Miscellaneous Essays - Thomas de Quincey
[NOTE 5.
"_False echoes_"--yes, false! for the words ascribed to Napoleon, as
breathed to the memory of Desaix, never were uttered at all.--They stand
in the same category of theatrical inventions as the cry of the foundering
_Vengeur_, as the vaunt of General Cambronne at Waterloo, "_La Garde meurt,
mais ne se rend pas_," as the repartees of Talleyrand.]
[NOTE 6.
"_Privileged few_." The general impression was, that this splendid costume
belonged of right to the mail-coachmen as their professional dress. But
that was an error. To the guard it _did_ belong, as a matter of course, and
was essential as an official warrant, and a means of instant identification
for his person, in the discharge of his important public duties. But the
coachman, and especially if his place in the series did not connect him
immediately with London and the General Post-Office, obtained the scarlet
coat only as an honorary distinction after long or special service.]
[NOTE 7.
"_Households_."--Roe-deer do not congregate in herds like the fallow or the
red deer, but by separate families, parents, and children; which feature
of approximation to the sanctity of human hearths, added to their
comparatively miniature and graceful proportions, conciliate to them
an interest of a peculiarly tender character, if less dignified by the
grandeurs of savage and forest life.]
[NOTE 8.
"_However visionary_."--But _are_ they always visionary? the unicorn, the
kraken, the sea-serpent, are all, perhaps, zoological facts. The unicorn,
for instance, so far from being a lie, is rather _too_ true; for, simply
as a _monokeras_, he is found in the Himalaya, in Africa, and elsewhere,
rather too often for the peace of what in Scotland would be called the
_intending_ traveller. That which really _is_ a lie in the account of the
unicorn--viz., his legendary rivalship with the lion--which lie may God
preserve, in preserving the mighty imperial shield that embalms it--cannot
be more destructive to the zoological pretensions of the unicorn, than
are to the same pretensions in the lion our many popular crazes about his
goodness and magnanimity, or the old fancy (adopted by Spenser, and noticed
by so many among our elder poets) of his graciousness to maiden innocence.
The wretch is the basest and most cowardly among the forest tribes; nor
has the sublime courage of the English bull-dog ever been so memorably
exhibited as in his hopeless fight at Warwick with the cowardly and cruel
lion called Wallace. Another of the traditional creatures, still doubtful,
is the mermaid, upon which Southey once remarked to me, that, if it
had been differently named (as, suppose, a mer-ape,) nobody would have
questioned its existence any more than that of sea-cows, sea-lions, &c.
The mermaid has been discredited by her human name and her legendary human
habits. If she would not coquette so much with melancholy sailors, and
brush her hair so assiduously upon solitary rocks, she would be carried on
our books for as honest a reality, as decent a female, as many that are
assessed to the poor-rates.]
[NOTE 9.
"_Audacity_!"--Such the French accounted it; and it has struck me that
Soult would not have been so popular in London, at the period of her
present Majesty's coronation, or in Manchester, on occasion of his visit to
that town, if they had been aware of the insolence with which he spoke of
us in notes written at intervals from the field of Waterloo. As though it
had been mere felony in our army to look a French one in the face, he said
more than once--"Here are the English--we have them: they are caught _en
flagrant delit_" Yet no man should have known us better; no man had drunk
deeper from the cup of humiliation than Soult had in the north of Portugal,
during the flight from an English army, and subsequently at Albuera, in the
bloodiest of recorded battles.]
[NOTE 10.
