[Varieties of Conversation]

The manuscript is in the Bodleian Library, Oxford as MS Eng. Lett. c. 461 ff. 94–5. It consists of a single sheet of white paper watermarked ‘moinier’s PATENT finish’, folded once to make two geminate leaves, each 185 by 227mm, of which 1r and 2r only are written in blue ink. There are a few alterations in black ink by Japp, not given here. These are followed by f. 96, a single sheet of unwatermarked white paper, 203 by 223mm, written on one side only in black ink entirely in Japp’s hand, which may possibly be a transcript of a lost conclusion, but seems more likely, from its style, to be material manufactured largely or entirely by Japp. It reads:

chair a little restlessly, & with the sweetest of smiles, whispers to her sister nearest to her, “Now, dear, let us have some music!” And so the ends of social intercourse are severed by reaction from my fine talk, & from their fine talk, & in the sweet sensations of the music all is reconciled; & ‹then› in the pauses we console ourselves with ‹the mor› the frivolous bye-play, & retire to our various places of refuge, each satisfied with our own & the others’ part in the evening’s bewitchments. Such is the course of the flying domestic talk in thousands of homes of an evening.

Japp published an adapted version of the whole piece - including, without comment, the ‘conclusion’ – in ‘Further Confessions of the Opium Eater’ (The Victorian Magazine, No. 2, January 1892, pp. 98–9). The conclusion as published differs in several details from the text on f. 96, though whether the variants derive from a lost original by De Quincey or merely reflect Japp’s changes of mind cannot be known.