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Autobiographic Sketches

T >> Thomas de Quincey >> Autobiographic Sketches




The rest of my mother's counsels, If deep, were not long; she, who had
always something of a Roman firmness, shed more milk of roses, I
believe, upon my cheeks than tears; and why not? What should there be
to _her_ corresponding to an ignorant child's sense of pathos, in a
little journey of about a hundred miles? Outside her door, however,
there awaited me some silly creatures, women of course, old and young,
from the nursery and the kitchen, who gave, and who received, those
fervent kisses which wait only upon love without awe and without
disguise. Heavens! what rosaries might be strung for the memory of
sweet female kisses, given without check or art, before one is of an
age to value them! And again, how sweet is the touch of female hands
as they array one for a journey! If any thing needs fastening, whether
by pinning, tying, or any other contrivance, how perfect is one's
confidence in female skill; as if, by mere virtue of her sex and
feminine instinct, a woman could not possibly fail to know the best
and readiest way of adjusting every case that could arise in dress.
Mine was hastily completed amongst them: each had a pin to draw from
her bosom, in order to put something to rights about my throat or
hands; and a chorus of "God bless hims!" was arising, when, from below,
young Mephistopheles murmured an impatient groan, and perhaps the
horses snorted. I found myself lifted into the chaise; counsels about
the night and the cold flowing in upon me, to which Mephistopheles
listened with derision or astonishment. I and he had each our separate
corner; and, except to request that I would draw up one of the glasses,
I do not think he condescended to address one word to me until dusk,
when we found ourselves rattling into Chesterfield, having barely
accomplished four stages, or forty or forty-two miles, in about nine
hours. This, except on the Bath or great north roads, may be taken as
a standard amount of performance, in 1794, (the year I am recording,)
and even ten years later. [4] In these present hurrying and tumultuous
days, whether time is really of more value, I cannot say; but all people
on the establishment of inns are required to suppose it of the most awful
value. Nowadays, (1833,) no sooner have the horses stopped at the gateway
of a posting house than a summons is passed down to the stables; and in
less than one minute, upon a great road, the horses next in rotation,
always ready harnessed when expecting to come on duty, are heard trotting
down the yard. "Putting to" and transferring the luggage, (supposing your
conveyance a common post chaise,) once a work of at least thirty minutes,
is now easily accomplished in three. And scarcely have you paid the ex-
postilion before his successor is mounted; the hostler is standing ready
with the steps in his hands to receive his invariable sixpence; the door
is closed; the representative waiter bows his acknowledgment for the
house, and you are off at a pace never less than ten miles an hour; the
total detention at each stage not averaging above four minutes. Then,
(_i.e._, at the latter end of the eighteenth and beginning of the
nineteenth century,) half an hour was the minimum of time spent at each
change of horses. Your arrival produced a great bustle of unloading and
unharnessing; as a matter of course, you alighted and went into the inn;
if you sallied out to report progress, after waiting twenty minutes, no
signs appeared of any stir about the stables. The most choleric person
could not much expedite preparations, which loitered not so much from any
indolence in the attendants, as from faulty arrangements and total defect
of forecasting. The pace was such as the roads of that day allowed; never
so much as six miles an hour, except upon a very great road, and then
only by extra payment to the driver. Yet, even under this comparatively
miserable system, how superior was England, as a land for the traveller,
to all the rest of the world, Sweden only excepted! Bad as were the
roads, and defective as were all the arrangements, still you had these
advantages: no town so insignificant, no posting house so solitary, but
that at all seasons, except a contested election, it could furnish horses
without delay, and without license to distress the neighboring farmers.
On the worst road, and on a winter's day, with no more than a single pair
of horses, you generally made out sixty miles; even if it were necessary
to travel through the night, you could continue to make way, although
more slowly; and finally, if you were of a temper to brook delay, and did
not exact from all persons the haste or energy of Hotspurs, the whole
system in those days was full of respectability and luxurious ease, and
well fitted to renew the image of the home you had left, if not in its
elegances, yet in all its substantial comforts. What cosy old parlors in
those days! low roofed, glowing with ample fires, and fenced from the
blasts of doors by screens, whose foldings were, or seemed to be,
infinite. What motherly landladies! won, how readily, to kindness the
most lavish, by the mere attractions of simplicity and youthful
innocence, and finding so much interest in the bare circumstance of being
a traveller at a childish age. Then what blooming young handmaidens! how
different from the knowing and worldly demireps of modern high roads! And
sometimes gray-headed, faithful waiters, how sincere and how attentive,
by comparison with their flippant successors, the eternal "coming, sir,
coming," of our improved generation!