"_Three hundred_." Of necessity this scale of measurement, to an American,
if he happens to be a thoughtless man, must sound ludicrous. Accordingly, I
remember a case in which an American writer indulges himself in the luxury
of a little lying, by ascribing to an Englishman a pompous account of
the Thames, constructed entirely upon American ideas of grandeur, and
concluding in something like these terms:--"And, sir, arriving at London,
this mighty father of rivers attains a breadth of at least two furlongs,
having, in its winding course, traversed the astonishing distance of one
hundred and seventy miles." And this the candid American thinks it fair to
contrast with the scale of the Mississippi. Now, it is hardly worth while
to answer a pure falsehood gravely, else one might say that no Englishman
out of Bedlam ever thought of looking in an island for the rivers of
a continent; nor, consequently, could have thought of looking for the
peculiar grandeur of the Thames in the length of its course, or in the
extent of soil which it drains: yet, if he _had_ been so absurd, the
American might have recollected that a river, not to be compared with the
Thames even as to volume of water--viz. the Tiber--has contrived to make
itself heard of in this world for twenty-five centuries to an extent
not reached, nor likely to be reached very soon, by any river, however
corpulent, of his own land. The glory of the Thames is measured by the
density of the population to which it ministers, by the commerce which
it supports, by the grandeur of the empire in which, though far from the
largest, it is the most influential stream. Upon some such scale, and not
by a transfer of Columbian standards, is the course of our English mails to
be valued. The American may fancy the effect of his own valuations to our
English ears, by supposing the case of a Siberian glorifying his country in
these terms:--"These rascals, sir, in France and England, cannot march half
a mile in any direction without finding a house where food can be had and
lodging; whereas, such is the noble desolation of our magnificent country,
that in many a direction for a thousand miles, I will engage a dog shall
not find shelter from a snow-storm, nor a wren find an apology for
breakfast."]
THE VISION OF SUDDEN DEATH.
[THE reader is to understand this present paper, in its two sections of
_The Vision_, &c., and _The Dream-Fugue_, as connected with a previous
paper on _The English Mail-Coach_. The ultimate object was the Dream-Fugue,
as an attempt to wrestle with the utmost efforts of music in dealing with
a colossal form of impassioned horror. The Vision of Sudden Death contains
the mail-coach incident, which did really occur, and did really suggest
the variations of the Dream, here taken up by the Fugue, as well as other
variations not now recorded. Confluent with these impressions, from the
terrific experience on the Manchester and Glasgow mail, were other and more
general impressions, derived from long familiarity with the English mail,
as developed in the former paper; impressions, for instance, of animal
beauty and power, of rapid motion, at that time unprecedented, of
connection with the government and public business of a great nation, but,
above all, of connection with the national victories at an unexampled
crisis,--the mail being the privileged organ for publishing and dispersing
all news of that kind. From this function of the mail, arises naturally the
introduction of Waterloo into the fourth variation of the Fogue; for the
mail itself having been carried into the dreams by the incident in the
Vision, naturally all the accessory circumstances of pomp and grandeur
investing this national carriage followed in the train of the principal
image.]
What is to be thought of sudden death? It is remarkable that, in different
conditions of society it has been variously regarded as the consummation of
an earthly career most fervently to be desired, and, on the other hand,
as that consummation which is most of all to be deprecated. Caesar the
Dictator, at his last dinner party, (_coena_,) and the very evening before
his assassination, being questioned as to the mode of death which, in _his_
opinion, might seem the most eligible, replied--"That which should be most
sudden." On the other hand, the divine Litany of our English Church, when
breathing forth supplications, as if in some representative character for
the whole human race prostrate before God, places such a death in the very
van of horrors. "From lightning and tempest; from plague, pestilence, and
famine; from battle and murder, and from sudden death,--_Good Lord, deliver
us_." Sudden death is here made to crown the climax in a grand ascent of
calamities; it is the last of curses; and yet, by the noblest of Romans,
it was treated as the first of blessings. In that difference, most readers
will see little more than the difference between Christianity and Paganism.
But there I hesitate. The Christian church may be right in its estimate of
sudden death; and it is a natural feeling, though after all it may also
be an infirm one, to wish for a quiet dismissal from life--as that which
_seems_ most reconcilable with meditation, with penitential retrospects,
and with the humilities of farewell prayer. There does not, however, occur
to me any direct scriptural warrant for this earnest petition of the
English Litany. It seems rather a petition indulged to human infirmity,
than exacted from human piety. And, however _that_ may be, two remarks
suggest themselves as prudent restraints upon a doctrine, which else _may_
wander, and _has_ wandered, into an uncharitable superstition. The first
is this: that many people are likely to exaggerate the horror of a sudden
death, (I mean the _objective_ horror to him who contemplates such a
death, not the _subjective_ horror to him who suffers it,) from the false
disposition to lay a stress upon words or acts, simply because by an
accident they have become words or acts. If a man dies, for instance,
by some sudden death when he happens to be intoxicated, such a death is
falsely regarded with peculiar horror; as though the intoxication were
suddenly exalted into a blasphemy. But _that_ is unphilosophic. The man
was, or he was not, _habitually_ a drunkard. If not, if his intoxication
were a solitary accident, there can be no reason at all for allowing
special emphasis to this act, simply because through misfortune it became
his final act. Nor, on the other hand, if it were no accident, but one of
his _habitual_ transgressions, will it be the more habitual or the more a
transgression, because some sudden calamity, surprising him, has caused
this habitual transgression to be also a final one? Could the man have had
any reason even dimly to foresee his own sudden death, there would have
been a new feature in his act of intemperance--a feature of presumption and
irreverence, as in one that by possibility felt himself drawing near to the
presence of God. But this is no part of the case supposed. And the only new
element in the man's act is not any element of extra immorality, but simply
of extra misfortune.
