The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2

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* * * * *

I shall not rehearse circumstantially, and point by point, the sad
unfolding, as it proceeded through successive revelations to me, of all
which had happened during my state of physical incapacity. When I first
became aware that my wandering senses had returned to me, and knew, by the
cessation of all throbbings, and the unutterable pains that had so long
possessed my brain, that I was now returning from the gates of death, a sad
confusion assailed me as to some indefinite cloud of evil that had been
hovering over me at the time when I first fell into a state of
insensibility. For a time I struggled vainly to recover the lost connection
of my thoughts, and I endeavoured ineffectually to address myself to sleep.
I opened my eyes, but found the glare of light painful beyond measure.
Strength, however, it seemed to me that I had, and more than enough, to
raise myself out of bed. I made the attempt, but fell back, almost giddy
with the effort. At the sound of the disturbance which I had thus made, a
woman whom I did not know came from behind a curtain, and spoke to me.
Shrinking from any communication with a stranger, especially one whose
discretion I could not estimate in making discoveries to me with the
requisite caution, I asked her simply what o'clock it was.

'Eleven in the forenoon,' she replied.

'And what day of the month?'

'The second,' was her brief answer.

I felt almost a sense of shame in adding--'The second! but of what month?'

'Of June,' was the startling rejoinder.

On the 8th of April I had fallen ill, and it was now actually the 2nd of
June. Oh! sickening calculation! revolting register of hours! for in that
same moment which brought back this one recollection, perhaps by steadying
my brain, rushed back in a torrent all the other dreadful remembrances of
the period, and now the more so, because, though the event was still
uncertain as regarded my knowledge, it must have become dreadfully certain
as regarded the facts of the case, and the happiness of all who were
concerned. Alas! one little circumstance too painfully assured me that this
event had not been a happy one. Had Agnes been restored to her liberty and
her home, where would she have been found but watching at my bedside? That
too certainly I knew, and the inference was too bitter to support.

* * * * *

On this same day, some hours afterwards, upon Hannah's return from the city,
I received from her, and heard with perfect calmness, the whole sum of evil
which awaited me. Little Francis--she took up her tale at that point--'was
with God:' so she expressed herself. He had died of the same fever which had
attacked me--had died and been buried nearly five weeks before. Too probably
he had caught the infection from me. Almost--such are the caprices of human
feeling--almost I could have rejoiced that this young memorial of my
vanished happiness had vanished also. It gave me a pang, nevertheless, that
the grave should thus have closed upon him before I had seen his fair little
face again. But I steeled my heart to hear worse things than this. Next she
went on to inform me that already, on the first or second day of our
calamity, she had taken upon herself, without waiting for authority, on
observing the rapid approaches of illness in me, and arguing the state of
helplessness which would follow, to write off at once a summons in the most
urgent terms to the brother of my wife. This gentleman, whom I shall call
Pierpoint, was a high-spirited, generous young man as I have ever known.
When I say that he was a sportsman, that at one season of the year he did
little else than pursue his darling amusement of fox-hunting, for which
indeed he had almost a maniacal passion--saying this, I shall already have
prejudged him in the opinions of many, who fancy all such persons the slaves
of corporal enjoyments. But, with submission, the truth lies the other way.
According to my experience, people of these habits have their bodies more
than usually under their command, as being subdued by severe exercise; and
their minds, neither better nor worse on an average than those of their
neighbours, are more available from being so much more rarely clogged by
morbid habits in that uneasy yoke-fellow of the intellectual part--the body.
He at all events was a man to justify in his own person this way of
thinking; for he was a man not only of sound, but even of bold and energetic
intellect, and in all moral respects one whom any man might feel proud to
call his friend. This young man, Pierpoint, without delay obeyed the
summons; and on being made acquainted with what had already passed, the
first step he took was to call upon Barratt, and without further question
than what might ascertain his identity, he proceeded to inflict upon him a
severe horsewhipping. A worse step on his sister's account he could not have
taken. Previously to this the popular feeling had run strongly against
Barratt, but now its unity was broken. A new element was introduced into the
question: Democratic feelings were armed against this outrage; gentlemen and
nobles, it was said, thought themselves not amenable to justice; and again,
the majesty of the law was offended at this intrusion upon an affair already
under solemn course of adjudication. Everything, however, passes away under
the healing hand of time, and this also faded from the public mind. People
remembered also that he was a brother, and in that character, at any rate,
had a right to some allowances for his intemperance; and what quickened the
oblivion of the affair was, which in itself was sufficiently strange, that
Barratt did not revive the case in the public mind by seeking legal
reparation for his injuries. It was, however, still matter of regret that
Pierpoint should have indulged himself in this movement of passion, since
undoubtedly it broke and disturbed the else uniform stream of public
indignation by investing the original aggressor with something like the
character of an injured person; and therefore with some set-off to plead
against his own wantonness of malice: his malice might now assume the nobler
aspect of revenge.

