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INTRODUCTION TO THE PAINS OF OPIUM
Courteous, and I hope indulgent, reader (for all MY readers must be
indulgent ones, or else I fear I shall shock them too much to count
on their courtesy), having accompanied me thus far, now let me
request you to move onwards for about eight years; that is to say,
from 1804 (when I have said that my acquaintance with opium first
began) to 1812. The years of academic life are now over and gone--
almost forgotten; the student's cap no longer presses my temples; if
my cap exist at all, it presses those of some youthful scholar, I
trust, as happy as myself, and as passionate a lover of knowledge.
My gown is by this time, I dare say, in the same condition with many
thousand excellent books in the Bodleian, viz., diligently perused
by certain studious moths and worms; or departed, however (which is
all that I know of his fate), to that great reservoir of SOMEWHERE
to which all the tea-cups, tea-caddies, tea-pots, tea-kettles, etc.,
have departed (not to speak of still frailer vessels, such as
glasses, decanters, bed-makers, etc.), which occasional resemblances
in the present generation of tea-cups, etc., remind me of having once
possessed, but of whose departure and final fate I, in common with
most gownsmen of either university, could give, I suspect, but an
obscure and conjectural history. The persecutions of the chapel-
bell, sounding its unwelcome summons to six o'clock matins,
interrupts my slumbers no longer, the porter who rang it, upon whose
beautiful nose (bronze, inlaid with copper) I wrote, in retaliation
so many Greek epigrams whilst I was dressing, is dead, and has
ceased to disturb anybody; and I, and many others who suffered much
from his tintinnabulous propensities, have now agreed to overlook
his errors, and have forgiven him. Even with the bell I am now in
charity; it rings, I suppose, as formerly, thrice a-day, and cruelly
annoys, I doubt not, many worthy gentlemen, and disturbs their peace
of mind; but as to me, in this year 1812, I regard its treacherous
voice no longer (treacherous I call it, for, by some refinement of
malice, it spoke in as sweet and silvery tones as if it had been
inviting one to a party); its tones have no longer, indeed, power to
reach me, let the wind sit as favourable as the malice of the bell
itself could wish, for I am 250 miles away from it, and buried in
the depth of mountains. And what am I doing among the mountains?
Taking opium. Yes; but what else? Why reader, in 1812, the year we
are now arrived at, as well as for some years previous, I have been
chiefly studying German metaphysics in the writings of Kant, Fichte,
Schelling, &c. And how and in what manner do I live?--in short,
what class or description of men do I belong to? I am at this
period--viz. in 1812--living in a cottage and with a single female
servant (honi soit qui mal y pense), who amongst my neighbours
passes by the name of my "housekeeper." And as a scholar and a man
of learned education, and in that sense a gentleman, I may presume
to class myself as an unworthy member of that indefinite body called
GENTLEMEN. Partly on the ground I have assigned perhaps, partly
because from my having no visible calling or business, it is rightly
judged that I must be living on my private fortune; I am so classed
by my neighbours; and by the courtesy of modern England I am usually
addressed on letters, etc., "Esquire," though having, I fear, in the
rigorous construction of heralds, but slender pretensions to that
distinguished honour; yet in popular estimation I am X. Y. Z.,
Esquire, but not justice of the Peace nor Custos Rotulorum. Am I
married? Not yet. And I still take opium? On Saturday nights.
