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These were my opera pleasures; but another pleasure I had which, as
it could be had only on a Saturday night, occasionally struggled
with my love of the Opera; for at that time Tuesday and Saturday
were the regular opera nights. On this subject I am afraid I shall
be rather obscure, but I can assure the reader not at all more so
than Marinus in his Life of Proclus, or many other biographers and
autobiographers of fair reputation. This pleasure, I have said, was
to be had only on a Saturday night. What, then, was Saturday night
to me more than any other night? I had no labours that I rested
from, no wages to receive; what needed I to care for Saturday night,
more than as it was a summons to hear Grassini? True, most logical
reader; what you say is unanswerable. And yet so it was and is,
that whereas different men throw their feelings into different
channels, and most are apt to show their interest in the concerns of
the poor chiefly by sympathy, expressed in some shape or other, with
their distresses and sorrows, I at that time was disposed to express
my interest by sympathising with their pleasures. The pains of
poverty I had lately seen too much of, more than I wished to
remember; but the pleasures of the poor, their consolations of
spirit, and their reposes from bodily toil, can never become
oppressive to contemplate. Now Saturday night is the season for the
chief, regular, and periodic return of rest of the poor; in this
point the most hostile sects unite, and acknowledge a common link of
brotherhood; almost all Christendom rests from its labours. It is a
rest introductory to another rest, and divided by a whole day and
two nights from the renewal of toil. On this account I feel always,
on a Saturday night, as though I also were released from some yoke
of labour, had some wages to receive, and some luxury of repose to
enjoy. For the sake, therefore, of witnessing, upon as large a
scale as possible, a spectacle with which my sympathy was so entire,
I used often on Saturday nights, after I had taken opium, to wander
forth, without much regarding the direction or the distance, to all
the markets and other parts of London to which the poor resort of a
Saturday night, for laying out their wages. Many a family party,
consisting of a man, his wife, and sometimes one or two of his
children, have I listened to, as they stood consulting on their ways
and means, or the strength of their exchequer, or the price of
household articles. Gradually I became familiar with their wishes,
their difficulties, and their opinions. Sometimes there might be
heard murmurs of discontent, but far oftener expressions on the
countenance, or uttered in words, of patience, hope, and
tranquillity. And taken generally, I must say that, in this point
at least, the poor are more philosophic than the rich--that they
show a more ready and cheerful submission to what they consider as
irremediable evils or irreparable losses. Whenever I saw occasion,
or could do it without appearing to be intrusive, I joined their
parties, and gave my opinion upon the matter in discussion, which,
if not always judicious, was always received indulgently. If wages
were a little higher or expected to be so, or the quartern loaf a
little lower, or it was reported that onions and butter were
expected to fall, I was glad; yet, if the contrary were true, I drew
from opium some means of consoling myself. For opium (like the bee,
that extracts its materials indiscriminately from roses and from the
soot of chimneys) can overrule all feelings into compliance with the
master-key. Some of these rambles led me to great distances, for an
opium-eater is too happy to observe the motion of time; and
sometimes in my attempts to steer homewards, upon nautical
principles, by fixing my eye on the pole-star, and seeking
ambitiously for a north-west passage, instead of circumnavigating
all the capes and head-lands I had doubled in my outward voyage, I
came suddenly upon such knotty problems of alleys, such enigmatical
entries, and such sphynx's riddles of streets without thoroughfares,
as must, I conceive, baffle the audacity of porters and confound the
intellects of hackney-coachmen. I could almost have believed at
times that I must be the first discoverer of some of these terrae
incognitae, and doubted whether they had yet been laid down in the
modern charts of London. For all this, however, I paid a heavy
price in distant years, when the human face tyrannised over my
dreams, and the perplexities of my steps in London came back and
haunted my sleep, with the feeling of perplexities, moral and
intellectual, that brought confusion to the reason, or anguish and
remorse to the conscience.
Thus I have shown that opium does not of necessity produce
inactivity or torpor, but that, on the contrary, it often led me
into markets and theatres. Yet, in candour, I will admit that
markets and theatres are not the appropriate haunts of the opium-
eater when in the divinest state incident to his enjoyment. In that
state, crowds become an oppression to him; music even, too sensual
and gross. He naturally seeks solitude and silence, as
indispensable conditions of those trances, or profoundest reveries,
which are the crown and consummation of what opium can do for human
nature. I, whose disease it was to meditate too much and to observe
too little, and who upon my first entrance at college was nearly
falling into a deep melancholy, from brooding too much on the
sufferings which I had witnessed in London, was sufficiently aware
of the tendencies of my own thoughts to do all I could to counteract
them. I was, indeed, like a person who, according to the old
legend, had entered the cave of Trophonius; and the remedies I
sought were to force myself into society, and to keep my
understanding in continual activity upon matters of science. But
for these remedies I should certainly have become hypochondriacally
melancholy. In after years, however, when my cheerfulness was more
fully re-established, I yielded to my natural inclination for a
solitary life. And at that time I often fell into these reveries
upon taking opium; and more than once it has happened to me, on a
summer night, when I have been at an open window, in a room from
which I could overlook the sea at a mile below me, and could command
a view of the great town of L-, at about the same distance, that I
have sate from sunset to sunrise, motionless, and without wishing to
move.
I shall be charged with mysticism, Behmenism, quietism, etc., but
THAT shall not alarm me. Sir H. Vane, the younger, was one of our
wisest men; and let my reader see if he, in his philosophical works,
be half as unmystical as I am. I say, then, that it has often
struck me that the scene itself was somewhat typical of what took
place in such a reverie. The town of L- represented the earth, with
its sorrows and its graves left behind, yet not out of sight, nor
wholly forgotten. The ocean, in everlasting but gentle agitation,
and brooded over by a dove-like calm, might not unfitly typify the
mind and the mood which then swayed it. For it seemed to me as if
then first I stood at a distance and aloof from the uproar of life;
as if the tumult, the fever, and the strife were suspended; a
respite granted from the secret burthens of the heart; a sabbath of
repose; a resting from human labours. Here were the hopes which
blossom in the paths of life reconciled with the peace which is in
the grave; motions of the intellect as unwearied as the heavens, yet
for all anxieties a halcyon calm; a tranquillity that seemed no
product of inertia, but as if resulting from mighty and equal
antagonisms; infinite activities, infinite repose.
Oh, just, subtle, and mighty opium! that to the hearts of poor and
rich alike, for the wounds that will never heal, and for "the pangs
that tempt the spirit to rebel," bringest an assuaging balm;
eloquent opium! that with thy potent rhetoric stealest away the
purposes of wrath; and to the guilty man for one night givest back
the hopes of his youth, and hands washed pure from blood; and to the
proud man a brief oblivion for
wrongs undress'd and insults unavenged;
that summonest to the chancery of dreams, for the triumphs of
suffering innocence, false witnesses; and confoundest perjury, and
dost reverse the sentences of unrighteous judges;--thou buildest
upon the bosom of darkness, out of the fantastic imagery of the
brain, cities and temples beyond the art of Phidias and Praxiteles--
beyond the splendour of Babylon and Hekatompylos, and "from the
anarchy of dreaming sleep" callest into sunny light the faces of
long-buried beauties and the blessed household countenances cleansed
from the "dishonours of the grave." Thou only givest these gifts to
man; and thou hast the keys of Paradise, oh, just, subtle, and
mighty opium!
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