The other remark has reference to the meaning of the word _sudden_. And it
is a strong illustration of the duty which for ever calls us to the stern
valuation of words--that very possibly Caeesar and the Christian church do
not differ in the way supposed; that is, do not differ by any difference
of doctrine as between Pagan and Christian views of the moral temper
appropriate to death, but that they are contemplating different cases.
Both contemplate a violent death; a [Greek: biathanatos]--death that
is [Greek: biaios]: but the difference is--that the Roman by the word
"sudden" means an _unlingering_ death: whereas the Christian Litany
by "sudden" means a death _without warning_, consequently without any
available summons to religious preparation. The poor mutineer, who kneels
down to gather into his heart the bullets from twelve firelocks of his
pitying comrades, dies by a most sudden death in Caesar's sense: one shock,
one mighty spasm, one (possibly _not_ one) groan, and all is over. But,
in the sense of the Litany, his death is far from sudden; his offence,
originally, his imprisonment, his trial, the interval between his sentence
and its execution, having all furnished him with separate warnings of his
fate--having all summoned him to meet it with solemn preparation.
Meantime, whatever may be thought of a sudden death as a mere variety in
the modes of dying, where death in some shape is inevitable--a question
which, equally in the Roman and the Christian sense, will be variously
answered according to each man's variety of temperament--certainly, upon
one aspect of sudden death there can be no opening for doubt, that of all
agonies incident to man it is the most frightful, that of all martyrdoms it
is the most freezing to human sensibilities--namely, where it surprises a
man under circumstances which offer (or which seem to offer) some hurried
and inappreciable chance of evading it. Any effort, by which such an
evasion can be accomplished, must be as sudden as the danger which it
affronts. Even _that_, even the sickening necessity for hurrying in
extremity where all hurry seems destined to be vain, self-baffled, and
where the dreadful knell of _too_ late is already sounding in the ears by
anticipation--even that anguish is liable to a hideous exasperation in one
particular case, namely, where the agonising appeal is made not exclusively
to the instinct of self-preservation, but to the conscience, on behalf of
another life besides your own, accidentally cast upon _your_ protection. To
fail, to collapse in a service merely your own, might seem comparatively
venial; though, in fact, it is far from venial. But to fail in a case where
Providence has suddenly thrown into your hands the final interests of
another--of a fellow-creature shuddering between the gates of life and
death; this, to a man of apprehensive conscience, would mingle the misery
of an atrocious criminality with the misery of a bloody calamity. The man
is called upon, too probably, to die; but to die at the very moment when,
by any momentary collapse, he is self-denounced as a murderer. He had but
the twinkling of an eye for his effort, and that effort might, at the best,
have been unavailing; but from this shadow of a chance, small or great, how
if he has recoiled by a treasonable _lachete_? The effort _might_ have been
without hope; but to have risen to the level of that effort, would have
rescued him, though not from dying, yet from dying as a traitor to his
duties.
The situation here contemplated exposes a dreadful ulcer, lurking far down
in the depths of human nature. It is not that men generally are summoned
to face such awful trials. But potentially, and in shadowy outline, such
a trial is moving subterraneously in perhaps all men's natures--muttering
under ground in one world, to be realized perhaps in some other. Upon the
secret mirror of our dreams such a trial is darkly projected at intervals,
perhaps, to every one of us. That dream, so familiar to childhood, of
meeting a lion, and, from languishing prostration in hope and vital energy,
that constant sequel of lying down before him, publishes the secret
frailty of human nature--reveals its deep-seated Pariah falsehood to
itself--records its abysmal treachery. Perhaps not one of us escapes that
dream; perhaps, as by some sorrowful doom of man, that dream repeats for
every one of us, through every generation, the original temptation in Eden.
