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Page 3
Thomas De Quincey was born in Manchester, August 15, 1785. His father
was a well-to-do merchant of literary taste, but of him the children
of the household scarcely knew; he was an invalid, a prey to
consumption, and during their childhood made his residence mostly in
the milder climate of Lisbon or the West Indies. Thomas was seven
years old when his father was brought home to die, and the lad, though
sensitively impressed by the event, felt little of the significance of
relationship between them. Mrs. De Quincey was a somewhat stately
lady, rather strict in discipline and rigid in her views. There does
not seem to have been the most complete sympathy between mother and
son, yet De Quincey was always reverent in his attitude, and certainly
entertained a genuine respect for her intelligence and character.
There were eight children in the home, four sons and four daughters;
Thomas was the fifth in age, and his relations to the other members of
this little community are set forth most interestingly in the opening
chapters of his _Autobiographic Sketches_.
De Quincey's child life was spent in the country; first at a pretty
rustic dwelling known as "The Farm," and after 1792 at a larger
country house near Manchester, built by his father, and given by his
mother the pleasantly suggestive name of "Greenhay," _hay_ meaning
hedge, or hedgerow. The early boyhood of Thomas De Quincey is of more
than ordinary interest, because of the clear light it throws upon the
peculiar temperament and endowments of the man. Moreover, we have the
best of authority in our study of this period, namely, the author
himself, who in the _Sketches_ already mentioned, and in his most
noted work, _The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater_, has told the
story of these early years in considerable detail and with apparent
sincerity. De Quincey was not a sturdy boy. Shy and dreamy,
exquisitely sensitive to impressions of melancholy and mystery, he was
endowed with an imagination abnormally active even for a child. It is
customary to give prominence to De Quincey's pernicious habit of
opium-eating, in attempting to explain the grotesque fancies and weird
flights of his marvellous mind in later years; yet it is only fair to
emphasize the fact that the later achievements of that strange
creative faculty were clearly foreshadowed in youth. For example, the
earliest incident in his life that he could afterwards recall, he
describes as "a remarkable dream of terrific grandeur about a favorite
nurse, which is interesting to myself for this reason--that it
demonstrates my dreaming tendencies to have been constitutional, and
not dependent upon laudanum."[1] Again he tells us how, when six years
old, upon the death of a favorite sister three years older, he stole
unobserved upstairs to the death chamber; unlocking the door and
entering silently, he stood for a moment gazing through the open
window toward the bright sunlight of a cloudless day, then turned to
behold the angel face upon the pillow. Awed in the presence of death,
the meaning of which he began vaguely to understand, he stood
listening to a "solemn wind" that began to blow--"the saddest that ear
ever heard." What followed should appear in De Quincey's own words: "A
vault seemed to open in the zenith of the far blue sky, a shaft which
ran up forever. I, in spirit, rose as if on billows that also ran up
the shaft forever; and the billows seemed to pursue the throne of God;
but _that_ also ran on before us and fled away continually. The flight
and the pursuit seemed to go on forever and ever. Frost gathering
frost, some sarsar wind of death, seemed to repel me; some mighty
relation between God and death dimly struggled to evolve itself from
the dreadful antagonism between them; shadowy meanings even yet
continued to exercise and torment, in dreams, the deciphering oracle
within me. I slept--for how long I cannot say: slowly I recovered my
self-possession; and, when I woke, found myself standing as before,
close to my sister's bed."[2] Somewhat similar in effect were the
fancies that came to this dreamy boy on Sunday mornings during service
in the fine old English church. Through the wide central field of
uncolored glass, set in a rich framework of gorgeous color,--for the
side panes of the great windows were pictured with the stories of
saints and martyrs,--the lad saw "white fleecy clouds sailing over the
azure depths of the sky." Straightway the picture changed in his
imagination, and visions of young children, lying on white beds of
sickness and of death, rose before his eyes, ascending slowly and
softly into heaven, God's arms descending from the heavens that He
might the sooner take them to Himself and grant release. Such are not
infrequently the dreams of children. De Quincey's experience is not
unique; but with him imagination, the imagination of childhood,
remained unimpaired through life. It was not wholly opium that made
him the great dreamer of our literature, any more than it was the
effect of a drug that brought from his dying lips the cry of "Sister,
sister, sister!"--an echo from this sacred chamber of death, where he
had stood awed and entranced nearly seventy years before.
Not all of De Quincey's boyhood, however, was passed under influences
so serious and mystical as these. He was early compelled to undergo
what he is pleased to call his "introduction to the world of strife."
His brother William, five years the senior of Thomas, appears to have
been endowed with an imagination as remarkable as his own. "His genius
for mischief," says Thomas, "amounted to inspiration." Very amusing
are the chronicles of the little autocracy thus despotized by William.
The assumption of the young tyrant was magnificent. Along with the
prerogatives and privileges of seniority, he took upon himself as well
certain responsibilities more galling to his half-dozen uneasy
subordinates, doubtless, than the undisputed hereditary rights of
age. William constituted himself the educational guide of the nursery,
proclaiming theories, delivering lectures, performing experiments,
asserting opinions upon subjects diverse and erudite. Indeed, a
vigorous spirit was housed in William's body, and but for his early
death, this lad also might have brought lustre to the family name.
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