Miscellaneous Essays - Thomas de Quincey
Ah, reader! when I look back upon those days, it seems to me that all
things change or perish. Even thunder and lightning, it pains me to say,
are not the thunder and lightning which I seem to remember about the
time of Waterloo. Roses, I fear, are degenerating, and, without a Red
revolution, must come to the dust. The Fannies of our island--though this
I say with reluctance--are not improving; and the Bath road is notoriously
superannuated. Mr. Waterton tells me that the crocodile does _not_
change--that a cayman, in fact, or an alligator, is just as good for riding
upon as he was in the time of the Pharaohs. _That_ may be; but the reason
is, that the crocodile does not live fast--he is a slow coach. I believe
it is generally understood amongst naturalists, that the crocodile is a
blockhead. It is my own impression that the Pharaohs were also blockheads.
Now, as the Pharaohs and the crocodile domineered over Egyptian society,
this accounts for a singular mistake that prevailed on the Nile. The
crocodile made the ridiculous blunder of supposing man to be meant chiefly
for his own eating. Man, taking a different view of the subject, naturally
met that mistake by another; he viewed the crocodile as a thing sometimes
to worship, but always to run away from. And this continued until Mr.
Waterton changed the relations between the animals. The mode of escaping
from the reptile he showed to be, not by running away, but by leaping on
its back, booted and spurred. The two animals had misunderstood each other.
The use of the crocodile has now been cleared up--it is to be ridden; and
the use of man is, that he may improve the health of the crocodile by
riding him a fox-hunting before breakfast. And it is pretty certain that
any crocodile, who has been regularly hunted through the season, and is
master of the weight he carries, will take a six-barred gate now as well as
ever he would have done in the infancy of the pyramids.
Perhaps, therefore, the crocodile does _not_ change, but all things else
_do_: even the shadow of the pyramids grows less. And often the restoration
in vision of Fanny and the Bath road, makes me too pathetically sensible of
that truth. Out of the darkness, if I happen to call up the image of Fanny
from thirty-five years back, arises suddenly a rose in June; or, if I think
for an instant of the rose in June, up rises the heavenly face of Fanny.
One after the other, like the antiphonies in the choral service, rises
Fanny and the rose in June, then back again the rose in June and Fanny.
Then come both together, as in a chorus; roses and Fannies, Fannies and
roses, without end--thick as blossoms in paradise. Then comes a venerable
crocodile, in a royal livery of scarlet and gold, or in a coat with sixteen
capes; and the crocodile is driving four-in-hand from the box of the
Bath mail. And suddenly we upon the mail are pulled up by a mighty dial,
sculptured with the hours, and with the dreadful legend of TOO LATE. Then
all at once we are arrived at Marlborough forest, amongst the lovely
households[7] of the roe-deer: these retire into the dewy thickets; the
thickets are rich with roses; the roses call up (as ever) the sweet
countenance of Fanny, who, being the granddaughter of a crocodile, awakens
a dreadful host of wild semi-legendary animals,--griffins, dragons,
basilisks, sphinxes,--till at length the whole vision of fighting images
crowds into one towering armorial shield, a vast emblazonry of human
charities and human loveliness that have perished, but quartered
heraldically with unutterable horrors of monstrous and demoniac natures,
whilst over all rises, as a surmounting crest, one fair female hand, with
the fore-finger pointing, in sweet, sorrowful admonition, upwards to
heaven, and having power (which, without experience, I never could have
believed) to awaken the pathos that kills in the very bosom of the horrors
that madden the grief that gnaws at the heart, together with the monstrous
creations of darkness that shock the belief, and make dizzy the reason of
man. This is the peculiarity that I wish the reader to notice, as having
first been made known to me for a possibility by this early vision of
Fanny on the Bath road. The peculiarity consisted in the confluence of two
different keys, though apparently repelling each other, into the music
and governing principles of the same dream; horror, such as possesses the
maniac, and yet, by momentary transitions, grief, such as may be supposed
to possess the dying mother when leaving her infant children to the mercies
of the cruel. Usually, and perhaps always, in an unshaken nervous system,
these two modes of misery exclude each other--here first they met in horrid
reconciliation. There was also a separate peculiarity in the quality of the
horror. This was afterwards developed into far more revolting complexities
of misery and incomprehensible darkness; and perhaps I am wrong in
ascribing any value as a _causative_ agency to this particular case on the
