might or might not be
blamable. But in any case, the system is palpably wrong. The nation
is entitled to a free enjoyment of its own public monuments; not free
only in the sense of being gratuitous, but free also from the
molestation of _showmen_, with their imperfect knowledge and their
vulgar sentiment.

Yet, after all, what is this system of restriction and annoyance,
compared with that which operates on the use of the national libraries?
or _that_ again, to the system of exclusion from some of these, where
an absolute interdict lies upon any use at all of that which is
confessedly national property? Books and manuscripts, which were
originally collected and formally bequeathed to the public, under the
generous and noble idea of giving to future generations advantages
which the collector had himself not enjoyed, and liberating them from
obstacles in the pursuit of knowledge which experience had bitterly
imprinted upon his own mind, are at this day locked up as absolutely
against me, you, or any body, as collections confessedly private. Nay,
far more so; for most private collectors of eminence, as the late Mr.
Heber, for instance, have been distinguished for liberality in lending
the rarest of their books to those who knew how to use them with effect.
But, in the cases I now contemplate, the whole funds for supporting
the proper offices attached to a library, such as librarians,
sub-librarians, &c., which of themselves (and without the express
verbal evidence of the founder's will) presume a _public_ in the daily
use of the books, else they are superfluous, have been applied to the
creation of lazy sinecures, in behalf of persons expressly charged
with the care of shutting out the public. Therefore, it is true, they
are _not_ sinecures; for that one care, vigilantly to keep out the
public, [6] they do take upon themselves; and why? A man loving books,
like myself, might suppose that their motive was the ungenerous one of
keeping the books to themselves. Far from it. In several instances, they
will as little use the books as suffer them to be used. And thus the
whole plans and cares of the good (weighing his motives, I will say of
the _pious_) founder have terminated in locking up and sequestering a
large collection of books, some being great rarities, in situations where
they are not accessible. Had he bequeathed them to the catacombs of
Paris or of Naples, he could not have better provided for their virtual
extinction. I ask, Does no action at common law lie against the
promoters of such enormous abuses? O thou fervent reformer,--whose
fatal tread he that puts his ear to the ground may hear at a distance
coming onwards upon _every_ road,--if too surely thou wilt work for
me and others irreparable wrong and suffering, work also for us a
little good; this way turn the great hurricanes and levanters of thy
wrath; winnow me this chaff; and let us enter at last the garners of
pure wheat laid up in elder days for our benefit, and which for two
centuries have been closed against our use!

London we left in haste, to keep an engagement of some standing at the
Earl Howe's, my friend's grandfather. This great admiral, who had
filled so large a station in the public eye, being the earliest among
the naval heroes of England in the first war of the revolution, and
the only one of noble birth, I should have been delighted to see; St.
Paul's, and its naval monuments to Captain Riou and Captain ----,
together with its floating pageantries of conquered flags, having
awakened within me, in a form of peculiar solemnity, those patriotic
remembrances of past glories, which all boys feel so much more vividly
than men can do, in whom the sensibility to such impressions is blunted.
Lord Howe, however, I was not destined to see; he had died about a
year before. Another death there had been, and very recently, in the
family, and under circumstances peculiarly startling; and the spirits
of the whole house were painfully depressed by that event at the time
of our visit. One of the daughters, a younger sister of my friend's
mother, had been engaged for some time to a Scottish nobleman, the
Earl of Morton, much esteemed by the royal family. The day was at
length fixed for the marriage; and about a fortnight before that day
arrived, some particular dress or ornament was brought to Porters, in
which it was designed that the bride should appear at the altar. The
fashion as to this point has often varied; but at that time, I believe
the custom was for bridal parties to be in full dress. The lady, when
the dress arrived, was, to all appearance, in good health; but, by one
of those unaccountable misgivings which are on record in so many
well-attested cases, (as that, for example, of Andrew Marveil's father,)
she said, after gazing for a minute or two at the beautiful dress,
firmly and pointedly, "So, then, _that_ is my wedding dress; and it
is expected that I shall wear it on the 17th; but I shall _not_; I
shall never wear it. On Thursday, the 17th, I shall be dressed in a
shroud!" All present were shocked at such a declaration, which the
solemnity of the lady's manner made it impossible to receive as a jest.
The countess, her mother, even reproved her with some severity for the
words, as an expression of distrust in the goodness of God. The bride
elect made no answer but by sighing heavily. Within a fortnight, all
happened, to the letter, as she had predicted. She was taken suddenly
ill; she died about three days before the marriage day, and was finally
dressed in her shroud, according to the natural course of the funeral
arrangements, on the morning that was to have been the wedding festival.

