The Opium Habit by Horace B. Day

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"'It seems dreadful to say this, with his expressions before me, but
it is so, and I know it to be so from my own observation, and that of
all with whom he has lived. The Morgans, with great difficulty and
perseverance, _did_ break him of the habit at a time when his
ordinary consumption of laudanum was from _two quarts a week to a
pint a day!_ He suffered dreadfully during the first abstinence, so
much so as to say it was better for him to die than to endure his
present feelings. Mrs. Morgan resolutely replied, it was indeed better
that he should die than that he should continue to live as he had been
living. It angered him at the time, but the effort was persevered in.

"'To what, then, was the relapse owing? I believe to this cause--that
no use was made of renewed health and spirits; that time passed on in
idleness, till the lapse of time brought with it a sense of neglected
duties, and then relief was again sought for _a self-accusing
mind_ in bodily feelings, which, when the stimulus ceased to act,
added only to the load of self-accusation. This, Cottle, is an
insanity which none but the soul's Physician can cure. Unquestionably,
restraint would do as much for him as it did when the Morgans tried
it, but I do not see the slightest reason for believing it would be
more permanent. This, too, I ought to say, that all the medical men to
whom Coleridge has made his confession have uniformly ascribed the
evil not to bodily disease but indulgence. The restraint which alone
could effectually cure is that which no person can impose upon
him. Could he be compelled to a certain quantity of labor every day
for his family, the pleasure of having done it would make his heart
glad, and the sane mind would make the body whole.

"'His great object should be to get out a play, and appropriate the
whole produce to the support of his son Hartley at college. Three
months' pleasurable exertion would effect this. Of some such fit of
industry I by no means despair; of any thing more than fits I am
afraid I do. But this of course I shall never say to him. From me he
shall never hear aught but cheerful encouragement and the language of
hope.'

"After anxious consideration I thought the only effectual way of
benefiting Mr. Coleridge would be to renew the project of an annuity,
by raising for him among his friends one hundred, or, if possible, one
hundred and fifty pounds a year, purposing through a committee of
three to pay for his comfortable board and all necessaries, but not of
giving him the disposition of any part till it was hoped the
correction of his bad habits and the establishment of his better
principles might qualify him for receiving it for his own
distribution. It was difficult to believe that his subjection to
_opium_ could much longer resist the stings of his own conscience
and the solicitations of his friends, as well as the pecuniary
destitution to which his _opium habits_ had reduced him. The
proposed object was named to Mr. C., who reluctantly gave his consent.

"I now drew up a letter, intending to send a copy to all
Mr. Coleridge's old and steady friends (several of whom approved of
the design), but before any commencement was made I transmitted a copy
of my proposed letter to Mr. Southey to obtain his sanction. The
following is his reply:

"'April 17th, 1814.

"'DEAR COTTLE:--I have seldom in the course of my life felt it so
difficult to answer a letter as on the present occasion. There is,
however, no alternative. I must sincerely express what I think, and be
thankful I am writing to one who knows me thoroughly.

"'Of sorrow and humiliation I will say nothing. No part of Coleridge's
embarrassment arises from his wife and children, except that he has
insured his life for a thousand pounds, and pays the annual
premium. He never writes to them, and never opens a letter from them.

"'In truth, Cottle, his embarrassments and his miseries of body and
mind all arise from one accursed cause--excess in _opium_, of
which he habitually takes more than was ever known to be taken by any
person before him. The Morgans, with great effort, succeeded in making
him leave it off for a time, and he recovered in consequence
_health_ and _spirits_. He has now taken to it again. Of
this indeed I was too sure before I heard from you--that his looks
bore testimony to it. Perhaps you are not aware of the costliness of
this drug. In the quantity which C. takes, it would consume
_more_ than the whole which you propose to raise. A frightful
consumption of _spirits_ is added. In this way bodily ailments
are produced, and the wonder is that he is still alive.

"'Nothing is wanting to make him easy in circumstances and happy in
himself but to leave off opium, and to direct a certain portion of his
time to the discharge of _his duties.'_

"During my illness at this time, Mr. Coleridge sent my sister the
following letter, and the succeeding one to myself:

"'13th May, 1814.

"'DEAR MADAM:--I am uneasy to know how my friend, J. Cottle, goes
on. The walk I took last Monday to inquire in person proved too much
for my strength, and shortly after my return I was in such a swooning
way that I was directed to go to bed, and orders were given that no
one should interrupt me. Indeed I can not be sufficiently grateful for
the skill with which _the surgeon treats me._ But it must be a
slow, and occasionally an interrupted progress, after a sad retrogress
of nearly twelve years.'

