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Autobiographic Sketches

T >> Thomas de Quincey >> Autobiographic Sketches




This hypothesis, however, like a thousand others, when it happened
that they engaged no durable sympathy from his nursery audience, he
did not pursue. For some time he turned his thoughts to philosophy,
and read lectures to us every night upon some branch or other of
physics. This undertaking arose upon some one of us envying or admiring
flies for their power of walking upon the ceiling. "Poh!" he said,
"they are impostors; they pretend to do it, but they can't do it as
it ought to be done. Ah! you should see _me_ standing upright on the
ceiling, with my head downwards, for half an hour together, and
meditating profoundly." My sister Mary remarked, that we should all
be very glad to see him in that position. "If that's the case," he
replied, "it's very well that all is ready, except as to a strap or
two." Being an excellent skater, he had first imagined that, if held
up until he had started, he might then, by taking a bold sweep ahead,
keep himself in position through the continued impetus of skating. But
this he found not to answer; because, as he observed, "the friction
was too retarding from the plaster of Paris, but the case would be
very different if the ceiling were coated with ice." As it was _not_,
he changed his plan. The true secret, he now discovered, was this: he
would consider himself in the light of a humming top; he would make
an apparatus (and he made it) for having himself launched, like a top,
upon the ceiling, and regularly spun. Then the vertiginous motion of
the human top would overpower the force of gravitation. He should, of
course, spin upon his own axis, and sleep upon his own axis--perhaps
he might even dream upon it; and he laughed at "those scoundrels, the
flies," that never improved in their pretended art, nor made any thing
of it. The principle was now discovered; "and, of course," he said,
if a man can keep it up for five minutes, what's to hinder him from
doing so for five months?" "Certainly, nothing that I can think of,"
was the reply of my sister, whose scepticism, in fact, had not settled
upon the five months, but altogether upon the five minutes. The
apparatus for spinning him, however, perhaps from its complexity, would
not work--a fact evidently owing to the stupidity of the gardener. On
reconsidering the subject, he announced, to the disappointment of some
amongst us, that, although the physical discovery was now complete,
he saw a moral difficulty. It was not a _humming_ top that was required,
but a peg top. Now, this, in order to keep up the _vertigo_ at full
stretch, without which, to a certainty, gravitation would prove too
much for him, needed to be whipped incessantly. But that was precisely
what a gentleman ought not to tolerate: to be scourged unintermittingly
on the legs by any grub of a gardener, unless it were father Adam
himself, was a thing that he could not bring his mind to face. However,
as some compensation, he proposed to improve the art of flying, which
was, as every body must acknowledge, in a condition disgraceful to
civilized society. As he had made many a fire balloon, and had succeeded
in some attempts at bringing down cats by _parachutes_, it was not
very difficult to fly downwards from moderate elevations. But, as he
was reproached by my sister for never flying back again,--which,
however, was a far different thing, and not even attempted by the
philosopher in "Rasselas,"--(for

"Revocare gradum, et _superas_ evadere ad auras
Hic labor, hoc opus est,")

he refused, under such poor encouragement, to try his winged parachutes
any more, either "aloft or alow," till he had thoroughly studied Bishop
Wilkins [3] on the art of translating right reverend gentlemen to the
moon; and, in the mean time, he resumed his general lectures on physics.
From these, however, he was speedily driven, or one might say shelled
out, by a concerted assault of my sister Mary's. He had been in the habit
of lowering the pitch of his lectures with ostentatious condescension to
the presumed level of our poor understandings. This superciliousness
annoyed my sister; and accordingly, with the help of two young female
visitors, and my next younger brother,--in subsequent times a little
middy on board many a ship of H. M., and the most predestined rebel upon
earth against all assumptions, small or great, of superiority,--she
arranged a mutiny, that had the unexpected effect of suddenly
extinguishing the lectures forever. He had happened to say, what was no
unusual thing with him, that he flattered himself he had made the point
under discussion tolerably clear; "clear," he added, bowing round the
half circle of us, the audience, "to the meanest of capacities;" and then
he repeated, sonorously, "clear to the most excruciatingly mean of
capacities." Upon which, a voice, a female voice,--but whose voice, in
the tumult that followed, I did not distinguish,--retorted, "No, you
haven't; it's as dark as sin; "and then, without a moment's interval, a
second voice exclaimed, "Dark as night;" then came my young brother's
insurrectionary yell, "Dark as midnight;" then another female voice
chimed in melodiously, "Dark as pitch;" and so the peal continued to come
round like a catch, the whole being so well concerted, and the rolling
fire so well sustained, that it was impossible to make head against it;
whilst the abruptness of the interruption gave to it the protecting
character of an oral "round robin," it being impossible to challenge any
one in particular as the ringleader. Burke's phrase of "the swinish
multitude," applied to mobs, was then in every body's mouth; and,
accordingly, after my brother had recovered from his first astonishment
at this audacious mutiny, he made us several sweeping bows that looked
very much like tentative rehearsals of a sweeping _fusillade_, and then
addressed us in a very brief speech, of which we could distinguish the
words _pearls_ and _swinish multitude_, but uttered in a very low key,
perhaps out of some lurking consideration for the two young strangers. We
all laughed in chorus at this parting salute; my brother himself
condescended at last to join us; but there ended the course of lectures
on natural philosophy.