And perhaps have taken it unblushingly ever since "the rainy
Sunday," and "the stately Pantheon," and "the beatific druggist" of
1804? Even so. And how do I find my health after all this opium-
eating? In short, how do I do? Why, pretty well, I thank you,
reader; in the phrase of ladies in the straw, "as well as can be
expected." In fact, if I dared to say the real and simple truth,
though, to satisfy the theories of medical men, I OUGHT to be ill, I
never was better in my life than in the spring of 1812; and I hope
sincerely that the quantity of claret, port, or "particular
Madeira," which in all probability you, good reader, have taken, and
design to take for every term of eight years during your natural
life, may as little disorder your health as mine was disordered by
the opium I had taken for eight years, between 1804 and 1812. Hence
you may see again the danger of taking any medical advice from
Anastasius; in divinity, for aught I know, or law, he may be a safe
counsellor; but not in medicine. No; it is far better to consult
Dr. Buchan, as I did; for I never forgot that worthy man's excellent
suggestion, and I was "particularly careful not to take above five-
and-twenty ounces of laudanum." To this moderation and temperate
use of the article I may ascribe it, I suppose, that as yet, at
least (i.e. in 1812), I am ignorant and unsuspicious of the avenging
terrors which opium has in store for those who abuse its lenity. At
the same time, it must not be forgotten that hitherto I have been
only a dilettante eater of opium; eight years' practice even, with a
single precaution of allowing sufficient intervals between every
indulgence, has not been sufficient to make opium necessary to me as
an article of daily diet. But now comes a different era. Move on,
if you please, reader, to 1813. In the summer of the year we have
just quitted I have suffered much in bodily health from distress of
mind connected with a very melancholy event. This event being no
ways related to the subject now before me, further than through the
bodily illness which it produced, I need not more particularly
notice. Whether this illness of 1812 had any share in that of 1813
I know not; but so it was, that in the latter year I was attacked by
a most appalling irritation of the stomach, in all respects the same
as that which had caused me so much suffering in youth, and
accompanied by a revival of all the old dreams. This is the point
of my narrative on which, as respects my own self-justification, the
whole of what follows may be said to hinge. And here I find myself
in a perplexing dilemma. Either, on the one hand, I must exhaust
the reader's patience by such a detail of my malady, or of my
struggles with it, as might suffice to establish the fact of my
inability to wrestle any longer with irritation and constant
suffering; or, on the other hand, by passing lightly over this
critical part of my story, I must forego the benefit of a stronger
impression left on the mind of the reader, and must lay myself open
to the misconstruction of having slipped, by the easy and gradual
steps of self-indulging persons, from the first to the final stage
of opium-eating (a misconstruction to which there will be a lurking
predisposition in most readers, from my previous acknowledgements).
This is the dilemma, the first horn of which would be sufficient to
toss and gore any column of patient readers, though drawn up sixteen
deep and constantly relieved by fresh men; consequently that is not
to be thought of. It remains, then, that I POSTULALE so much as is
necessary for my purpose. And let me take as full credit for what I
postulate as if I had demonstrated it, good reader, at the expense
of your patience and my own. Be not so ungenerous as to let me
suffer in your good opinion through my own forbearance and regard
for your comfort. No; believe all that I ask of you--viz., that I
could resist no longer; believe it liberally and as an act of grace,
or else in mere prudence; for if not, then in the next edition of my
Opium Confessions, revised and enlarged, I will make you believe and
tremble; and a force d'ennuyer, by mere dint of pandiculation I will
terrify all readers of mine from ever again questioning any
postulate that I shall think fit to make.
