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Autobiographic Sketches

T >> Thomas de Quincey >> Autobiographic Sketches




"And show us how divine a thing
A woman may become."

For what purpose have I repeated this story? The reader may, perhaps,
suppose it introductory to some tale of boyish romantic passion for
some female idol clothed with imaginary perfections. But in that case
he will be mistaken. Nothing of the kind was possible to me. I was
preoccupied by other passions. Under the disease--for disease it
was--which at that time mastered me, one solitary desire, one frenzy,
one demoniac fascination, stronger than the fascinations of calenture,
brooded over me as the moon over the tides--forcing me day and night
into speculations upon great intellectual problems, many times beyond
my strength, as indeed often beyond all human strength, but not the
less provoking me to pursue them. As a prophet in days of old had no
power to resist the voice which, from hidden worlds, called him to a
mission, sometimes, perhaps, revolting to his human sensibilities, as
he must deliver, was under a coercion to deliver the burning word that
spoke within his heart,--or as a ship on the Indian Ocean cannot seek
rest by anchoring, but _must_ run before the wrath of the monsoon,--such
in its fury, such in its unrelentingness, was the persecution that
overmastered me. School tasks under these circumstances, it may well
be supposed, had become a torment to me. For a long time they had lost
even that slight power of stimulation which belongs to the irritation
of difficulty. Easy and simple they had now become as the elementary
lessons of childhood. Not that it is possible for Greek studies, if
pursued with unflinching sincerity, ever to fall so far into the rear
as a _palaestra_ for exercising both strength and skill; but, in a
school where the exercises are pursued, in common by large classes,
the burden must be adapted to the powers of the weakest, and not of
the strongest. And, apart from that objection, at this period, the
hasty unfolding of far different intellectual interests than such as
belong to mere literature had, for a time, dimmed in my eyes the lustre
of classical studies, pursued at whatsoever depth and on whatsoever
scale. For more than a year, every thing connected with schools and
the business of schools had been growing more and more hateful to me.
At first, however, my disgust had been merely the disgust of weariness
and pride. But now, at this crisis, (for crisis it was virtually to
me,) when a premature development of my whole mind was rushing in like
a cataract, forcing channels for itself and for the new tastes which
it introduced, my disgust was no longer simply intellectual, but had
deepened into a _moral_ sense as of some inner dignity continually
violated. Once the petty round of school tasks had been felt as a
molestation; but now, at last, as a degradation. Constant conversation
with grown-up men for the last half year, and upon topics oftentimes
of the gravest order,--the responsibility that had always in some
slight degree settled upon myself since I had become the eldest
surviving son of my family, but of late much more so when circumstances
had thrown me as an English stranger upon the society of distinguished
Irishmen,--more, however, than all beside, the inevitable rebound and
counter-growth of internal dignity from the everlasting commerce with
lofty speculations, these agencies in constant operation had imbittered
my school disgust, until it was travelling fast into a mania. Precisely
at this culminating point of my self-conflict did that scene occur
which I have described with Miss Bl----. In that hour another element,
which assuredly was not wanted, fell into the seething caldron of
new-born impulses, that, like the magic caldron of Medea, was now
transforming me into a new creature. Then first and suddenly I brought
powerfully before myself the change which was worked in the aspects
of society by the presence of woman--woman, pure, thoughtful, noble,
coming before me as a Pandora crowned with perfections. Right over
against this ennobling spectacle, with equal suddenness, I placed the
odious spectacle of schoolboy society--no matter in what region of the
earth; schoolboy society, so frivolous in the matter of its disputes,
often so brutal in the manner; so foolishly careless, and yet so
revoltingly selfish; dedicated ostensibly to learning, and yet beyond
any section of human beings so conspicuously ignorant. Was it indeed
_that_ heavenly which I was soon to exchange for _this_ earthly? It
seemed to me, when contemplating the possibility that I could yet have
nearly three years to pass in such society as this, that I heard some
irresistible voice saying, Lay aside thy fleshly robes of humanity,
and enter for a season into some brutal incarnation. But what
connection had this painful prospect with Laxton? Why should it press
upon my anxieties in approaching that mansion, more than it had done
at Westport? Naturally enough, in part, because every day brought me
nearer to the horror from which I recoiled: my return to England would
recall the attention of my guardians to the question, which as yet had
slumbered; and the knowledge that I had reached Northamptonshire would
