| 78 | THOMAS DE QUINCEY | [CHAP. VIII |
I have been reading two volumes of autobiographical sketches, published in 1854, by this strange and more than half-crazed writer. I can hardly see anything that is plainly or naturally told, nor can I find a single fact but requires confirmation.
I would not accuse the “Opium-Eater”—at least, not often—of intentional, deliberate falsehood. As his friends have long known, the man is incapable of even seeing the truth, and to his diseased brain and morbid imagination all the stories he has invented of himself at various times, within these last thirty or forty years, no doubt assumed the character of the most perfect and unquestionable truths. He has lied so long to himself that he believes in his own falsehoods or visions. The grandeur of his father, the English merchant, the style in which his mother and the family lived after his father’s death, and all the incidents of familiar friendship with the great and noble of the land, are exaggerated beyond all discretion.
This was always, and still is, one of his greatest weaknesses. He would
impress the world with the belief that his family and family connections were highly
aristocratic people. To further this delusion, and to gratify his own eye and ear, he
affixed the aristocratic De to his name. His father called himself
Quincey, and old Mrs. C. of
Clifton-by-Bristol, and a good many other old gentlewomen of that part, had been intimate
for many years with his
| CHAP. VIII] | HIS BIRTH AT WRINGTON | 79 |
I passed a day at Wrington in the autumn of 1840, and conversed with a good many people who had known the Quinceys. To hear the Opium-Eater talk of his mother, while she was yet alive, one could hardly help, while carried away by his eloquence or verbosity, and the deep, solemn tones of his voice, fancying her a duchess or something still greater. As Dr. Johnson said of Queen Anne, by whom in his childhood he had been touched for the King’s Evil, I could hardly avoid having a vision of a lady in black velvet and diamonds, as one night, after supper at John Wilson the poet’s, he held forth on the subject of the maternal genius, virtues, and dignity. Now Mrs. Quincey was a gentlewomanly English gentlewoman enough, and nothing more; and as for her fortune or income, it was hardly more than a tithe of what her son chose to represent it. Many and many were the pulls he made upon the poor old lady’s purse, for he could never live within his own limited allowance, and could very seldom make up his mind to earn money by literary labour or any other kind of work.
It is rather annoying to see this confirmed swiller of laudanum, this man so
dilatory, so procrastinating, so infirm of purpose, dwelling with critical severity on the
infirmities of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He alleges
that while he himself was forced by a painful malady to have recourse to opium, and to
continue
| 80 | THOMAS DE QUINCEY | [CHAP. VIII |
“Hang you, De Quincey!” he would say. “Can’t you take your whisky toddy like a Christian man, and leave your d——d opium slops to infidel Turks, Persians, and Chinamen?”
Whenever he had engaged to write a magazine article or to do any other work
for the booksellers, those gentlemen were almost certain to receive from
| CHAP. VIII] | HARTLEY COLERIDGE | 81 |
If he could and would have worked like other men, he might, through John Wilson, have made a good annual income by Blackwood’s Magazine alone. After many trials the poet was obliged to give him up. And what did the Opium-Eater do then? Why, he, a Tory of the deepest dye, a would-be aristocrat of the first water, went and connected himself, for a considerable time, with an ultra-Liberal Whig Radical publication, Tait’s Magazine, in which he vented a good deal of spite, malice, and calumny, on Wordsworth, Mrs. Wordsworth, Coleridge, and others of his early associates and close friends.