Bath road--possibly it furnished merely an _occasion_ that accidentally
introduced a mode of horrors certain, to any rate, to have grown up,
with or without the Bath road, from more advanced stages of the nervous
derangement. Yet, as the cubs of tigers or leopards, when domesticated,
have been observed to suffer a sudden development of their latent ferocity
under too eager an appeal to their playfulness--the gaieties of sport in
_them_ being too closely connected with the fiery brightness of their
murderous instincts--so I have remarked that the caprices, the gay
arabesques, and the lovely floral luxuriations of dreams, betray a shocking
tendency to pass into finer maniacal splendors. That gaiety, for instance
(for such as first it was,) in the dreaming faculty, by which one principal
point of resemblance to a crocodile in the mail-coachman was soon made to
clothe him with the form of a crocodile, and yet was blended with accessory
circumstances derived from his _human_ functions, passed rapidly into a
further development, no longer gay or playful, but terrific, the most
terrific that besieges dreams, viz--the horrid inoculation upon each other
of incompatible natures. This horror has always been secretly felt by
man; it was felt even under pagan forms of religion, which offered a very
feeble, and also a very limited gamut for giving expression to the human
capacities of sublimity or of horror. We read it in the fearful composition
of the sphinx. The dragon, again, is the snake inoculated upon the
scorpion. The basilisk unites the mysterious malice of the evil eye,
unintentional on the part of the unhappy agent, with the intentional venom
of some other malignant natures. But these horrid complexities of evil
agency are but _objectively_ horrid; they inflict the horror suitable to
their compound nature; but there is no insinuation that they _feel_ that
horror. Heraldry is so full of these fantastic creatures, that, in some
zoologies, we find a separate chapter or a supplement dedicated to what is
denominated heraldic zoology. And why not? For these hideous creatures,
however visionary[8], have a real traditionary ground in medieval
belief--sincere and partly reasonable, though adulterating with mendacity,
blundering, credulity, and intense superstition. But the dream-horror
which I speak of is far more frightful. The dreamer finds housed
within himself--occupying, as it were, some separate chamber in his
brain--holding, perhaps, from that station a secret and detestable commerce
with his own heart--some horrid alien nature. What if it were his own
nature repeated,--still, if the duality were distinctly perceptible, even
_that_--even this mere numerical double of his own consciousness--might
be a curse too mighty to be sustained. But how, if the alien nature
contradicts his own, fights with it, perplexes, and confounds it? How,
again, if not one alien nature, but two, but three, but four, but five, are
introduced within what once he thought the inviolable sanctuary of himself?
These, however, are horrors from the kingdoms of anarchy and darkness,
which, by their very intensity, challenge the sanctity of concealment, and
gloomily retire from exposition. Yet it was necessary to mention them,
because the first introduction to such appearances (whether causal,
or merely casual) lay in the heraldic monsters, (which monsters were
themselves introduced though playfully,) by the transfigured coachman of
the Bath mail.
GOING DOWN WITH VICTORY.
But the grandest chapter of our experience, within the whole mail-coach
service, was on those occasions when we went down from London with the
news of victory. A period of about ten years stretched from Trafalgar to
Waterloo: the second and third years of which period (1806 and 1807)
were comparatively sterile; but the rest, from 1805 to 1815 inclusively,
furnished a long succession of victories; the least of which, in a contest
of that portentous nature, had an inappreciable value of position--partly
for its absolute interference with the plans of our enemy, but still
more from its keeping alive in central Europe the sense of a deep-seated
vulnerability in France. Even to tease the coasts of our enemy, to mortify
them by continual blockades, to insult them by capturing if it were but a
baubling schooner under the eyes of their arrogant armies, repeated from
time to time a sullen proclamation of power lodged in a quarter to which
the hopes of Christendom turned in secret. How much more loudly must this
proclamation have spoken in the audacity[9] of having bearded the _elite_
of their troops, and having beaten them in pitched battles! Five years of
life it was worth paying down for the privilege of an outside place on a
mail-coach, when carrying down the first tidings of any such event. And it
is to be noted that, from our insular situation, and the multitude of our
frigates disposable for the rapid transmission of intelligence, rarely
did any unauthorized rumor steal away a prelibation from the aroma of the
regular dispatches. The government official news was generally the first
news.
