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Autobiographic Sketches

T >> Thomas de Quincey >> Autobiographic Sketches





FOOTNOTES

[1] This poem, from great admiration of its mother English, and to
illustrate some ideas upon style, Mr. Coleridge republished in his
"Biographia Literaria."

[2] From the well-known Italian epitaph--"_Stava bene; ma per star
meglio, sto qui_"--I was well; but, because I would be better than well,
I am--where you see.

[3] This was not meant assuredly as any advertisement of an
establishment, which could not by all reports need any man's praise, but
was written under a very natural impulse derived from a recent visit to
the place, and under an unaffected sympathy with the spirit of freedom
and enjoyment that seemed to reign amongst the young people.

[4] To those who are open to the impression of omens, there is a most
striking one on record with respect to the birth of this ill-fated
prince, not less so than the falling off of the head from the cane of
Charles I. at his trial, or the same king's striking a medal, bearing an
oak tress, (prefiguring the oak of _Boscobel_,) with this prophetic
inscription, "_Seris nepotibus umbram_." At the very moment when
(according to immemorial usage) the birth of a child was in the act of
annunciation to the great officers of state assembled in the queen's bed
chamber, and when a private signal from a lady had made known the glad
tidings that it was a dauphin, (the first child having been a princess,
to the signal disappointment of the nation; and the second, who was a
boy, having died,) the whole frame of carved woodwork at the back of the
queen's bed, representing the crown and other regalia of France, with the
Bourbon lilies, came rattling down in ruins. There is another and more
direct ill omen connected, apparently, with the birth of this prince; in
fact, a distinct prophecy of his ruin,--a prophecy that he should survive
his father, and yet no reign,--which is so obscurely told, that one knows
not in what light to view it; and especially since Louis XVIII., who is
the original authority for it, obviously confounds the first dauphin, who
died before the calamities of his family commenced, with the second. As
to this second, who is of course the prince concerned in the references
of the text, a new and most extraordinary interest has begun to invest
his tragical story in this very month of April, 1853; at least, it is now
first brought before universal Christendom. In the monthly journal of
Putnam, (published in New York,) the No. for April contains a most
interesting memoir upon the subject, signed T. H. Hanson. Naturally, it
indisposed most readers to put faith in any fresh pretensions of this
nature, that at least one false dauphin had been pronounced such by so
undeniable a judge of the Duchesse d'Angoulême. Meantime, it is made
probably enough by Mr Hanson that the true dauphin did not die in the
year 1795 at the Temple, but was personated by a boy unknown; that two
separate parties had an equal interest in sustaining the fraud, and _did_
sustain it; but one would hesitate to believe whether at the price of
murdering a celebrated physician; that they had the prince conveyed
secretly to an Indian settlement in Lower Canada, as a situation in which
French, being the prevailing language, would attract no attention, as it
must have done in most other parts of North America; that the boy was
educated and trained as a missionary clergyman; and finally, that he is
now acting in that capacity under the name of Eleazar Williams--
perfectly aware of the royal pretensions put forward on his behalf, but
equally, through age (being about 69) and through absorption in spiritual
views, indifferent to these pretensions. It is admitted on all hands that
the Prince de Joinville had an interview with Eleazar Williams a dozen
years since--the prince alleges through mere accident; but this seems
improbable; and Mr Hanson is likely to be right in supposing this visit
to have been a pre-concerted one, growing out of some anxiety to test the
reports current, so far as they were grounded upon resemblances in Mr.
Williams's features to those of the Bourbon and Austrian families. The
most pathetic fact is that of the idiocy common to the dauphin and Mr.
Eleazar Williams. It is clear from all the most authentic accounts of the
young prince that idiocy was in reality stealing over him--due,
doubtless, to the stunning nature of the calamities that overwhelmed his
family; to the removal from him by tragical deaths, in so rapid a
succession, of the Princesse de Lamballe, of his aunt, of his father, of
his mother, and others whom most he had loved; to his cruel separation
from his sister; and to the astounding (for him naturally
incomprehensible) change that had come over the demeanor and the language
of nearly all the people placed about the persons of himself and his
family. An idiocy resulting from what must have seemed a causeless and
demoniac conspiracy would be more likely to melt away under the sudden
transfer to kindness and the gayety of forest life than any idiocy
belonging to original organic imbecility. Mr. Williams describes his own
confusion of mind as continuing up to his fourteenth year, and all things
which had happened in earlier years as gleaming through clouds of
oblivion, and as painfully perplexing; but otherwise he shows no desire
to strengthen the pretensions made for himself by any reminiscences
piercing these clouds that could point specially to France or to royal
experiences.