precipitate their decision. Obscurely, besides, through a hint which
had reached me, I guessed what this decision was likely to be, and it
took the very worst shape it could have taken. All this increased my
agitation from hour to hour. But all this was quickened and barbed by
the certainty of so immediately meeting Lady Carbery. To her it was,
and to her only, that I could look for any useful advice or any
effectual aid. She over my mother, as in turn my mother over _her_,
exercised considerable influence; whilst my mother's power was very
seldom disturbed by the other guardians. The mistress of Laxton it
was, therefore, whose opinion upon the case would virtually be decisive;
since, if _she_ saw no reasonable encouragement to any contest with
my guardians, I felt too surely that my own uncountenanced and unaided
energies drooped too much for such an effort. Who Lady Carbery was,
I will explain in my next chapter, entitled _Laxton_. Meantime, to me,
individually, she was the one sole friend that ever I could regard as
entirely fulfilling the offices of an honorable friendship. She had
known me from infancy: when I was in my first year of life, she, an
orphan and a great heiress, was in her tenth or eleventh; and on her
occasional visits to "the Farm," (a rustic old house then occupied by
my father,) I, a household pet, suffering under an ague, which lasted
from my first year to my third, naturally fell into her hands as a
sort of superior toy, a toy that could breathe and talk. Every year
our intimacy had been renewed, until her marriage interrupted it. But,
after no very long interval, when my mother had transferred her
household to Bath, in that city we frequently met again; Lord Carbery
liking Bath for itself, as well as for its easy connection with London,
whilst Lady Carbery's health was supposed to benefit by the waters.
Her understanding was justly reputed a fine one; but, in general, it
was calculated to win respect rather than love, for it was masculine
and austere, with very little toleration for sentiment or romance. But
to myself she had always been indulgently kind; I was protected in her
regard, beyond any body's power to dislodge me, by her childish
remembrances; and of late years she had begun to entertain the highest
opinion of my intellectual promises. Whatever could be done to assist
my views, I most certainly might count upon her doing; that is to say,
within the limits of her conscientious judgment upon the propriety of
my own plans. Having, besides, so much more knowledge of the world
than myself, she might see cause to dissent widely from my own view
of what was expedient as well as what was right; in which case I was
well assured that, in the midst of kindness and unaffected sympathy,
she would firmly adhere to the views of my guardians. In any
circumstances she would have done so. But at present a new element had
begun to mix with the ordinary influences which governed her estimates
of things: she had, as I knew from my sister's report, become religious;
and her new opinions were of a gloomy cast, Calvinistic, in fact, and
tending to what is _now_ technically known in England as "Low Church,"
or "Evangelical Christianity." These views, being adopted in a great
measure from my mother, were naturally the same as my mother's; so
that I could form some guess as to the general spirit, if not the exact
direction, in which her counsels would flow. It is singular that,
until this time, I had never regarded Lady Carbery under any relation
whatever to female intellectual society. My early childish knowledge
of her had shut out that mode of viewing her. But now, suddenly, under
the new-born sympathies awakened by the scene with Miss Bl----, I
became aware of the distinguished place she was qualified to fill in
such society. In that Eden--for such it had now consciously become to
me--I had no necessity to cultivate an interest or solicit an admission;
already, through Lady Carbery's too flattering estimate of my own
pretensions, and through old, childish memories, I held the most
distinguished place. This Eden, she it was that lighted up suddenly
to my new-born powers of appreciation in all its dreadful points of
contrast with the killing society of schoolboys. She it was, fitted
to be the glory of such an Eden, who probably would assist in banishing
me for the present to the wilderness outside. My distress of mind was
inexpressible. And, in the midst of glittering saloons, at times also
in the midst of society the most fascinating, I--contemplating the
idea of that gloomy academic dungeon to which for three long years I
anticipated too certainly a sentence of exile--felt very much as in
the middle ages must have felt some victim of evil destiny, inheritor
of a false, fleeting prosperity, that suddenly, in a moment of time,
by signs blazing out past all concealment on his forehead, was detected
as a leper; and in that character, as a public nuisance and universal
horror, was summoned instantly to withdraw from society; prince or
peasant, was indulged with no time for preparation or evasion; and,
from the midst of any society, the sweetest or the most dazzling, was
driven violently to take up his abode amid the sorrow-haunted chambers
of a lazar house.


