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Autobiographic Sketches

T >> Thomas de Quincey >> Autobiographic Sketches




Such was the outline of their position; and, that being explained,
what I saw was simply this: it composed a silent and symbolic scene,
a momentary interlude in dumb show, which interpreted itself, and
settled forever in my recollection, as if it had prophesied and
interpreted the event which soon followed. They were resting from toil,
and both sitting down. This had lasted for perhaps ten or fifteen
minutes. Suddenly from below stairs the voice of angry summons rang
up to their ears. Both rose, in an instant, as if the echoing scourge
of some avenging Tisiphone were uplifted above their heads; both opened
their arms; flung them round each other's necks; and then, unclasping
them, parted to their separate labors. This was my last rememberable
interview with the two sisters; in a week both were corpses. They had
died, I believe, of scarlatina, and very nearly at the same moment.

* * * * *

But surely it was no matter for grief, that the two scrofulous idiots
were dead and buried. O, no! Call them idiots at your pleasure, serfs
or slaves, strulbrugs [19] or pariahs; _their_ case was certainly not
worsened by being booked for places in the grave. Idiocy, for any thing I
know, may, in that vast kingdom, enjoy a natural precedency; scrofula and
leprosy may have some mystic privilege in a coffin; and the pariahs
of the upper earth may form the aristocracy of the dead. That the
idiots, real or reputed, were at rest,--that their warfare was
accomplished,--might, if a man happened to know enough, be interpreted
as a glorious festival. The sisters were seen no more upon staircases
or in bed rooms, and deadly silence had succeeded to the sound of
continual uproars. Memorials of _them_ were none surviving on earth.
Not _they_ it was that furnished mementoes of themselves. The mother
it was, the father it was--that mother who by persecution had avenged
the wounds offered to her pride; that father, who had tolerated this
persecution; she it was, he it was, that by the altered glances of her
haunted eye, that by the altered character of his else stationary
habits, had revived for me a spectacle, once real, of visionary twin
sisters, moving forever up and down the stairs--sisters, patient,
humble, silent, that snatched convulsively at a loving smile, or loving
gesture, from a child, as at some message of remembrance from God,
whispering to them, "You are not forgotten"--sisters born apparently
for the single purpose of suffering, whose trials, it is true, were
over, and could not be repeated, but (alas for her who had been their
cause!) could not be recalled. Her face grew thin, her eye sunken and
hollow, after the death of her daughters; and, meeting her on the
staircase, I sometimes fancied that she did not see me so much as
something beyond me. Did any misfortune befall her after this double
funeral? Did the Nemesis that waits upon the sighs of children pursue
her steps? Not apparently: externally, things went well; her sons were
reasonably prosperous; her handsome daughter--for she had a more
youthful daughter, who really _was_ handsome--continued to improve in
personal attractions; and some years after, I have heard, she married
happily. But from herself, so long as I continued to know her, the
altered character of countenance did not depart, nor the gloomy eye,
that seemed to converse with secret and visionary objects.

This result from the irrevocable past was not altogether confined to
herself. It is one evil attached to chronic and domestic oppression,
that it draws into its vortex, as unwilling, or even as loathing,
coöperators, others who either see but partially the wrong they are
abetting, or, in cases where they do see it, are unable to make head
against it, through the inertia of their own nature, or through the
coercion of circumstances. Too clearly, by the restless irritation
of his manner for some time after the children's death, their father
testified, in a language not fully, perhaps, perceived by himself, or
meant to be understood by others, that to his inner conscience he also
was not clear of blame. Had he, then, in any degree sanctioned the
injustice which sometimes he must have witnessed? Far from it; he had
been roused from his habitual indolence into energetic expressions of
anger; he had put an end to the wrong, when it came openly before him.
I had myself heard him say on many occasions, with patriarchal fervor,
"Woman, they are your children, and God made them. Show mercy to _them_,
as you expect it for yourself." But he must have been aware, that, for
any three instances of tyrannical usage that fell under his notice,
at least five hundred would escape it. That was the sting of the
case--that was its poisonous aggravation. But with a nature that sought
for peace before all things, in this very worst of its aggravations
was found a morbid cure--the effectual temptation to wilful blindness
and forgetfulness. The sting became the palliation of the wrong, and
the poison became its anodyne. For together with the five hundred
hidden wrongs, arose the necessity that they must be hidden. Could he
be pinned on, morning, noon, and night, to his wife's apron? And if
not, what else should he do by angry interferences at chance times
than add special vindictive impulses to those of general irritation
and dislike? Some truth there was in this, it cannot be denied:
innumerable cases arise, in which a man the most just is obliged, in
some imperfect sense, to connive at injustice; his chance experience
must convince him that injustice is continually going on; and yet, in
any attempt to intercept it or to check it, he is met and baffled by
the insuperable obstacles of household necessities. Dr. S. therefore
surrendered himself, as under a coercion that was none of _his_
creating, to a passive acquiescence and a blindness that soothed his
constitutional indolence; and he reconciled his feelings to a tyranny
which he tolerated, under some self-flattering idea of submitting with
resignation to a calamity that he suffered.