Lord Morton, the nobleman thus suddenly and remarkably bereaved of
his bride, was the only gentleman who appeared at the dinner table.
He took a particular interest in literature; and it was, in fact,
through _his_ kindness that, for the first time in my life, I found
myself somewhat in the situation of a "_lion_." The occasion of Lord
Morton's flattering notice was a particular copy of verses which had
gained for me a public distinction; not, however, I must own, a very
brilliant one; the prize awarded to me being not the first, nor even
the second,--what on the continent is called the _accessit_,--it was
simply the third; and that fact, stated nakedly, might have left it
doubtful whether I were to be considered in the light of one honored
or of one stigmatized. However, the judges in this case, with more
honesty, or more self-distrust, than belongs to most adjudications of
the kind, had printed the first three of the successful essays.
Consequently, it was left open to each of the less successful candidates
to benefit by any difference of taste amongst their several friends;
and _my_ friends in particular, with the single and singular exception
of my mother, who always thought her own children inferior to other
people's, had generally assigned the palm to myself. Lord Morton
protested loudly that the case admitted of no doubt; that gross
injustice had been done me; and, as the ladies of the family were much
influenced by his opinion, I thus came, not only to wear the laurel
in their estimation, but also with the advantageous addition of having
suffered some injustice. I was not only a victor, but a victor in
misfortune.

At this moment, looking back from a distance of fifty years upon those
trifles, it may well be supposed that I do not attach so much importance
to the subject of my fugitive honors as to have any very decided opinion
one way or the other upon my own proportion of merit. I do not even
recollect the major part of the verses: that which I _do_ recollect,
inclines me to think that, in the structure of the metre and in the
choice of the expressions, I had some advantage over my competitors,
though otherwise, perhaps, my verses were less finished; Lord Morton
might, therefore, in a partial sense, have been just, as well as kind.
But, little as that may seem likely, even then, and at the moment of
reaping some advantage from my honors, which gave me a consideration
with the family I was amongst such as I could not else have had, most
unaffectedly I doubted in my own mind whether I were really entitled
to the praises which I received. My own verses had not at all satisfied
myself; and though I felt elated by the notice they had gained me, and
gratified by the generosity of the earl in taking my part so warmly,
I was so more in a spirit of sympathy with the kindness thus manifested
in my behalf, and with the consequent kindness which it procured me
from others, than from any incitement or support which it gave to my
intellectual pride. In fact, whatever estimate I might make of those
intellectual gifts which I believed or which I knew myself to possess,
I was inclined, even in those days, to doubt whether my natural vocation
lay towards poetry. Well, indeed, I knew, and I know that, had I chosen
to enlist amongst the _soi disant_ poets of the day,--amongst those,
I mean, who, by mere force of _talent_ and mimetic skill, contrive to
sustain the part of poet in a scenical sense and with a scenical
effect,--I also could have won such laurels as are won by such merit;
I also could have taken and sustained a place _taliter qualiter_ amongst
the poets of the time. Why _not_ then? Simply because I knew that me,
as them, would await the certain destiny in reversion of resigning
that place in the next generation to some younger candidate having
equal or greater skill in appropriating the vague sentiments and old
traditionary language of passion spread through books, but having
also the advantage of novelty, and of a closer adaptation to the
prevailing taste of the day. Even at that early age, I was keenly
alive, if not so keenly as at this moment, to the fact, that by far
the larger proportion of what is received in every age for poetry, and
for a season usurps that consecrated name, is _not_ the spontaneous
overflow of real unaffected passion, deep, and at the same time
original, and also forced into public manifestation of itself from the
necessity which cleaves to all passion alike of seeking external
sympathy: this it is _not_; but a counterfeit assumption of such
passion, according to the more or less accurate skill of the writer
in distinguishing the key of passion suited to the particular age; and
a concurrent assumption of the language of passion, according to his
more or less skill in separating the spurious from the native and
legitimate diction of genuine emotion. Rarely, indeed, are the reputed
poets of any age men who groan, like prophets, under the burden of a
message which they have to deliver, and _must_ deliver, of a mission
which they _must_ discharge. Generally, nay, with much fewer exceptions,
perhaps, than would be readily believed, they are merely simulators
of the part they sustain; speaking not out of the abundance of their
own hearts, but by skill and artifice assuming or personating emotions
at second hand; and the whole is a business of talent, (sometimes even
of great talent,) but not of original power, of genius, [7] or authentic
inspiration.

