A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

Autobiographic Sketches

T >> Thomas de Quincey >> Autobiographic Sketches




That day was amongst the most splendid in a splendid June: it was--to
borrow the line of Wordsworth--

"One of those heavenly days which cannot die;"

and, early as it was at that moment, we children, all six of us that then
survived, were already abroad upon the lawn. There were two lawns at
Greenhay in the shrubbery that invested three sides of the house: one of
these, which ran along one side of the house, extended to a little bridge
traversed by the gates of entrance. The central gate admitted carriages:
on each side of this was a smaller gate for foot passengers; and, in a
family containing so many as six children, it may be supposed that often
enough one or other of the gates was open; which, most fortunately, on
this day was not the case. Along the margin of this side lawn ran a
little brook, which had been raised to a uniform level, and kept up by
means of a wear at the point where it quitted the premises; after which
it resumed its natural character of wildness, as it trotted on to the
little hamlet of Greenhill. This brook my brother was at one time
disposed to treat as Remus treated the infant walls of Rome; but, on
maturer thoughts, having built a fleet of rafts, he treated it more
respectfully; and this morning, as will be seen, the breadth of the
little brook did us "yeoman's service." Me at one time he had meant to
put on board this fleet, as his man Friday; and I had a fair prospect of
first entering life in the respectable character of supercargo. But it
happened that the current carried his rafts and himself over the wear;
which, he assured us, was no accident, but a lesson by way of practice in
the art of contending with the rapids of the St. Lawrence and other
Canadian streams. However, as the danger had been considerable, he was
prohibited from trying such experiments with me. On the centre of the
lawn stood my eldest surviving sister, Mary, and my brother William.
Round _him_, attracted (as ever) by his inexhaustible opulence of thought
and fun, stood, laughing and dancing, my youngest sister, a second Jane,
and my youngest brother Henry, a posthumous child, feeble, and in his
nurse's arms, but on this morning showing signs of unusual animation and
of sympathy with the glorious promise of the young June day. Whirling
round on his heel, at a little distance, and utterly abstracted from all
around him, my next brother, Richard, he that had caused so much
affliction by his incorrigible morals to the Sultan Amurath, pursued his
own solitary thoughts--whatever those might be. And, finally, as regards
myself, it happened that I was standing close to the edge of the brook,
looking back at intervals to the group of five children and two nurse
maids who occupied the centre of the lawn; time, about an hour before
_our_ breakfast, or about two hours before the world's breakfast,--
_i.e._, a little after seven,--when as yet in shady parts of the grounds
the dazzling jewelry of the early dews had not entirely exhaled. So
standing, and so occupied, suddenly we were alarmed by shouts as of some
great mob manifestly in rapid motion, and probably, at this instant
taking the right-angled turn into the lane connecting Greenhay with the
Oxford Road. The shouts indicated hostile and headlong pursuit: within
one minute another right-angled turn in the lane itself brought the
uproar fully upon the ear; and it became evident that some imminent
danger--of what nature it was impossible to guess--must be hastily
nearing us. We were all rooted to the spot; and all turned anxiously to
the gates, which happily seemed to be closed. Had this been otherwise, we
should have had no time to apply any remedy whatever, and the
consequences must probably have involved us all. In a few seconds, a
powerful dog, not much above a furlong ahead of his pursuers, wheeled
into sight. We all saw him pause at the gates; but, finding no ready
access through the iron lattice work that protected the side battlements
of the little bridge, and the pursuit being so hot, he resumed his course
along the outer margin of the brook. Coming opposite to myself, he made a
dead stop. I had thus an opportunity of looking him steadily in the face;
which I did, without more fear than belonged naturally to a case of so
much hurry, and to me, in particular, of mystery. I had never heard of
hydrophobia. But necessarily connecting the furious pursuit with the dog
that now gazed at me from the opposite side of the water, and feeling
obliged to presume that he had made an assault upon somebody or other, I
looked searchingly into his eyes, and observed that they seemed glazed,
and as if in a dreamy state, but at the same time suffused with some
watery discharge, while his mouth was covered with masses of white foam.
He looked most earnestly at myself and the group beyond me; but he made
no effort whatever to cross the brook, and apparently had not the energy
to attempt it by a flying leap. My brother William, who did not in the
least suspect the real danger, invited the dog to try his chance in a
leap--assuring him that, if he succeeded, he would knight him on the
spot. The temptation of a knighthood, however, did not prove sufficient.
A very few seconds brought his pursuers within sight; and steadily,
without sound or gesture of any kind, he resumed his flight in the only
direction open to him, viz., by a field path across stiles to Greenhill.
Half an hour later he would have met a bevy of children going to a dame's
school, or carrying milk to rustic neighbors. As it was, the early
morning kept the road clear in front. But behind immense was the body of
agitated pursuers. Leading the chase came, probably, half a troop of
light cavalry, all on foot, nearly all in their stable dresses, and armed
generally with pitchforks, though some eight or ten carried carabines.
Half mingled with these, and very little in the rear, succeeded a vast
miscellaneous mob, that had gathered on the chase as it hurried through
the purlieus of Deansgate, and all that populous suburb of Manchester.
From some of these, who halted to recover breath, we obtained an
explanation of the affair. About a mile and a half from Greenhay stood
some horse barracks, occupied usually by an entire regiment of cavalry. A
large dog--one of a multitude that haunted the barracks--had for some
days manifested an increasing sullenness, snapping occasionally at dogs
and horses, but finally at men. Upon this, he had been tied up; but in
some way he had this morning liberated himself: two troop horses he had
immediately bitten; and had made attacks upon several of the men, who
fortunately parried these attacks by means of the pitchforks standing
ready to their hands. On this evidence, coupled with the knowledge of his
previous illness, he was summarily condemned as mad; and the general
pursuit commenced, which brought all parties (hunters and game) sweeping
so wildly past the quiet grounds of Greenhay. The sequel of the affair
was this: none of the carabineers succeeded in getting a shot at the dog;
in consequence of which, the chase lasted for 17 miles nominally; but,
allowing for all the doublings and headings back of the dog, by
computation for about 24; and finally, in a state of utter exhaustion, he
was run into and killed, somewhere in Cheshire. Of the two horses whom he
had bitten, both treated alike, one died in a state of furious
hydrophobia some two months later, but the other (though the more
seriously wounded of the two) manifested no symptoms whatever of
constitutional derangement. And thus it happened that for me this general
event of separation from my eldest brother, and the particular morning on
which it occurred, were each for itself separately and equally memorable.
Freedom won, and death escaped, almost in the same hour,--freedom from a
yoke of such secret and fretful annoyance as none could measure but
myself, and death probably through the fiercest of torments,--these
double cases of deliverance, so sudden and so _unlooked for_, signalized
by what heraldically might have been described as a two-headed memorial,
the establishment of an _epoch_ in my life. Not only was the chapter of
INFANCY thus solemnly finished forever, and the record closed, but--which
cannot often happen--the chapter was closed pompously and conspicuously
by what the early printers through the 15th and 16th centuries would have
called a bright and illuminated colophon.


