The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2

T >> Thomas de Quincey >> The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21

[Ratcliffe, before my story closes, I will pursue to the last of my
acquaintance with him, according to the just claims of his services. He
had privately whispered to me, as we went along, that he could speak to
the innocence of that lady, pointing to my wife, better than anybody. He
was the person whom (as then holding an office in the prison) Barratt
had attempted to employ as agent in conveying any messages that he found
it safe to send--obscurely hinting the terms on which he would desist
from prosecution. Ratcliffe had at first undertaken the negotiation from
mere levity of character. But when the story and the public interest
spread, and after himself becoming deeply struck by the prisoner's
affliction, beauty, and reputed innocence, he had pursued it only as a
means of entrapping Barratt into such written communications and such
private confessions of the truth as might have served Agnes effectually.
He wanted the art, however, to disguise his purposes: Barratt came to
suspect him violently, and feared his evidence so far, even for those
imperfect and merely oral overtures which he had really sent through
Ratcliffe--that on the very day of the trial he, as was believed, though
by another nominally, contrived that Ratcliffe should be arrested for
debt; and, after harassing him with intricate forms of business, had
finally caused him to be conveyed to prison. Ratcliffe was thus
involved in his own troubles at the time; and afterwards supposed that,
without written documents to support his evidence, he could not be of
much service to the re-establishment of my wife's reputation. Six months
after his services in the night-escape from the prison, I saw him, and
pressed him to take the money so justly forfeited to him by Manasseh's
perfidy. He would, however, be persuaded to take no more than paid his
debts. A second and a third time his debts were paid by myself and
Pierpoint. But the same habits of intemperance and dissolute pleasure
which led him into these debts, finally ruined his constitution; and he
died, though otherwise of a fine generous manly nature, a martyr to
dissipation at the early age of twenty-nine. With respect to his prison
confinement, it was so frequently recurring in his life, and was
alleviated by so many indulgences, that he scarcely viewed it as a
hardship: having once been an officer of the prison, and having thus
formed connections with the whole official establishment, and done
services to many of them, and being of so convivial a turn, he was, even
as a prisoner, treated with distinction, and considered as a privileged
son of the house.]

It was just striking twelve o'clock as we entered the lane where the
carriage was drawn up. Rain, about the profoundest I had ever witnessed,
was falling. Though near to midsummer, the night had been unusually dark
to begin with, and from the increasing rain had become much more so. We
could see nothing; and at first we feared that some mistake had occurred
as to the station of the carriage--in which case we might have sought
for it vainly through the intricate labyrinth of the streets in that
quarter. I first descried it by the light of a torch, reflected
powerfully from the large eyes of the leaders. All was ready.
Horse-keepers were at the horses' heads. The postilions were mounted;
each door had the steps let down: Agnes was lifted in: Hannah and I
followed: Pierpoint mounted his horse; and at the word--Oh! how strange
a word!--'_All's right_,' the horses sprang off like leopards, a manner
ill suited to the slippery pavement of a narrow street. At that moment,
but we valued it little indeed, we heard the prison-bell ringing out
loud and clear. Thrice within the first three minutes we had to pull up
suddenly, on the brink of formidable accidents, from the dangerous speed
we maintained, and which, nevertheless, the driver had orders to
maintain, as essential to our plan. All the stoppages and hinderances of
every kind along the road had been anticipated previously, and met by
contrivance, of one kind or other; and Pierpoint was constantly a little
ahead of us to attend to anything that had been neglected. The
consequence of these arrangements was--- that no person along the road
could possibly have assisted to trace us by anything in our appearance:
for we passed all objects at too flying a pace, and through darkness too
profound, to allow of any one feature in our equipage being distinctly
noticed. Ten miles out of town, a space which we traversed in forty-four
minutes, a second relay of horses was ready; but we carried on the same
postilions throughout. Six miles a-head of this distance we had a second
relay; and with this set of horses, after pushing two miles further
along the road, we crossed by a miserable lane five miles long, scarcely
even a bridge road, into another of the great roads from the capital;
and by thus crossing the country, we came back upon the city at a point
far distant from that at which we left it. We had performed a distance
of forty-two miles in three hours, and lost a fourth hour upon the
wretched five miles of cross-road. It was therefore four o'clock, and
broad daylight, when we drew near the suburbs of the city; but a most
happy accident now favoured us; a fog the most intense now prevailed;
nobody could see an object six feet distant; we alighted in an
uninhabited new-built street, plunged into the fog, thus confounding our
traces to any observer. We then stepped into a hackney-coach which had
been stationed at a little distance. Thence, according to our plan, we
drove to a miserable quarter of the town, whither the poor only and the
wretched resorted; mounted a gloomy dirty staircase, and, befriended by
the fog, still growing thicker and thicker, and by the early hour of the
morning, reached a house previously hired, which, if shocking to the eye
and the imagination from its squalid appearance and its gloom, still was
a home--a sanctuary--an asylum from treachery, from captivity, from
persecution. Here Pierpoint for the present quitted us: and once more
Agnes, Hannah, and I, the shattered members of a shattered family, were
thus gathered together in a house of our own.