Such an honest, old, butler-looking servant waited on us during dinner
at Chesterfield, carving for me, and urging me to eat. Even
Mephistopheles found his pride relax under the influence of wine; and
when loosened from this restraint, his kindness was not deficient. To
me he showed it in pressing wine upon me, without stint or measure.
The elegances which he had observed in such parts of my mother's
establishment as could be supposed to meet his eye on so hasty a visit,
had impressed him perhaps favorably towards myself; and could I have
a little altered my age, or dismissed my excessive reserve, I doubt
not that he would have admitted me, in default of a more suitable
comrade, to his entire confidence for the rest of the road. Dinner
finished, and myself at least, for the first time in my childish life,
somewhat perhaps overcharged with wine, the bill was called for, the
waiter paid in the lavish style of antique England, and we heard our
chaise drawing up under the gateway,--the invariable custom of those
days,--by which you were spared the trouble of going into the street;
stepping from the hall of the inn right into your carriage. I had been
kept back for a minute or so by the landlady and her attendant nymphs,
to be dressed and kissed; and, on seating myself in the chaise, which
was well lighted with lamps, I found my lordly young principal in
conversation with the landlord, first upon the price of oats,--which
youthful horsemen always affect to inquire after with interest,--but,
secondly, upon a topic more immediately at his heart--viz., the
reputation of the road. At that time of day, when gold had not yet
disappeared from the circulation, no traveller carried any other sort
of money about him; and there was consequently a rich encouragement
to highwaymen, which vanished almost entirely with Mr. Pitt's act of
1797 for restricting cash payments. Property which could be identified
and traced was a perilous sort of plunder; and from that time the free
trade of the road almost perished as a regular occupation. At this
period it did certainly maintain a languishing existence; here and
there it might have a casual run of success; and, as these local ebbs
and flows were continually shifting, perhaps, after all, the trade
might lie amongst a small number of hands. Universally, however, the
landlords showed some shrewdness, or even sagacity, in qualifying,
according to the circumstances of the inquirer, the sort of credit
which they allowed to the exaggerated ill fame of the roads. Returning
on this very road, some months after, with a timid female relative,
who put her questions with undisguised and distressing alarm, the very
same people, one and all, assured her that the danger was next to
nothing. Not so at present: rightly presuming that a haughty cavalier
of eighteen, flushed with wine and youthful blood, would listen with
disgust to a picture too amiable and pacific of the roads before him,
Mr. Spread Eagle replied with the air of one who knew more than he
altogether liked to tell; and looking suspiciously amongst the strange
faces lit up by the light of the carriage lamps--"Why, sir, there have
been ugly stories afloat; I cannot deny it; and sometimes, you know,
sir,"--winking sagaciously, to which a knowing nod of assent was
returned,--"it may not be quite safe to tell all one knows. But you
can understand me. The forest, you are well aware, sir, _is_ the forest:
it never was much to be trusted, by all accounts, in my father's time,
and I suppose will not be better in mine. But you must keep a sharp