As it was impossible, however, that he should remain quiet, he announced
to us, that for the rest of his life he meant to dedicate himself to
the intense cultivation of the tragic drama. He got to work instantly;
and very soon he had composed the first act of his "Sultan Selim;"
but, in defiance of the metre, he soon changed the title to "Sultan
Amurath," considering _that_ a much fiercer name, more bewhiskered and
beturbaned. It was no part of his intention that we should sit lolling
on chairs like ladies and gentleman that had paid opera prices for
private boxes. He expected every one of us, he said, to pull an oar.
We were to _act_ the tragedy. But, in fact, we had many oars to pull.
There were so many characters, that each of us took four at the least,
and the future middy had six. He, this wicked little middy, [4] caused
the greatest affliction to Sultan Amurath, forcing him to order the
amputation of his head six several times (that is, once in every one of
his six parts) during the first act. In reality, the sultan, though
otherwise a decent man, was too bloody. What by the bowstring, and what
by the cimeter, he had so thinned the population with which he commenced
business, that scarcely any of the characters remained alive at the
end of act the first. Sultan Amurath found himself in an awkward
situation. Large arrears of work remained, and hardly any body to do
it but the sultan himself. In composing act the second, the author had
to proceed like Deucalion and Pyrrha, and to create an entirely new
generation. Apparently this young generation, that ought to have been
so good, took no warning by what had happened to their ancestors in
act the first: one must conclude that they were quite as wicked, since
the poor sultan had found himself reduced to order them all for
execution in the course of this act the second. To the brazen age had
succeeded an iron age; and the prospects were becoming sadder and
sadder as the tragedy advanced. But here the author began to hesitate.
He felt it hard to resist the instinct of carnage. And was it right
to do so? Which of the felons whom he had cut of prematurely could
pretend that a court of appeal would have reversed his sentence? But
the consequences were distressing. A new set of characters in every
act brought with it the necessity of a new plot; for people could not
succeed to the arrears of old actions, or inherit ancient motives,
like a landed estate. Five crops, in fact, must be taken off the ground
in each separate tragedy, amounting, in short, to five tragedies
involved in one.

Such, according to the rapid sketch which at this moment my memory
furnishes, was the brother who now first laid open to me the gates of
war. The occasion was this. He had resented, with a shower of stones, an
affront offered to us by an individual boy, belonging to a cotton
factory: for more than two years afterwards this became the _teterrima
causa_ of a skirmish or a battle as often as we passed the factory; and,
unfortunately, _that_ was twice a day on every day except Sunday. Our
situation in respect to the enemy was as follows: Greenhay, a country
house newly built by my father, at that time was a clear mile from the
outskirts of Manchester; but in after years Manchester, throwing out the
_tentacula_ of its vast expansions, absolutely enveloped Greenhay; and,
for any thing I know, the grounds and gardens which then insulated the
house may have long disappeared. Being a modest mansion, which (including
hot walls, offices, and gardener's house) had cost only six thousand
pounds, I do not know how it should have risen to the distinction of
giving name to a region of that great town; however, it _has_ done so;
[5] and at this time, therefore, after changes so great, it will be
difficult for the _habitué_ of that region to understand how my brother
and myself could have a solitary road to traverse between Greenhay and
Princess Street, then the termination, on that side, of Manchester. But
so it was. Oxford _Street_, like its namesake in London, was then called
the Oxford _Road_; and during the currency of our acquaintance with it,
arose the first three houses in its neighborhood; of which the third was
built for the Rev. S. H., one of our guardians, for whom his friends had
also built the Church of St. Peter's--not a bowshot from the house. At
present, however, he resided in Salford, nearly two miles from Greenhay;
and to him we went over daily, for the benefit of his classical
instructions. One sole cotton factory had then risen along the line of
Oxford Street; and this was close to a bridge, which also was a new
creation; for previously all passengers to Manchester went round by
Garrat. This factory became to us the _officina gentium_, from which
swarmed forth those Goths and Vandals that continually threatened our
steps; and this bridge became the eternal arena of combat, we taking good
care to be on the right side of the bridge for retreat, _i.e._, on the
town side, or the country side, accordingly as we were going out in the
morning, or returning in the afternoon. Stones were the implements of
warfare; and by continual practice both parties became expert in throwing
them.