Yes: once again, daughter of the hills, thou sleptst as heretofore in my
encircling arms; but not again in that peace which crowned thy innocence
in those days, and should have crowned it now. Through the whole of our
flying journey, in some circumstances at its outset strikingly recalling
to me that blessed one which followed our marriage, Agnes slept away
unconscious of our movements. She slept through all that day and the
following night; and I watched over her with as much jealousy of all
that might disturb her, as a mother watches over her new-born baby; for
I hoped, I fancied, that a long--long rest, a rest, a halcyon calm, a
deep, deep Sabbath of security, might prove healing and medicinal. I
thought wrong; her breathing became more disturbed, and sleep was now
haunted by dreams; all of us, indeed, were agitated by dreams; the past
pursued me, and the present, for high rewards had been advertised by
Government to those who traced us; and though for the moment we were
secure, because we never went abroad, and could not have been naturally
sought in such a neighbourhood, still that very circumstance would
eventually operate against us. At length, every night I dreamed of our
insecurity under a thousand forms; but more often by far my dreams
turned upon our wrongs; wrath moved me rather than fear. Every night,
for the greater part, I lay painfully and elaborately involved, by deep
sense of wrong,

'----in long orations, which I pleaded
Before unjust tribunals.'[20]

And for poor Agnes, her also did the remembrance of mighty wrongs occupy
through vast worlds of sleep in the same way--though coloured by that
tenderness which belonged to her gentler nature. One dream in
particular--a dream of sublime circumstances--she repeated to me so
movingly, with a pathos so thrilling, that by some profound sympathy it
transplanted itself to my own sleep, settled itself there, and is to
this hour a part of the fixed dream-scenery which revolves at intervals
through my sleeping life. This it was:--She would hear a trumpet
sound--though perhaps as having been the prelude to the solemn entry of
the judges at a town which she had once visited in her childhood; other
preparations would follow, and at last all the solemnities of a great
trial would shape themselves and fall into settled images. The audience
was assembled, the judges were arrayed, the court was set. The prisoner
was cited. Inquest was made, witnesses were called; and false witnesses
came tumultuously to the bar. Then again a trumpet was heard, but the
trumpet of a mighty archangel; and then would roll away thick clouds and
vapours. Again the audience, but another audience, was assembled; again
the tribunal was established; again the court was set; but a tribunal
and a court--how different to her! _That_ had been composed of men
seeking indeed for truth, but themselves erring and fallible creatures;
the witnesses had been full of lies, the judges of darkness. But here
was a court composed of heavenly witnesses--here was a righteous
tribunal--and then at last a judge that could not be deceived. The judge
smote with his eye a person who sought to hide himself in the crowd; the
guilty man stepped forward; the poor prisoner was called up to the
presence of the mighty judge; suddenly the voice of a little child was
heard ascending before her. Then the trumpet sounded once again; and
then there were new heavens and a new earth; and her tears and her
agitation (for she had seen her little Francis) awoke the poor
palpitating dreamer.

[20] From a MS. poem of a great living Poet. [Written in January 1838.
The lines occur in Wordsworth's _Prelude_, Book Tenth, line 410. The
passage stands thus:--

----------'the unbroken dream entangled me
In long orations, which I strove to plead
Before unjust tribunals,--with a voice
Labouring, a brain confounded, and a sense,
Death-like, of treacherous desertion, felt
In the last place of refuge--my own soul.'--H.]

