This extract is important as showing that when a mere child, knowing nothing of the fatal drug, he had visions similar to those which filled his after years. At Oxford he had begun the use of opium—but his first vision was a repetition of one of his childish years, and it leads us to infer that his own vivid imagination bore an important part in the brilliant dreams which followed his taking of opium. No person of ordinary mind could induce those gorgeous and bewildering dreams by its use. In his case the drug acted upon a mind fitted to see visions and dream dreams even without its use; and the result was that gorgeous and bewildering phantasmagoria which he so eloquently describes.
The causes of his first indulging in opium may be briefly glanced at here. At seventeen, he ran away from the school at which he had been placed by his guardians, his father now being dead. He wished to enter college at once, and it appears was well prepared to do so, and had made earnest representations to his guardians upon the subject, as he was unhappy where he was, and under a very unsuitable master. But they would not consent, and, like one of his brothers who ran away from school and went to sea, he borrowed a little money and stole quietly away to Wales.
The brother had left school, it appears, with good reason, being brutally treated; but in the case of Thomas there seems to have been no complaint of real ill-usage. It was simply one of the wilful freaks of a precocious and fantastic boy. He wandered in Wales for a few weeks, until his money was nearly spent, and then contrived to get to London, where he suffered the cruellest pangs of poverty, although he was a young gentleman of independent fortune. It is difficult for a matter-of-fact and well-balanced mind to conceive of an experience just like that of De Quincey. Why he should have allowed himself to starve rather than communicate with his friends, we are not told,—it could scarcely have been pride, for he accepted help even from strangers when it was offered,—and why he did not seek some of the friends of his family in the city we are not informed, but such was the fact.
He tells the story thus:—
"And now began the later and fiercer stage of my long sufferings; without using a disproportionate expression, I might say of my agony. For I now suffered for upwards of sixteen weeks the physical anguish of hunger in various degrees of intensity, but as bitter, perhaps, as ever any human being can have suffered who has survived it. I would not needlessly harass my readers' feelings by a detail of all that I endured; for extremities such as these, under any circumstances of heaviest misconduct or guilt, cannot be contemplated, even in description, without a rueful pity that is painful to the natural goodness of the human heart. Let it suffice to say that a few fragments of bread from the breakfast table of one individual, and these at uncertain intervals, constituted my whole support. . . . I was houseless, and seldom slept under a roof."
After a time, however, he slept in an unoccupied house, or unoccupied save by a child of ten years,—as forlorn as himself. She slept here, and was much tormented by the fear of ghosts. She hailed his advent with great pleasure as a protection from supernatural visitants; and when the weather became cold, he used to hold her in his arms that she might gain the additional comfort of a little warmth. He says they lay upon the floor "with a bundle of cursed law papers for a pillow, and no covering save an old cloak." He slept only from exhaustion, and could hear himself moaning in his sleep; but his little companion, relieved of fear, and perhaps a little better fed than he, slept soundly and well at all times. He learned to love the poor child as his partner in wretchedness. He made also one other friend, a girl of the streets, named Ann, who was kind to him, and whom he remembered with gratitude to the end of his life. He says of her:—
"This person was a young woman, and one of that unhappy class who subsist upon the wages of prostitution. . . . Yet, no! let me not class thee, O noble-minded Ann, with that order of women; let me find, if it be possible, some gentler name to designate the condition of her to whose bounty and compassion—ministering to my necessities when all the world had forsaken me—I owe it that I am at this time alive. . . . She was not as old as myself. . . . O youthful benefactress! how often in succeeding years, standing in solitary places and thinking of thee with grief of heart and perfect love,—how often have I wished that, as in ancient times the curse of a father was believed to have a supernatural power, and to pursue its object with a fatal necessity of self-fulfilment,—even so the benediction of a heart oppressed with gratitude might have a like prerogative,—might have power given it from above to chase, to haunt, to waylay, to overtake, to pursue thee into the central darkness of a London brothel, or (if it were possible) into the darkness of the grave, there to awaken thee with an authentic message of peace and forgiveness and final reconciliation!"
The youthful wanderer was finally discovered by his friends, and placed by his wish at Oxford, where about a year after, in 1804, he began the occasional use of opium. He did this merely as a means of pleasure at first, like the drinking of wine, and took it only at stated intervals for a period of eight years. He seemed to experience no harm from its use in this way; but a very severe neuralgic affection of the stomach (caused, it is supposed, by his privations in London primarily) developed itself at the end of that time, and he resorted to the habitual use of opium as a relief from pain.
He was married in 1816 to Miss Margaret Simpson, and lived with her in a cottage at Grasmere. Of this wife, with whom he lived for twenty-one years, he thus writes:—
"But watching by my pillow, or defrauding herself of sleep to bear me company through the heavy watches of the night, sat my Electra; for thou, beloved M., dear companion of my later years, thou wast my Electra! and neither in nobility of mind nor in long-suffering affection would'st permit that a Grecian sister should excel an English wife. For thou thoughtest not much to stoop to humble offices of kindness, and to servile ministrations of tenderest affection; to wipe away for years the unwholesome dews upon the forehead, or to refresh the lips when parched and baked with fever; nor even when thy own peaceful slumbers had by long sympathy become infected with the spectacle of my dread contest with phantoms and shadowy enemies that oftentimes bade me 'sleep no more'—not even then did'st thou utter a complaint or any murmur, nor withdraw thy angelic smiles, nor shrink from thy service of love, more than did Electra of old. For she too, though she was a Grecian woman, and the daughter of the king of men, yet wept sometimes, and hid her face in her robe!"