knocked at my door. What business a Malay could have to transact amongst English mountains, I cannot conjecture: but possibly he was on his road to a seaport about forty miles distant.
The servant who opened the door to him was a young girl born and bred amongst the mountains, who had never seen an Asiatic dress of any sort: his turban, therefore, confounded her not a little: and, as it turned out that his attainments in English were exactly of the same extent as hers in the Malay, there seemed to be an impassable gulf fixed between all communication of ideas, if either party had happened to possess any. In this dilemma, the girl, recollecting the reputed learning of her master (and, doubtless, giving me credit for a knowledge of all the languages of the earth, besides, perhaps, a few of the lunar ones), came and gave me to understand that there was a sort of demon below, whom she clearly imagined that my art could exorcise from the house. I did not immediately go down: but, when I did, the group which presented itself, arranged as it was by accident, though not very elaborate, took hold of my fancy and my eye in a way that none of the statuesque attitudes exhibited in the ballets at the Opera House, though so ostentatiously complex, had ever done. In a cottage kitchen, but paneled on the wall with dark wood that from age and rubbing resembled oak, and looking more like a rustic hall of entrance than a kitchen, stood the Malay?his turban and loose trousers of dingy white relieved upon the dark paneling: he had placed himself nearer to the girl than she seemed to relish; though her native spirit of mountain intrepidity contended with the feeling of simple awe which her countenance expressed as she gazed upon the tiger-cat before her. And a more striking picture there could not be imagined, than the beautiful English face of the girl, and its exquisite fairness, together with her erect and independent attitude, contrasted with the sallow and bilious skin of the Malay, enameled or veneered with mahogany, by marine air, his small, fierce, restless eyes, thin lips, slavish gestures and adorations. Half-hidden by the ferocious-looking Malay, was a little child from a neighboring cottage who had crept in after him, and was now in the act of reverting its head, and gazing upwards at the turban and the fiery eyes beneath it, whilst with one hand he caught at the dress of the young woman for protection. My knowledge of the Oriental tongues is not remarkably extensive, being indeed confined to two words?the Arabic word for barley, and the Turkish for opium (madjoon), which I have learnt from Anastasius.4 And, as I had neither a Malay dictionary, nor even Adelung's Mithridates,5 which might have helped me to a few words, I addressed him in some lines from the Iliad; considering that, of such languages
2. It is 1816. De Quincy is living at Dove Cottage, 4. Anastasius, or Memoirs of a Greek, was a novel Grasmere, and for three years has been addicted published anonymously by Thomas Hope in 1819. to laudanum, i.e., opium dissolved in alcohol. At It included a description of the physical effects of this time he has succeeded in reducing his daily opium that De Quincey considered to be a 'grievdosage from eight thousand to one thousand drops, ous misrepresentation.' with a consequent improvement in health and 5. Mithridates, or The Universal Table of Lanenergy. guages, by the German philologist J. C. Adelung 3. Native of the Malay peninsula in Southeast (1732- 1806). Asia.
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56 0 / THOMAS DE QUINCEY
as I possessed, Greek, in point of longitude, came geographically nearest to an Oriental one. He worshiped6 me in a most devout manner, and replied in what I suppose was Malay. In this way I saved my reputation with my neighbors: for the Malay had no means of betraying the secret. He lay down upon the floor for about an hour, and then pursued his journey. On his departure, I presented him with a piece of opium. To him, as an Orientalist, I concluded that opium must be familiar: and the expression of his face convinced me that it was. Nevertheless, I was struck with some little consternation when I saw him suddenly raise his hand to his mouth, and (in the schoolboy phrase) bolt the whole, divided into three pieces, at one mouthful. The quantity was enough to kill three dragoons and their horses: and I felt some alarm for the poor creature: but what could be done? 1 had given him the opium in compassion for his solitary life, on recollecting that if he had traveled on foot from London, it must be nearly three weeks since he could have exchanged a thought with any human being. I could not think of violating the laws of hospitality, by having him seized and drenched with an emetic, and thus frightening him into a notion that we were going to sacrifice him to some English idol. No: there was clearly no help for it:?he took his leave: and for some days I felt anxious: but as I never heard of any Malay being found dead, I became convinced that he was used7 to opium: and that I must have done him the service I designed, by giving him one night of respite from the pains of wandering.
This incident I have digressed to mention, because this Malay (partly from the picturesque exhibition he assisted to frame, partly from the anxiety I connected with his image for some days) fastened afterwards upon my dreams, and brought other Malays with him worse than himself, that ran 'amuck'8 at me, and led me into a world of troubles. * * *
From The Pains of Opium
[OPIUM REVERIES AND DREAMS]
I have thus described and illustrated my intellectual torpor, in terms that apply, more or less, to every part of the four years during which I was under the Circean9 spells of opium. But for misery and suffering, I might, indeed, be said to have existed in a dormant state. I seldom could prevail on myself to write a letter; an answer of a few words, to any that I received, was the utmost that I could accomplish; and often that not until the letter had lain weeks, or even months, on my writing table. Without the aid of M.1 all records of bills paid, or to be paid, must have perished: and my whole domestic economy, whatever became of Political Economy,2 must have gone into irretrievable confusion.? I shall not afterwards allude to this part of the case: it is one, however, which the opium-eater will find, in the end, as oppressive and tormenting as any other, from the sense of incapacity and feebleness, from the direct embarrass
6. Bowed down to. travel literature and was used initially as a generic 7. This, however, is not a necessary conclusion: designation for inhabitants of the Malay peninsula. the varieties of effect produced by opium on dif-9. Like those of Circe, the enchantress in the ferent constitutions are infinite [De Quincey's Odyssey who turned Odysseus's men into swine. note], 1. Margaret Simpson, whom De Quincey had 8. See the common accounts in any Eastern trav-married in 1817. eller or voyager of the frantic excesses committed 2. Inspired by David Ricardo's Principles of Politby Malays who have taken opium, or are reduced ical Economy (1817), De Quincey had begun to to desperation by ill luck at gambling [De Quin-write, but never completed, a work he called Pro- cey's note]. As a term denoting frenzy, 'amuck,' legomena to All Future Systems of Political Econalso spelled 'amok,' entered English by way of omy.
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CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER / 561
ments incident to the neglect or procrastination of each day's appropriate duties, and from the remorse which must often exasperate the stings of these evils to a reflective and conscientious mind. The opium-eater loses none of his moral sensibilities, or aspirations: he wishes and longs, as earnestly as ever, to realize what he believes possible, and feels to be exacted by duty; but his intellectual apprehension of what is possible infinitely outruns his power, not of execution only, but even of power to attempt. He lies under the weight of incubus and nightmare: he lies in sight of all that he would fain perform, just as a man forcibly confined to his bed by the mortal languor of a relaxing disease, who is compelled to witness injury or outrage offered to some object of his tenderest love:?he curses the spells which chain him down from motion:?he would lay down his life if he might get up and walk; but he is powerless as an infant, and cannot even attempt to rise.