"'Friday, 27th May, 1814.

"'MY DEAR COTTLE:--I feel, with an intensity unfathomable by words, my
utter nothingness, impotence, and worthlessness, in and for myself. I
have learned what a sin is against an infinite, imperishable being,
such as is the soul of man.

"'I have had more than a glimpse of what is meant by death and outer
darkness, and the worm that dieth not--and that all the _hell_ of the
reprobate, is no more inconsistent with the love of God, than the
blindness of one who has occasioned loathsome and guilty diseases to
eat out his eyes is inconsistent with the light of the sun. But the
consolations, at least the sensible sweetness of hope, I do not
possess. On the contrary, the temptation which I have constantly to
fight up against, is a fear that if _annihilation_ and the
_possibility_ of _heaven_ were offered to my choice, I should choose
the former. "'Mr. Eden gave you a too flattering account of me. It is
true I am restored, as much beyond my expectations almost as my
deserts; but I am exceedingly weak. I need for myself solace and
refocillation of animal spirits, instead of being in a condition of
offering it to others.'

"The serious expenditure of money resulting from Mr. C.'s consumption
of opium was the least evil, though very great, and must have absorbed
all the produce of Mr. C.'s lectures and all the liberalities of his
friends. It is painful to record such circumstances as the following,
but the picture would be incomplete without it.

"Mr. Coleridge, in a late letter, with something it is feared, if not
of duplicity, of self-deception, extols the skill of his surgeon in
having gradually lessened his consumption of laudanum, it was
understood, to twenty drops a day. With this diminution the habit was
considered as subdued, at which result no one appeared to rejoice more
than Mr. Coleridge himself. The reader will be surprised to learn
that, notwithstanding this flattering exterior, Mr. C., while
apparently submitting to the directions of his medical adviser, was
secretly indulging in his usual overwhelming quanties of opium!
Heedless of his health and every honorable consideration, he contrived
to obtain surreptitiously the fatal drug, and thus to baffle the hopes
of his warmest friends.

"Mr. Coleridge had resided at this time for several months with his
kind friend Mr. Josiah Wade, of Bristol, who in his solicitude for his
benefit had procured for him, so long as it was deemed necessary, the
professional assistance stated above. The surgeon on taking leave,
after the cure had been _effected_, well knowing the expedients
to which opium patients would often recur to obtain their proscribed
draughts--at least till the habit of temperance was fully
established--cautioned Mr. W. to prevent Mr. Coleridge by all possible
means from obtaining that by stealth from which he was openly
debarred. It reflects great credit on Mr. Wade's humanity that, to
prevent all access to opium, and thus if possible to rescue his friend
from destruction, he engaged a respectable old decayed tradesman
constantly to attend Mr. C, and, to make that which was sure, doubly
certain, placed him even in his bedroom; and this man always
accompanied him whenever he went out. To such surveillance
Mr. Coleridge cheerfully acceded, in order to show the promptitude
with which he seconded the efforts of his friends. It has been stated
that every precaution was unavailing. By some unknown means and
dexterous contrivances Mr. C. afterward confessed that he still
obtained his usual lulling potions.

"As an example, among others of a similar nature, one ingenious
expedient to which he resorted to cheat the doctor he thus disclosed
to Mr. Wade, from whom I received it. He said, in passing along the
quay where the ships were moored, he noticed by a side glance a
druggist's shop, probably an old resort, and standing near the door he
looked toward the ships, and pointing to one at some distance he said
to his attendant, 'I think that's an American.' 'Oh, no, that I am
sure it is not,' said the man. 'I think it is,' replied Mr. C.' I
wish you would step over and ask, and bring me the particulars.' The
man accordingly went; when as soon as his back was turned
Mr. C. stepped into the shop, had his portly bottle filled with
laudanum, which he always carried in his pocket, and then
expeditiously placed himself in the spot where he was left. The man
now returned with the particulars, beginning, 'I told you, Sir, it was
not an American, but I have learned all about her.' 'As I am mistaken,
never mind the rest,' said Mr. C, and walked on.