Every one of us, in this dream, has a bait offered to the infirm places of
his own individual will; once again a snare is made ready for leading him
into captivity to a luxury of ruin; again, as in aboriginal Paradise, the
man falls from innocence; once again, by infinite iteration, the ancient
Earth groans to God, through her secret caves, over the weakness of her
child; "Nature, from her seat, sighing through all her works," again "gives
signs of woe that all is lost;" and again the counter sigh is repeated to
the sorrowing heavens of the endless rebellion against God. Many people
think that one man, the patriarch of our race, could not in his single
person execute this rebellion for all his race. Perhaps they are wrong.
But, even if not, perhaps in the world of dreams every one of us ratifies
for himself the original act. Our English rite of "Confirmation," by which,
in years of awakened reason, we take upon us the engagements contracted
for us in our slumbering infancy,--how sublime a rite is that! The little
postern gate, through which the baby in its cradle had been silently placed
for a time within the glory of God's countenance, suddenly rises to the
clouds as a triumphal arch, through which, with banners displayed and
martial pomps, we make our second entry as crusading soldiers militant
for God, by personal choice and by sacramental oath. Each man says in
effect--"Lo! I rebaptise myself; and that which once was sworn on my
behalf, now I swear for myself." Even so in dreams, perhaps, under some
secret conflict of the midnight sleeper, lighted up to the consciousness
at the time, but darkened to the memory as soon as all is finished, each
several child of our mysterious race completes for himself the aboriginal
fall.
As I drew near to the Manchester post office, I found that it was
considerably past midnight; but to my great relief, as it was important for
me to be in Westmorland by the morning, I saw by the huge saucer eyes of
the mail, blazing through the gloom of overhanging houses, that my chance
was not yet lost. Past the time it was; but by some luck, very unusual in
my experience, the mail was not even yet ready to start. I ascended to
my seat on the box, where my cloak was still lying as it had lain at
the Bridgewater Arms. I had left it there in imitation of a nautical
discoverer, who leaves a bit of bunting on the shore of his discovery, by
way of warning off the ground the whole human race, and signalising to the
Christian and the heathen worlds, with his best compliments, that he has
planted his throne for ever upon that virgin soil: henceforward claiming
the _jus dominii_ to the top of the atmosphere above it, and also the right
of driving shafts to the centre of the earth below it; so that all people
found after this warning, either aloft in the atmosphere, or in the
shafts, or squatting on the soil, will be treated as trespassers--that is,
decapitated by their very faithful and obedient servant, the owner of the
said bunting. Possibly my cloak might not have been respected, and the _jus
gentium_ might have been cruelly violated in my person--for, in the dark,
people commit deeds of darkness, gas being a great ally of morality--but it
so happened that, on this night, there was no other outside passenger;
and the crime, which else was but too probable, missed fire for want of
a criminal. By the way, I may as well mention at this point, since a
circumstantial accuracy is essential to the effect of my narrative, that
there was no other person of any description whatever about the mail--the
guard, the coachman, and myself being allowed for--except only one--a
horrid creature of the class known to the world as insiders, but whom young
Oxford called sometimes "Trojans," in opposition to our Grecian selves, and
sometimes "vermin." A Turkish Effendi, who piques himself on good breeding,
will never mention by name a pig. Yet it is but too often that he has
reason to mention this animal; since constantly, in the streets of
Stamboul, he has his trousers deranged or polluted by this vile creature
running between his legs. But under any excess of hurry he is always
careful, out of respect to the company he is dining with, to suppress the
odious name, and to call the wretch "that other creature," as though all
animal life beside formed one group, and this odious beast (to whom, as
Chrysippus observed, salt serves as an apology for a soul) formed another
and alien group on the outside of creation. Now I, who am an English
Effendi, that think myself to understand good-breeding as well as any son
of Othman, beg my reader's pardon for having mentioned an insider by his
gross natural name. I shall do so no more; and, if I should have occasion
to glance at so painful a subject, I shall always call him "that other
creature." Let us hope, however, that no such distressing occasion will
arise. But, by the way, an occasion arises at this moment; for the reader
will be sure to ask, when we come to the story, "Was this other creature
present?" He was _not_; or more correctly, perhaps, _it_ was not. We
dropped the creature--or the creature, by natural imbecility, dropped
itself--within the first ten miles from Manchester. In the latter case, I
wish to make a philosophic remark of a moral tendency. When I die, or when
the reader dies, and by repute suppose of fever, it will never be known
whether we died in reality of the fever or of the doctor. But this other
creature, in the case of dropping out of the coach, will enjoy a coroner's
inquest; consequently he will enjoy an epitaph. For I insist upon it, that
the verdict of a coroner's jury makes the best of epitaphs. It is brief, so
that the public all find time to read; it is pithy, so that the surviving
friends (if any _can_ survive such a loss) remember it without fatigue; it
is upon oath, so that rascals and Dr. Johnsons cannot pick holes in it.