FOOTNOTES

[1] "_Peculiar_."--Viz., as _endowed_ foundations to which those resort
who are rich and pay, and those also who, being poor, cannot pay, or
cannot pay so much. This most honorable distinction amongst the services
of England from ancient times to the interests of education--a service
absolutely unapproached by any one nation of Christendom--is amongst the
foremost cases of that remarkable class which make England, whilst often
the most aristocratic, yet also, for many noble purposes, the most
democratic of lands.

[2] Five years ago, during the carnival of universal anarchy equally
amongst doers and thinkers, a closely-printed pamphlet was published with
this title, "A New Revelation, or the Communion of the Incarnate Dead
with the Unconscious Living. Important Fact, without trifling Fiction, by
HIM." I have not the pleasure of knowing HIM; but certainly I must
concede to HIM, that he writes like a man of extreme sobriety upon his
extravagant theme. He is angry with Swedenborg, as might be expected, for
his chimeras; some of which, however, of late years have signally altered
their aspect; but. as to HIM, there is no chance that he should be
occupied with chimeras, because (p. 6) "he has met with some who have
acknowledged the fact of their having come from the dead"--_habes
confitentem reum_. Few, however, are endowed with so much candor; and in
particular, for the honor of literature, it grieves me to find, by p. 10,
that the largest number of these shams, and perhaps the most uncandid,
are to be looked for amongst "publishers and printers," of whom, it
seems, "the great majority" are mere forgeries: a very few speak frankly
about the matter, and say they don't care who knows it, which, to my
thinking, is impudence, but by far the larger section doggedly deny it,
and call a policeman, if you persist in charging them with being shams.
Some differences there are between my brother and HIM, but in the great
outline of their views they coincide.

