The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2

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As an introduction, I will state my story--the case for the casuist; and
then say one word on the reason of the case.

First, let me report the case of a friend--a distinguished lawyer at the
English bar. I had the circumstances from himself, which lie in a very
small compass; and, as my friend is known, to a proverb almost, for his
literal accuracy in all statements of fact, there need be no fear of any
mistake as to the main points of the case. He was one day engaged in
pleading before the Commissioners of Bankruptcy; a court then, newly
appointed, and differently constituted, I believe, in some respects,
from its present form. That particular commissioner, as it happened, who
presided at the moment when the case occurred, had been recently
appointed, and did not know the faces of those who chiefly practised in
the court. All things, indeed, concurred to favour his mistake: for the
case itself came on in a shape or in a stage which was liable to
misinterpretation, from the partial view which it allowed of the facts,
under the hurry of the procedure; and my friend, also, unluckily, had
neglected to assume his barrister's costume, so that he passed, in the
commissioner's appreciation, as an attorney. 'What if he _had_ been an
attorney?' it may be said: 'was he, therefore, less entitled to courtesy
or justice?' Certainly not; nor is it my business to apologise for the
commissioner. But it may easily be imagined, and (making allowances for
the confusion of hurry and imperfect knowledge of the case) it _does_
offer something in palliation of the judge's rashness, that, amongst a
large heap of 'Old Bailey' attorneys, who notoriously attended this
court for the express purpose of whitewashing their clients, and who
were in bad odour as tricksters, he could hardly have been expected to
make a special exception in favour of one particular man, who had not
protected himself by the insignia of his order. His main error, however,
lay in misapprehending the case: misapprehension lent strength to the
assumption that my friend was an 'Old Bailey' (_i. e._, a sharking)
attorney; whilst, on the other hand, that assumption lent strength to
his misapprehension of the case. Angry interruptions began: these, being
retorted or resented with just indignation, produced an irritation and
ill temper, which, of themselves, were quite sufficient to raise a cloud
of perplexity over any law process, and to obscure it for any
understanding. The commissioner grew warmer and warmer; and, at length,
he had the presumption to say:--'Sir, you are a disgrace to your
profession.' When such sugar-plums, as Captain M'Turk the peacemaker
observes, were flying between them, there could be no room for further
parley. That same night the commissioner was waited on by a friend of
the barrister's, who cleared up his own misconceptions to the
disconcerted judge; placed him, even to his own judgment, thoroughly in
the wrong; and then most courteously troubled him for a reference to
some gentleman, who would arrange the terms of a meeting for the next
day. The commissioner was too just and grave a man to be satisfied with
himself, on a cool review of his own conduct. Here was a quarrel ripened
into a mortal feud, likely enough to terminate in wounds, or, possibly,
in death to one of the parties, which, on his side, carried with it no
palliations from any provocation received, or from wrong and insult, in
any form, sustained: these, in an aggravated shape, could be pleaded by
my friend, but with no opening for retaliatory pleas on the part of the
magistrate. That name, again, of magistrate, increased his offence and
pointed its moral: he, a conservator of the laws--he, a dispenser of
equity, sitting even at the very moment on the judgment seat--_he_ to
have commenced a brawl, nay to have fastened a quarrel upon a man even
then of some consideration and of high promise; a quarrel which finally
tended to this result--shoot or be shot. That commissioner's situation
and state of mind, for the succeeding night, were certainly not
enviable: like Southey's erring painter, who had yielded to the
temptation of the subtle fiend,

With repentance his only companion he lay;
And a dismal companion is she.