"A common impression prevailed on the minds of his friends that it was
a desperate case that paralyzed all their efforts; that to assist
Mr. C. with money, which under favorable circumstances would have been
most promptly advanced, would now only enlarge his capacity to obtain
the opium which was consuming him. We at length learned that Mr.
Coleridge was gone to reside with his friend Mr. John Morgan, in a
small house, at Calne, in Wiltshire. So gloomy were our apprehensions,
that even the death of Mr. C. was mournfully expected at no distant
period, for his actions at this time were, we feared, all indirectly
of a suicidal description.

"In a letter dated October 27, 1814, Mr. Southey thus writes:

"'Can you tell me any thing of Coleridge? We know that he is with the
Morgans at Calne. What is to become of him? He may find men who will
give him board and lodging for the sake of his conversation, but who
will pay his other expenses? He leaves his family to chance and
charity. With good feelings, good principles, as far as the
understanding is concerned, and an intellect as clear and as powerful
as was ever vouchsafed to man, he is the slave of degrading
sensuality, and sacrifices every thing to it. The case is equally
deplorable and monstrous.'"

The intimacy between Coleridge and Cottle seems about this period to
have entirely ceased. After the death of Coleridge, Mr. Cottle
prepared his "Recollections" of his friend, but was restrained from
its publication by considerations of propriety, until the following
letter was placed in his hands by the gentleman to whom it was
addressed, with permission to use it:

"BRISTOL, June 26, 1814.

"DEAR SIR:--For I am unworthy to call any good man friend--much less
you, whose hospitality and love I have abused; accept, however, my
entreaties for your forgiveness and your prayers.

"Conceive a poor miserable wretch, who for many years has been
attempting to beat off pain by a constant recurrence to the vice that
reproduces it. Conceive a spirit in hell employed in tracing out for
others the road to that heaven from which his crimes exclude him! In
short, conceive whatever is most wretched, helpless, and hopeless, and
you will form as tolerable a notion of my state as it is possible for
a good man to have.

"I used to think the text in St. James, that 'he who offended in one
point, offends in all,' very harsh, but I now feel the awful, the
tremendous truth of it. In the one crime of OPIUM, what crime have I
not made myself guilty of? Ingratitude to my Maker! and to my
benefactors, injustice! _and unnatural cruelty to my poor
children!_--self-contempt for my repeated promise--breach, nay, too
often, actual falsehood.

"After my death, I earnestly entreat that a full and unqualified
narration of my wretchedness and of its guilty cause may be made
public, that at least some little good may be effected by the direful
example.

"May God Almighty bless you, and have mercy on your still
affectionate, and in his heart grateful,

"S. T. COLERIDGE.

"JOSIAH WADE, ESQ."

"It appears that in the spring of 1816 Mr. Coleridge left Mr. Morgan's
house at Calne, and in a desolate state of mind repaired to London;
when the belief remaining strong on his mind that his opium habits
would never be effectually subdued till he had subjected himself to
medical restraint, he called on Dr. Adams, an eminent physician, and
disclosed to him the whole of his painful circumstances, stating what
he conceived to be his only remedy. The doctor, being a humane man,
sympathized with his patient, and knowing a medical gentleman who
resided three or four miles from town, who would be likely to
undertake the charge, he addressed the following letter to Mr. Gilman:

"'HATTON GARDEN, April 9,1816.

"'DEAR SIR:--A very learned, but in one respect an unfortunate
gentleman, has applied to me on a singular occasion. He has for
several years been in the habit of taking large quantities of
opium. For some time past he has been in vain endeavoring to break
himself off it. It is apprehended his friends are not firm enough,
from a dread lest he should suffer by suddenly leaving it off, though
he is conscious of the contrary, and has proposed to me to submit
himself to any regimen, however severe. With this view he wishes to
fix himself in the house of some medical gentleman, who will have
courage to refuse him any laudanum, and under whose assistance, should
he be the worse for it, he may be relieved. As he is desirous of
retirement and a garden, I could think of none so readily as
yourself. Be so good as to inform me whether such a proposal is
absolutely inconsistent with your family arrangements. I should not
have proposed it, but on account of the great importance of the
character as a literary man. His communicative temper will make his
society very interesting as well as useful. Have the goodness to favor
me with an immediate answer; and believe me, dear Sir, your faithful
humble servant,

"'JOSEPH ADAMS.'"

