Chapter 11

"His tastes were very simple, though a little troublesome, at least to the servant who prepared his repast. Coffee, boiled rice and milk, and a piece of mutton from the loin were the materials that invariably formed his diet. The cook, who had an audience with him daily, received her instructions in silent awe, quite overpowered by his manner, for had he been addressing a duchess he could scarcely have spoken with more deference. He would couch his request in such terms as these: 'Owing to dyspepsia affecting my system, and the possibility of any additional disarrangement of the stomach taking place, consequences incalculably distressing would arise, so much so indeed as to increase nervous irritation, and prevent me from attending to matters of overwhelming importance, if you do not remember to cut the mutton in a diagonal rather than in a longitudinal form.' But these little meals were not the only indulgences that, when not properly attended to, brought trouble to Mr. De Quincey. Regularity in doses of opium was even of greater consequence. An ounce of laudanum per diem prostrated animal life in the early part of the day. It was no unfrequent sight to find him in his room, lying upon the rug in front of the fire, his head resting upon a book, his arms crossed over his breast, plunged in profound slumber. For several hours he would lie in this state, until the effects of the torpor had passed away. The time when he was most brilliant was generally toward the early morning hours; and then, more than once, in order to show him off, my father arranged his supper-parties so that, sitting till three or four in the morning, he brought Mr. De Quincey to that point at which in charm and power of conversation he was so truly wonderful."

* * * * *

In the "Suspiris de Profundis" of De Quincey, written in the year 1845, we have his own final record of the last chapter of his opium history. He says:

"In 1821, as a contribution to a periodical work--in 1822, as a separate volume--appeared the 'Confessions of an English Opium-Eater.' At the close of this little work the reader was instructed to believe, and _truly_ instructed, that I had mastered the tyranny of opium. The fact is, that _twice_ I mastered it, and by efforts even more prodigious in the second of these cases than in the first. But one error I committed in both. I did not connect with the abstinence from opium, so trying to the fortitude under _any_ circumstances, that enormity of exercise which (as I have since learned) is the one sole resource for making it endurable. I overlooked, in those days, the one _sine qua non_ for making the triumph permanent. Twice I sank, twice I rose again. A third time I sank; partly from the cause mentioned (the oversight as to exercise), partly from other causes, on which it avails not now to trouble the reader. I could moralize if I chose; and perhaps _he_ will moralize whether I choose it or not. But in the mean time neither of us is acquainted properly with the circumstances of the case; I, from natural bias of judgment, not altogether acquainted; and he (with his permission) not at all.

"During this third prostration before the dark idol, and after some years, new and monstrous phenomena began slowly to arise. For a time these were neglected as accidents, or palliated by such remedies as I knew of. But when I could no longer conceal from myself that these dreadful symptoms were moving forward forever, by a pace steadily, solemnly, and equably increasing, I endeavored, with some feeling of panic, for a third time to retrace my steps. But I had not reversed my motions for many weeks before I became profoundly aware that this was impossible. Or, in the imagery of my dreams, which translated every thing into their own language, I saw through vast avenues of gloom those towering gates of ingress, which hitherto had always seemed to stand open, now at last barred against my retreat, and hung with funeral crape.

"The sentiment which attends the sudden revelation that _all is lost!_ silently is gathered up into the heart; it is too deep for gestures or for words; and no part of it passes to the outside. Were the ruin conditional, or were it in any point doubtful, it would be natural to utter ejaculations, and to seek sympathy. But where the ruin is understood to be absolute, where sympathy can not be consolation, and counsel can not be hope, this is otherwise. The voice perishes; the gestures are frozen; and the spirit of man flies back upon its own centre. I, at least, upon seeing those awful gates closed and hung with draperies of woe, as for a death already past, spoke not, nor started, nor groaned. One profound sigh ascended from my heart, and I was silent for days." [Footnote: Mr. De Quincey died at Edinburgh, Dec. 8, 1859.]