Meantime, my friend--what was _his_ condition; and how did _he_ pass the
interval? I have heard him feelingly describe the misery, the blank
anguish of this memorable night. Sometimes it happens that a man's
conscience is wounded; but this very wound is the means, perhaps, by
which his feelings are spared for the present: sometimes his feelings
are lacerated; but this very laceration makes the ransom for his
conscience. Here, on the contrary, his feelings and his happiness were
dimmed by the very same cause which offered pain and outrage to his
conscience. He was, upon principle, a hater of duelling. Under any
circumstances, he would have condemned the man who could, for a light
cause, or almost for the weightiest, have so much as _accepted_ a
challenge. Yet, here he was positively _offering_ a challenge; and to
whom? To a man whom he scarcely knew by sight; whom he had never spoken
to until this unfortunate afternoon; and towards whom (now that the
momentary excitement of anger had passed away) he felt no atom of
passion or resentment whatsoever. As a free 'unhoused' young man,
therefore, had he been such, without ties or obligations in life, he
would have felt the profoundest compunction at the anticipation of any
serious injury inflicted upon another man's hopes or happiness, or upon
his own. But what was his real situation? He was a married man, married
to the woman of his choice within a very few years: he was also a
father, having one most promising son, somewhere about three years old.
His young wife and his son composed his family; and both were dependent,
in the most absolute sense, for all they possessed or they expected--for
all they had or ever could have--upon his own exertions. Abandoned by
him, losing him, they forfeited, in one hour, every chance of comfort,
respectability, or security from scorn and humiliation. The mother, a
woman of strong understanding and most excellent judgment--good and
upright herself--liable, therefore, to no habit of suspicion, and
constitutionally cheerful, went to bed with her young son, thinking no
evil. Midnight came, one, two o'clock; mother and child had long been
asleep; nor did either of them dream of that danger which even now was
yawning under their feet. The barrister had spent the hours from ten to
two in drawing up his will, and in writing such letters as might have
the best chance, in case of fatal issue to himself, for obtaining some
aid to the desolate condition of those two beings whom he would leave
behind, unprotected and without provision. Oftentimes he stole into the
bedroom, and gazed with anguish upon the innocent objects of his love;
and, as his conscience now told him, of his bitterest perfidy. 'Will you
then leave us? Are you really going to betray us? Will you deliberately
consign us to life-long poverty, and scorn, and grief?' These affecting
apostrophes he seemed, in the silence of the night, to hear almost with
bodily ears. Silent reproaches seemed written upon their sleeping
features; and once, when his wife suddenly awakened under the glare of
the lamp which he carried, he felt the strongest impulse to fly from the
room; but he faltered, and stood rooted to the spot. She looked at him
smilingly, and asked why he was so long in coming to bed. He pleaded an
excuse, which she easily admitted, of some law case to study against the
morning, or some law paper to draw. She was satisfied; and fell asleep
again. He, however, fearing, above all things, that he might miss the
time for his appointment, resolutely abided by his plan of not going to
bed; for the meeting was to take place at Chalk Farm, and by half-past
five in the morning: that is, about one hour after sunrise. One hour and
a half before this time, in the gray dawn, just when the silence of
Nature and of mighty London was most absolute, he crept stealthily, and
like a guilty thing, to the bedside of his sleeping wife and child;
took, what he believed might be his final look of them: kissed them
softly; and, according to his own quotation from Coleridge's _Remorse_,

In agony that could not be remembered;