From eight, P.M. to fifteen or twenty minutes later, imagine the mails
assembled on parade in Lombard Street, where, at that time, was seated the
General Post-Office. In what exact strength we mustered I do not remember;
but, from the length of each separate _attelage_, we filled the street,
though a long one, and though we were drawn up in double file. On _any_
night the spectacle was beautiful. The absolute perfection of all the
appointments about the carriages and the harness, and the magnificence of
the horses, were what might first have fixed the attention. Every
carriage, on every morning in the year, was taken down to an inspector
for examination--wheels, axles, linch-pins, pole, glasses, &c., were
all critically probed and tested. Every part of every carriage had been
cleaned, every horse had been groomed, with as much rigor as if they
belonged to a private gentleman; and that part of the spectacle offered
itself always. But the night before us is a night of victory; and behold!
to the ordinary display, what a heart-shaking addition!--horses, men,
carriages--all are dressed in laurels and flowers, oak leaves and ribbons.
The guards, who are his majesty's servants, and the coachmen, who are
within the privilege of the post-office, wear the royal liveries of course;
and as it is summer (for all the _land_ victories were won in summer,) they
wear, on this fine evening, these liveries exposed to view, without any
covering of upper coats. Such a costume, and the elaborate arrangement of
the laurels in their hats, dilated their hearts, by giving to them openly
an _official_ connection with the great news, in which already they have
the general interest of patriotism. That great national sentiment surmounts
and quells all sense of ordinary distinctions. Those passengers who happen
to be gentlemen are now hardly to be distinguished as such except by dress.
The usual reserve of their manner in speaking to the attendants has on this
night melted away. One heart, one pride, one glory, connects every man
by the transcendent bond of his English blood. The spectators, who are
numerous beyond precedent, express their sympathy with these fervent
feelings by continual hurrahs. Every moment are shouted aloud by the
post-office servants the great ancestral names of cities known to history
through a thousand years,--Lincoln, Winchester, Portsmouth, Gloucester,
Oxford, Bristol, Manchester, York, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Perth,
Glasgow--expressing the grandeur of the empire by the antiquity of its
towns, and the grandeur of the mail establishment by the diffusive
radiation of its separate missions. Every moment you hear the thunder of
lids locked down upon the mail-bags. That sound to each individual mail is
the signal for drawing off, which process is the finest part of the entire
spectacle. Then come the horses into play,--horses! can these be horses
that (unless powerfully reined in) would bound off with the action and
gestures of leopards? What stir!--what sea-like ferment!--what a thundering
of wheels, what a trampling of horses!--what farewell cheers--what
redoubling peals of brotherly congratulation, connecting the name of the
particular mail--"Liverpool for ever!"--with the name of the particular
victory--"Badajoz for ever!" or "Salamanca for ever!" The half-slumbering
consciousness that, all night long and all the next day--perhaps for even
a longer period--many of these mails, like fire racing along a train of
gunpowder, will be kindling at every instant new successions of burning
joy, has an obscure effect of multiplying the victory itself, by
multiplying to the imagination into infinity the stages of its progressive
diffusion. A fiery arrow seems to be let loose, which from that moment
is destined to travel, almost without intermission, westwards for three
hundred[10] miles--northwards for six hundred; and the sympathy of our
Lombard Street friends at parting is exalted a hundred fold by a sort of
visionary sympathy with the approaching sympathies, yet unborn, which we
are going to evoke.