OPIUM REMINISCENCES OF COLERIDGE.

Soon after the death of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a retired book-seller of Bristol by the name of Joseph Cottle felt called upon to make public what he knew or could gather respecting the opium habits of the philosopher and poet. His first publication was made in the year 1837, and was entitled "Recollections of Coleridge." Ten years later he elaborated this publication into "The Reminiscences of Coleridge and Southey." From the pages of the latter, from Gilman's "Life of Coleridge," from the poet's own correspondence, and from the miscellaneous writings of De Quincey, the following record has been chiefly compiled. From these sources the reader can obtain a pretty accurate knowledge of the circumstances under which Coleridge became an opium-eater; of the struggles he made to emancipate himself from the habit, and of the intellectual ruin which opium entailed upon one of the most marvellous-minded men the world has produced.

It seems certain that Coleridge became familiar with opium as early at least as the year 1796, though it is probable that its use did not become habitual till about 1802 or 1803. From this period to the year 1814, his consumption of laudanum appears to have been enormous. The efforts he made at self-reformation immediately previous to his admission in 1816 into the family of Dr. Gilman, were unsuccessful; and while the quantity of laudanum to which he had been so long accustomed, was subsequently reduced to a small daily allowance, the opium _habit_ ceased only with his life.

In justice to his memory, and in part mitigation of the censures of many of his personal friends, as well as to enable the reader to judge of the circumstances under which this distinguished man fell into his ruinous habit, the following extracts from his own letters and from other sources are given, nearly in chronological order, that it may be seen how far, from his childhood to his grave, Coleridge's constitutional infirmities furnish a partial apology for his excesses. Under date of Nov. 5, 1796, he writes to a friend:

"I wanted such a letter as yours, for I am very unwell. On Wednesday night I was seized with an intolerable pain from my temple to the tip of my right shoulder, including my right eye, cheek, jaw, and that side of the throat. I was nearly frantic, and ran about the house almost naked, endeavoring by every means to excite sensation in different parts of my body, and so to weaken the enemy by creating a diversion. It continued from one in the morning till half-past five, and left me pale and faint. It came on fitfully, but not so violently, several times on Thursday, and began severer threats toward night; but I took between sixty and seventy drops of laudanum, and sopped the Cerberus just as his mouth began to open. On Friday it only niggled, as if the chief had departed, as from a conquered place, and merely left a small garrison behind, or as if he had evacuated the Corsica, and a few straggling pains only remained. But this morning he returned in full force, and his name is Legion. Giant-fiend of a hundred hands, with a shower of arrowy death-pangs he transpierced me; and then he became a Wolf, and lay gnawing my bones! I am not mad, most noble Festus! but in sober sadness I have suffered this day more bodily pain than I had before a conception of. My right cheek has certainly been placed with admirable exactness under the focus of some invisible burning-glass, which concentrated all the rays of a Tartarean sun. My medical attendant decides it to be altogether nervous, and that it originates either in severe application or excessive anxiety. My beloved Poole, in excessive anxiety I believe it might originate. I have a blister under my right ear, and I take twenty-five drops of laudanum every five hours, the ease and spirits gained by which have enabled me to write to you this flighty but not exaggerating account."

About the same time he writes to another friend, "A devil, a very devil, has got possession of my left temple, eye, cheek, jaw, throat, and shoulder. I can not see you this evening. I write in agony." Frequent reference is made in Coleridge's correspondence to his sufferings, from rheumatic or neuralgic affections, and the following letter, written in 1797, may possibly explain their origin:

"I had asked my mother one evening to cut my cheese entire, so that I might toast it. This was no easy matter, it being a _crumbly_ cheese. My mother, however, did it. I went into the garden for something or other, and in the mean time my brother Frank minced my cheese, to 'disappoint the favorite.' I returned, saw the exploit, and in an agony of passion flew at Frank. He pretended to have been seriously hurt by my blow, flung himself on the ground, and there lay with outstretched limbs. I hung over him mourning and in a great fright; he leaped up, and with a horse-laugh gave me a severe blow in the face. I seized a knife and was running at him, when my mother came in and took me by the arm. I expected a flogging, and struggling from her I ran away to a little hill or slope, at the bottom of which the Otter flows, about a mile from Ottery. There I stayed. My rage died away, but my obstinancy vanquished my fears, and taking out a shilling book, which had at the end morning and evening prayers, I very devoutly repeated them--thinking at the same time, with a gloomy inward satisfaction, how miserable my mother must be!.... It grew dark and I fell asleep. It was toward the end of October, and it proved a stormy night. I felt the cold in my sleep, and dreamed that I was pulling the blanket over me, and actually pulled over me a dry thorn-bush which lay on the ground near me. In my sleep I had rolled from the top of the hill till within three yards of the river, which flowed by the unfenced edge of the bottom. I awoke several times, and finding myself wet, and cold, and stiff, closed my eyes again that I might forget it.

"In the mean time my mother waited about half an hour, expecting my return when the _sulks_ had evaporated. I not returning, she sent into the church-yard and round the town. Not found! Several men and all the boys were sent out to ramble about and seek me. In vain! My mother was almost distracted, and at ten o'clock at night I was _cried_ by the crier in Ottery and in two villages near it, with a reward offered for me. No one went to bed; indeed I believe half the town were up all the night. To return to myself. About five in the morning, or a little after, I was broad awake and attempted to get up and walk, but I could not move. I saw the shepherds and workmen at a distance and cried, but so faintly that it was impossible to hear me thirty yards off, and there I might have lain and died--for I was now almost given over, the pond and even the river near which I was lying having been dragged--but providentially Sir Stafford Northcote, who had been out all night, resolved to make one other trial, and came so near that he heard me crying. He carried me in his arms for nearly a quarter of a mile, when we met my father and Sir Stafford Northcote's servants. I remember and never shall forget my father's face as he looked upon me while I lay in the servant's arms--so calm, and the tears stealing down his face, for I was the child of his old age. My mother, as you may suppose, was outrageous with joy. Meantime in rushed a young lady, crying out, 'I hope you'll whip him, Mr. Coleridge.' This woman still lives at Ottery, and neither philosophy nor religion has been able to conquer the antipathy which I feel toward her whenever I see her. I was put to bed and recovered in a day or so; but I was certainly injured, for I was weakly and subject to ague for many years after."

The next year he writes to two other friends: "I have been confined to my bed for some days through a fever occasioned by the stump of a tooth which baffled chirurgical efforts to eject, and which by affecting my eye affected my stomach, and through that my whole frame. I am better, but still weak in consequence of such long sleeplessness and wearying pains; weak, very weak.

"I have even now returned from a little excursion that I have taken for the confirmation of my health, which has suffered a rude assault from the anguish of the stump of a tooth which had baffled the attempts of our surgeon here, and which confined' me to my bed. I suffered much from the disease, and more from the doctor. Rather than again put my mouth into his hands, I would put my hands into a lion's mouth."

His nephew says of him: "He was naturally of a joyous temperament, and in one amusement, swimming, he excelled and took singular delight. Indeed he believed, and probably with truth, that his health was singularly injured by his excess in bathing, coupled with such tricks as swimming across the New River in his clothes, and drying them on his back, and the like."

In the biography of the poet by his friend Dr. Gilman, in whose family he resided for the last twenty years of his life, the subjoined statements are found:

"From his own account, as well as from Lamb and others who knew him when at school, he must have been a delicate and suffering boy. His principal ailments he owed much to the state of his stomach, which was at that time so delicate that when compelled to go to a large closet containing shoes, to pick out a pair easy to his feet, which were always tender, the smell from the number in this place used to make him so sick that I have often seen him shudder, even in late life, when he gave an account of it.