Mr. Gilman, in his "Life of Coleridge," says: "I had seen the writer
of this letter but twice in my life, and had no intention of receiving
an inmate into my house. I however determined on seeing Dr. Adams, for
whether the person referred to had taken opium from choice or
necessity, to me Dr. Adams informed me that the patient had been
warned of the danger of discontinuing opium by several eminent medical
men, who at the same time represented the frightful consequences that
would most probably ensue. I had heard of the failure of
Mr. Wilberforce's case under an eminent physician at Bath, in addition
to which the doctor gave me an account of several others within his
own knowledge. After some further conversation it was agreed that Dr.
Adams should drive Coleridge to Highgate the following evening. On the
following evening came Coleridge _himself_, and alone. Coleridge
proposed to come the following evening, but he first informed me of
the painful opinion which he had received concerning his case,
especially from one medical man of celebrity. The tale was sad, and
the opinion given unprofessional and cruel, sufficient to have
deterred most men so afflicted from making the attempt Coleridge was
contemplating, and in which his whole soul was so deeply and so
earnestly engaged. My situation was new, and there was something
affecting in the thought that one of such amiable manners, and at the
same time so highly gifted, should seek comfort and medical aid in our
quiet home. Deeply interested, I began to reflect seriously on the
duties imposed upon me, and with anxiety to expect the approaching
day. It brought me the following letter:

"'MY DEAR SIR:.... And now of myself. My ever-wakeful reason and the
keenness of my moral feelings will secure you from all unpleasant
circumstances Connected with me save only one, viz., the evasion of a
specific madness. You will never _hear_ any thing but truth from
me. Prior habits render it out of my power to tell an untruth, but
unless carefully observed, I dare not promise that I should not, with
regard to this detested poison, be capable of acting one. No sixty
hours have yet passed without my having taken laudanum, though for the
last week comparatively trifling doses. I have full belief that your
anxiety need not be extended beyond the first week, and for the first
week I shall not, I must not, be permitted to leave your house unless
with you. Delicately or indelicately, this must be done, and both the
servants and the assistant must receive absolute commands from
you. The stimulus of conversation suspends the terror that haunts my
mind; but when I am alone the horrors I have suffered from laudanum,
the degradation, the blighted utility, almost overwhelm me. If (as I
feel for the _first time_ a soothing confidence it will prove) I
should leave you restored to my moral and bodily health, it is not
myself only that will love and honor you; every friend I have (and,
thank God! in spite of this wretched vice I have many and warm ones,
who were friends of my youth and have never deserted me) will thank
you with reverence.'"

Dr. Gilman's admiration of Coleridge's talents and respect for his
character soon became so enthusiastic that the remainder of the poet's
life was made comfortable by his care and under his roof. After the
death of Coleridge the first volume of a biography was published by
Dr. G., but has never been completed. We are therefore left in
ignorance of the process by which his addiction to opium was reduced
to the small daily allowance which he used during the later years of
his life. It seems from the following letter addressed to Dr. Gilman
more than six years after he was received as a member of his
household, that the conflict with the habit was still going on. "I am
still too much under the cloud of past misgivings--too much of the
stun and stupor from the recent peals and thunder-crash still
remain--to permit me to anticipate others than by wishes and prayers."

Coleridge wrote but little respecting his own infirmity. Ten years
after his domestication in the family of Dr. Gilman he made the
following memorandum:

"I wrote a few stanzas twenty years ago--soon after my eyes had been
opened to the true nature of the habit into which I had been
ignorantly deluded by the seeming magic effects of opium in the sudden
removal of a supposed rheumatic affection, attended with swellings in
my knees and palpitations of the heart, and pains all over me, by
which I had been bedridden for nearly six months. Unhappily, among my
neighbor's and landlord's books was a large parcel of medical reviews
and magazines. I had always a fondness (a common case, but most
mischievous turn with reading men who are at all dyspeptic) for
dabbling in medical writings; and in one of these reviews I met a case
which I fancied very like my own, in which a cure had been affected by
the Kendal Black Drop. In an evil hour I procured it. It worked
miracles. The swellings disappeared, the pains vanished; I was all
alive; and all around me being as ignorant as myself, nothing could
exceed my triumph. I talked of nothing else, prescribed the
newly-discovered panacea for all complaints, and carried a bottle
about with me, not to lose any opportunity of administering 'instant
relief and speedy cure' to all complainers, stranger or friend, gentle
or simple. Need I say that my own apparent convalescence was of no
long continuance? But what then? the remedy was at hand and
infallible. Alas! it is with a bitter smile, a laugh of gall and
bitterness, that I recall this period of unsuspecting delusion, and
how I first became aware of the Maelstrom, the fatal whirlpool to
which I was drawing just when the current was already beyond my
strength to stem. God knows that from that moment I was the victim of
pain and terror, nor had I at any time taken the flattering poison as
a stimulus, or for any craving after pleasurable sensation. I needed
none--and oh! with what unutterable sorrow did I read the 'Confessions
of an Opium-eater,' in which the writer with morbid vanity makes a
boast of what was my misfortune, for he had been faithfully and with
an agony of zeal warned of the gulf, and yet willfully struck into the
current! Heaven be merciful to him!