This, then, let me repeat, I postulate--that at the time I began to
take opium daily I could not have done otherwise. Whether, indeed,
afterwards I might not have succeeded in breaking off the habit,
even when it seemed to me that all efforts would be unavailing, and
whether many of the innumerable efforts which I did make might not
have been carried much further, and my gradual reconquests of ground
lost might not have been followed up much more energetically--these
are questions which I must decline. Perhaps I might make out a case
of palliation; but shall I speak ingenuously? I confess it, as a
besetting infirmity of mine, that I am too much of an Eudaemonist; I
hanker too much after a state of happiness, both for myself and
others; I cannot face misery, whether my own or not, with an eye of
sufficient firmness, and am little capable of encountering present
pain for the sake of any reversionary benefit. On some other
matters I can agree with the gentlemen in the cotton trade {15} at
Manchester in affecting the Stoic philosophy, but not in this. Here
I take the liberty of an Eclectic philosopher, and I look out for
some courteous and considerate sect that will condescend more to the
infirm condition of an opium-eater; that are "sweet men," as Chaucer
says, "to give absolution," and will show some conscience in the
penances they inflict, and the efforts of abstinence they exact from
poor sinners like myself. An inhuman moralist I can no more endure
in my nervous state than opium that has not been boiled. At any
rate, he who summons me to send out a large freight of self-denial
and mortification upon any cruising voyage of moral improvement,
must make it clear to my understanding that the concern is a hopeful
one. At my time of life (six-and-thirty years of age) it cannot be
supposed that I have much energy to spare; in fact, I find it all
little enough for the intellectual labours I have on my hands, and
therefore let no man expect to frighten me by a few hard words into
embarking any part of it upon desperate adventures of morality.
Whether desperate or not, however, the issue of the struggle in 1813
was what I have mentioned, and from this date the reader is to
consider me as a regular and confirmed opium-eater, of whom to ask
whether on any particular day he had or had not taken opium, would
be to ask whether his lungs had performed respiration, or the heart
fulfilled its functions. You understand now, reader, what I am, and
you are by this time aware that no old gentleman "with a snow-white
beard" will have any chance of persuading me to surrender "the
little golden receptacle of the pernicious drug." No; I give notice
to all, whether moralists or surgeons, that whatever be their
pretensions and skill in their respective lines of practice, they
must not hope for any countenance from me, if they think to begin by
any savage proposition for a Lent or a Ramadan of abstinence from
opium. This, then, being all fully understood between us, we shall
in future sail before the wind. Now then, reader, from 1813, where
all this time we have been sitting down and loitering, rise up, if
you please, and walk forward about three years more. Now draw up
the curtain, and you shall see me in a new character.
If any man, poor or rich, were to say that he would tell us what had
been the happiest day in his life, and the why and the wherefore, I
suppose that we should all cry out--Hear him! Hear him! As to the
happiest DAY, that must be very difficult for any wise man to name,
because any event that could occupy so distinguished a place in a
man's retrospect of his life, or be entitled to have shed a special
felicity on any one day, ought to be of such an enduring character
as that (accidents apart) it should have continued to shed the same
felicity, or one not distinguishably less, on many years together.
To the happiest LUSTRUM, however, or even to the happiest YEAR, it
may be allowed to any man to point without discountenance from
wisdom. This year, in my case, reader, was the one which we have
now reached; though it stood, I confess, as a parenthesis between
years of a gloomier character. It was a year of brilliant water (to
speak after the manner of jewellers), set as it were, and insulated,
in the gloom and cloudy melancholy of opium. Strange as it may
sound, I had a little before this time descended suddenly, and
without any considerable effort, from 320 grains of opium (i.e.
eight {16} thousand drops of laudanum) per day, to forty grains, or
one-eighth part. Instantaneously, and as if by magic, the cloud of
profoundest melancholy which rested upon my brain, like some black
vapours that I have seen roll away from the summits of mountains,
drew off in one day (Greek text); passed off with its murky
banners as simultaneously as a ship that has been stranded, and is
floated off by a spring tide -
that moveth altogether, if it move at all.
Now, then, I was again happy; I now took only 1000 drops of laudanum
per day; and what was that? A latter spring had come to close up
the season of youth; my brain performed its functions as healthily
as ever before; I read Kant again, and again I understood him, or
fancied that I did. Again my feelings of pleasure expanded
themselves to all around me; and if any man from Oxford or
Cambridge, or from neither, had been announced to me in my
unpretending cottage, I should have welcomed him with as sumptuous a
reception as so poor a man could offer. Whatever else was wanting
to a wise man's happiness, of laudanum I would have given him as
much as he wished, and in a golden cup. And, by the way, now that I
speak of giving laudanum away, I remember about this time a little
incident, which I mention because, trifling as it was, the reader
will soon meet it again in my dreams, which it influenced more
fearfully than could be imagined. One day a Malay knocked at my
door. What business a Malay could have to transact amongst English
mountains I cannot conjecture; but possibly he was on his road to a
seaport about forty miles distant.