Some years after this, I read "Agamemnon" of Aeschylus; and then, in
the prophetic horror with which Cassandra surveys the regal abode in
Mycenae, destined to be the scene of murders so memorable through the
long traditions of the Grecian stage, murders that, many centuries
after all the parties to them--perpetrators, sufferers, avengers--had
become dust and ashes, kindled again into mighty life through a thousand
years upon the vast theaters of Athens and Rome, I retraced the horrors,
not prophetic but memorial, with which I myself had invested that
humble dwelling of Dr. S.; and read again, repeated in visionary
proportions, the sufferings which there had darkened the days of people
known to myself through two distinct successions--not, as was natural
to expect, of parents first and then children, but inversely of children
and parents. Manchester was not Mycenae. No, but by many degrees nobler.
In some of the features most favorable to tragic effects, it was so;
and wanted only these idealizing advantages for withdrawing mean details
which are in the gift of distance and hazy antiquity. Even at that day
Manchester was far larger, teeming with more and with stronger hearts;
and it contained a population the most energetic even in the _modern_
world--how much more so, therefore, by comparison with any race in
_ancient_ Greece, inevitably rendered effeminate by dependence too
generally upon slaves. Add to this superior energy in Lanceshire, the
immeasurably profounder feelings generated by the mysteries which stand
behind Christianity, as compared with the shallow mysteries that stood
behind paganism, and it would be easy to draw the inference, that,
in the capacity for the infinite and impassioned, for horror and for
pathos, Mycenae could have had no pretentions to measure herself against
Manchester. Not that I had drawn such an inference myself. Why should
I? there being nothing to suggest the points in which the two cities
differed, but only the single one in which they agreed, viz., the dusky
veil that overshadowed in both the noonday tragedies haunting their
household recesses; which veil was raised only to the gifted eyes of
a Cassandra, or to the eyes that, like my own, had experimentally
become acquainted with them as facts. Pitiably mean is he that measures
the relations of such cases by the scenical apparatus of purple and
gold. That which never _has_ been apparelled in royal robes, and hung
with theatrical jewels, is but suffering from an accidental fraud,
having the same right to them that any similar misery can have, or
calamity upon an equal scale. These proportions are best measured from
the fathoming ground of a real uncounterfeit sympathy.

I have mentioned already that we had four male guardians, (a fifth
being my mother.) These four were B., E., G., and H. The two consonants,
B. and G., gave us little trouble. G., the wisest of the whole band,
lived at a distance of more than one hundred miles: him, therefore,
we rarely saw; but B., living within four miles of Greenbay, washed
his hands of us by inviting us, every now and then, to spend a few
days at his house.

At this house, which stood in the country, there was a family of amiable
children, who were more skilfully trained in their musical studies
than at that day was usual. They sang the old English glees and
madrigals, and correctly enough for me, who, having, even at that
childish age, a preternatural sensibility to music, had also, as may
be supposed, the most entire want of musical knowledge. No blunders
could do much to mar _my_ pleasure. There first I heard the concertos
of Corelli; but also, which far more profoundly affected me, a few
selections from Jomelli and Cimarosa. With Handel I had long been
familiar, for the famous chorus singers of Lancashire sang continually
at churches the most effective parts from his chief oratorios. Mozart
was yet to come; for, except perhaps at the opera in London, even at
this time, his music was most imperfectly diffused through England.
But, above all, a thing which to my dying day I could never forget,
at the house of this guardian I heard sung a long canon of Cherubini's.
Forty years later I heard it again, and better sung; but at that time
I needed nothing better. It was sung by four male voices, and rose
into a region of thrilling passion, such as my heart had always dimly
craved and hungered after, but which now first interpreted itself, as
a physical possibility, to my ear.