Thus far, in reporting the circumstances, Hannah had dallied--thus far I
had rejoiced that she dallied, with the main burden of the wo; but now
there remained nothing to dally with any longer--and she rushed along in
her narrative, hurrying to tell--I hurrying to hear. A second, a third
examination had ensued, then a final committal--all this within a week.
By that time all the world was agitated with the case; literally not the
city only, vast as that city was, but the nation was convulsed and
divided into parties upon the question, Whether the prosecution were one
of mere malice or not? The very government of the land was reported to
be equally interested, and almost equally divided in opinion. In this
state of public feeling came the trial. Image to yourself, oh reader,
whosoever you are, the intensity of the excitement which by that time
had arisen in all people to be spectators of the scene--then image to
yourself the effect of all this, a perfect consciousness that in herself
as a centre was settled the whole mighty interest of the
exhibition--that interest again of so dubious and mixed a
character--sympathy in some with mere misfortune--sympathy in others
with female frailty and guilt, not perhaps founded upon an absolute
unwavering belief in her innocence even amongst those who were most loud
and positive as partisans in affirming it,--and then remember that all
this hideous scenical display and notoriety settled upon one whose very
nature, constitutionally timid, recoiled with the triple agony of
womanly shame--of matronly dignity--of insulted innocence, from every
mode and shape of public display. Combine all these circumstances and
elements of the case, and you may faintly enter into the situation of my
poor Agnes. Perhaps the best way to express it at once is by recurring
to the case of a young female Christian martyr, in the early ages of
Christianity, exposed in the bloody amphitheatre of Rome or Verona to
'fight with wild beasts,' as it was expressed in mockery--she to fight!
the lamb to fight with lions! But in reality the young martyr _had_ a
fight to maintain, and a fight (in contempt of that cruel mockery)
fiercer than the fiercest of her persecutors could have faced
perhaps--the combat with the instincts of her own shrinking, trembling,
fainting nature. Such a fight had my Agnes to maintain; and at that time
there was a large party of gentlemen in whom the gentlemanly instinct
was predominant, and who felt so powerfully the cruel indignities of her
situation, that they made a public appeal in her behalf. One thing, and
a strong one, which they said, was this:--'We all talk and move in this
case as if, because the question appears doubtful to some people, and
the accused party to some people wears a doubtful character, it would
follow that she therefore had in reality a mixed character composed in
joint proportions of the best and the worst that is imputed to her. But
let us not forget that this mixed character belongs not to her, but to
the infirmity of our human judgments--_they_ are mixed--_they_ are
dubious--but she is not--she is, or she is not, guilty--there is no
middle case--and let us consider for a single moment, that if this young
lady (as many among us heartily believe) _is_ innocent, then and upon
that supposition let us consider how cruel we should all think the
public exposure which aggravates the other injuries (as in that case
they must be thought) to which her situation exposes her.' They went on
to make some suggestions for the officers of the court in preparing the
arrangements for the trial, and some also for the guidance of the
audience, which showed the same generous anxiety for sparing the
feelings of the prisoner. If these did not wholly succeed in repressing
the open avowal of coarse and brutal curiosity amongst the intensely
vulgar, at least they availed to diffuse amongst the neutral and
indifferent part of the public a sentiment of respect and forbearance
which, emanating from high quarters, had a very extensive influence upon
most of what met the eye or the ear of my poor wife. She, on the day of
trial, was supported by her brother; and by that time she needed support
indeed. I was reported to be dying; her little son was dead; neither had
she been allowed to see him. Perhaps these things, by weaning her from
all further care about life, might have found their natural effect in
making her indifferent to the course of the trial, or even to its issue.
And so, perhaps, in the main, they did. But at times some lingering
sense of outraged dignity, some fitful gleams of old sympathies, 'the
hectic of a moment,' came back upon her, and prevailed over the
deadening stupor of her grief. Then she shone for a moment into a starry
light--sweet and woful to remember. Then----but why linger? I hurry to
the close: she was pronounced guilty; whether by a jury or a bench of
judges, I do not say--having determined, from the beginning, to give no
hint of the land in which all these events happened; neither is that of
the slightest consequence. Guilty she was pronounced: but sentence at
that time was deferred. Ask me not, I beseech you, about the muff or
