On alien shores; and if his fellows spake,
His voice was thin, as voices from the grave;
And deaf-asleep he seemed, yet all awake,
And music in his ears his beating heart did make."
By causing the life to flow inward upon a more ideal centre, opium deepens the consciousness, and compels it to give testimony to processes and connections that in ordinary moments escape unrecorded. It is as if new materials were found for a history of the individual life,—materials which, like freshly discovered records, sound the deepest meanings of the present and measure the abysses of the past. Thus it is that the fugitive imagery of sense is interpreted as a scroll which hides infinite truths under the most fleeting of symbols,—symbols which are not sufficiently enduring to call them words, or even syllables of words, since the most trivial hint or whisper of them has hardly reached us ere they have perished. Thus it is that even the still more intangible record of memory, where are preserved only images and echoes of that which undeniably has perished, is revivified and enlarged.
There is, then, in the opium-eater a most marked, a polar antithesis between his every-day life and the central manifestations of his genius. In the latter, there is beautiful order, as in a symphony of Beethoven's; but in the former, looked upon from without, all seems confusion. There is the same antithesis in every meditative mind; but here opium has heightened each part of the contrast. The more we admire the encentric harmonies of inwrapt power, the more do we find to draw forth laughter in the eccentricities of outward habit. The very same agencies which undisguised and unveiled the deep, divine heaven, masked the earth with desert sands; and De Quincey's outward life was thus masked and rendered abnormal, that the blue heaven in which he revelled might be infinitely exalted.
Thus is it possible for the seemingly ludicrous to harmonize with transcendent sublimity. We smile at De Quincey's giving in "copy" on the generous margins of a splendid "Somnium Scipionis"; but the precious words, that might perhaps have found some more fit vehicle to the composer's eye, could have found no deeper place in our hearts. We look at the hatless sleeper among the mountains: his face seems utterly blank and meaningless, and to all intents and purposes he seems as good as dead; but let us ascend with him in his dreams, and we shall soon forget that under God's heavens there exists mortality [pg 370] or the commonplace uses of mortality.
As we ascend from grotesque features to such as are more intellectual, that peculiarity of his character which most strikes us is his inimitable courtesy. Mr. F.,—to whom I am indebted for the most novel and interesting portions of this memorial,—from his own personal interviews with the man, among many other things, retains this chiefly in remembrance,—that De Quincey was the perfectest gentleman he had ever seen.
I take the liberty here of particularizing somewhat in regard to one visit which this friend of De Quincey's paid him, particularly as it introduces us to the man towards the last of his life (1851). Mr. F., curious as it may seem, found but one person in Edinburgh who could inform him definitely as to De Quincey's whereabouts. In return to a note, giving De Quincey information of his arrival, etc., the latter replies in a letter which is very characteristic, and which may well be highly prized, so rarely was it that any friend was able to obtain from him such a memento. The style, perhaps, is as familiar as it was ever his habit to indulge in; and it shows how impossible it was for him, even on the most temporary summons, to dispense with his usual regularity of expression or with any logical nicety of method. The letter runs thus:—
Thursday evening, August 26, 1851.
"My dear Sir,—The acccompanying billet from my daughter, short at any rate under the pressure of instant engagements, has been cut shorter by a sudden and very distressing headache; I, therefore, who (from a peculiar nervousness connected with the act of writing) so rarely attempt to discharge my own debts in the letter-writing department of life, find myself unaccountably, I might say mysteriously, engaged in the knight-errantry of undertaking for other people's. Wretched bankrupt that I am, with an absolute refusal on the part of the Commissioner to grant me a certificate of the lowest class, suddenly, and by a necessity not to be evaded, I am affecting the large bounties of supererogation. I appear to be vaporing in a spirit of vainglory; and yet it is under the mere coercion of 'salva necessitas' that I am surprised into this unparalleled instance of activity. Do you walk? That is, do you like walking for four hours 'on end'—(which is our archaic expression for continuously)? If I knew that, I would arrange accordingly for meeting you. The case as to distance is this. The Dalkeith railway, from the Waverley station, brings you to Esk Bank. That is its nearest approach,—its perihelion, in relation to ourselves; and it is precisely two and three-quarters miles distant from Mavis Bush,—the name of our cottage. Close to us, and the most noticeable object for guiding your inquiries, is Mr. Annandale's Paper-Mills.
"Now, then, accordingly as you direct my motions, I will—rain being supposed absent—join you at your hotel in Edinburgh any time after 11 A.M. and walk out the whole distance, (seven miles from the Scott monument,) or else I will meet you at Esk Bank; or, if you prefer coming out in a carriage, I will await your coming here in that state of motionless repose which best befits a philosopher. Excuse my levity; and believe that with sincere pleasure we shall receive your obliging visit.
"Ever your faithful servant,
"THOMAS DE QUINCEY."