"Even under the direful yoke of the necessity of daily poisoning by
narcotics, it is somewhat less horrible through the knowledge that it
was not from any craving for pleasurable animal excitement, but from
pain, delusion, error, of the worst ignorance, medical sciolism, and
(alas! too late the plea of error was removed from my eyes) from
terror and utter perplexity and infirmity--sinful infirmity, indeed,
but yet not a willful sinfulness--that I brought my neck under it. Oh,
may the God to whom I look for mercy through Christ, show mercy on the
author of the 'Confessions of an Opium-eater,' if, as I have too
strong reason to believe, his book has been the occasion of seducing
others into this withering vice through wantonness. From this
aggravation I have, I humbly trust, been free as far as acts of my
freewill and intention are concerned; even to the author of that work
I pleaded with flowing tears, and with an agony of forewarning. He
utterly denied it, but I fear that I had even then to _deter_,
perhaps not to forewarn."

Referring to the character of Coleridge's disorder, Dr. Gilman says:
"He had much bodily suffering. The _cause_ of this was the
organic change slowly and gradually taking place in the structure of
the heart itself. But it was so masked by other sufferings, though at
times creating despondency, and was so generally overpowered by the
excitement of animated conversation, as to leave its real cause
undiscovered." [Footnote: "_My heart, or some part_ about it,
seems breaking, as if a weight were suspended from it that stretches
it. Such is the _bodily feeling_ as far as I can express it by
words."--_Coleridge's letter to Morgan_.]

In a volume entitled "Letters, Conversations, and Recollections of
S. T. C.," written by an intimate friend, we find the following
declaration from Coleridge himself:

"My conscience indeed bears me witness, that from the time I quitted
Cambridge no human being was more indifferent to the pleasures of the
table than myself, or less needed any stimulation to my spirits; and
that, by a most unhappy quackery, after having been almost bedrid for
near six months with swollen knees, and other distressing symptoms of
disordered digestive functions, and through that most pernicious form
of ignorance, medical half-knowledge, I was _seduced_ into the
use of narcotics, not secretly, but (such was my ignorance) openly and
exultingly, as one who had discovered, and was never weary of
recommending, a grand panacea, and saw not the truth till my
_body_ had contracted a habit and a necessity; and that, even to
the latest, my responsibility is for cowardice and defect of
fortitude, not for the least craving after gratification or
pleasurable sensation of any sort, but for yielding to pain, terror,
and haunting bewilderment. But this I say to _man_ only, who
knows only what has been yielded, not what has been resisted; before
God I have but one voice--Mercy! mercy! woe is me.

"Pray for me, my dear friend, that I may not pass such another night
as the last. While I am awake and retain my reasoning powers the pang
is gnawing, but I am, except for a fitful moment or two, tranquil; it
is the howling wilderness of sleep that I dread." (July 31, 1820.)

From this _bodily_ slavery (for it was _bodily_) to a
baneful drug he was never _entirely_ free, though the quantity
was so greatly reduced as not materially to affect his health or
spirits.

A good deal that is known respecting Coleridge's opium habits is
derived from the published papers of De Quincey, whose opportunities
for becoming fully informed on the subject are beyond question:

"I now gathered that procrastination in excess was, or had become, a
marked feature in Coleridge's daily life. Nobody who knew him ever
thought of depending on any appointment he might make. Spite of his
uniformly honorable intentions, nobody attached any weight to his
assurances _in re futura_. Those who asked him to dinner, or any
other party, as a matter of course sent a carriage for him, and went
personally or by proxy to fetch him; and as to letters, unless the
address was in some female hand that commanded his affectionate
esteem, he tossed them all into one general _dead-letter bureau_,
and rarely, I believe, opened them at all. But all this, which I heard
now for the first time and with much concern, was fully explained, for
already he was under the full dominion of opium, as he himself
revealed to me--with a deep expression of horror at the hideous
bondage--in a private walk of some length which I took with him about
sunset.

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