"Died through the visitation of intense stupidity, by impinging on a
moonlight night against the off hind wheel of the Glasgow mail! Deodand
upon the said wheel--two-pence." What a simple lapidary inscription! Nobody
much in the wrong but an off-wheel; and with few acquaintances; and if it
were but rendered into choice Latin, though there would be a little bother
in finding a Ciceronian word for "off-wheel," Marcellus himself, that great
master of sepulchral eloquence, could not show a better. Why I call this
little remark _moral_, is, from the compensation it points out. Here, by
the supposition, is that other creature on the one side, the beast of the
world; and he (or it) gets an epitaph. You and I, on the contrary, the
pride of our friends, get none.
But why linger on the subject of vermin? Having mounted the box, I took a
small quantity of laudanum, having already travelled two hundred and fifty
miles--viz., from a point seventy miles beyond London, upon a simple
breakfast. In the taking of laudanum there was nothing extraordinary. But
by accident it drew upon me the special attention of my assessor on the
box, the coachman. And in _that_ there was nothing extraordinary. But by
accident, and with great delight, it drew my attention to the fact that
this coachman was a monster in point of size, and that he had but one eye.
In fact he had been foretold by Virgil as--
"Monstrum. horrendum, informe, ingens cui lumen adempium."
He answered in every point--a monster he was--dreadful, shapeless, huge,
who had lost an eye. But why should _that_ delight me? Had he been one of
the Calendars in the Arabian Nights, and had paid down his eye as the price
of his criminal curiosity, what right had I to exult in his misfortune? I
did _not_ exult: I delighted in no man's punishment, though it were even
merited. But these personal distinctions identified in an instant an old
friend of mine, whom I had known in the south for some years as the most
masterly of mail-coachmen. He was the man in all Europe that could best
have undertaken to drive six-in-hand full gallop over _Al Sirat_--that
famous bridge of Mahomet across the bottomless gulf, backing himself
against the Prophet and twenty such fellows. I used to call him _Cyclops
mastigophorus_, Cyclops the whip-bearer, until I observed that his skill
made whips useless, except to fetch off an impertinent fly from a leader's
head; upon which I changed his Grecian name to Cyclops _diphrelates_
(Cyclops the charioteer.) I, and others known to me, studied under him the
diphrelatic art. Excuse, reader, a word too elegant to be pedantic. And
also take this remark from me, as a _gage d'amitie_--that no word ever
was or _can_ be pedantic which, by supporting a distinction, supports the
accuracy of logic; or which fills up a chasm for the understanding. As a
pupil, though I paid extra fees, I cannot say that I stood high in
his esteem. It showed his dogged honesty, (though, observe, not his
discernment,) that he could not see my merits. Perhaps we ought to excuse
his absurdity in this particular by remembering his want of an eye. _That_
made him blind to my merits. Irritating as this blindness was, (surely
it could not be envy?) he always courted my conversation, in which art I
certainly had the whip-hand of him. On this occasion, great joy was at our
meeting. But what was Cyclops doing here? Had the medical men recommended
northern air, or how? I collected, from such explanations as he
volunteered, that he had an interest at stake in a suit-at-law pending at
Lancaster; so that probably he had got himself transferred to this station,
for the purpose of connecting with his professional pursuits an instant
readiness for the calls of his lawsuit.