* * * * *

Two months passed on: nothing could possibly be done materially to raise
the standard of those wretched accommodations which the house offered.
The dilapidated walls, the mouldering plaster, the blackened
mantel-pieces, the stained and polluted wainscots--what could be
attempted to hide or to repair all this by those who durst not venture
abroad? Yet whatever could be done, Hannah did, and, in the meantime,
very soon indeed my Agnes ceased to see or to be offended by these
objects. First of all her sight went from her; and nothing which
appealed to that sense could ever more offend her. It is to me the one
only consolation I have, that my presence and that of Hannah, with such
innocent frauds as we concerted together, made her latter days pass in a
heavenly calm, by persuading her that our security was absolute, and
that all search after us had ceased, under a belief on the part of
Government that we had gained the shelter of a foreign land. All this
was a delusion; but it was a delusion--blessed be Heaven!--which lasted
exactly as long as her life, and was just commensurate with its
necessity. I hurry over the final circumstances.

There was fortunately now, even for me, no fear that the hand of any
policeman or emissary of justice could effectually disturb the latter
days of my wife; for, besides pistols always lying loaded in an inner
room, there happened to be a long narrow passage on entering the house,
which, by means of a blunderbuss, I could have swept effectually, and
cleared many times over; and I know what to do in a last extremity. Just
two months it was, to a day, since we had entered the house; and it
happened that the medical attendant upon Agnes, who awakened no
suspicion by his visits, had prescribed some opiate or anodyne which had
not come; being dark early, for it was now September, I had ventured out
to fetch it. In this I conceived there could be no danger. On my return
I saw a man examining the fastenings of the door. He made no opposition
to my entrance, nor seemed much to observe it--but I was disturbed. Two
hours after, both Hannah and I heard a noise about the door, and voices
in low conversation. It is remarkable that Agnes heard this also--so
quick had grown her hearing. She was agitated, but was easily calmed;
and at ten o'clock we were all in bed. The hand of Agnes was in mine; so
only she felt herself in security. She had been restless for an hour,
and talking at intervals in sleep. Once she certainly wakened, for she
pressed her lips to mine. Two minutes after, I heard something in her
breathing which did not please me. I rose hastily--brought a
light--raised her head--two long, long gentle sighs, that scarcely moved
the lips, were all that could be perceived. At that moment, at that very
moment, Hannah called out to me that the door was surrounded. 'Open it!'
I said; six men entered; Agnes it was they sought; I pointed to the bed;
they advanced, gazed, and walked away in silence.