FOOTNOTES

[1] "_The haughtiest_."--Which, however, is very doubtful. Such,
certainly, was the popular impression. But people who knew Mr. Pitt
intimately have always ascribed to him a nature the most amiable and
social, under an unfortunate reserve of manner. Whilst, on the contrary,
Mr. Fox, ultra democratic in his principles and frank in his address, was
repulsively aristocratic in his temper and sympathies.

[2] I have sometimes had occasion to remark, as a noticeable phenomenon
of our present times, that the order of ladies called _bluestockings,_ by
way of reproach, has become totally extinct amongst us, except only here
and there with superannuated clingers to obsolete remembrances. The
reason of this change is interesting; and I do not scruple to call it
honorable to our intellectual progress. In the last (but still more in
the penultimate) generation, any tincture of literature, of liberal
curiosity about science, or of ennobling interest in books, carried with
it an air of something unsexual, mannish, and (as it was treated by the
sycophantish satirists that for ever humor the prevailing folly) of
something ludicrous. This mode of treatment was possible so long as the
literary class of ladies formed a feeble minority. But now, when two vast
peoples, English and American, counting between them forty-nine millions,
when the leaders of transcendent civilization (to say nothing of Germany
and France) behold their entire educated class, male and female alike,
calling out, not for _Panem et circenses_, (Give us this day our daily
bread and our games of the circus,) but for _Panem et literas_, (Give us
this day our daily bread and literature,) the universality of the call
has swept away the very name of _bluestocking_; the very possibility of
the ridicule has been undermined by stern realities; and the verbal
expression of the reproach is fast becoming, not simply obsolete, but
even unintelligible to our juniors. By the way, the origin of this term
_bluestocking_ has never been satisfactorily accounted for, unless the
reader should incline to think _my_ account satisfactory. I incline to
that opinion myself. Dr. Bisset (in his Life of Burke) traces it idly to
a _sobriquet_ imposed by Mrs. Montagu, and the literary ladies of her
circle, upon a certain obscure Dr. Stillingfleet, who was the sole
masculine assistant at their literary sittings in Portman Square, and
chose, upon some inexplicable craze, to wear blue stockings. The
translation, however, of this name from the doctor's legs to the ladies'
legs is still unsolved. That great _hiatus _needs filling up. I,
therefore, whether erroneously or not, in reviewing a German historical
work of some pretensions, where this problem emerges, rejected the
Portman Square doctor altogether, and traced the term to an old Oxford
statute--one of the many which meddle with dress, and which charges it as
a point of conscience upon loyal scholastic students that they shall wear
cerulean socks. Such socks, therefore, indicated scholasticism: worn by
females, they would indicate a self-dedication to what for them would be
regarded as pedantic studies. But, says an objector, no rational _female_
would wear cerulean socks. Perhaps not, female taste being too good. But
as such socks would symbolize such a profession of pedantry, so,
inversely, any profession of pedantry, by whatever signs expressed, would
be symbolized reproachfully by the imputation of wearing cerulean socks.
It classed a woman, in effect, as a scholastic pedant. Now, however, when
the vast diffusion of literature as a sort of daily bread has made all
ridicule of female literary culture not less ridiculous than would be the
attempt to ridicule that same daily bread, the whole phenomenon, thing
and word, substance and shadow, is melting away from amongst us.
Something of the same kind has happened in the history of silver forks.
Forks of any kind, as is well known, were first introduced into Italy;
thence by a fantastic (but, in this instance, judicious) English
traveller _immediately _(and not _mediately through France_) were
introduced into England. This elegant revolution occurred about 240 years
ago; and never since that day have there been wanting English protesters
against the infamy of eating without forks; and for the last 160 years,
at least, against the paganism of using _steel _forks; or, 2dly, two-
pronged forks; or, 3dly, of putting the knife into the mouth. At least
120 years ago, the Duchess of Queensberry, (Gay's duchess,) that leonine
woman, used to shriek out, on seeing a hyperborean squire conveying peas
to his abominable mouth on the point of a knife. "O, stop him, stop him!
that man's going to commit suicide." This anecdote argues silver forks as
existing much more than a century back, else the squire had a good
defence. Since then, in fact, about the time of the French revolution,
silver forks have been recognized as not less indispensable appendages to
any elegant dinner table than silver spoons; and, along with silver
forks, came in the explosion of that anti-Queensberry brutalism which
forks first superseded--viz., the fiendish practice of introducing the
knife between the lips. But, in defiance of all these facts, certain
select hacks of the daily press, who never had an opportunity of seeing a
civilized dinner, and fancying that their own obscene modes of feeding
prevailed every where, got up the name of the _Silver-fork_ School,
(which should have indicated the school of decency,) as representing some
ideal school of fantastic or ultra refinement. At length, however, when
cheap counterfeits of silver have made the decent four-pronged fork
cheaper than the two-pronged steel barbarism, what has followed? Why,
this--that the universality of the diffusion has made it hopeless any
longer to banter it. There is, therefore, this strict analogy between
"the silver fork" reproach and "the bluestocking" reproach--that in both
cases alike a recognition, gradually becoming universal, of the thing
itself, as a social necessity, has put down forever all idle attempts to
throw ridicule upon it--upon literature, in the one case, as a most
appropriate female ornament; and upon silver forks, on the other, as an
element of social decorum.

* * * * *

The author has exerted himself every where to keep the text accurate;
and he is disposed to believe that his own care, combined with the
general accuracy of the press, must have enabled him to succeed in
that object. But if it should appear that any errors have after all
escaped him, he must request his readers to excuse them, after
explaining that he suffers under the oppression of a nervous
distraction, which renders all labors exacting any energy of attention
inexpressibly painful.

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