Liberated from the embarrassments of the city, and issuing into the broad
uncrowded avenues of the northern suburbs, we begin to enter upon our
natural pace of ten miles an hour. In the broad light of the summer
evening, the sun, perhaps, only just at the point of setting, we are
seen from every story of every house. Heads of every age crowd to
the windows--young and old understand the language of our victorious
symbols--and rolling volleys of sympathizing cheers run along behind and
before our course. The beggar, rearing himself against the wall, forgets
his lameness--real or assumed--thinks not of his whining trade, but stands
erect, with bold exulting smiles, as we pass him. The victory has healed
him, and says--Be thou whole! Women and children, from garrets alike and
cellars, look down or look up with loving eyes upon our gay ribbons and our
martial laurels--sometimes kiss their hands, sometimes hang out, as signals
of affection, pocket handkerchiefs, aprons, dusters, anything that lies
ready to their hands. On the London side of Barnet, to which we draw near
within a few minutes after nine, observe that private carriage which is
approaching us. The weather being so warm, the glasses are all down; and
one may read, as on the stage of a theatre, everything that goes on within
the carriage. It contains three ladies, one likely to be "mama," and two
of seventeen or eighteen, who are probably her daughters. What lovely
animation, what beautiful unpremeditated pantomime, explaining to us every
syllable that passes, in these ingenuous girls! By the sudden start and
raising of the hands, on first discovering our laurelled equipage--by the
sudden movement and appeal to the elder lady from both of them--and by the
heightened color on their animated countenances, we can almost hear them
saying--"See, see! Look at their laurels. Oh, mama! there has been a great
battle in Spain; and it has been a great victory." In a moment we are on
the point of passing them. We passengers--I on the box, and the two on the
roof behind me--raise our hats, the coachman makes his professional salute
with the whip; the guard even, though punctilious on the matter of his
dignity as an officer under the crown, touches his hat. The ladies move to
us, in return, with a winning graciousness of gesture: all smile on each
side in a way that nobody could misunderstand, and that nothing short of a
grand national sympathy could so instantaneously prompt. Will these ladies
say that we are nothing to _them_? Oh, no; they will not say _that_. They
cannot deny--they do not deny--that for this night they are our sisters:
gentle or simple, scholar or illiterate servant, for twelve hours to
come--we on the outside have the honor to be their brothers. Those poor
women again, who stop to gaze upon us with delight at the entrance of
Barnet, and seem, by their air of weariness, to be returning from labor--do
you mean to say that they are washerwomen and char-women? Oh, my poor
friend, you are quite mistaken; they are nothing of the kind. I assure you
they stand in a higher rank; for this one night they feel themselves by
birthright to be daughters of England, and answer to no humbler title.
Every joy, however, even rapturous joy--such is the sad law of earth--may
carry with it grief, or fear of grief, to some. Three miles beyond Barnet,
we see approaching us another private carriage, nearly repeating the
circumstances of the former case. Here, also, the glasses are all
down--here, also, is an elderly lady seated; but the two amiable daughters
are missing; for the single young person, sitting by the lady's side, seems
to be an attendant--so I judge from her dress, and her air of respectful
reserve. The lady is in mourning; and her countenance expresses sorrow.
At first she does not look up; so that I believe she is not aware of our
approach, until she hears the measured beating of our horses' hoofs. Then
she raises her eyes to settle them painfully on our triumphal equipage.
Our decorations explain the case to her at once; but she beholds them with
apparent anxiety, or even with terror. Some time before this, I, finding it
difficult to hit a flying mark, when embarrassed by the coachman's person
and reins intervening, had given to the guard a _Courier_ evening paper,
containing the gazette, for the next carriage that might pass. Accordingly
he tossed it in so folded that the huge capitals expressing some such
legend as--GLORIOUS VICTORY, might catch the eye at once. To see the paper,
however, at all, interpreted as it was by our ensigns of triumph, explained
everything; and, if the guard were right in thinking the lady to have
received it with a gesture of horror, it could not be doubtful that she had
suffered some deep personal affliction in connection with this Spanish war.