lookout; and, Tom," speaking to the postilion, "mind, when you pass
the third gate, to go pretty smartly by the thicket." Tom replied in
a tone of importance to this professional appeal. General valedictions
were exchanged, the landlord bowed, and we moved off for the forest.
Mephistopheles had his travelling case of pistols. These he began now
to examine; for sometimes, said he, I have known such a trick as drawing
the charge whilst one happened to be taking a glass of wine. Wine had
unlocked his heart,--the prospect of the forest and the advancing night
excited him,--and even of such a child as myself he was now disposed
to make a confidant. "Did you observe," said he, "that ill-looking
fellow, as big as a camel, who stood on the landlord's left hand? "Was
it the man, I asked timidly, who seemed by his dress to be a farmer?
"Farmer, you call him! Ah! my young friend, that shows your little
knowledge of the world. He is a scoundrel, the bloodiest of scoundrels.
And so I trust to convince him before many hours are gone over our
heads." Whilst saying this, he employed himself in priming his pistols;
then, after a pause, he went on thus: "No, my young friend, this alone
shows his base purposes--his calling himself a farmer. Farmer he is
not, but a desperate highwayman, of which I have full proof. I watched
his malicious glances whilst the landlord was talking; and I could
swear to his traitorous intentions." So speaking, he threw anxious
glances on each side as we continued to advance: we were both somewhat
excited; he by the spirit of adventure, I by sympathy with him--and
both by wine. The wine, however, soon applied a remedy to its own
delusions; six miles from the town we had left, both of us were in a
bad condition for resisting highwaymen with effect--being fast asleep.
Suddenly a most abrupt halt awoke us,--Mephistopheles felt for his
pistols,--the door flew open, and the lights of the assembled group
announced to us that we had reached Mansfield. That night we went on
to Newark, at which place about forty miles of our journey remailed.
This distance we performed, of course, on the following day, between
breakfast and dinner. But it serves strikingly to illustrate the state
of roads in England, whenever your affairs led you into districts a
little retired from the capital routes of the public travelling, that,
for one twenty-mile stage,--viz. from Newark to Sleaford,--they refused
to take us forward with less than four horses. This was neither a
fraud, as our eyes soon convinced us, (for even four horses could
scarcely extricate the chaise from the deep sloughs which occasionally
seamed the road through tracts of two or three miles in succession,)
nor was it an accident of the weather. In all seasons the same demand
was enforced, as my female protectress found in conducting me back at
a fine season of the year, and had always found in traversing the
same route. The England of that date (1794) exhibited many similar
cases. At present I know of but one stage in all England where a
traveller, without regard to weight, is called upon to take four horses;
and that is at Ambleside, in going by the direct road to Carlisle. The
first stage to Patterdale lies over the mountain of Kirkstone, and the
ascent is not only toilsome, (continuing for above three miles, with
occasional intermissions,) but at times is carried over summits too
steep for a road by all the rules of engineering, and yet too little
frequented to offer any means of repaying the cost of smoothing the
difficulties.