The origin of the feud it is scarcely requisite to rehearse, since the
particular accident which began it was not the true efficient cause
of our long warfare, but simply the casual occasion. The cause lay in
our aristocratic dress. As children of an opulent family, where all
provisions were liberal, and all appointments elegant, we were uniformly
well dressed; and, in particular, we wore troussers, (at that time
unheard of, except among sailors,) and we also wore Hessian boots--a
crime that could not be forgiven in the Lancashire of that day, because
it expressed the double offence of being aristocratic and being
outlandish. We were aristocrats, and it was vain to deny it; could
we deny our boots? whilst our antagonists, if not absolutely _sans
culottes_, were slovenly and forlorn in their dress, often unwashed,
with hair totally neglected, and always covered with flakes of cotton.
Jacobins they were not, as regarded any sympathy with the Jacobinism
that then desolated France; for, on the contrary, they detested every
thing French, and answered with brotherly signals to the cry of "Church
and king," or "King and constitution." But, for all that, as they were
perfectly independent, getting very high wages, and these wages in a
mode of industry that was then taking vast strides ahead, they contrived
to reconcile this patriotic anti-Jacobinism with a personal Jacobinism
of that sort which is native to the heart of man, who is by natural
impulse (and not without a root of nobility, though also of base envy)
impatient of inequality, and submits to it only through a sense of
its necessity, or under a long experience of its benefits.

It was on an early day of our new _tyrocinium_, or perhaps on the very
first, that, as we passed the bridge, a boy happening to issue from
the factory [6] sang out to us derisively, "Hollo, bucks!" In this the
reader may fail to perceive any atrocious insult commensurate to the long
war which followed. But the reader is wrong. The word "_dandies_" [7]
which was what the villain meant, had not then been born, so that he
could not have called us by that name, unless through the spirit of
prophecy. _Buck_ was the nearest word at hand in his Manchester
vocabulary: he gave all he could, and let us dream the rest. But in the
next moment he discovered our boots, and he consummated his crime by
saluting us as "Boots! boots!" My brother made a dead stop, surveyed him
with intense disdain, and bade him draw near, that he might "give his
flesh to the fowls of the air." The boy declined to accept this
liberal invitation, and conveyed his answer by a most contemptuous and
plebian gesture, [8] upon which my brother drove him in with a shower
of stones.

During this inaugural flourish of hostilities, I, for my part, remained
inactive, and therefore apparently neutral. But this was the last time
that I did so: for the moment, indeed, I was taken by surprise. To be
called a _buck_ by one that had it in his choice to have called me a
coward, a thief, or a murderer, struck me as a most pardonable offence;
and as to _boots_, that rested upon a flagrant fact that could not be
denied; so that at first I was green enough to regard the boy as very
considerate and indulgent. But my brother soon rectified my views; or,
if any doubts remained, he impressed me, at least, with a sense of my
paramount duty to himself, which was threefold. First, it seems that
I owed military allegiant to _him_, as my commander-in-chief, whenever
we "took the field;" secondly, by the law of nations, I, being a cadet
of my house, owed suit and service to him who was its head; and he
assured me, that twice in a year, on _my_ birthday and on _his_, he
had a right, strictly speaking, to make me lie down, and to set his
foot upon my neck; lastly, by a law not so rigorous, but valid amongst
gentlemen,--viz., "by the _comity_ of nations,"--it seems I owed eternal
deference to one so much older than myself, so much wiser, stronger,
braver, more beautiful, and more swift of foot. Something like all
this in tendency I had already believed, though I had not so minutely
investigated the modes and grounds of my duty. By temperament, and
through natural dedication to despondency, I felt resting upon me
always too deep and gloomy a sense of obscure duties attached to life,
that I never _should_ be able to fulfil; a burden which I could not
carry, and which yet I did not know how to throw off. Glad, therefore,
I was to find the whole tremendous weight of obligations--the law and
the prophets--all crowded into this one pocket command, "Thou shalt
obey thy brother as God's vicar upon earth." For now, if, by any future
stone levelled at him who had called me a "buck," I should chance to
draw blood, perhaps I might not have committed so serious a trespass
on any rights which he could plead; but if I _had_, (for on this subject
my convictions were still cloudy,) at any rate, the duty I might have
violated in regard to this general brother, in right of Adam, was
cancelled when it came into collision with my paramount duty to this
liege brother of my own individual house.