My brother did not share my inexpressible delight; his taste ran in
a different channel; and the arrangements of the house did not meet
his approbation; particularly this, that either Mrs. B. herself, or
else the governess, was always present when the young ladies joined
our society, which my brother considered particularly vulgar, since
natural propriety and decorum should have whispered to an old lady
that a young gentleman might have "things" to say to her daughters
which he could not possibly intend for the general ear of
eavesdroppers--things tending to the confidential or the sentimental,
which none but a shameless old lady would seek to participate; by that
means compelling a young man to talk as loud as if he were addressing
a mob at Charing Cross, or reading the Riot Act. There were other
out-of-door amusements, amongst which a swing--which I mention for the
sake of illustrating the passive obedience which my brother levied
upon me, either through my conscience, as mastered by his doctrine of
primogeniture, or, as in this case, through my sensibility to shame
under his taunts of cowardice. It was a most ambitious swing, ascending
to a height beyond any that I have since seen in fairs or public
gardens. Horror was at my heart regularly as the swing reached its
most aerial altitude; for the oily, swallow-like fluency of the swoop
downwards threatened always to make me sick, in which it is probable
that I must have relaxed my hold of the ropes, and have been projected,
with fatal violence, to the ground. But, in defiance of all this
miserable panic, I continued to swing whenever he tauntingly invited
me. It was well that my brother's path in life soon ceased to coincide
with my own, else I should infallibly have broken my neck in confronting
perils which brought me neither honor nor profit, and in accepting
defiances which, issue how they might, won self-reproach from myself,
and sometimes a gayety of derision from _him_. One only of these
defiances I declined. There was a horse of this same guardian B.'s,
who always, after listening to Cherubini's music, grew irritable to
excess; and, if any body mounted him, would seek relief to his wounded
feelings in kicking, more or less violently, for an hour. This habit
endeared him to my brother, who acknowledged to a propensity of the
same amiable kind; protesting that an abstract desire of kicking seized
him always after hearing good performers on particular instruments,
especially the bagpipes. Of kicking? But of kicking what or _whom_?
I fear of kicking the venerable public collectively, creditors without
exception, but also as many of the debtors as might be found at large;
doctors of medicine more especially, but with no absolute immunity for
the majority of their patients; Jacobins, but not the less
anti-Jacobins; every Calvinist, which seems reasonable; but then also,
which is intolerable, every Arminian. Is philosophy able to account
for this morbid affection, and particularly when it takes the restricted
form (as sometimes it does, in the bagpipe case) of seeking furiously
to kick the piper, instead of paying him? In this case, my brother was
urgent with me to mount _en croupe_ behind himself. But weak as I
usually was, this proposal I resisted as an immediate suggestion of
the fiend; for I had heard, and have since known proofs of it, that
a horse, when he is ingeniously vicious, sometimes has the power, in
lashing out, of curving round his hoofs, so as to lodge them, by way
of indorsement, in the small of his rider's back; and, of course, he
would have an advantage for such a purpose, in the case of a rider
sitting on the crupper. That sole invitation I persisted in declining.