It was not until after the year 1715 that the main improvement took
place in the English travelling system, so far as regarded speed. It
is, in reality, to Mr. Macadam that we owe it. All the roads in England,
within a few years, were remodelled, and upon principles of Roman
science. From mere beds of torrents and systems of ruts, they were
raised universally to the condition and appearance of gravel walks in
private parks or shrubberies. The average rate of velocity was, in
consequence, exactly doubled--ten miles an hour being now generally
accomplished, instead of five. And at the moment when all further
improvement upon this system had become hopeless, a new prospect was
suddenly opened to us by railroads; which again, considering how much
they have already exceeded the _maximum_ of possibility, as laid down
by all engineers during the progress of the Manchester and Liverpool
line, may soon give way to new modes of locomotion still more
astonishing to our preconceptions.

One point of refinement, as regards the comfort of travellers, remains
to be mentioned, in which the improvement began a good deal earlier,
perhaps by ten years, than in the construction of the roads. Luxurious
as was the system of English travelling at all periods, after the
general establishment of post chaises, it must be granted that, in the
circumstance of cleanliness, there was far from being that attention,
or that provision for the traveller's comfort, which might have been
anticipated from the general habits of the country. I, at all periods
of my life a great traveller, was witness, to the first steps and the
whole struggle of this revolution. Maréchal Saxe professed always to
look under his bed, applying his caution chiefly to the attempts of
robbers. Now, if at the greatest inns of England you had, in the days
I speak of, adopted this marshal's policy of reconnoitring, what would
you have seen? Beyond a doubt, you would have seen what, upon all
principles of seniority, was entitled to your veneration, viz., a dense
accumulation of dust far older than yourself. A foreign author made
some experiments upon the deposition of dust, and the rate of its
accumulation, in a room left wholly undisturbed. If I recollect, a
century would produce a stratum about half an inch in depth. Upon this
principle, I conjecture that much dust which I have seen in inns,
during the first four or five years of the present century, must have
belonged to the reign of George II. It was, however, upon travellers
by coaches that the full oppression of the old vicious system operated.
The elder Scaliger mentions, as a characteristic of the English in his
day, (about 1530,) a horror of cold water; in which, however, there
must have been some mistake. [5] Nowhere could he and his foreign
companions obtain the luxury of cold water for washing their hands
either before or after dinner. One day he and his party dined with the
lord chancellor; and now, thought he, for very shame they will allow
us some means of purification. Not at all; the chancellor viewed this
outlandish novelty with the same jealousy as others. However, on the
earnest petition of Scaliger, he made an order that a basin or other
vessel of cold water should be produced. His household bowed to this
judgment, and a slop basin was cautiously introduced. "What!" said
Scaliger, "only one, and we so many?" Even that one contained but a
teacup full of water: but the great scholar soon found that he must
be thankful for what he had got. It had cost the whole strength of the
English chancery to produce that single cup of water; and, for that
day, no man in his senses could look for a second. Pretty much the
same struggle, and for the same cheap reform, commenced about the year
1805-6. Post-chaise travellers could, of course, have what they liked;
and generally they asked for a bed room. It is of coach travellers I
speak. And the particular innovation in question commenced, as was
natural, with the mail coach, which, from the much higher scale of its
fares, commanded a much more select class of company. I was a party
to the very earliest attempts at breaking ground in this alarming
revolution. Well do I remember the astonishment of some waiters, the
indignation of others, the sympathetic uproars which spread to the
bar, to the kitchen, and even to the stables, at the first opening of
our extravagant demands. Sometimes even the landlady thought the case
worthy of her interference, and came forward to remonstrate with us
upon our unheard-of conduct. But gradually we made way. Like Scaliger,
at first we got but one basin amongst us, and that one was brought
into the breakfast room; but scarcely had two years revolved before
we began to see four, and all appurtenances, arranged duly in
correspondence to the number of inside passengers by the mail; and,
as outside travelling was continually gaining ground amongst the
wealthier classes, more comprehensive arrangements were often made;
though, even to this day, so much influence survives, from the original
aristocratic principle upon which public carriages were constructed,
that on the mail coaches there still prevails the most scandalous
inattention to the comfort, and even to the security, of the outside
passengers: a slippery glazed roof frequently makes the sitting a
matter of effort and anxiety, whilst the little iron side rail of four
inches in height serves no one purpose but that of bruising the thigh.
Concurrently with these reforms in the system of personal cleanliness,
others were silently making way through all departments of the household
economy. Dust, from the reign of George II., became scarcer; gradually
it came to bear an antiquarian value: basins lost their grim appearance,
and looked as clean as in gentlemen's houses. And at length the whole
system was so thoroughly ventilated and purified, that all good inns,
nay, generally speaking, even second-rate inns, at this day, reflect
the best features, as to cleanliness and neatness, of well-managed
private establishments.


FOOTNOTES

[1] It marks the rapidity with which new phrases float themselves into
currency under our present omnipresence of the press, that this word,
_now_ (viz., in 1853) familiarly used in every newspaper, _then_ (viz.,
in 1833) required a sort of apology to warrant its introduction.