One beautiful morning, as we were walking along the banks of the Grasmere
Lake, Hartley Coleridge said, in his quick, emphatic
way, “I will tell you what De Quincey is;
he is an anomaly and a contradiction—a contradiction to himself, a contradiction
throughout! He steals the aristocratic ‘de’; he announces for years the
most aristocratic tastes, principles, and predilections, and then he goes and marries
the uneducated daughter of a very humble, very coarse, and very poor farmer. He
continues to be, in profession and in talk, as violent a Tory and anti-reformer as
ever, and yet he writes for Tait. He
professed almost an idolatry for Wordsworth and
for my father, and quite a filial affection for
Mrs. Wordsworth, and yet you see how he is
treat-
| 82 | THOMAS DE QUINCEY | [CHAP. VIII |
It must be said that De Quincey, who
elaborated everything he did, was always a very slow writer. Had he been firm of purpose,
persevering and steadily industrious, instead of being the very reverse of all this, he
could, to all appearance, not have produced very much, but he might have produced enough to
keep himself and his family above dependency and a wretched mendicancy. When Charles Knight was publishing his “Gallery of Portraits,” a book of
engravings with biographies attached to them, he engaged De Quincey to write for it, as
G. L. Craik, Professor De Morgan, Professor George
Long, and I and others were doing. He allowed him the choice of his
subjects. For a beginning, the Opium-Eater chose Milton. Knowing his man, C. K. took
him into his own house, a comfortable residence in Pall Mall East, gave him a bedroom and
study, and supplied him with all the books he required for his task. He spent the far
greater part of his time in bed, or in talking, or in very desultory reading. At the end of
three months, and not before, the Memoir of Milton was finished. It
would not make more than sixteen ordinary octavo pages. It was well thought out, it was
ably written; but no more than this for three mortal months! When he had been nearly a week
in the house, Mrs. K. could not but observe that his
clothes were almost ragged, and that he was wearing a very dirty shirt. She spoke to her
husband; and he, with as much delicacy as he could muster for the occasion, spoke to his
guest. “Why, to tell you the truth,” said Quincey
in his slow, solemn manner and with his deep, hoarse
| CHAP. VIII] | HIS FAMILY AT LASSWADE | 83 |
For some time before Knight found him out and took him in tow, he had been lying out in the suburban fields, or sleeping in retired doorways, or upon bulkheads, after the fashion of poor Savage the poet.
It was a dangerous thing to offer him a dinner and bed, for if he found himself at all comfortable he would never think of moving for a month or two. John Wilson told me one evening that his family were literally half starving, and that he was very much afraid the children had found their way to papa’s laudanum bottle. When I returned to Edinburgh, in the spring of 1847, I inquired after this strange, unaccountable being. “Oh,” said Wilson, “a Glasgow friend invited him to his house about six months ago, and there he has been ever since, and there he is now, taking no heed of his poor children, and in all probability never giving them a thought.” For all that he did, they might have died of starvation. He left them in a little cottage at that pretty little village of Lasswade, one of Sir Walter Scott’s pet places. When he had been gone some time, the minister of the parish observed some children begging about the village for food, and looking both sickly and hungry. On inquiry, he found that they were the luckless progeny of the Opium-Eater! The minister and his wife supplied their immediate wants, and then we raised a small fund for them—in Edinburgh, where their father has had his hand in nearly every man’s pocket. And yet, when he returns—if he ever should return—he will come spinning eternal sentences about the strength, depth, and unimaginable vivacity of his paternal affections. I have now lost all patience with him. I can no longer tolerate his solemn cant.
| 84 | JAMES MATHIAS | [CHAP. VIII |
For a good number of years I was rather intimate with the author of
“The Pursuits of
Literature”—that is, about as intimate as a volatile young man like me, at
that period, could possibly be with a sedate, phlegmatic old man like Mathias. I think that it was in the summer of 1817 or 1818
that I first met him. I cannot be quite sure of the date, but I can never forget the place.