The servant who opened the door to him was a young girl, born and
bred amongst the mountains, who had never seen an Asiatic dress of
any sort; his turban therefore confounded her not a little; and as
it turned out that his attainments in English were exactly of the
same extent as hers in the Malay, there seemed to be an impassable
gulf fixed between all communication of ideas, if either party had
happened to possess any. In this dilemma, the girl, recollecting
the reputed learning of her master (and doubtless giving me credit
for a knowledge of all the languages of the earth besides perhaps a
few of the lunar ones), came and gave me to understand that there
was a sort of demon below, whom she clearly imagined that my art
could exorcise from the house. I did not immediately go down, but
when I did, the group which presented itself, arranged as it was by
accident, though not very elaborate, took hold of my fancy and my
eye in a way that none of the statuesque attitudes exhibited in the
ballets at the Opera-house, though so ostentatiously complex, had
ever done. In a cottage kitchen, but panelled on the wall with dark
wood that from age and rubbing resembled oak, and looking more like
a rustic hall of entrance than a kitchen, stood the Malay--his
turban and loose trousers of dingy white relieved upon the dark
panelling. He had placed himself nearer to the girl than she seemed
to relish, though her native spirit of mountain intrepidity
contended with the feeling of simple awe which her countenance
expressed as she gazed upon the tiger-cat before her. And a more
striking picture there could not be imagined than the beautiful
English face of the girl, and its exquisite fairness, together with
her erect and independent attitude, contrasted with the sallow and
bilious skin of the Malay, enamelled or veneered with mahogany by
marine air, his small, fierce, restless eyes, thin lips, slavish
gestures and adorations. Half-hidden by the ferocious-looking Malay
was a little child from a neighbouring cottage who had crept in
after him, and was now in the act of reverting its head and gazing
upwards at the turban and the fiery eyes beneath it, whilst with one
hand he caught at the dress of the young woman for protection. My
knowledge of the Oriental tongues is not remarkably extensive, being
indeed confined to two words--the Arabic word for barley and the
Turkish for opium (madjoon), which I have learned from Anastasius;
and as I had neither a Malay dictionary nor even Adelung's
Mithridates, which might have helped me to a few words, I addressed
him in some lines from the Iliad, considering that, of such
languages as I possessed, Greek, in point of longitude, came
geographically nearest to an Oriental one. He worshipped me in a
most devout manner, and replied in what I suppose was Malay. In
this way I saved my reputation with my neighbours, for the Malay had
no means of betraying the secret. He lay down upon the floor for
about an hour, and then pursued his journey. On his departure I
presented him with a piece of opium. To him, as an Orientalist, I
concluded that opium must be familiar; and the expression of his
face convinced me that it was. Nevertheless, I was struck with some
little consternation when I saw him suddenly raise his hand to his
mouth, and, to use the schoolboy phrase, bolt the whole, divided
into three pieces, at one mouthful. The quantity was enough to kill
three dragoons and their horses, and I felt some alarm for the poor
creature; but what could be done? I had given him the opium in
compassion for his solitary life, on recollecting that if he had
travelled on foot from London it must be nearly three weeks since he
could have exchanged a thought with any human being. I could not
think of violating the laws of hospitality by having him seized and
drenched with an emetic, and thus frightening him into a notion that
we were going to sacrifice him to some English idol. No: there was
clearly no help for it. He took his leave, and for some days I felt
anxious, but as I never heard of any Malay being found dead, I
became convinced that he was used {17} to opium; and that I must
have done him the service I designed by giving him one night of
respite from the pains of wandering.
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