and a conflict with himself that defied all rehearsal, he quitted his
peaceful cottage at Chelsea in order to seek for the friend who had
undertaken to act as his second. He had good reason, from what he had
heard on the night before, to believe his antagonist an excellent shot;
and, having no sort of expectation that any interruption could offer to
the regular progress of the duel, he, as the challenger, would have to
stand the first fire; at any rate, conceiving this to be the fair
privilege of the party challenged, he did not mean to avail himself of
any proposal for drawing lots upon the occasion, even if such a proposal
should happen to be made. Thus far the affair had travelled through the
regular stages of expectation and suspense; but the interest of the case
as a story was marred and brought to an abrupt conclusion by the conduct
of the commissioner. He was a man of known courage, but he also, was a
man of conscientious scruples; and, amongst other instances of courage,
had the courage to own himself in the wrong. He felt that his conduct
hitherto had not been wise or temperate, and that he would be sadly
aggravating his original error by persisting in aiming at a man's life,
upon which life hung also the happiness of others, merely because he had
offered to that man a most unwarranted insult. Feeling this, he thought
fit, at first coming upon the ground, to declare that, having learned,
since the scene in court, the real character of his antagonist, and the
extent of his own mistake, he was resolved to brave all appearances and
ill-natured judgments, by making an ample apology; which, accordingly,
he did; and so the affair terminated. I have thought it right, however,
to report the circumstances, both because they were really true in every
particular, but, much more, because they place in strong relief one
feature, which is often found in these cases, and which is allowed far
too little weight in distributing the blame between the parties: to this
I wish to solicit the reader's attention. During the hours of this
never-to-be-forgotten night of wretchedness and anxiety, my friend's
reflection was naturally forced upon the causes which had produced it.
In the world's judgment, he was aware that he himself, as the one
charged with the most weighty responsibility, (those who depended upon
him being the most entirely helpless,) would have to sustain by much the
heaviest censure: and yet what was the real proportion of blame between
the parties? He, when provoked and publicly insulted, had retorted
angrily: that was almost irresistible under the constitution of human
feelings; the meekest of men could scarcely do less. But surely the true
_onus_ of wrong and moral responsibility for all which might follow,
rested upon that party who, giving way to mixed impulses of rash
judgment and of morose temper, had allowed himself to make a most
unprovoked assault upon the character of one whom he did not know; well
aware that such words, uttered publicly by a person in authority, must,
by some course or other, be washed out and cancelled; or, if not, that
the party submitting to such defamatory insults, would at once exile
himself from the society and countenance of his professional brethren.
Now, then, in all justice, it should be so ordered that the weight of
public indignation might descend upon him, whoever he might be, (and, of
course, the more heavily, according to the authority of his station and
his power of inflicting wrong,) who should thus wantonly abuse his means
of influence, to the dishonour or injury of an unoffending party. We
clothe a public officer with power, we arm him with influential
authority over public opinion; not that he may apply these authentic
sanctions to the backing of his own malice, and giving weight to his
private caprices: and, wherever such abuse takes place, then it should
be so contrived that some reaction in behalf of the injured person
might receive a sanction equally public. And, upon this point, I shall
say a word or two more, after first stating my own case; a case where
the outrage was far more insufferable, more deliberate, and more
malicious; but, on the other hand, in this respect less effectual for
injury, that it carried with it no sanction from any official station or
repute in the unknown parties who offered the wrong. The circumstances
were these:--In 1824, I had come up to London upon an errand in itself
sufficiently vexatious--of fighting against pecuniary embarrassments, by
literary labours; but, as had always happened hitherto, with very
imperfect success, from the miserable thwartings I incurred through the
deranged state of the liver. My zeal was great, and my application was