A young gentleman had joined us as a fellow-student under the care of
our tutor. He was an only son; indeed, the only child of an amiable
widow, whose love and hopes all centred in _him_. He was destined to
inherit several separate estates, and a great deal had been done to
spoil him by indulgent aunts; but his good natural disposition defeated
all these efforts; and, upon joining us, he proved to be a very amiable
boy, clever, quick at learning, and abundantly courageous. In the
summer months, his mother usually took a house out in the country,
sometimes on one side of Manchester, sometimes on another. At these
rusticating seasons, he had often much farther to come than ourselves,
and on that account he rode on horseback. Generally it was a fierce
mountain pony that he rode; and it was worth while to cultivate the
pony's acquaintance, for the sake of understanding the extent to which
the fiend can sometimes incarnate himself in a horse. I do not trouble
the reader with any account of his tricks, and drolleries, and
scoundrelisms; but this I may mention, that he had the propensity
ascribed many centuries ago to the Scandinavian horses for sharing and
practically asserting his share in the angry passions of a battle. He
would fight, or attempt to fight, on his rider's side, by biting,
rearing, and suddenly wheeling round, for the purpose of lashing out
when he found himself within kicking range. [20] This little monster was
coal black; and, in virtue of his carcass, would not have seemed very
formidable; but his head made amends--it was the head of a buffalo, or of
a bison, and his vast jungle of mane was the mane of a lion. His eyes, by
reason of this intolerable and unshorn mane, one did not often see,
except as lights that sparkled in the rear of a thicket; but, once seen
they were not easily forgotten, for their malignity was diabolic. A few
miles more of less being a matter of indifference to one who was so well
mounted, O. would sometimes ride out with us to the field of battle; and,
by manoeuvring so as to menace the enemy of the flanks, in skirmishes he
did good service. But at length came a day of pitched battle. The enemy
had mustered in unusual strength, and would certainly have accomplished
the usual result of putting us to flight with more than usual ease,
but, under the turn which things took, their very numbers aided their
overthrow, by deepening their confusion. O. had, on this occasion,
accompanied us; and, as he had hitherto taken no very decisive part
in the war, confining himself to distant "demonstrations," the enemy
did not much regard his presence in the field. This carelessness threw
them into a dense mass, upon which my brother's rapid eye saw instantly
the opportunity offered for operating most effectually by a charge.
O. saw it too; and, happening to have his spurs on, he complied
cheerfully with my brother's suggestion. He had the advantage of a
slight descent: the wicked pony went down "with a will;" his echoing
hoofs drew the general gaze upon him; his head, his leonine mane, his
diabolic eyes, did the rest; and in a moment the whole hostile array had
broken, and was in rapid flight across the brick fields. I leave the
reader to judge whether "Te Deum" would be sung on that night. A Gazette
Extraordinary was issued; and my brother had really some reason for his
assertion, "that in conscience he could not think of comparing Cannae to
this smashing defeat;" since at Cannae many brave men had refused to
fly--the consul himself, Terentius Varro, amongst them; but, in the
present rout, there was no Terentius Varro--_every body_ fled.

The victory, indeed, considered in itself, was complete. But it had
consequences which we had not looked for. In the ardor of our conflict,
neither my brother nor myself had remarked a stout, square-built man,
mounted on an uneasy horse, who sat quietly in his saddle as spectator
of the battle, and, in fact, as the sole non-combatant present. This
man, however, had been observed by O., both before and after his own
brilliant charge; and, by the description, there could be no doubt
that it had been our guardian B., as also, by the description of the
horse, we could as little doubt that he had been mounted on Cherubini.
My brother's commentary was in a tone of bitter complaint, that so
noble an opportunity should have been lost for strengthening O.'s
charge. But the consequences of this incident were graver than we
anticipated. A general board of our guardians, vowels and consonants,
was summoned to investigate the matter. The origin of the feud, or
"war," as my brother called it, was inquired into. As well might the
war of Troy or the purser's accounts from the Argonautic expedition
have been overhauled. Ancient night and chaos had closed over the
"incunabula belli;" and that point was given up in despair. But what
hindered a general pacification, no matter in how many wrongs the
original dispute had arisen? Who stopped the way which led to peace?
Not we, was our firm declaration; we were most pacifically inclined,
and ever had been; we were, in fact, little saints. But the enemy could
not be brought to any terms of accommodation. "That we will try," said
the vowel amongst our guardians, Mr. E. He, being a magistrate, had
naturally some weight with the proprietors of the cotton factory. The
foremen of the several floors were summoned, and gave it as their
humble opinion that we, the aristocratic party in the war, were as bad
as the _sans culottes_--"not a pin to choose between us." Well, but
no matter for the past: could any plan be devised for a pacific future?
Not easily. The workspeople were so thoroughly independent of their
employers, and so careless of their displeasure, that finally this
only settlement was available as wearing any promise of permanence,
viz., that we should alter our hours, so as not to come into collision
with the exits or returns of the boys.