After this I wandered about, caring little for life or its affairs, and
roused only at times to think of vengeance upon all who had contributed
to lay waste my happiness. In this pursuit, however, I was confounded as
much by my own thoughts as by the difficulties of accomplishing my
purpose. To assault and murder either of the two principal agents in
this tragedy, what would it be, what other effect could it have, than to
invest them with the character of injured and suffering people, and thus
to attract a pity or a forgiveness at least to their persons which never
otherwise could have illustrated their deaths? I remembered, indeed, the
words of a sea-captain who had taken such vengeance as had offered at
the moment upon his bitter enemy and persecutor (a young passenger on
board his ship), who had informed against him at the Custom-house on his
arrival in port, and had thus effected the confiscation of his ship, and
the ruin of the captain's family. The vengeance, and it was all that
circumstances allowed, consisted in coming behind the young man
clandestinely and pushing him into the deep waters of the dock, when,
being unable to swim, he perished by drowning. 'And the like,' said the
captain, when musing on his trivial vengeance, 'and the like happens to
many an honest sailor.' Yes, thought I, the captain was right. The
momentary shock of a pistol-bullet--what is it? Perhaps it may save the
wretch after all from the pangs of some lingering disease; and then
again I shall have the character of a murderer, if known to have shot
him; he will with many people have no such character, but at worst the
character of a man too harsh (they will say), and possibly mistaken in
protecting his property. And then, if not known as the man who shot him,
where is the shadow even of vengeance? Strange, it seemed to me, and
passing strange, that I should be the person to urge arguments in behalf
of letting this man escape. For at one time I had as certainly, as
inexorably, doomed him as ever I took any resolution in my life. But the
fact is, and I began to see it upon closer view, it is not easy by any
means to take an adequate vengeance for any injury beyond a very trivial
standard; and that with common magnanimity one does not care to avenge.
Whilst I was in this mood of mind, still debating with myself whether I
should or should not contaminate my hands with the blood of this
monster, and still unable to shut my eyes upon one fact, viz. that my
buried Agnes could above all things have urged me to abstain from such
acts of violence, too evidently useless, listlessly and scarcely knowing
what I was in quest of, I strayed by accident into a church where a
venerable old man was preaching at the very moment I entered; he was
either delivering as a text, or repeating in the course of his sermon,
these words--'Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.' By some
accident also he fixed his eyes upon me at the moment; and this
concurrence with the subject then occupying my thoughts so much
impressed me, that I determined very seriously to review my half-formed
purposes of revenge; and well it was that I did so: for in that same
week an explosion of popular fury brought the life of this wretched
Barratt to a shocking termination, pretty much resembling the fate of
the De Witts in Holland. And the consequences to me were such, and so
full of all the consolation and indemnification which this world could
give me, that I have often shuddered since then at the narrow escape I
had had from myself intercepting this remarkable retribution. The
villain had again been attempting to play off the same hellish scheme
with a beautiful young rustic which had succeeded in the case of my
ill-fated Agnes. But the young woman in this instance had a high, and,
in fact, termagant spirit. Rustic as she was, she had been warned of the
character of the man; everybody, in fact, was familiar with the recent
tragedy. Either her lover or her brother happened to be waiting for her
outside the window. He saw in part the very tricks in the act of
perpetration by which some article or other, meant to be claimed as
stolen property, was conveyed into a parcel she had incautiously laid
down. He heard the charge against her made by Barratt, and seconded by
his creatures--heard her appeal--sprang to her aid--dragged the ruffian
into the street, when in less time than the tale could be told, and
before the police (though tolerably alert) could effectually interpose
for his rescue, the mob had so used or so abused the opportunity they
had long wished for, that he remained the mere disfigured wreck of what
had once been a man, rather than a creature with any resemblance to
humanity. I myself heard the uproar at a distance, and the shouts and
yells of savage exultation; they were sounds I shall never forget,
though I did not at that time know them for what they were, or
understood their meaning. The result, however, to me was something
beyond this, and worthy to have been purchased with my heart's blood.
Barratt still breathed; spite of his mutilations he could speak; he was
rational. One only thing he demanded--it was that his dying confession
might be taken. Two magistrates and a clergyman attended. He gave a list
of those whom he had trepanned, and had failed to trepan, by his
artifices and threats, into the sacrifice of their honour. He expired
before the record was closed, but not before he had placed my wife's
name in the latter list as the one whose injuries in his dying moments
most appalled him. This confession on the following day went into the
hands of the hostile minister, and my revenge was perfect.

MR. SCHNACKENBERGER;

OR,

TWO MASTERS FOR ONE DOG.

FROM THE GERMAN.

CHAPTER I.

IN WHAT MANNER MR. SCHNACKENBERGER MADE HIS ENTRY INTO B----.

The sun had just set, and all the invalids at the baths of B---- had
retired to their lodgings, when the harsh tones of welcome from the
steeple announced the arrival of a new guest. Forthwith all the windows
were garrisoned with young faces and old faces, pretty faces and ugly
faces; and scarce one but was overspread with instantaneous merriment--a
_feu-de-joie_ of laughter, that travelled up the street in company with
the very extraordinary object that now advanced from the city gates.
Upon a little, meagre, scare-crow of a horse, sate a tall,
broad-shouldered young fellow, in a great-coat of bright pea-green,
whose variegated lights and shades, from soaking rains and partial
dryings, bore sullen testimony to the changeable state of the weather
for the last week. Out of this great-coat shot up, to a monstrous
height, a head surmounted by a huge cocked hat, one end of which hung
over the stem, the other over the stern of the horse: the legs belonging
to this head were sheathed in a pair of monstrous boots, technically
called 'field-pieces,' which, descending rather too low, were well
plaistered with flesh-coloured mud. More, perhaps, in compliance with
the established rule, than for any visible use, a switch was in the
rider's hand; for to attribute to such a horse, under such a load, any
power to have quitted a pace that must have satisfied the most rigorous
police in Poland, was obviously too romantic. Depending from his side,
and almost touching the ground, rattled an enormous back-sword, which
suggested to the thinking mind a salutary hint to allow free passage,
without let or unseasonable jesting, to Mr. Jeremiah Schnackenberger,
student at the University of X----. He, that might be disposed to
overlook this hint, would certainly pay attention to a second, which
crept close behind the other in the shape of a monstrous dog, somewhat
bigger than the horse, and presenting on every side a double tier of
most respectable teeth. Observing the general muster of the natives,
which his appearance had called to the windows, the rider had unslung
and mounted a pipe, under whose moving canopy of clouds and vapours he
might advance in greater tranquillity: and during this operation, his
very thoughtful and serious horse had struck up a by-street--and made a
dead stop, before his rider was aware, at the sign of the Golden Sow.