From Porters, after a few days' visit, we returned to Eton. Her majesty
about this time gave some splendid _fêtes_ at Frogmore, to one or two
of which she had directed that we should be invited. The invitation
was, of course, on my friend's account; but her majesty had condescended
to direct that I, as his visitor, should be specially included. Lord
Westport, young as he was, had become tolerably indifferent about such
things; but to me such a scene was a novelty; and, on that account,
it was settled we should go as early as was permissible. We _did_ go;
and I was not sorry to have had the gratification of witnessing (if
it were but for once or twice) the splendors of a royal party. But,
after the first edge of expectation was taken off,--after the vague
uncertainties of rustic ignorance had given place to absolute realities,
and the eye had become a little familiar with the flashing of the
jewelry,--I began to suffer under the constraints incident to a young
person in such a situation--the situation, namely, of sedentary
passiveness, where one is acted upon, but does not act. The music, in
fact, was all that continued to delight me; and, but for _that,_ I
believe I should have had some difficulty in avoiding so monstrous an
indecorum as yawning. I revise this faulty expression, however, on the
spot; not the music only it was, but the music combined with the
dancing, that so deeply impressed me. The ball room--a temporary
erection, with something of the character of a pavilion about it--wore
an elegant and festal air; the part allotted to the dancers being
fenced off by a gilded lattice work, and ornamented beautifully from
the upper part with drooping festoons of flowers. But all the luxury
that spoke to the eye merely faded at once by the side of impassioned
dancing, sustained by impassioned music. Of all the scenes which this
world offers, none is to me so profoundly interesting, none (I say it
deliberately) so affecting, as the spectacle of men and women floating
through the mazes of a dance; under these conditions, however, that
the music shall be rich, resonant, and festal, the execution of the
dancers perfect, and the dance itself of a character to admit of free,
fluent, and _continuous_ motion. But this last condition will be sought
vainly in the quadrilles, &c., which have for so many years banished
the truly beautiful _country dances_ native to England. Those whose
taste and sensibility were so defective as to substitute for the
_beautiful_ in dancing the merely _difficult_, were sure, in the end,
to transfer the depravations of this art from the opera house to the
floors of private ball rooms. The tendencies even then were in that
direction; but as yet they had not attained their final stage; and the
English country dance [8] was still in estimation at the courts of
princes. Now, of all dances, this is the only one, as a class, of which
you can truly describe the motion to be _continuous,_ that is, not
interrupted or fitful, but unfolding its fine mazes with the equability
of light in its diffusion through free space. And wherever the music
happens to be not of a light, trivial character, but charged with the
spirit of festal pleasure, and the performers in the dance so far skilful
as to betray no awkwardness verging on the ludicrous, I believe that many
people feel as I feel in such circumstances, viz., derive from the
spectacle the very grandest form of passionate sadness which can belong
to any spectacle whatsoever. _Sadness_ is not the exact word; nor is
there any word in any language (because none in the finest languages)
which exactly expresses the state; since it is not a depressing, but a
most elevating state to which I allude. And, certainly, it is easy to
understand, that many states of pleasure, and in particular the highest,
are the most of all removed from merriment. The day on which a Roman
triumphed was the most gladsome day of his existence; it was the crown
and consummation of his prosperity; yet assuredly it was also to him the
most solemn of his days. Festal music, of a rich and passionate
character, is the most remote of any from vulgar hilarity. Its very
gladness and pomp is impregnated with sadness, but sadness of a grand and
aspiring order. Let, for instance, (since without individual
illustrations there is the greatest risk of being misunderstood,) any
person of musical sensibility listen to the exquisite music composed by
Beethoven, as an opening for Burger's "Lenore," the running idea of which
is the triumphal return of a crusading host, decorated with laurels and
with palms, within the gates of their native city; and then say whether
the presiding feeling, in the midst of this tumultuous festivity, be not,
by infinite degrees, transcendent to any thing so vulgar as hilarity.
In fact, laughter itself is of all things the most equivocal; as the
organ of the ludicrous, laughter is allied to the trivial and the mean;
as the organ of joy, it is allied to the passionate and the noble.
From all which the reader may comprehend, if he should not happen
experimentally to have felt, that a spectacle of young men and women,
_flowing_ through the mazes of an intricate dance under a full volume
of music, taken with all the circumstantial adjuncts of such a scene
in rich men's halls; the blaze of lights and jewels, the life, the
motion, the sea-like undulation of heads, the interweaving of the
figures, the _anachuchlosis_ or self-revolving, both of the
dance and the music, "never ending, still beginning," and the continual
regeneration of order from a system of motions which forever touch the
very brink of confusion; that such a spectacle, with such circumstances,
may happen to be capable of exciting and sustaining the very grandest
emotions of philosophic melancholy to which the human spirit is open.
The reason is, in part, that such a scene presents a sort of mask of
human life, with its whole equipage of pomps and glories, its luxury
of sight and sound, its hours of golden youth, and the interminable
revolution of ages hurrying after ages, and one generation treading
upon the flying footsteps of another; whilst all the while the
overruling music attempers the mind to the spectacle, the subject to
the object, the beholder to the vision. And, although this is known
to be but one phasis of life,--of life culminating and in ascent,--yet
the other (and repulsive) phasis is concealed upon the hidden or averted
side of the golden arras, known but not felt; or is seen but dimly in
the rear, crowding into indistinct proportions. The effect of the music
is, to place the mind in a state of elective attraction for every thing
in harmony with its own prevailing key.

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