other circumstances inconsistent with the hostile evidence. These
circumstances had the testimony, you will observe, of my own servants
only; nay, as it turned out, of one servant exclusively: _that_
naturally diminished their value. And, on the other side, evidence was
arrayed, perjury was suborned, that would have wrecked a wilderness of
simple truth trusting to its own unaided forces. What followed? Did
this judgment of the court settle the opinion of the public? Opinion of
the public! Did it settle the winds? Did it settle the motion of the
Atlantic? Wilder, fiercer, and louder grew the cry against the wretched
accuser: mighty had been the power over the vast audience of the
dignity, the affliction, the perfect simplicity, and the Madonna beauty
of the prisoner. That beauty so childlike, and at the same time so
saintly, made, besides, so touching in its pathos by means of the
abandonment--the careless abandonment and the infinite desolation of her
air and manner--would of itself, and without further aid, have made many
converts. Much more was done by the simplicity of her statements, and
the indifference with which she neglected to improve any strong points
in her own favour--the indifference, as every heart perceived, of
despairing grief. Then came the manners on the hostile side--the haggard
consciousness of guilt, the drooping tone, the bravado and fierce strut
which sought to dissemble all this. Not one amongst all the witnesses,
assembled on that side, had (by all agreement) the bold natural tone of
conscious uprightness. Hence it could not be surprising that the storm
of popular opinion made itself heard with a louder and a louder sound.
The government itself began to be disturbed; the ministers of the
sovereign were agitated; and, had no menaces been thrown out, it was
generally understood that they would have given way to the popular
voice, now continually more distinct and clamorous. In the midst of all
this tumult obscure murmurs began to arise that Barratt had practised
the same or similar villainies in former instances. One case in
particular was beginning to be whispered about, which at once threw a
light upon the whole affair: it was the case of a young and very
beautiful married woman, who had been on the very brink of a catastrophe
such as had befallen my own wife, when some seasonable interference, of
what nature was not known, had critically delivered her. This case arose
'like a little cloud no bigger than a man's hand,' then spread and
threatened to burst in tempest upon the public mind, when all at once,
more suddenly even than it had arisen, it was hushed up, or in some way
disappeared. But a trifling circumstance made it possible to trace this
case:--in after times, when means offered, but unfortunately no
particular purpose of good, nor any purpose, in fact, beyond that of
curiosity, it _was_ traced: and enough was soon ascertained to have
blown to fragments any possible conspiracy emanating from this Barratt,
had that been of any further importance. However, in spite of all that
money or art could effect, a sullen growl continued to be heard amongst
the populace of villainies many and profound that had been effected or
attempted by this Barratt; and accordingly, much in the same way as was
many years afterwards practised in London, when a hosier had caused
several young people to be prosecuted to death for passing forged
bank-notes, the wrath of the people showed itself in marking the shop
for vengeance upon any favourable occasion offering through fire or
riots, and in the meantime in deserting it. These things had been going
on for some time when I awoke from my long delirium; but the effect they
had produced upon a weak and obstinate and haughty government, or at
least upon the weak and obstinate and haughty member of the government
who presided in the police administration, was, to confirm and rivet the
line of conduct which had been made the object of popular denunciation.
More energetically, more scornfully, to express that determination of
flying in the face of public opinion and censure, four days before my
awakening, Agnes had been brought up to receive her sentence. On that
same day (nay, it was said in that same hour), petitions, very
numerously signed, and various petitions from different ranks, different
ages, different sexes, were carried up to the throne, praying, upon
manifold grounds, but all noticing the extreme doubtfulness of the case,
for an unconditional pardon. By whose advice or influence, it was
guessed easily, though never exactly ascertained, these petitions were
unanimously, almost contemptuously, rejected. And to express the
contempt of public opinion as powerfully as possible, Agnes was
sentenced by the court, reassembled in full pomp, order, and ceremonial
costume, to a punishment the severest that the laws allowed--viz. hard
labour for ten years. The people raged more than ever; threats public
and private were conveyed to the ears of the minister chiefly concerned
in the responsibility, and who had indeed, by empty and ostentatious
talking, assumed that responsibility to himself in a way that was
perfectly needless.