From this day, therefore, I obeyed all my brother's military commands
with the utmost docility; and happy it made me that every sort of
doubt, or question, or opening for demur was swallowed up in the unity
of this one papal principle, discovered by my brother, viz., that all
rights and duties of casuistry were transferred from me to himself.
_His_ was the judgment--_his_ was the responsibility; and to me belonged
only the sublime obligation of unconditional faith in _him_. That faith
I realized. It is true that he taxed me at times, in his reports of
particular fights, with "horrible cowardice," and even with "a cowardice
that seemed inexplicable, except on the supposition of treachery." But
this was only a _façon de parler_ with him: the idea of secret perfidy,
that was constantly moving under ground, gave an interest to the
progress of the war, which else tended to the monotonous. It was a
dramatic artifice for sustaining the interest, where the incidents
might happen to be too slightly diversified. But that he did not believe
his own charges was clear, because he never repeated them in his
"General History of the Campaigns," which was a _resumé_, or
recapitulating digest, of his daily reports.

We fought every day, and, generally speaking, _twice_ every day; and
the result was pretty uniform, viz., that my brother and I terminated
the battle by insisting upon our undoubted right to run away. _Magna
Charta_, I should fancy, secures that great right to every man; else,
surely, it is sadly defective. But out of this catastrophe to most of
our skirmishes, and to all our pitched battles except one, grew a
standing schism between my brother and myself. My unlimited obedience
had respect to action, but not to opinion. Loyalty to my brother did
not rest upon hypocrisy: because I was faithful, it did not follow
that I must be false in relation to his capricious opinions. And these
opinions sometimes took the shape of acts. Twice, at the least, in
every week, but sometimes every night, my brother insisted on singing
"Te Deum" for supposed victories which he had won; and he insisted
also on my bearing a part in these "Te Deums." Now, as I knew of no
such victories, but resolutely asserted the truth,--viz., that we ran
away,--a slight jar was thus given to the else triumphal effect of
these musical ovations. Once having uttered my protest, however,
willingly I gave my aid to the chanting; for I loved unspeakably the
grand and varied system of chanting in the Romish and English churches.
And, looking back at this day to the ineffable benefits which I derived
from the church of my childhood, I account among the very greatest
those which reached me through the various chants connected with the
"O, Jubilate," the "Magnificat," the "Te Deum," the "Benedicite," &c.
Through these chants it was that the sorrow which laid waste my infancy,
and the devotion which nature had made a necessity of my being, were
profoundly interfused: the sorrow gave reality and depth to the
devotion; the devotion gave grandeur and idealization to the sorrow.
Neither was my love for chanting altogether without knowledge. A son
of my reverend guardian, much older than myself, who possessed a
singular faculty of producing a sort of organ accompaniment with one
half of his mouth, whilst he sang with the other half, had given me
some instructions in the art of chanting; and, as to my brother, he,
the hundred-handed Briareus, could do all things; of course, therefore,
he could chant.