[5] "_Flibustiers_."--This word, which is just now revolving upon us in
connection with the attempts on Cuba, &c., is constantly spelt by our own
and the American journals as _fillibustiers_ and fillibusteros. But the
true word of nearly two centuries back amongst the old original race of
sea robbers (French and English) that made irregular war upon the Spanish
shipping and maritime towns was that which I have here retained.

[6] "_Seamanship and shipmanship_"--These are two functions of a sailor
seldom, separated in the mind of a landsman. The conducting a ship
(causing her to _choose_ a right path) through the ocean; that is one
thing. Then there is the management of the ship within herself, the
trimming of her sails, &c., (causing her to _keep_ the line chosen;) that
is another thing. The first is called seamanship; the second might be
called shipmanship, but is, I believe, called navigation. They are
perfectly distinct; one man rarely has both in perfection. Both may be
illustrated from the rudder. The question is, suppose at the Cape of Good
Hope, to steer for India: trust the rudder to him, as a seaman, who knows
the passage whether within or without Madagascar. The question is to
avoid a sunk rock: trust the rudder to him, as a navigator, who
understands the art of steering to a nicety.

[7] For this little parenthetical record of my brother's early history
the exact chronology of the several items in the case may possible be now
irrecoverable; but any error must be of trivial importance. His two
pedestrian journeys between London and Liverpool occurred, I believe, in
the same year--viz., after the death of the friendly captain, and during
the last visit of his ship to England. The capture of Pink by the pirates
took place after the ship's return to the Pacific.




CHAPTER XIII.

PREMATURE MANHOOD.


My last two chapters, very slenderly connected with Birmingham, are
yet made to rise out of it; the one out of Birmingham's own relation
to the topic concerned, (viz., _Travelling_,) and the other (viz., _My
Brother_) out of its relation to all possible times in my earlier life,
and, therefore, why not to all possible places? _Any where_ introduced,
the chapter was partially out of its place; as well then to introduce
it in Birmingham as elsewhere. Somewhat arbitrary episodes, therefore,
are these two last chapters; yet still endurable as occurring in a
work confessedly rambling, and whose very duty lies in the pleasant
paths of vagrancy. Pretending only to amuse my reader, or pretending
chiefly to _that_, however much I may have sought, or _shall_ seek,
to interest him occasionally through his profounder affections, I enjoy
a privilege of neglecting harsher logic, and connecting the separate
sections of these sketches, not by ropes and cables, but by threads
of aerial gossamer.

This present chapter, it may seem, promises something of the same
episodical or parenthetic character. But in reality it does not. I am
now returning into the main current of my narrative, although I may
need to linger for a moment upon a past anecdote. I have mentioned
already, that, on inquiring at the Birmingham post office for a letter
addressed to myself, I found one directing me to join my sister Mary
at Laxton, a seat of Lord Carbery's in Northamptonshire, and giving
me to understand, that, during my residence at this place, some fixed
resolution would be taken and announced to me in regard to the future
disposal of my time, during the two or three years before I should be
old enough on the English system for matriculating at Oxford or
Cambridge. In the poor countries of Europe, where they cannot afford
double sets of scholastic establishments,--having, therefore, no
splendid schools, such as are, in fact, peculiar to England,--they are
compelled to throw the duties of such schools upon their universities;
and consequently you see boys of thirteen and fourteen, or even younger,
crowding such institutions, which, in fact, they ruin for all higher
functions. But England, whose regal establishments of both classes
emancipate her from this dependency, sends her young men to college
not until they have ceased to be boys--not earlier, therefore, than
eighteen.