Thus stood matters when I awoke to consciousness: and this was the fatal
journal of the interval--interval so long as measured by my fierce
calendar of delirium--so brief measured by the huge circuit of events
which it embraced, and their mightiness for evil. Wrath, wrath
immeasurable, unimaginable, unmitigable, burned at my heart like a
cancer. The worst had come. And the thing which kills a man for
action--the living in two climates at once--a torrid and a frigid
zone--of hope and fear--that was past. Weak--suppose I were for the
moment: I felt that a day or two might bring back my strength. No
miserable tremors of hope _now_ shook my nerves: if they shook from that
inevitable rocking of the waters that follows a storm, so much might be
pardoned to the infirmity of a nature that could not lay aside its
fleshly necessities, nor altogether forego its homage to 'these frail
elements,' but which by inspiration already lived within a region where
no voices were heard but the spiritual voices of transcendant
passions--of

'Wrongs unrevenged, and insults unredress'd.'

Six days from that time I was well--well and strong. I rose from bed; I
bathed; I dressed: dressed as if I were a bridegroom. And that _was_ in
fact a great day in my life. I was to see Agnes. Oh! yes: permission had
been obtained from the lordly minister that I should see my wife. Is it
possible? Can such condescensions exist? Yes: solicitations from ladies,
eloquent notes wet with ducal tears, these had won from the thrice
radiant secretary, redolent of roseate attar, a countersign to some
order or other, by which I--yes I--under license of a fop, and
supervision of a jailer--was to see and for a time to converse with my
own wife.

The hour appointed for the first day's interview was eight o'clock in
the evening. On the outside of the jail all was summer light and
animation. The sports of children in the streets of mighty cities are
but sad, and too painfully recall the circumstances of freedom and
breezy nature that are not there. But still the pomp of glorious summer,
and the presence, 'not to be put by,' of the everlasting light, that is
either always present, or always dawning--these potent elements
impregnate the very city life, and the dim reflex of nature which is
found at the bottom of well-like streets, with more solemn powers to
move and to soothe in summer. I struck upon the prison gates, the first
among multitudes waiting to strike. Not because we struck, but because
the hour had sounded, suddenly the gate opened; and in we streamed. I,
as a visitor for the first time, was immediately distinguished by the
jailers, whose glance of eye is fatally unerring. 'Who was it that I
wanted?' At the name a stir of emotion was manifest, even there: the dry
bones stirred and moved: the passions outside had long ago passed to the
interior of this gloomy prison: and not a man but had his hypothesis on
the case; not a man but had almost fought with some comrade (many had
literally fought) about the merits of their several opinions.

If any man had expected a scene at this reunion, he would have been
disappointed. Exhaustion, and the ravages of sorrow, had left to dear
Agnes so little power of animation or of action, that her emotions were
rather to be guessed at, both for kind and for degree, than directly to
have been perceived. She was in fact a sick patient, far gone in an
illness that should properly have confined her to bed; and was as much
past the power of replying to my frenzied exclamations, as a dying
victim of fever of entering upon a strife of argument. In bed, however,
she was not. When the door opened she was discovered sitting at a table
placed against the opposite wall, her head pillowed upon her arms, and
these resting upon the table. Her beautiful long auburn hair had escaped
from its confinement, and was floating over the table and her own
person. She took no notice of the disturbance made by our entrance, did
not turn, did not raise her head, nor make an effort to do so, nor by
any sign whatever intimate that she was conscious of our presence, until
the turnkey in a respectful tone announced me. Upon that a low groan, or
rather a feeble moan, showed that she had become aware of my presence,
and relieved me from all apprehension of causing too sudden a shock by
taking her in my arms. The turnkey had now retired; we were alone. I
knelt by her side, threw my arms about her, and pressed her to my heart.
She drooped her head upon my shoulder, and lay for some time like one
who slumbered; but, alas! not as she had used to slumber. Her breathing,
which had been like that of sinless infancy, was now frightfully short
and quick; she seemed not properly to breathe, but to gasp. This,
thought I, may be sudden agitation, and in that case she will gradually
recover; half an hour will restore her. Wo is me! she did _not_ recover;
and internally I said--she never _will_ recover. The arrows have gone
too deep for a frame so exquisite in its sensibility, and already her
hours are numbered.