[2] A well-known hotel, and also a coach inn, which we English in those
days thought colossal. It was in fact, according to the spirit of Dr.
Johnson's itty reply to Miss Knight, big enough for an island. But our
transatlantic brothers, dwelling upon so mighty a continent, have
gradually enlarged their scale of inns as of other objects into a size of
commensurate grandeur. In two separate New York journals, which, by the
kindness of American friends, are at this moment (April 26) lying before
me, I read astounding illustrations of this. For instance: (1.) In
"Putnam's Monthly" for April, 1853, the opening article, a very amusing
one, entitled "New York daguerreotyped," estimates the hotel population
of that vast city as "not much short of ten thousand;" and one individual
hotel, apparently far from being the most conspicuous, viz., the
_Metropolitan_, reputed to have "more than twelve miles of water and gas
pipe, and two hundred and fifty servants," offers "accommodations for one
thousand guests." (2.) Yet even this Titanic structure dwindles by
comparison with _The Mount Vernon Hotel_ at Cape May, N. J., (meant, I
suppose, for New Jersey,) which advertises itself in the "New York
Herald," of April 12, 1853, under the authority of Mr. J. Taber, its
aspiring landlord, as offering accommodations, from the 20th of next
June, to the romantic number of _three thousand five hundred_ guests. The
Birmingham Hen and Chickens undoubtedly had slight pretensions by the
side of these behemoths and mammoths. And yet, as a street in a very
little town may happen to be quite as noisy as a street in London, I can
testify that any single gallery in this Birmingham hotel, if measured in
importance by the elements of discomfort which it could develop, was
entitled to an American rating. But alas! _Fuit Ilium_; I have not seen
the ruins of this ancient hotel; but an instinct tells me that the
railroad has run right through it; that the hen has ceased to lay golden
eggs, and that her chickens are dispersed. (3.) As another illustration,
I may mention that, in the middle of March, 1853, I received, as a
present from New York, the following newspaper. Each page contained
eleven columns, whereas our London "Times" contains only six. It was
entitled "The New York Journal of Commerce," and was able to proclaim
itself with truth the largest journal in the world. For 25-1/2 years it
had existed in a smaller size, but even in this infant stage had so far
outrun all other journals in size (measuring, from the first, 816 square
inches) as to have earned the name of "_the blanket sheet:_" but this
thriving baby had continued to grow, until at last, on March 1, 1853, it
came out in a sheet "comprising an area of 2057-1/4 square inches, or 16-
2/3 square feet." This was the monster sent over the Atlantic to myself;
and I really felt it as some relief to my terror, when I found the editor
protesting that the monster should not be allowed to grow any more. I
presume that it was meant to keep the hotels in countenance; for a
journal on the old scale could not expect to make itself visible in an
edifice that offered accommodations to an army.

[3] Elsewhere I have suggested, as the origin of this term, the French
word _cartayer_, to manoeuvre so as to evade the ruts.

[4] It appears, however, from the Life of Hume, by my distinguished
friend Mr. Hill Burton, that already, in the middle of the last century,
the historian accomplished without difficulty six miles an hour with only
a pair of horses. But this, it should be observed, was on the great North
Road.

[5] "_Some mistake_."--The mistake was possibly this: what little water
for ablution, and what little rags called towels, a foreigner ever sees
at home will at least be always within reach, from the continental
practice of using the bed room for the sitting room. But in England our
plentiful means of ablution are kept in the background. Scaliger should
have asked for a bed room: the surprise was, possibly, not at his wanting
water, but at his wanting it in a dining room.




CHAPTER XII.

MY BROTHER.


The reader who may have accompanied me in these wandering memorials
of my own life and casual experiences, will be aware, that in many
cases the neglect of chronological order is not merely permitted, but
is in fact to some degree inevitable: there are cases, for instance,
which, as a whole, connect themselves with my own life at so many
different eras, that, upon any chronological principle of position,
it would have been difficult to assign them a proper place; backwards
or forwards they must have leaped, in whatever place they had been
introduced; and in their entire compass, from first to last, never
could have been represented as properly belonging to any one _present_
time, whensoever that had been selected: belonging to every place
alike, they would belong, according to the proverb, to no place at
all; or, (reversing that proverb,) belonging to no place by preferable
right, they would, in fact, belong to every place, and therefore to
this place.

The incidents I am now going to relate come under this rule; for they
form part of a story which fell in with my own life at many different
points. It is a story taken from the life of my own brother; and I
dwell on it with the more willingness, because it furnishes an indirect
lesson upon a great principle of social life, now and for many years
back struggling for its just supremacy--the principle that all corporal
punishments whatsoever, and upon whomsoever inflicted, are hateful,
and an indignity to our common nature, which (with or without our
consent) is enshrined in the person of the sufferer. Degrading _him_,
they degrade _us_. I will not here add one word upon the general thesis,
but go on to the facts of this case; which, if all its incidents could
now be recovered, was perhaps as romantic as any that ever yet has
tried the spirit of fortitude and patience in a child. But its moral
interest depends upon this--that, simply out of one brutal chastisement,
arose naturally the entire series of events which so very nearly made
shipwreck of all hope for one individual, and did in fact poison the
tranquility of a whole family for seven years.

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