But when, by what test, by what indication, does manhood commence?
Physically by one criterion, legally by another, morally by a third,
intellectually by a fourth--and all indefinite. Equator, absolute
equator, there is none. Between the two spheres of youth and age,
perfect and imperfect manhood, as in all analogous cases, there is no
strict line of bisection. The change is a large process, accomplished
within a large and corresponding space; having, perhaps, some central
or equatorial line, but lying, like that of our earth, between certain
tropics, or limits widely separated. This _intertropical_ region may,
and generally does, cover a number of years; and, therefore, it is
hard to say, even for an assigned case, by any tolerable approximation,
at what precise era it would be reasonable to describe the individual
as having ceased to be a boy, and as having attained his inauguration
as a man. Physically, we know that there is a very large latitude of
differences, in the periods of human maturity, not merely between
individual and individual, but also between nation and nation;
differences so great, that, in some southern regions of Asia, we hear
of matrons at the age of twelve. And though, as Mr. Sadler rightly
insists, a romance of exaggeration has been built upon the facts,
enough remains behind of real marvel to irritate the curiosity of the
physiologist as to its efficient, and, perhaps, of the philosopher as
to its final cause. Legally and politically, that is, conventionally,
the differences are even greater on a comparison of nations and eras.
In England we have seen senators of mark and authority, nay, even a
prime minister, the haughtiest, [1] the most despotic, and the most
irresponsible of his times, at an age which, in many states, both
ancient and modern, would have operated as a ground of absolute
challenge to the candidate for offices the meanest. Intellectually
speaking, again, a very large proportion of men _never_ attain maturity.
Nonage is their final destiny; and manhood, in this respect, is for
them a pure idea. Finally, as regards the moral development,--by which
I mean the whole system and economy of their love and hatred, of their
admirations and contempts, the total organization of their pleasures
and their pains,--hardly any of our species ever attain manhood. It
would be unphilosophic to say that intellects of the _highest_ order
were, or could be, developed fully without a corresponding development
of the whole nature. But of such intellects there do not appear above
two or three in a thousand years. It is a fact, forced upon one by the
whole experience of life, that almost all men are children, more or
less, in their tastes and admirations. Were it not for man's latent
tendencies,--were it not for that imperishable grandeur which exists
by way of germ and ultimate possibility in his nature, hidden though
it is, and often all but effaced,--how unlimited would be the contempt
amongst all the wise for his species! and misanthropy would, but for
the angelic ideal buried and imbruted in man's sordid race, become
amongst the noble fixed, absolute, and deliberately cherished.

But, to resume my question, how, under so variable a standard, both
natural and conventional, of every thing almost that can be received
for a test or a presumption of manhood, shall we seize upon any
characteristic feature, sufficiently universal to serve a _practical_
use, as a criterion of the transition from the childish mind to the
dignity (relative dignity at least) of that mind which belongs to
conscious maturity? One such criterion, and one only, as I believe,
there is--all others are variable and uncertain. It lies in the
reverential feeling, sometimes suddenly developed, towards woman, and
the idea of woman. From that moment when women cease to be regarded
with carelessness, and when the ideal of womanhood, in its total pomp
of loveliness and purity, dawns like some vast aurora upon the mind,
boyhood has ended; childish thoughts and inclinations have passed away
forever; and the gravity of manhood, with the self-respecting views
of manhood, have commenced.

"Mentemque priorem
Expulit, atque hominem toto sibi cedere jussit
Pectore."--_Lucan_.