Although the gold had long since vanished from the stone beast, and, to
say the truth, every part of the house seemed to sympathise admirably
with the unclean habits of its patron image, nevertheless, Mr. Jeremiah
thought proper to comply with the instincts of his horse; and, as nobody
in the street, or in the yard, came forward to answer his call, he gave
himself no further trouble, but rode on through the open door right
forwards into the bar.

CHAPTER II.

HOW MR. JEREMIAH CAME TO TAKE UP HIS QUARTERS AT THE GOLDEN SOW.

'The Lord, and his angels, protect us!--As I live, here comes the late
governor!' ejaculated the hostess, Mrs. Bridget Sweetbread; suddenly
startled out of her afternoon's nap by the horse's hoofs--and seeing
right before her what she took for the apparition of Don Juan; whom, as
it afterwards appeared, she had seen in a pantomime the night before.

'Thunder and lightning! my good woman,' said the student laughing,
'would you dispute the reality of my flesh and blood?'

Mrs. Bridget, however, on perceiving her mistake, cared neither for the
sword nor for the dog, but exclaimed, 'Why then, let me tell you, Sir,
it's not the custom in this country to ride into parlours, and disturb
honest folks when they're taking their rest. Innkeeping's not the trade
it has been to me, God he knows: but, for all that, I'll not put up with
such work from nobody.'

'Good, my dear creature; what you say is good--very good: but let me
tell you, it's _not_ good that I must be kept waiting in the street, and
no soul in attendance to take my horse and feed him.'

'Oh, that base villain of a hostler!' said the landlady, immediately
begging pardon, and taking hold of the bridle, whilst Mr.
Schnackenberger dismounted.

'That's a good creature,' said he; 'I love you for this: and I don't
care if I take up my quarters here, which at first was not my intention.
Have you room for me?'

'Room!' answered Mrs. Sweetbread; 'ah! now there's just the whole Golden
Sow at your service; the more's the pity.'

On Mr. Jeremiah's asking the reason for this superfluity of room, she
poured out a torrent of abuse against the landlord of _The
Double-barrelled Gun_, who--not content with having at all times done
justice to his sign--had latterly succeeded, with the help of vicious
coachmen and unprincipled postilions, in drawing away her whole
business, and had at length utterly ruined the once famous inn of _The
Golden Sow_. And true it was that the apartment, into which she now
introduced her guest, showed some vestiges of ancient splendour, in the
pictures of six gigantic sows. The late landlord had been a butcher, and
had christened his inn from his practice of slaughtering a pig every
week; and the six swine, as large as life, and each bearing a separate
name, were designed to record his eminent skill in the art of fattening.

His widow, who was still in mourning for him, must certainly have
understood Mr. Schnackenberger's words, '_I love you for this_,' in a
sense very little intended by the student. For she brought up supper
herself; and, with her own hand, unarmed with spoon or other implement,
dived after and secured a little insect which was floundering about in
the soup. So much the greater was her surprise on observing, that, after
such flattering proofs of attention, her guest left the soup untouched;
and made no particular application to the other dishes--so well
harmonising with the general character of the Golden Sow. At last,
however, she explained his want of appetite into the excess of his
passion for herself; and, on that consideration, failed not to lay
before him a statement of her flourishing circumstances, and placed in
a proper light the benefits of a marriage with a woman somewhat older
than himself.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21