unintermitting; but spirits radically vitiated, chiefly through the
direct mechanical depression caused by one important organ deranged;
and, secondly, by a reflex effect of depression through my own thoughts,
in estimating my prospects; together with the aggravation of my case, by
the inevitable exile from my own mountain home,--all this reduced the
value of my exertions in a deplorable way. It was rare indeed that I
could satisfy my own judgment, even tolerably, with the quality of any
literary article I produced; and my power to make sustained exertions,
drooped, in a way I could not control, every other hour of the day:
insomuch, that what with parts to be cancelled, and what with whole days
of torpor and pure defect of power to produce anything at all, very
often it turned out that all my labours were barely sufficient (some
times not sufficient) to meet the current expenses of my residence in
London. Three months' literary toil terminated, at times, in a result =
0; the whole _plus_ being just equal to the _minus_, created by two
separate establishments, and one of them in the most expensive city of
the world. Gloomy, indeed, was my state of mind at that period: for,
though I made prodigious efforts to recover my health, (sensible that
all other efforts depended for their result upon this elementary effort,
which was the _conditio sine qua non_ for the rest), yet all availed me
not; and a curse seemed to settle upon whatever I then undertook. Such
was my frame of mind on reaching London: in fact it never varied. One
canopy of murky clouds (a copy of that dun atmosphere which settles so
often upon London) brooded for ever upon my spirits, which were in one
uniformly low key of cheerless despondency; and, on this particular
morning, my depression had been deeper than usual, from the effects of a
long, continuous journey of 300 miles, and of exhaustion from want of
sleep. I had reached London, about six o'clock in the morning, by one of
the northern mails; and, resigning myself as usual in such cases, to the
chance destination of the coach, after delivering our bags in Lombard
Street, I was driven down to a great city hotel. Here there were hot
baths; and, somewhat restored by this luxurious refreshment, about eight
o'clock I was seated at a breakfast table; upon which, in a few minutes,
as an appendage not less essential than the tea-service, one of the
waiters laid that morning's _Times_, just reeking from the press. The
_Times_, by the way, is notoriously the leading journal of Europe
anywhere; but, in London, and more peculiarly in the city quarter of
London, it enjoys a pre-eminence scarcely understood elsewhere. Here it
is not _a_ morning paper, but _the_ morning paper: no other is known, no
other is cited as authority in matters of fact. Strolling with my eye
indolently over the vast Babylonian confusion of the enormous columns,
naturally as one of the _corps litteraire_, I found my attention drawn
to those regions of the paper which announced forthcoming publications.
Amongst them was a notice of a satirical journal, very low priced, and
already advanced to its third or fourth number. My heart palpitated a
little on seeing myself announced as the principal theme for the malice
of the current number. The reader must not suppose that I was left in
any doubt as to the quality of the notice with which I had been
honoured; and that, by possibility, I was solacing my vanity with some
anticipation of honeyed compliments. That, I can assure him, was made
altogether impossible, by the kind of language which flourished in the
very foreground of the _programme_, and even of the running title. The
exposure and _depluming_ (to borrow a good word from the fine old
rhetorician, Fuller,) of the leading 'humbugs' of the age--_that_ was
announced as the regular business of the journal: and the only question
which remained to be settled was, the more or less of the degree; and
also one other question, even more interesting still, viz.--whether
personal abuse were intermingled with literary. Happiness, as I have
experienced in other periods of my life, deep domestic happiness, makes
a man comparatively careless of ridicule, of sarcasm, or of abuse. But
calamity--the degradation, in the world's eye, of every man who is
fighting with pecuniary difficulties--exasperates beyond all that can be
imagined, a man's sensibility to insult. He is even apprehensive of
insult--tremulously fantastically apprehensive, where none is intended;
and like Wordsworth's shepherd, with his very understanding consciously
abused and depraved by his misfortunes is ready to say, at all hours--