Once having begun, it followed naturally that the war should deepen
in bitterness. Wounds that wrote memorials in the flesh, insults that
rankled in the heart,--these were not features of the case likely to
be forgotten by our enemies, and far less by my fiery brother. I, for
my part, entered not into any of the passions that war may be supposed
to kindle, except only the chronic passion of anxiety. _Fear_ it was
not; for experience had taught me that, under the random firing of our
undisciplined enemies, the chances were not many of being wounded. But
the uncertainties of the war; the doubts in every separate action
whether I could keep up the requisite connection with my brother, and,
in case I could not, the utter darkness that surrounded my fate;
whether, as a trophy won from Israel, I should be dedicated to the
service of some Manchester Dagon, or pass through fire to Moloch,--all
these contingencies, for me that had no friend to consult, ran too
violently into the master current of my constitutional despondency
ever to give way under any casual elation of success. Success, however,
we really had at times; in slight skirmishes pretty often; and once,
at least, as the reader will find to his mortification, if he is wicked
enough to take the side of the Philistines, a most smashing victory
in a pitched battle. But even then, and whilst the hurrahs were yet
ascending from our jubilating lips, the freezing remembrance came back
to my heart of that deadly depression which, duly at the coming round
of the morning and evening watches, travelled with me like my shadow
on our approach to the memorable bridge. A bridge of sighs [9] too surely
it was for me; and even for my brother it formed an object of fierce yet
anxious jealousy, that he could not always disguise, as we first came in
sight of it; for, if it happened to be occupied in strength, there was an
end of all hope that we could attempt the passage; and _that_ was a
fortunate solution of the difficulty, as it imposed no evil beyond a
circuit; which, at least, was safe, if the world should choose to call it
inglorious. Even this shade of ignominy, however, my brother contrived
to color favorably, by calling us--that is, me and himself--"a corps
of observation;" and he condescendingly explained to me, that, although
making "a lateral movement," he had his eye upon the enemy, and "might
yet come round upon his left flank in a way that wouldn't, perhaps,
prove very agreeable." This, from the nature of the ground, never
happened. We crossed the river at Garrat, out of sight from the enemy's
position; and, on our return in the evening, when we reached that point
of our route from which the retreat was secure to Greenhay, we took
such revenge for the morning insult as might belong to extra liberality
in our stone donations. On this line of policy there was, therefore,
no cause for anxiety; but the common case was, that the numbers might
not be such as to justify this caution, and yet quite enough for
mischief. To my brother, however, stung and carried headlong into
hostility by the martial instincts of his nature, the uneasiness of
doubt or insecurity was swallowed up by his joy in the anticipation
of victory, or even of contest; whilst to myself, whose exultation was
purely official and ceremonial, as due by loyalty from a cadet to the
head of his house, no such compensation existed. The enemy was no enemy
in _my_ eyes; his affronts were but retaliations; and his insults
were so inapplicable to my unworthy self, being of a calibre exclusively
meant for the use of my brother, that from me they recoiled, one and
all, as cannon shot from cotton bags.

The ordinary course of our day's warfare was this: between nine and
ten in the morning occurred our first transit, and, consequently, our
earliest opportunity for doing business. But at this time the great
sublunary interest of breakfast, which swallowed up all nobler
considerations of glory and ambition, occupied the work people of the
factory, (or what in the pedantic diction of this day are termed the
"operatives,") so that very seldom any serious business was transacted.
Without any formal armistice, the paramount convenience of such an
arrangement silently secured its own recognition. Notice there needed
none of truce, when the one side yearned for breakfast, and the other
for a respite: the groups, therefore, on or about the bridge, if any
at all, were loose in their array, and careless. We passed through
them rapidly, and, on my part, uneasily; exchanging a few snarls,
perhaps, but seldom or ever snapping at each other. The tameness was
almost shocking of those who, in the afternoon, would inevitably resume
their natural characters of tiger cats and wolves. Sometimes, however,
my brother felt it to be a duty that we should fight in the morning;
particularly when any expression of public joy for a victory,--bells
ringing in the distance,--or when a royal birthday, or some traditional
commemoration of ancient feuds, (such as the 5th of November,) irritated
his martial propensities. Some of these being religious festivals,
seemed to require of us an _extra_ homage, for which we knew not how
to find any natural or significant expression, except through sharp
discharges of stones, that being a language older than Hebrew or
Sanscrit, and universally intelligible. But, excepting these high
days of religious solemnity, when a man is called upon to show that
he is not a pagan or a miscreant in the eldest of senses, by thumping,
or trying to thump, somebody who is accused or accusable of being
heterodox, the great ceremony of breakfast was allowed to sanctify the
hour. Some natural growls we uttered, but hushed them soon, regardless

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