History & The Arts
Meetings with a polite Opium Eater: Charles Knight on Thomas De Quincey
...open window, habited as a prize-fighter when he enters the ring. "You will take cold," I exclaimed. "Where is your shirt?" "I have not a shirt —my shirts are unwashed." "But why not tell the servant to send them to the laundress?" "Ah ! how could I presume to do that in Mrs. Knight's absence?" One more illustration of the eccentricity of De Quincey. I had been to...