It was that lovely village-dotted plain, between the mountains and the sea, Il piano di Sorrento, in that quiet, shady nook,
embosomed in groves of orange and citron trees, called “La
Cocumella.” He was staying there in the same rambling, quaint old
lodging-house which I believe had once been a nunnery, with Mariana Starke, authoress of the well-known guide-book for English
travellers on the Continent, which after a long run, and a very extensive sale, has been
superseded by Mr. Murray’s excellent
handbooks. We sat for an hour or two on a rustic seat at the edge of an orange-grove which
overhung the sea and commanded a full view of the bay, Mount Vesuvius, with the lofty
ridges of the Apennines in its rear, the whole of the city of Naples, with the castles and
monasteries, behind it and above it, the enchanting promontory of Posilipo, the Cape of
Misenum, the coast of Baiae, the low, bright, glittering island of Procida, and the lofty,
volcanic island of Ischia—a view which I shall always maintain, and religiously believe, to
be the finest in the beautiful globe which God has allotted to us for a habitation. We
talked a good deal about living or recent English poets, and I well remember that he gently
reproved my too warm admiration for Lord Byron, an error
which has long since been corrected by time, experience, knowledge of the world, and
careful study of our truly classical writers. He stood up stoutly in
| CHAP. VIII] | RESEMBLANCE TO GRAY | 85 |
| 86 | JAMES MATHIAS | [CHAP. VIII |
He had been writing and publishing various original Italian poems, and he was now turning the first two cantos of the “Faery Queene” into Italian ottava rima.
He did this kind of work very slowly. I have heard him say that he considered eight verses to be a very good day’s work. He had but a scanty library, and in it only one book of a fine edition. This was an edition of Gray’s works, the quarto printed at Glasgow by Foulis, and alluded to in the poet’s letters. Mathias had illustrated it with a variety of engravings—English, French, Italian, and German; for in nearly every country in Europe the Elegy had lent inspiration to artists as well as to poets. He could be very thankful for any contribution to this quarto. At the time I had not many books myself, but I had admirable facilities for borrowing from the Prince of Colonna Stigliano, the Duke of Atri, the Prince of San Giorgio, and about a dozen more Neapolitan friends, who had inherited libraries and were annually increasing them. Then the admirable public library in the Bourbon Museum, with its 400,000 volumes, was always open to me, with the indulgence of a private room all to myself. I now and then borrowed for Mathias, and would have done so much oftener if he had wished it, but he appeared to me to read very little. What he liked, was to con over his Italian rhymes,* take a peep at his classics, and to muse and meditate in the garden, or in his room, or while walking, at a brisk pace, in the streets and suburbs of Naples. We should have been together much more frequently
* I have a copy of Mathias’ “Poesie Liriche,” 2 vols., octavo, Naples, 1825, inscribed in the author’s handwriting, “Alla cultissima Signora, La Signora S. Canning, Da T. J. Mathias, Napoli, Marzo, 1829.”—Ed. |
| CHAP. VIII] | AS LIBRARIAN | 87 |
Once at that restaurant I saw him greatly ruffled and excited. A young
Austrian officer, who had been taking rather too much champagne, fell into a passion and
broke an empty bottle over the head of a waiter—a real Roman, if you please! We were seated
at a table just opposite, and a fragment of the bottle fell among our plates and dishes,
and nearly struck the old bard, who turned very pale, and then fell into a passion himself.
He was for
| 88 | JAMES MATHIAS | [CHAP. VIII |
| CHAP. VIII] | “PURSUITS OF LITERATURE” | 89 |
Ischitella’s daughter, who knew him through me, and who often watched him in the pit, used to call his bald pate il lampione, or the great lamp, and when San Carlo was fully illuminated on Court Festival nights, it really shone almost as brightly as a lamp. His seat was just under Ischitella’s* box. I see it and its occupant still; I shall never lose the vision of old Mathias’s pate. He would never acknowledge the fact, perfectly well known to all literary people, that he was the sole author of the “Pursuits of Literature,” and he could never, with anything like patience, hear that book spoken of or alluded to. One day, in our snug and trim garden, before I knew of this peculiarity, I asked him if he had a copy of that book, as I had not seen it for many years, and wished to improve my acquaintance with it. “No, sir!” said he, very sharply and almost angrily. “No, sir! I have no such book, nor do I know anybody that has, nor do I care to know anything about it!” I uttered an apology, and retreated to my own rooms. That evening, at an English party, he told my friend Mrs. I. that he thought me rather an impertinent young fellow.