[3] Charles II., notoriously wrote a book on the possibility of a voyage
to the moon, which, in a bishop, would be called a translation to the
moon, and perhaps it was _his_ name in combination with _his_ book that
suggested the "Adventures of Peter Wilkins." It is unfair, however, to
mention him in connection with that single one of his works which
announces an extravagant purpose. He was really a scientific man, and
already in the time of Cromwell (about 1656) had projected that Royal
Society of London which was afterwards realized and presided over by
Isaac Barrow and Isaac Newton. He was also a learned man, but still with
a veil of romance about him, as may be seen in his most elaborate work--
"The Essay towards a Philosophic or Universal Language."

[4] "_Middy_."--I call him so simply to avoid confusion, and by way of
anticipation; else he was too young at this time to serve in the navy.
Afterwards he did so for many years, and saw every variety of service in
every class of ships belonging to our navy. At one time, when yet a boy,
he was captured by pirates, and compelled to sail with them; and the end
of his adventurous career was, that for many a year he has been lying at
the bottom of the Atlantic.

[5] "Green_heys_," with slight variation in the spelling, is the name
given to that district of which Greenhay formed the original nucleus.
Probably it was the solitary situation of the house which (failing any
other grounds of denomination) raised it to this privilege.

[6] "_Factory_."--Such was the designation technically at that time. At
present, I believe that a building of that class would be called a
"mill."

[7] This word, however, exists in _Jack-a-dandy_--a very old English
word. But what does _that_ mean?

[8] Precisely, however, the same gesture, plebian as it was, by which the
English commandant at Heligoland replied to the Danes when civilly
inviting him to surrender. Southey it was, on the authority of Lieutenant
Southey, his brother, who communicated to me this anecdote.

[9] "_Bridge of sighs_."--Two men of memorable genius, Hood last, and
Lord Byron by many years previously, have so appropriated this phrase,
and reissued it as English currency, that many readers suppose it to be
theirs. But the genealogies of fine expressions should be more carefully
preserved. The expression belongs originally to Venice. This _jus
postliminii_ becomes of real importance in many cases, but especially in
the case of Shakspeare. Could one have believed it possible beforehand?
And yet it is a fact that he is made to seem a robber of the lowest
order, by mere dint of suffering robbery. Purely through their own
jewelly splendor have many hundreds of his phrases forced themselves into
usage so general, under the vulgar infirmity of seeking to strengthen
weak prose by shreds of poetic quotation, that at length the majority of
careless readers come to look upon these phrases as belonging to the
language, and traceable to no distinct proprietor any more than proverbs:
and thus, on afterwards observing them in Shakspeare, they regard him in
the light of one accepting alms (like so many meaner persons) from the
common treasury of the universal mind, on which treasury, meantime, he
had himself conferred these phrases as original donations of his own.
Many expressions in the "Paradise Lost," in "Il Penseroso," and in
"L'Allegro," are in the same predicament. And thus the almost incredible
case is realized which I have described, viz., that simply by having
suffered a robbery through two centuries, (for the first attempt at
plundering Milton was made upon his juvenile poems,) have Shakspeare and
Milton come to be taxed as robbers. N. B.--In speaking of Hood as having
appropriated the phrase _Bridge of Sighs_, I would not be understood to
represent him as by possibility aiming at any concealment. He was as far
above such a meanness by his nobility of heart, as he was raised above
all need for it by the overflowing opulence of his genius.

[10] Geometry (it has been said) would not evade disputation, if a man
could find his interest in disputing it: such is the spirit of cavil. But
I, upon a very opposite ground, assert that there is not one page of
prose that could be selected from the best writer in the English language
(far less in the German) which, upon a sufficient interest arising, would
not furnish matter, simply through its defects in precision, for a suit
in Chancery. Chancery suits do not arise, it is true, because the
doubtful expressions do not touch any interest of property; but what
_does_ arise is this--that something more valuable than a pecuniary
interest is continually suffering, viz., the interests of truth.

[11] "_Of a Stuart sovereign_," and by no means of a Stuart only. Queen
Anne, the last Stuart who sat on the British throne, was the last of _our
princes_ who touched for the _king's evil_, (as scrofula was generally
called until lately;) but the Bourbon houses, on the thrones of France,
Spain, and Naples, as well as the house of Savoy, claimed and exercised
the same supernatural privilege down to a much later period than the year
1714--the last of Queen Anne: according to their own and the popular
faith, they could have cleansed Naaman the Syrian, and Gehazi too.

