Part 1
Morella
Itself, by itself, solely, one
everlasting, and single. PLATO: SYMPOS.
With a feeling of deep yet most
singular affection I regarded my friend Morella. Thrown by accident
into her society many years ago, my soul from our first meeting,
burned with fires it had never before known; but the fires were not
of Eros, and bitter and tormenting to my spirit was the gradual
conviction that I could in no manner define their unusual meaning
or reg- ulate their vague intensity. Yet we met; and fate bound us
to- gether at the altar, and I never spoke of passion nor thought
of love. She, however, shunned society, and, attaching herself to
me alone rendered me happy. It is a happiness to wonder; it is a
happiness to dream.
Morella's erudition was profound.
As I hope to live, her tal- ents were of no common order—her powers
of mind were gi- gantic. I felt this, and, in many matters, became
her pupil. I soon, however, found that, perhaps on account of her
Presburg education, she placed before me a number of those mystical
writings which are usually considered the mere dross of the early
German literature. These, for what reason I could not imagine, were
her favourite and constant study—and that in process of time they
became my own, should be attributed to the simple but effectual
influence of habit and example.
In all this, if I err not, my
reason had little to do. My convic- tions, or I forget myself, were
in no manner acted upon by the ideal, nor was any tincture of the
mysticism which I read to be discovered, unless I am greatly
mistaken, either in my deeds or in my thoughts. Persuaded of this,
I abandoned myself impli- citly to the guidance of my wife, and
entered with an unflinch- ing heart into the intricacies of her
studies. And then—then, when poring over forbidden pages, I felt a
forbidden spirit en- kindling within me—would Morella place her
cold hand upon my own, and rake up from the ashes of a dead
philosophy some low, singular words, whose strange meaning burned
them- selves in upon my memory. And then, hour after hour, would I
linger by her side, and dwell upon the music of her voice, until at
length its melody was tainted with terror, and there fell a
shadow upon my soul, and I grew
pale, and shuddered in- wardly at those too unearthly tones. And
thus, joy suddenly faded into horror, and the most beautiful became
the most hideous, as Hinnon became Ge-Henna.
It is unnecessary to state the
exact character of those dis- quisitions which, growing out of the
volumes I have mentioned, formed, for so long a time, almost the
sole conversation of Morella and myself. By the learned in what
might be termed theological morality they will be readily
conceived, and by the unlearned they would, at all events, be
little understood. The wild Pantheism of Fichte; the modified
Paliggenedia of the Pythagoreans; and, above all, the doctrines of
Identity as urged by Schelling, were generally the points of
discussion present- ing the most of beauty to the imaginative
Morella. That identity which is termed personal, Mr. Locke, I
think, truly defines to consist in the saneness of rational being.
And since by person we understand an intelligent essence having
reason, and since there is a consciousness which always accompanies
thinking, it is this which makes us all to be that which we call
ourselves, thereby distinguishing us from other beings that think,
and giv- ing us our personal identity. But the principium
indivduationis, the notion of that identity which at death is or is
not lost for ever, was to me, at all times, a consideration of
intense in- terest; not more from the perplexing and exciting
nature of its consequences, than from the marked and agitated
manner in which Morella mentioned them.
But, indeed, the time had now
arrived when the mystery of
my wife's manner oppressed me as
a spell. I could no longer bear the touch of her wan fingers, nor
the low tone of her mu- sical language, nor the lustre of her
melancholy eyes. And she knew all this, but did not upbraid; she
seemed conscious of my weakness or my folly, and, smiling, called
it fate. She seemed also conscious of a cause, to me unknown, for
the gradual ali- enation of my regard; but she gave me no hint or
token of its nature. Yet was she woman, and pined away daily. In
time the crimson spot settled steadily upon the cheek, and the
blue veins upon the pale forehead became prominent; and one in-
stant my nature melted into pity, but in, next I met the glance of
her meaning eyes, and then my soul sickened and became
giddy with the giddiness of one
who gazes downward into some dreary and unfathomable abyss.
Shall I then say that I longed
with an earnest and consuming desire for the moment of Morella's
decease? I did; but the fra- gile spirit clung to its tenement of
clay for many days, for many weeks and irksome months, until my
tortured nerves obtained the mastery over my mind, and I grew
furious through delay, and, with the heart of a fiend, cursed the
days and the hours and the bitter moments, which seemed to lengthen
and lengthen as her gentle life declined, like shadows in the dying
of the day.