However, I soon got over this. I wrote a short review of his version of Spenser, and of some other of his pieces, which was published, if I remember right, in the old London Magazine. A friend showed him this, and it had the good fortune to please the tetchy, very fastidious old poet. But we had our little tiffs afterwards. I could go almost entirely along with him in his worship of Gray. I could fully agree with him that in everything Gray had an
* Don Francesco Pinto, Prince of Ischitella, Minister of War, “Resided long in England” (C. M.: Letter to Lord Aberdeen, 1851). |
| 90 | JAMES MATHIAS | [CHAP. VIII |
It will be inferred, from what I have said, that old Mathias had neither “chick nor child.” He had never been married, and I can scarcely believe in the possibility of his ever having been in love. Like every old bachelor I have known, with the single and glorious exception of Mountstuart Elphinstone, he was amazingly attentive to his own comforts, great or small, and eminently selfish. An accomplished scholar he certainly was, but I should hesitate to call him a man of genius. His English poem, the “Pursuits of Literature,” is but a tame, colourless production, and but for its foot-notes, which make ten times the quantity of the verses, it would never be looked at. In these notes, in addition to a large amount of classical and other learning, there is a considerable quantity of fun and quiet sarcasm. The hit at poor Poet-Laureate Pye will not be forgotten. “Mr. Pye, the present Poet-Laureate, with the best intentions at this momentous period, if not with the very best poetry, translated the verses of Tyrtaeus the Spartan. They were designed to produce animation throughout the kingdom, and among the militia in particular.
“Several of the Reviewing Generals—I do not mean the monthly or critical—were much impressed with their weight and
importance, and, at a Board of General Officers, an experiment was agreed upon, which
unfortunately failed. They were read aloud at Warley Common and at Barham Downs by the
adjutants, at the head of five different regiments at each camp, and much was expected.
But before they were half finished, all the front ranks, and as many others as were
within hearing or verse-shot, dropped their arms suddenly, and were all found fast
asleep! Marquis Townshend, who never ap-
| CHAP. VIII] | HIS ITALIAN POEMS | 91 |
I left Mathias at Naples, in May, 1827, when I was going to Sicily, Malta, Greece, and Turkey.* He was living up on the Pizzofalcone, in the same quiet, retired apartment which opened upon the queer little garden and its gods and goddesses, and there he continued to live for some years longer, reading very little, scarcely anything English, and conning his Italian rhymes. I was vexed and grieved when I heard that the stopping of his £100 a year made him feel the res angusta domi, and deprived him of many of the little pleasures which had become habits of his life. He never spoke Italian very fluently. I suppose that in England, shut out from the Continent by the wars of the French Republic and then of Bonaparte, he had few opportunities of speaking it until he was advanced in years; but he could write it with great correctness and propriety, and in a manner to astonish the natives when they considered that he was a foreigner, and one who had never set his foot on their soil until he was an old man. Yet Italian critics would say that his “Rime” were little more than a work in mosaic, being made up of an expression of Dante here, of Petrarca there, of a bit of Ariosto in this line, a bit of Tasso in that, and so on through the “Testi di Lingua” or Italian classics, and though very cleverly and gracefully put together, the pieces and component parts of this mosaic, of so many different ages and of so many and varied styles, produced a rather incongruous and unpleasant effect. At the time, when I was reading a great deal more of Italian poetry than of any other, I fancied I could myself detect the incongruity and the artificiality. I may say that, at the very least, I could see that Mathias’s “Rime,”
* This sentence in C. M.’s handwriting. Mathias was visited here by N. P. Willis (cf. “Pencillings by the Way,” 1850). |
| 92 | JAMES MATHIAS | [CHAP. VIII |
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