Here now was the case of one, who, having formerly suffered, might,
erroneously perhaps, be distressing herself with anticipations of another
similar suffering. That same night, and hardly three hours later, occurred
the reverse case. A poor woman, who too probably would find herself, in a
day or two, to have suffered the heaviest of afflictions by the battle,
blindly allowed herself to express an exultation so unmeasured in the
news, and its details, as gave to her the appearance which amongst Celtic
Highlanders is called _fey_. This was at some little town, I forget what,
where we happened to change horses near midnight. Some fair or wake had
kept the people up out of their beds. We saw many lights moving about as
we drew near; and perhaps the most impressive scene on our route was our
reception at this place. The flashing of torches and the beautiful radiance
of blue lights (technically Bengal lights) upon the heads of our horses;
the fine effect of such a showery and ghostly illumination falling upon
flowers and glittering laurels, whilst all around the massy darkness seemed
to invest us with walls of impenetrable blackness, together with the
prodigious enthusiasm of the people, composed a picture at once scenical
and affecting. As we staid for three or four minutes, I alighted. And
immediately from a dismantled stall in the street, where perhaps she had
been presiding at some part of the evening, advanced eagerly a middle-aged
woman. The sight of my newspaper it was that had drawn her attention upon
myself. The victory which we were carrying down to the provinces on _this_
occasion was the imperfect one of Talavera. I told her the main outline of
the battle. But her agitation, though not the agitation of fear, but of
exultation rather, and enthusiasm, had been so conspicuous when listening,
and when first applying for information, that I could not but ask her if
she had not some relation in the Peninsular army. Oh! yes: her only son was
there. In what regiment? He was a trooper in the 23d Dragoons. My heart
sank within me as she made that answer. This sublime regiment, which an
Englishman should never mention without raising his hat to their memory,
had made the most memorable and effective charge recorded in military
annals. They leaped their horses--_over_ a trench where they could, _into_
it, and with the result of death or mutilation when they could _not_. What
proportion cleared the trench is nowhere stated. Those who _did_, closed up
and went down upon the enemy with such divinity of fervor--(I use the
word _divinity_ by design: the inspiration of God must have prompted this
movement to those whom even then he was calling to his presence)--that two
results followed. As regarded the enemy, this 23d Dragoons, not, I believe,
originally three hundred and fifty strong, paralyzed a French column, six
thousand strong, then ascending the hill, and fixed the gaze of the whole
French army. As regarded themselves, the 23d were supposed at first to have
been all but annihilated; but eventually, I believe, not so many as one in
four survived. And this, then, was the regiment--a regiment already for
some hours known to myself and all London, as stretched, by a large
majority, upon one bloody aceldama--in which the young trooper served whose
mother was now talking with myself in a spirit of such hopeful enthusiasm.
Did I tell her the truth? Had I the heart to break up her dreams? No. I
said to myself, to-morrow, or the next day, she will hear the worst. For
this night, wherefore should she not sleep in peace? After to-morrow,
the chances are too many that peace will forsake her pillow. This brief
respite, let her owe this to _my_ gift and _my_ forbearance. But, if I told
her not of the bloody price that had been paid, there was no reason for
suppressing the contributions from her son's regiment to the service and
glory of the day. For the very few words that I had time for speaking, I
governed myself accordingly. I showed her not the funeral banners under
which the noble regiment was sleeping. I lifted not the overshadowing
laurels from the bloody trench in which horse and rider lay mangled
together. But I told her how these dear children of England, privates and
officers, had leaped their horses over all obstacles as gaily as hunters to
the morning's chase. I told her how they rode their horses into the mists
of death, (saying to myself, but not saying to _her_,) and laid down their
young lives for thee, O mother England! as willingly--poured out their
noble blood as cheerfully--as ever, after a long day's sport, when infants,
they had rested their wearied heads upon their mother's knees, or had sunk
to sleep in her arms. It is singular that she seemed to have no fears, even
after this knowledge that the 23d Dragoons had been conspicuously engaged,
for her son's safety: but so much was she enraptured by the knowledge that
_his_ regiment, and therefore _he_, had rendered eminent service in the
trying conflict--a service which had actually made them the foremost topic
of conversation in London--that in the mere simplicity of her fervent
nature, she threw her arms round my neck, and, poor woman, kissed me.
NOTES.
[NOTE 1.
Lady Madeline Gordon.]
[NOTE 2.
"_Vast distances_."--One case was familiar to mail-coach travellers, where
two mails in opposite directions, north and south, starting at the same
minute from points six hundred miles apart, met almost constantly at a
particular bridge which exactly bisected the total distance.]
[NOTE 3.
"_Resident_."--The number on the books was far greater, many of whom kept
up an intermitting communication with Oxford. But I speak of those only who
were steadily pursuing their academic studies, and of those who resided
constantly as _fellows_.]
[NOTE 4.
"_Snobs_," and its antithesis, "_nobs_," arose among the internal fractions
of shoemakers perhaps ten years later. Possibly enough, the terms may have
existed much earlier; but they were then first made known, picturesquely
and effectively, by a trial at some assizes which happened to fix the
public attention.]