And every man I met or faced,
Methought he knew some ill of me.

Some notice, perhaps, the newspaper had taken of this new satirical
journal, or some extracts might have been made from it; at all events, I
had ascertained its character so well that, in this respect, I had
nothing to learn. It now remained to get the number which professed to
be seasoned with my particular case; and it may be supposed that I did
not loiter over my breakfast after this discovery. Something which I saw
or suspected amongst the significant hints of a paragraph or
advertisement, made me fear that there might possibly be insinuations or
downright assertion in the libel requiring instant public notice; and,
therefore, on a motive of prudence, had I even otherwise felt that
indifference for slander which now I _do_ feel, but which, in those
years, morbid irritability of temperament forbade me to affect, I should
still have thought it right to look after the work; which now I did:
and, by nine o'clock in the morning--an hour at which few people had
seen me for years--I was on my road to Smithfield. Smithfield? Yes; even
so. All known and respectable publishers having declined any connexion
with the work, the writers had facetiously resorted to this _aceldama_,
or slaughtering quarter of London--to these vast shambles, as typical, I
suppose, of their own slaughtering spirit. On my road to Smithfield, I
could not but pause for one moment to reflect on the pure defecated
malice which must have prompted an attack upon myself. Retaliation or
retort it could not pretend to be. To most literary men, scattering
their written reviews, or their opinions, by word of mouth, to the right
and the left with all possible carelessness, it never can be matter of
surprise, or altogether of complaint, (unless as a question of degrees,)
that angry notices, or malicious notices, should be taken of themselves.
Few, indeed, of literary men can pretend to any absolute innocence from
offence, and from such even as may have seemed deliberate. But I, for my
part, could. Knowing the rapidity with which all remarks _of_ literary
men _upon_ literary men are apt to circulate, I had studiously and
resolutely forborne to say anything, whether of a writer or a book,
unless where it happened that I could say something that would be felt
as complimentary. And as to written reviews, so much did I dislike the
assumption of judicial functions and authority over the works of my own
brother authors and contemporaries, that I have, in my whole life,
written only two; at that time only one; and that one, though a review
of an English novel, was substantially a review of a German book, taking
little notice, or none, of the English translator; for, although he, a
good German scholar now, was a very imperfect one at that time, and was,
therefore, every way open to criticism, I had evaded this invidious
office applied to a novice in literature, and (after pointing out one or
two slight blemishes of trivial importance) all that I said of a general
nature was a compliment to him upon the felicity of his verses. Upon the
German author I was, indeed, severe, but hardly as much as he deserved.
The other review was a tissue of merriment and fun; and though, it is
true, I _did_ hear that the fair authoress was offended at one jest, I
may safely leave it for any reader to judge between us. She, or her
brother, amongst other Latin epigrams had one addressed to a young lady
_upon the loss of her keys_. This, the substance of the lines showed to
have been the intention; but (by a very venial error in one who was
writing Latin from early remembrance of it, and not in the character of
a professing scholar) the title was written _De clavis_ instead of _De
clavibus amissis_; upon which I observed that the writer had selected a
singular topic for condolence with a young lady,--viz., '_on the loss of
her cudgels_;' (_clavis_, as an ablative, coming clearly from _clava_).
This (but I can hardly believe it) was said to have offended Miss H.;
and, at all events, this was the extent of my personalities. Many kind
things I had said; much honour; much admiration, I had professed at that
period of my life in occasional papers or private letters, towards many
of my contemporaries, but never anything censorious or harsh; and simply
on a principle of courteous forbearance which I have felt to be due
towards those who are brothers of the same liberal profession with one's
self. I could not feel, when reviewing my whole life, that in any one
instance, by act, by word, or by intention, I had offered any
unkindness, far less any wrong or insult, towards a brother author. I
was at a loss, therefore, to decipher the impulse under which the
malignant libeller could have written, in making (as I suspected
already) my private history the subject of his calumnies. Jealousy, I
have since understood, jealousy, was the foundation of the whole. A
little book of mine had made its way into drawing-rooms where some book
of his had not been heard of. On reaching Smithfield, I found the
publisher to be a medical bookseller, and, to my surprise, having every
appearance of being a grave, respectable man; notwithstanding this
undeniable fact, that the libellous journal, to which he thought proper
to affix his sanction, trespassed on decency, not only by its slander,
but, in some instances, by downright obscenity; and, worse than that,
by prurient solicitations to the libidinous imagination, through blanks,
seasonably interspersed. I said nothing to him in the way of inquiry;
for I easily guessed that the knot of writers who were here clubbing
their _virus_, had not so ill combined their plans as to leave them open
to detection by a question from any chance stranger. Having, therefore,
purchased a set of the journal, then amounting to three or four numbers,
I went out; and in the elegant promenades of Smithfield, I read the
lucubrations of my libeller. Fit academy for such amenities of
literature! Fourteen years have gone by since then; and, possibly, the
unknown hound who yelled, on that occasion, among this kennel of curs,
may, long since, have buried himself and his malice in the grave.
Suffice it here to say, that, calm as I am now, and careless on
recalling the remembrance of this brutal libel, at that time I was
convulsed with wrath. As respected myself, there was a depth of
malignity in the article which struck me as perfectly mysterious. How
could any man have made an enemy so profound, and not even have
suspected it? _That_ puzzled me. For, with respect to the other objects
of attack, such as Sir Humphrey Davy, &c., it was clear that the malice
was assumed; that, at most, it was the gay impertinence of some man upon
town, armed with triple Irish brass from original defect of feeling, and
willing to raise an income by running amuck at any person just then
occupying enough of public interest to make the abuse saleable. But, in
my case, the man flew like a bull-dog at the throat, with a pertinacity
and _acharnement_ of malice that would have caused me to laugh
immoderately, had it not been for one intolerable wound to my feelings.
These mercenary libellers, whose stiletto is in the market, and at any
man's service for a fixed price, callous and insensible as they are,
yet retain enough of the principles common to human nature, under every
modification, to know where to plant their wounds. Like savage hackney
coachmen, they know where there is a _raw_. And the instincts of human
nature teach them that every man is vulnerable through his female
connexions. There lies his honour; there his strength; there his
weakness. In their keeping is the heaven of his happiness; in them and
through them the earthy of its fragility. Many there are who do not feel
the _maternal_ relation to be one in which any excessive freight of
honour or sensibility is embarked. Neither is the name of _sister_,
though tender in early years, and impressive to the fireside
sensibilities, universally and through life the same magical sound. A
sister is a creature whose very property and tendency (_qua_ sister) is
to alienate herself, not to gather round your centre. But the names of
_wife_ and _daughter_ these are the supreme and starry charities of
life: and he who, under a mask, fighting in darkness, attacks you there,
that coward has you at disadvantage. I stood in those hideous shambles
of Smithfield: upwards I looked to the clouds, downwards to the earth,
for vengeance. I trembled with excessive wrath--such was my infirmity of
feeling at that time, and in that condition of health; and had I
possessed forty thousand lives, all, and every one individually, I would
have sacrificed in vindication of her that was thus cruelly libelled.
Shall I give currency to his malice, shall I aid and promote it by
repeating it? No. And yet why not? Why should I scruple, as if afraid to
challenge his falsehoods?--why should I scruple to cite them? He, this
libeller, asserted--But faugh!

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