[12] One reason, I believe, why it was held a point of wisdom in ancient
days that the metropolis of a warlike state should have a secret name
hidden from the world, lay in the pagan practice of _evocation_, applied
to the tutelary deities of such a state. These deities might be lured by
certain rites and briberies into a transfer of their favors to the
besieging army. But, in order to make such an evocation effectual, it was
necessary to know the original and secret name of the beleaguered city;
and this, therefore, was religiously concealed.

[13] Hamlet, Act v., scene 1.

[14] "_Hide himself in--light_."--The greatest scholar, by far, that this
island ever produced, viz., Richard Bentley, published (as is well known)
a 4to volume that in some respects is the very worst 4to now extant in
the world--viz., a critical edition of the. "Paradise Lost." I observe,
in the "Edinburgh Review," (July, 1851, No. 191, p. 15,) that a learned
critic supposes Bentley to have meant this edition as a "practical jest."
Not at all. Neither could the critic have fancied such a possibility, if
he had taken the trouble (which _I_ did many a year back) to examine it.
A jest book it certainly is, and the most prosperous of jest books, but
undoubtedly never meant for such by the author. A man whose lips are
livid with anger does not jest, and does not understand jesting. Still,
the Edinburgh Reviewer is right about the proper functions of the book,
though wrong about the intentions of the author. The fact is, the man was
maniacally in error, and always in error, as regarded the ultimate or
poetic truth of Milton; but, as regarded truth reputed and truth
_apparent_, he often had the air of being furiously in the right; an
example of which I will cite. Milton, in the First Book of the "Paradise
Lost," had said,--

"That from the _secret_ top
Of Oreb or of Sinai didst inspire;"

upon which Bentley comments in effect thus: "How!--the exposed summit of
a mountain _secret_? Why, it's like Charing Cross--always the least
secret place in the whole county." So one might fancy; since the summit
of a mountain, like Plinlimmon or Cader Idris in Wales, like Skiddaw or
Helvellyn in England, constitutes a central object of attention and gaze
for the whole circumjacent district, measured by a radius sometimes of 15
to 20 miles. Upon this consideration, Bentley instructs us to substitute
as the true reading--"That on the _sacred_ top," &c. Meantime, an actual
experiment will demonstrate that there is no place so absolutely secret
and hidden as the exposed summit of a mountain, 3500 feet high, in
respect to an eye stationed in the valley immediately below. A whole
party of men, women, horses, and even tents, looked at under those
circumstances, is absolutely invisible unless by the aid of glasses: and
it becomes evident that a murder might be committed on the bare open
summit of such a mountain with more assurance of absolute secrecy than
any where else in the whole surrounding district.

[15] Which "_saying_" is sometimes ascribed, I know not how truly, to
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.

[16] It strikes me, upon second thoughts, that the particular idiom,
which Lord Monboddo illustrated as regarded the Greek language, merits a
momentary notice; and for this reason--that it plays a part not at all
less conspicuous or less delicate in the Latin. Here is an instance of
its use in Greek, taken from the well-known night scene in the "Iliad:"--

------_gaethaese de poimenos aetor_,

And the heart of the shepherd _rejoices_; where the verb _gaethaese_ is
in the indefinite or aorist tense, and is meant to indicate a condition
of feeling not limited to any time whatever--past, present, or future.
In Latin, the force and elegance of this usage are equally impressive,
if not more so. At this moment, I remember two cases of this in Horace:-
-

1. "Rarò antecedentem scelestum
_Deseruit_ pede poena claudo;"
2. "saepe Diespiter
Neglectus incesto _addidit_ integrum."

That is--"oftentimes the supreme ruler, when treated with neglect,
confounds or unites (not _has united_, as the tyro might fancy) the
impure man with the upright in one common fate."

Exceedingly common is this usage in Latin poetry, when the object is to
generalize a remark--as not connected with one mode of time more than
another. In reality, all three modes of time--past, present, future--are
used (though not equally used) in all languages for this purpose of
generalization. Thus,--

1. The _future_; as, Sapiens dominabitur astris;
2. The _present_; as, Fortes fortuna juvat;
3. The _past_; as in the two cases cited from Horace.