These feelings, no doubt, depend for their development in part upon
physical causes; but they are also determined by the many retarding or
accelerating forces enveloped in circumstances of position, and sometimes
in pure accident. For myself, I remember most distinctly the very day--
the scene and its accidents--when that mysterious awe fell upon me which
belongs to woman in her ideal portrait; and from that hour a profounder
gravity colored all my thoughts, and a "beauty still more beauteous" was
lit up for me in this agitating world. Lord Westport and myself had been
on a visit to a noble family about fifty miles from Dublin; and we were
returning from Tullamore by a public passage boat, on the splendid canal
which connects that place with the metropolis. To avoid attracting an
unpleasant attention to ourselves in public situations, I observed a rule
of never addressing Lord Westport by his title: but it so happened that
the canal carried us along the margin of an estate belonging to the Earl
(now Marquis) of Westmeath; and, on turning an angle, we came suddenly in
view of this nobleman taking his morning lounge in the sun. Somewhat
loftily he reconnoitred the miscellaneous party of clean and unclean
beasts, crowded on the deck of our ark, ourselves amongst the number,
whom he challenged gayly as young acquaintances from Dublin; and my
friend he saluted more than once as "My lord." This accident made known
to the assembled mob of our fellow-travellers Lord Westport's rank, and
led to a scene rather too broadly exposing the spirit of this world.
Herded together on the deck (or roof of that den denominated the "_state_
cabin") stood a party of young ladies, headed by their governess. In the
cabin below was mamma, who as yet had not condescended to illuminate our
circle, for she was an awful personage--a wit, a bluestocking, (I call
her by the name then current,) and a leader of _ton_ in Dublin and
Belfast. The fact, however, that a young lord, and one of great
expectations, was on board, brought her up. A short cross examination of
Lord Westport's French valet had confirmed the flying report, and at the
same time (I suppose) put her in possession of my defect in all those
advantages of title, fortune, and expectation which so brilliantly
distinguished my friend. Her admiration of him, and her contempt for
myself, were equally undisguised. And in the ring which she soon cleared
out for public exhibition, she made us both fully sensible of the very
equitable stations which she assigned to us in her regard. She was
neither very brilliant, nor altogether a pretender, but might be
described as a showy woman, of slight but popular accomplishments. Any
woman, however has the advantage of possessing the ear of any company;
and a woman of forty, with such tact and experience as she will naturally
have gathered in a talking practice of such duration, can find little
difficulty in mortifying a boy, or sometimes, perhaps, in tempting him to
unfortunate sallies of irritation. Me it was clear that she viewed in the
light of a humble friend, or what is known in fashionable life by the
humiliating name of a "toad-eater." Lord Westport, full of generosity in
what regarded his own pretensions, and who never had violated the perfect
equality which reigned in our deportment to each other, colored with as
much confusion as myself at her coarse insinuations. And, in reality, our
ages scarcely allowed of that relation which she supposed to exist
between us. Possibly she did _not_ suppose it; but it is essential to the
wit and the display of some people that it should have a foundation in
malice. A victim and a sacrifice are indispensable conditions in every
exhibition. In such a case, my natural sense of justice would generally
have armed me a hundred fold for retaliation; but at present, chiefly,
perhaps, because I had no effectual ally, and could count upon no
sympathy in my audience, I was mortified beyond the power of retort, and
became a passive butt to the lady's stinging contumely and the arrowy
sleet of her gay rhetoric. The narrow bounds of our deck made it not easy
to get beyond talking range; and thus it happened, that for two hours I
stood the worst of this bright lady's feud. At length the tables turned.
Two ladies appeared slowly ascending from the cabin, both in deepest
mourning, but else as different in aspect as summer and winter. The elder
was the Countess of Errol, then mourning an affliction which had laid her
life desolate, and admitted of no human consolation. Heavier grief--grief
more self-occupied and deaf to all voice of sympathy--I have not happened
to witness. She seemed scarcely aware of our presence, except it were by
placing herself as far as was possible from the annoyance of our odious
conversation. The circumstances of her loss are now forgotten; at that
time they were known to a large circle in Bath and London, and I violate
no confidence in reviewing them. Lord Errol had been privately intrusted
by Mr. Pitt with an official secret, viz., the outline and principal
details of a foreign expedition; in which, according to Mr. Pitt's
original purpose, his lordship was to have held a high command. In a
moment of intoxication, the earl confided this secret to some false
friend, who published the communication and its author. Upon this, the
unhappy nobleman, under too keen a sense of wounded honor, and perhaps
with an exaggerated notion of the evils attached to his indiscretion,
destroyed himself. Months had passed since that calamity when we met his
widow; but time appeared to have done nothing in mitigating her sorrow.
The younger lady, on the other hand, who was Lady Errol's sister,--
Heavens! what a spirit of joy and festal pleasure radiated from her eyes,
her step, her voice, her manner! She was Irish, and the very
impersonation of innocent gayety, such as we find oftener, perhaps,
amongst Irish women than those of any other country. Mourning, I have
said, she wore; from sisterly consideration, the deepest mourning; that
sole expression there was about her of gloom or solemn feeling,--

"But all things else about her drawn
From May time and the cheerful dawn."