Under this arrangement, a sort of hollow armistice prevailed for some
time; but it was beginning to give way, when suddenly an internal
change in our own home put an end to the war forever. My brother,
amongst his many accomplishments, was distinguished for his skill in
drawing. Some of his sketches had been shown to Mr. De Loutherbourg,
an academician well known in those days, esteemed even in these days,
after he has been dead for forty or fifty years, and personally a
distinguished favorite with the king, (George III.) He pronounced a
very flattering opinion upon my brother's promise of excellence. This
being known, a fee of a thousand guineas was offered to Mr. L. by the
guardians; and finally that gentleman took charge of my brother as a
pupil. Now, therefore, my brother, King of Tigrosylvania, scourge of
Gombroon, separated from me; and, as it turned out, forever. I never
saw him again; and, at Mr. De L.'s house in Hammersmith, before he had
completed his sixteenth year, he died of typhus fever. And thus it
happened that a little gold dust skilfully applied put an end to wars
that else threatened to extend into a Carthaginian length. In one
week's time

"Hi motus animorum atque haec certamina tanta
Pulveris exigui jactu compressa quiêrunt."

* * * * *

Here I had terminated this chapter, as at a natural pause, which, whilst
shutting out forever my eldest brother from the reader's sight and
from my own, necessarily at the same moment worked a permanent
revolution in the character of my daily life. Two such changes, and
both so abrupt, indicated imperiously the close of one era and the
opening of another. The advantages, indeed, which my brother had over
me in years, in physical activities of every kind, in decision of
purpose, and in energy of will,--all which advantages, besides,
borrowed a ratification from an obscure sense, on my part, of duty as
incident to what seemed an appointment of Providence,--inevitably _had_
controlled, and for years to come _would have_ controlled, the free
spontaneous movements of a contemplative dreamer like myself.
Consequently, this separation, which proved an eternal one, and
contributed to deepen my constitutional propensity to gloomy meditation,
had for me (partly on that account, but much more through the sudden
birth of perfect independence which so unexpectedly it opened) the
value of a revolutionary experience. A new date, a new starting point,
a redemption (as it might be called) into the golden sleep of halcyon
quiet, after everlasting storms, suddenly dawned upon me; and not as
any casual intercalation of holidays that would come to an end, but,
for any thing that appeared to the contrary, as the perpetual tenor
of my future career. No longer was the factory a Carthage for me: if
any obdurate old Cato there were who found his amusement in denouncing
it with a daily _"Delenda est,"_ take notice, (I said silently to
myself,) that I acknowledge no such tiger for a friend of mine.
Nevermore was the bridge across the Irwell a bridge of sighs for me.
And the meanest of the factory population--thanks be to their
discrimination--despised my pretensions too entirely to waste a thought
or a menace upon a cipher so abject.

This change, therefore, being so sudden and so total, ought to signalize
itself externally by a commensurate break in the narrative. A new
chapter, at the least, with a huge interspace of blank white paper,
or even a new book, ought rightfully to solemnize so profound a
revolution. And virtually it shall. But, according to the general
agreement of antiquity, it is not felt as at all disturbing to the
unity of that event which winds up the "Iliad," viz., the death of
Hector, that Homer expands it circumstantially into the whole ceremonial
of his funeral obsequies; and upon that same principle I--when looking
back to this abrupt close of all connection with, my brother, whether
in my character of major general or of potentate trembling daily for
my people--am reminded that the very last morning of this connection
had its own separate distinction from all other mornings, in a way
that entitles it to its own separate share in the general commemoration.
A shadow fell upon this particular morning as from a cloud of danger,
that lingered for a moment over our heads, might seem even to muse and
hesitate, and then sullenly passed away into distant quarters. It is
noticeable that a danger which approaches, but wheels away,--which
threatens, but finally forbears to strike,--is more interesting by
much on a distant retrospect than the danger which accomplishes its
mission. The Alpine precipice, down which many pilgrims have fallen,
is passed without much attention; but that precipice, within one inch
of which a traveller has passed unconsciously in the dark, first tracing
his peril along the snowy margin on the next morning, becomes invested
with an attraction of horror for all who hear the story. The dignity
of mortal danger ever after consecrates the spot; and, in this
particular case which I am now recalling, the remembrance of such a
danger consecrates the day.

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