But this practice holds equally in English: as to the future and the
present, nobody will doubt it; and here is a case from the past: "The
fool _hath said_ in his heart, There is no God;" not meaning, that in
some past time he has said so, but that generally in all times he _does_
say so, and _will_ say so.

[17] "_Too obstinate a preconception_."--Until the birth of geology, and
fossil paleontology, concurring with vast strides ahead in the science of
comparative anatomy, it is a well-established fact, that oftentimes the
most scientific museum admitted as genuine fragments of the human
osteology what in fact belonged to the gigantic brutes of our earth in
her earliest stages of development. This mistake would go some way in
accounting for the absurd disposition in all generations to view
themselves as abridged editions of their forefathers. Added to which, as
a separate cause of error, there can be little doubt, that intermingled
with the human race there has at most periods of the world been a
separate and Titanic race, such as the Anakim amongst the peoples of
Palestine, the Cyclopean race diffused over the Mediterranean in the
elder ages of Greece, and certain tribes amongst the Alps, known to
Evelyn in his youth (about Cromwell's time) by an unpleasant travelling
experience. These gigantic races, however, were no arguments for a
degeneration amongst the rest of mankind. They were evidently a variety
of man, coexistent with the ordinary races, but liable to be absorbed and
gradually lost by intermarriage amongst other tribes of the ordinary
standard. Occasional exhumations of such Titan skeletons would strengthen
the common prejudice. They would be taken, not for a local variety, but
for an antediluvian or prehistoric type, from which the present races of
man had arisen by gradual degeneration.

These cases of actual but misinterpreted experience, at the same time
that they naturally must tend to fortify the popular prejudice, would
also, by accounting for it, and ingrafting it upon a reasonable origin,
so far tend to take from it the reproach of a prejudice. Though
erroneous, it would yet seem to us, in looking back upon it, a rational
and even an inevitable opinion, having such plausible grounds to stand
upon; plausible, I mean, until science and accurate examination of the
several cases had begun to read them into a different construction. Yet,
on the other hand, in spite of any colorable excuses that may be pleaded
for this prejudice, it is pretty plain that, after all, there is in human
nature a deep-laid predisposition to an obstinate craze of this nature.
Else why is it that, in every age alike, men have asserted or even
assumed the downward tendency of the human race in all that regards
_moral_ qualities. For the _physical_ degeneration of man there really
were some apparent (though erroneous) arguments; but, for the moral
degeneration, no argument at all, small or great. Yet a bigotry of belief
in this idle notion has always prevailed amongst moralists, pagan alike
and Christian. Horace, for example, informs us that

"Aetas parentum, pejor avis, tulit
Nos nequiores--mox daturos
Progeniem vitiosiorem."

The last generation was worse, it seems, than the penultimate, as the
present is worst than the last. We, however, of the present, bad as we
may be, shall be kept in countenance by the coming generation, which will
prove much worse than ourselves. On the same precedent, all the sermons
through the last three centuries, if traced back through decennial
periods, so as to form thirty successive strata, will be found regularly
claiming the precedency in wickedness for the immediate period of the
writer. Upon which theories, as men ought physically to have dwindled
long ago into pygmies, so, on the other hand, morally they must by this
time have left Sodom and Gomorrah far behind. What a strange animal must
man upon this scheme offer to our contemplation; shrinking in size, by
graduated process, through every century, until at last he would not rise
an inch from the ground; and, on the other hand, as regards villany,
towering evermore and more up to the heavens. What a dwarf! what a giant!
Why, the very crows would combine to destroy such a little monster.

[18] The names and history of the Pyrenean Cagots are equally obscure.
Some have supposed that, during the period of the Gothic warfare with the
Moors, the Cagots were a Christian tribe that betrayed the Christian
cause and interests at a critical moment. But all is conjecture. As to
the name, Southey has somewhere offered a possible interpretation of it;
but it struck me as far from felicitous, and not what might have been
expected from Southey, whose vast historical research and commanding
talent should naturally have unlocked this most mysterious of modern
secrets, if any unlocking does yet lie within the resources of human
skill and combining power, now that so many ages divide us from the
original steps of the case. I may here mention, as a fact accidentally
made known to myself, and apparently not known to Southey, that the
Cagots, under a name very slightly altered, are found in France also, as
well as Spain, and in provinces of France that have no connection at all
with Spain.

Copyright (c) 2007. famouswriterz.com. All rights reserved.