Odious bluestocking [2] of Belfast and Dublin! as some would call you,
how I hated you up to that moment! half an hour after, how grateful I
felt for the hostility which had procured me such an alliance! One minute
sufficed to put the quick-witted young Irish woman in possession of our
little drama and the several parts we were playing. To look was to
understand, to wish was to execute, with this ardent child of nature.
Like Spenser's Bradamant, with martial scorn she couched her lance on the
side of the party suffering wrong. Her rank, as sister-in-law to the
constable of Scotland, gave her some advantage for winning a favorable
audience; and throwing her aegis over me, she extended that benefit to
myself. Road was now made perforce for me also; my replies were no longer
stifled in noise and laughter. Personalities were banished; literature
was extensively discussed; and that is a subject which, offering little
room to argument, offers the widest to eloquent display. I had immense
reading; vast command of words, which somewhat diminished as ideas and
doubts multiplied; and, speaking no longer to a deaf audience, but to a
generous and indulgent protectress, I threw out, as from a cornucopia, my
illustrative details and recollections; trivial enough, perhaps, as I
might now think, but the more intelligible to my present circle. It might
seem too much the case of a storm in a slop basin, if I were to spend any
words upon the revolution which ensued. Suffice it, that I remained the
lion of that company which had previously been most insultingly facetious
at my expense; and the intellectual lady finally declared the air of the
deck unpleasant.

Never, until this hour, had I thought of women as objects of a possible
interest or of a reverential love. I had known them either in their
infirmities and their unamiable aspects, or else in those sterner
relations which made them objects of ungenial and uncompanionable
feelings. Now first it struck me that life might owe half its
attractions and all its graces to female companionship. Gazing, perhaps,
with too earnest an admiration at this generous and spirited young
daughter of Ireland, and in that way making her those acknowledgments
for her goodness which I could not properly clothe in words, I was
aroused to a sense of my indecorum by seeing her suddenly blush. I
believe that Miss Bl---- interpreted my admiration rightly; for she
was not offended, but, on the contrary, for the rest of the day, when
not attending to her sister, conversed almost exclusively, and in a
confidential way, with Lord Westport and myself. The whole, in fact,
of this conversation must have convinced her that I, mere boy as I
was, (viz., about fifteen,) could not have presumed to direct my
admiration to _her_, a fine young woman of twenty, in any other
character than that of a generous champion, and a very adroit mistress
in the dazzling fence of colloquial skirmish. My admiration had, in
reality, been addressed to her moral qualities, her enthusiasm, her
spirit, and her generosity. Yet that blush, evanescent as it was,--the
mere possibility that I, so very a child, should have called up the
most transitory sense of bashfulness or confusion upon any female
cheek, first,--and suddenly, as with a flash of lightning, penetrating
some utter darkness, illuminated to my own startled consciousness,
never again to be obscured, the pure and powerful ideal of womanhood
and womanly excellence. This was, in a proper sense, a _revelation_;
it fixed a great era of change in my life; and this new-born idea,
being agreeable to the uniform tendencies of my own nature,--that is,
lofty and aspiring,--it governed my life with great power, and with
most salutary effects. Ever after, throughout the period of youth, I
was jealous of my own demeanor, reserved and awe-struck, in the presence
of women; reverencing, often, not so much _them_ as my own ideal of
woman latent in them. For I carried about with me the idea, to which
often I seemed to see an approximation, of

"A perfect woman, nobly planned,
To warn, to comfort, to command."

And from this day I was an altered creature, never again relapsing
into the careless, irreflective mind of childhood.

At the same time I do not wish, in paying my homage to the other sex,
and in glorifying its possible power over ours, to be confounded with
those thoughtless and trivial rhetoricians who flatter woman with a
false lip worship; and, like Lord Byron's buccaneers, hold out to them
a picture of their own empire, built only upon sensual or upon shadowy
excellences. We find continually a false enthusiasm, a mere bacchanalian
inebriation, on behalf of woman, put forth by modern verse writers,
expressly at the expense of the other sex, as though woman could be
of porcelain, whilst man was of common earthern ware. Even the
testimonies of Ledyard and Park are partly false (though amiable)
tributes to female excellence; at least they are merely one-sided
truths--aspects of one phasis, and under a peculiar angle. For, though
the sexes differ characteristically, yet they never fail to reflect
each other; nor can they differ as to the general amount of development;
never yet was woman in one stage of elevation, and man (of the same
community) in another. Thou, therefore, daughter of God and man,
all-potent woman! reverence thy own ideal; and in the wildest of the
homage which is paid to thee, as also in the most real aspects of thy
wide dominion, read no trophy of idle vanity, but a silent indication
of the possible grandeur enshrined in thy nature; which realize to the
extent of thy power,--

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