"'Conceive,' says Coleridge, 'what I must have been at fourteen. I was in a continual low fever. My whole being was, with eyes closed to every object of present sense, to crumple myself up in a sunny corner and read, read, read; fancy myself on Robinson Crusoe's Island, finding a mountain of plum-cake, and eating a room for myself, and then eating it into the shapes of tables and chairs--hunger and fancy!'

"Full half the time from seventeen to eighteen was passed in the sick-ward of Christ's Hospital, afflicted with jaundice and rheumatic fever. From these indiscretions and their consequences may be dated all his bodily sufferings in future life--in short, rheumatism sadly afflicting him, while the remedies only slightly alleviated his sufferings, without hope of a permanent cure. Medical men are too often called upon to witness the effects of acute rheumatism in the young subject. In some the attack is on the heart, and its consequences are immediate; in others it leaves behind bodily suffering, which may indeed be palliated, but terminates only in a lingering dissolution.

"In early life he was remarkably joyous. Nature had blessed him with a buoyancy of spirits, and even when suffering he deceived the partial observer.

"At this time (while a soldier) he frequently complained of a pain at the pit of his stomach, accompanied with sickness, which totally prevented his stooping, and in consequence he could never arrive at the power of bending his body to rub the heels of his horse. During the latter part of his life he became nearly crippled by the rheumatism."

Under date of July 24, 1800, Coleridge writes: "I have been more unwell than I have ever been since I left school. For many days was forced to keep my bed, and when released from that incarceration I suffered most grievously from a brace of swollen eyelids and a head into which, on the least agitation, the blood was felt as rushing in and flowing back again, like the raking of the tide on a coast of loose stones."

In January, 1803, he says: "I write with difficulty, with all the fingers but one of my right hand very much swollen. Before I was half up the _Kirkstone mountain_, the storm had wetted me through and through. In spite of the wet and the cold I should have had some pleasure in it, but for two vexations; first, an almost intolerable pain came into my right eye, a smarting and burning pain; and secondly, in consequence of riding with such cold water under my seat, extremely uneasy and burdensome feelings attacked my groin, so that, what with the pain from the one, and the alarm from the other, I had no enjoyment at all!

"I went on to Grasmere. I was not at all unwell when I arrived there, though wet of course to the skin. My right eye had nothing the matter with it, either to the sight of others or to my own feelings, but I had a bad night with distressful dreams, chiefly about my eye; and waking often in the dark, I thought it was the effect of mere recollection, but it appeared in the morning that my right eye was bloodshot and the lid swollen. That morning, however, I walked home, and before I reached Keswick my eye was quite well, but _I felt unwell all over_. Yesterday I continued unusually unwell all over me till eight o'clock in the evening. I took no _laudanum or opium_, but at eight o'clock, unable to bear the stomach uneasiness and aching of my limbs, I took two large tea-spoons full of ether in a wine-glass of camphorated gum-water, and a third tea-spoon full at ten o'clock, and I received complete relief, my body calmed, my sleep placid; but when I awoke in the morning my right hand, with three of the fingers, were swollen and inflamed. The swelling in the hand is gone down, and of two of the fingers somewhat abated, but the middle finger is still twice its natural size, so that I write with difficulty."

A few days later, he writes to the same friend: "On Monday night I had an attack in my stomach and right side, which in pain, and the length of its continuance, appeared to me by far the severest I ever had. About one o'clock the pain passed out of my stomach, like lightning from a cloud, into the extremities of my right foot. My toe swelled and throbbed, and I was in a state of delicious ease which the pain in my toe did not seem at all to interfere with. On Wednesday I was well, and after dinner wrapped myself up warm and walked to Lodore.