At this first visit I said nothing to her about the past; _that_, and
the whole extent to which our communications should go, I left rather to
her own choice. At the second visit, however, upon some word or other
arising which furnished an occasion for touching on this hateful topic,
I pressed her, contrary to my own previous intention, for as full an
account of the fatal event as she could without a distressing effort
communicate. To my surprise she was silent--gloomily--almost it might
have seemed obstinately silent. A horrid thought came into my mind;
could it, might it have been possible that my noble-minded wife, such
she had ever seemed to me, was open to temptations of this nature? Could
it have been that in some moment of infirmity, when her better angel was
away from her side, she had yielded to a sudden impulse of frailty, such
as a second moment for consideration would have resisted, but which
unhappily had been followed by no such opportunity of retrieval? I had
heard of such things. Cases there were in our own times (and not
confined to one nation), when irregular impulses of this sort were known
to have haunted and besieged natures not otherwise ignoble or base. I
ran over some of the names amongst those which were taxed with this
propensity. More than one were the names of people in a technical sense
held noble. That, nor any other consideration, abated my horror. Better,
I said, better (because more compatible with elevation of mind) better
to have committed some bloody act--some murderous act. Dreadful was the
panic I underwent. God pardon the wrong I did; and even now I pray to
him--as though the past thing were a future thing and capable of
change--that he would forbid her for ever to know what was the
derogatory thought I had admitted. I sometimes think, by recollecting a
momentary blush that suffused her marble countenance,--I think--I fear
that she might have read what was fighting in my mind. Yet that would
admit of another explanation. If she did read the very worst, meek
saint! she suffered no complaint or sense of that injury to escape her.
It might, however, be that perception, or it might be that fear which
roused her to an effort that otherwise had seemed too revolting to
undertake. She now rehearsed the whole steps of the affair from first to
last; but the only material addition, which her narrative made to that
which the trial itself had involved, was the following:--On two
separate occasions previous to the last and fatal one, when she had
happened to walk unaccompanied by me in the city, the monster Barratt
had met her in the street. He had probably,--and this was, indeed,
subsequently ascertained,--at first, and for some time afterwards,
mistaken her rank, and had addressed some proposals to her, which, from
the suppressed tone of his speaking, or from her own terror and
surprise, she had not clearly understood; but enough had reached her
alarmed ear to satisfy her that they were of a nature in the last degree
licentious and insulting. Terrified and shocked rather than indignant,
for she too easily presumed the man to be a maniac, she hurried
homewards; and was rejoiced, on first venturing to look round when close
to her own gate, to perceive that the man was not following. There,
however, she was mistaken; for either on this occasion, or on some
other, he had traced her homewards. The last of these rencontres had
occurred just three months before the fatal 6th of April; and if, in any
one instance, Agnes had departed from the strict line of her duty as a
wife, or had shown a defect of judgment, it was at this point--in not
having frankly and fully reported the circumstances to me. On the last
of these occasions I had met her at the garden-gate, and had
particularly remarked that she seemed agitated; and now, at recalling
these incidents, Agnes reminded me that I had noticed that circumstance
to herself, and that she had answered me faithfully as to the main fact.
It was true she had done so; for she had said that she had just met a
lunatic who had alarmed her by fixing his attention upon herself, and
speaking to her in a ruffian manner; and it was also true that she did
sincerely regard him in that light. This led me at the time to construe
the whole affair into a casual collision with some poor maniac escaping
from his keepers, and of no future moment, having passed by without
present consequences. But had she, instead of thus reporting her own
erroneous impression, reported the entire circumstances of the case, I
should have given them a very different interpretation. Affection for
me, and fear to throw me needlessly into a quarrel with a man of
apparently brutal and violent nature--these considerations, as too often
they do with the most upright wives, had operated to check Agnes in the
perfect sincerity of her communications. She had told nothing _but_ the
truth--only, and fatally it turned out for us both, she had not told the
_whole_ truth. The very suppression, to which she had reconciled herself
under the belief that thus she was providing for my safety and her own
consequent happiness, had been the indirect occasion of ruin to both. It
was impossible to show displeasure under such circumstances, or under
any circumstances, to one whose self-reproaches were at any rate too
bitter; but certainly, as a general rule, every conscientious woman
should resolve to consider her husband's honour in the first case, and
far before all other regards whatsoever; to make this the first, the
second, the third law of her conduct, and his personal safety but the
fourth or fifth. Yet women, and especially when the interests of
children are at stake upon their husband's safety, rarely indeed are
able to take this Roman view of their duties.

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