Guilty Thing by Frances Wilson Read Free Book Online

leader on the grass. The sound of their play was broken suddenly by the roar of a mob in the direction of Oxford Street, and a large dog ‘suddenly wheeled into view’. Barred from the garden by the closed gate and the brook, the dog – foam oozing from his mouth, his eyes ‘glazed, and as if in a dreamy state’ – stopped in his tracks and looked directly at De Quincey, whose sympathy went out to the persecuted dreamer. The mob, wielding pitchforks, then appeared in view and the pariah took off; the pursuit continued for a further twenty-four miles, ending only when the ‘deranged’ creature was eventually run over by a cart. The threshold moments in De Quincey’s life were often accompanied by an image of disaster hurtling in his direction; separation from William and narrowly avoiding being mauled to death by a rabid dog blended into a seamless story: ‘freedom won and death escaped, almost in the same hour’.
    Without William to stand in his way, Thomas’s own greatness would now shine. Another chapter had closed on another midsummer day. It was now the start of what he called ‘ a new book ’.

    De Quincey’s mother provided the first enigma for the boy whose world was composed of signs and symbols. Described by her son as a handsome but ‘freezing’ figure who ‘delighted not in infancy, nor infancy in her’, Elizabeth Quincey was a stickler for order and hierarchy. From a military family, she addressed her servants only through the intermediary of the housekeeper, and her presence was compared by a housemaid to that of a ghost. Distant, unyielding and holy as a nun, every day for six years Mrs Quincey had her children ‘roll out’ of their nursery ‘as mail-coaches go down daily to London’, in order that she might inspect their appearance, from back posture to skin pallor. ‘ Were the lamps of our equipage clean and bright? Were the linch-pins secured?’ Before pronouncing them ‘to be in proper trim’ she performed ‘two ceremonies that to us were mysterious and allegorical’: she sprinkled the hair and faces of each with lavender water and milk of roses, and bestowed on their foreheads a single kiss. For the rest of his life De Quincey pondered the significance of these rituals.
    There are many indications, however, of Elizabeth Quincey’s softer side, not least the pet name of ‘Pink’ given to her son, Richard, as a tribute to his prettiness. She also had a weakness for fashion and her children were paraded in the latest styles. De Quincey did not share his mother’s concern with appearances but he inherited other characteristics and interests, including her restlessness and enthusiasm for houses. She also implanted in him, in a tale about nearly drowning as a child, an image that would return in his opium dreams. As his mother came near to death, ‘ a mighty theatre expanded within her brain. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, every act – every design of her past life lived again – arraying themselves not as a succession, but as parts of a coexistence. . . her consciousness became omnipresent at one moment to every feature in the infinite review.’
    Mrs Quincey’s primary legacy to her children was a sense of guilt: ‘ Trial by jury, English laws of evidence , all were forgotten; and we were found guilty on the bare affidavit of the angry accuser.’ De Quincey grew up believing himself to be a great criminal; not only must he be responsible in some way for the catalogue of ills which had befallen his family, he was also to blame for his precocity and for any praise his intelligence might receive. ‘Usually mothers defend their own cubs right or wrong,’ he remembered. ‘Not so my mother.’ Should a visitor or a tutor compliment one of her progeny, Mrs Quincey, rather than flushing with maternal pride, would protest