"The walk appears to have done me good, but I had a wretched night: shocking pains in my head, occiput, and teeth, and found in the morning that I had two bloodshot eyes. But almost immediately after the receipt and perusal of your letter the pains left me, and I am bettered to this hour; and am now indeed as well as usual saving that my left eye is very much bloodshot. It is a sort of duty with me to be particular respecting parts that relate to my health. I have retained a good sound appetite through the whole of it, without any craving after exhilarants or narcotics, and I have got well as in a moment. Rapid recovery is constitutional with me; but the former circumstances I can with certainty refer to the system of diet, abstinence of vegetables, wine, spirits, and beer, which I have adopted by your advice."

The same year he writes to a friend suffering from a chronic disorder, and records the trial of Bang--"the powder of the leaves of a kind of hemp that grows in the hot climates. It is prepared, and I believe used, in all parts of the east, from Morocco to China. In Europe it is found to act very differently on different constitutions. Some it elevates in the extreme; others it renders torpid, and scarcely observant of any evil that may befall them. In Barbary it is always taken, if it can be procured, by criminals condemned to suffer amputation, and it is said to enable those miserables to bear the rough operations of an unfeeling executioner more than we Europeans can the keen knife of our most skillful chirurgeons:

"We will have a fair trial of Bang. Do bring down some of the Hyoscyamine pills, and I will give a fair trial to Opium, Henbane, and Nepenthe. By the bye, I always considered Homer's account of the Nepenthe as a _Banging_ lie."

In September, 1803, he gives a gloomy account of his condition. It seems probable that at this time his use of opium must have become habitual:

"For five months past my mind has been strangely shut up. I have taken the paper with the intention to write to you many times, but it has been one blank feeling--one blank idealess feeling. I had nothing to say--could say nothing. How dearly I love you, my very dreams make known to me. I will not trouble you with the gloomy tale of my health. When I am awake, by patience, employment, effort of mind, and walking, I can keep the fiend at arm's-length, but the night is my Hell! sleep my tormenting Angel. Three nights out of four I fall asleep, struggling to lie awake, and my frequent night-screams have almost made me a nuisance in my own house. Dreams with me are no shadows, but the very calamities of my life.

"In the hope of drawing the gout, if gout it should be, into my feet, I walked, previously to my getting into the coach at Perth, 263 miles in eight days, with no unpleasant fatigue. My head is equally strong; but acid or not acid, gout or not gout, something there is in my stomach.

"To diversify this dusky letter, I will write an _Epitaph_, which I composed in my sleep for myself while dreaming that I was dying. To the best of my recollection I have not altered a word:

"'Here sleeps at length poor Col. and without screaming, Who died as he had always lived, a dreaming; Shot dead, while sleeping, by the gout within, Alone, and all unknown, at E'nbro' in an Inn'"

In the beginning of the next year, 1804, the state of his health is thus indicated: "I stayed at Grasmere (Mr. Wordsworth's) a month--three-fourths of the time bedridden--and deeply do I feel the enthusiastic kindness of Wordsworth's wife and sister, who sat up by me, one or the other, in order to awaken me at the first symptoms of distressful feeling; and even when they went to rest, continued often and often to weep and watch for me even in their dreams.

"Though my right hand is so much swollen that I can scarcely keep my pen steady between my thumb and finger, yet my stomach is easy and my breathing comfortable, and I am eager to hope all good things of my health. That gained, I have a cheering and I trust prideless confidence that I shall make an active and perseverant use of the faculties and requirements that have been entrusted to my keeping, and a fair trial of their height, depth, and width."

A few days later he writes to a friend who was suffering like himself: "Have you ever thought of trying large doses of opium, a hot climate, keeping your body open by grapes, and the fruits of the climate? Is it possible that by drinking freely you might at last produce the gout, and that a violent pain and inflammation in the extremities might produce new trains of motion and feeling in your stomach, and the organs connected with the stomach, known and unknown? I know by a little what your sufferings are, and that to shut the eyes and stop up the ears is to give one's self up to storm and darkness, and the lurid forms and horrors of a dream."