But one autumnal evening, when
the winds lay still in heav- en, Morella called me to her bedside.
There was a dim mist over all the earth, and a warm glow upon the
waters, and amid the rich October leaves of the forest, a rainbow
from the firma- ment had surely fallen.
"It is a day of days," she said,
as I approached; "a day of all days either to live or die. It is a
fair day for the sons of earth and life—ah, more fair for the
daughters of heaven and death!"
I kissed her forehead, and she
continued:
"I am dying, yet shall I live."
"Morella!"
"The days have never been when
thou couldst love me—but her whom in life thou didst abhor, in
death thou shalt adore."
"Morella!"
"I repeat I am dying. But within
me is a pledge of that affec- tion—ah, how little!—which thou didst
feel for me, Morella. And when my spirit departs shall the child
live—thy child and mine, Morella's. But thy days shall be days of
sorrow—that sor- row which is the most lasting of impressions, as
the cypress is the most enduring of trees. For the hours of thy
happiness are over and joy is not gathered twice in a life, as the
roses of Paestum twice in a year. Thou shalt no longer, then, play
the Teian with time, but, being ignorant of the myrtle and the
vine, thou shalt bear about with thee thy shroud on the earth, as
do the Moslemin at Mecca."
"Morella!" I cried, "Morella! how
knowest thou this?" but she turned away her face upon the pillow
and a slight tremor com- ing over her limbs, she thus died, and I
heard her voice no more.
Yet, as she had foretold, her
child, to which in dying she had given birth, which breathed not
until the mother breathed no more, her child, a daughter, lived.
And she grew strangely in stature and intellect, and was the
perfect resemblance of her who had departed, and I loved her with a
love more fervent than I had believed it possible to feel for any
denizen of earth.
But, ere long the heaven of this
pure affection became darkened, and gloom, and horror, and grief
swept over it in clouds. I said the child grew strangely in stature
and intelli- gence. Strange, indeed, was her rapid increase in
bodily size, but terrible, oh! terrible were the tumultuous
thoughts which crowded upon me while watching the development of
her men- tal being. Could it be otherwise, when I daily discovered
in the conceptions of the child the adult powers and faculties of
the woman? when the lessons of experience fell from the lips of in-
fancy? and when the wisdom or the passions of maturity I found
hourly gleaming from its full and speculative eye? When, I say, all
this beeame evident to my appalled senses, when I could no longer
hide it from my soul, nor throw it off from those perceptions which
trembled to receive it, is it to be wondered at that suspicions, of
a nature fearful and exciting, crept in upon my spirit, or that my
thoughts fell back aghast upon the wild tales and thrilling
theories of the entombed Morella? I snatched from the scrutiny of
the world a being whom destiny compelled me to adore, and in the
rigorous se- clusion of my home, watched with an agonizing anxiety
over all which concerned the beloved.
And as years rolled away, and I
gazed day after day upon her
holy, and mild, and eloquent
face, and poured over her matur- ing form, day after day did I
discover new points of resemb- lance in the child to her mother,
the melancholy and the dead. And hourly grew darker these shadows
of similitude, and more full, and more definite, and more
perplexing, and more hideously terrible in their aspect. For that
her smile was like her mother's I could bear; but then I shuddered
at its too per- fect identity, that her eyes were like Morella's I
could endure; but then they, too, often looked down into the depths
of my soul with Morella's own intense and bewildering meaning. And
in the contour of the high forehead, and in the ringlets of the
silken hair, and in the wan fingers which buried themselves
therein, and in the sad musical
tones of her speech, and above all—oh, above all, in the phrases
and expressions of the dead on the lips of the loved and the
living, I found food for consum- ing thought and horror, for a worm
that would not die.
Thus passed away two lustra of
her life, and as yet my daugh- ter remained nameless upon the
earth. "My child," and "my love," were the designations usually
prompted by a father's af- fection, and the rigid seclusion of her
days precluded all other intercourse. Morella's name died with her
at her death. Of the mother I had never spoken to the daughter, it
was impossible to speak. Indeed, during the brief period of her
existence, the latter had received no impressions from the outward
world, save such as might have been afforded by the narrow limits
of her privacy. But at length the ceremony of baptism presented
to my mind, in its unnerved and agitated condition, a present
deliverance from the terrors of my destiny. And at the baptis- mal
font I hesitated for a name. And many titles of the wise and
beautiful, of old and modern times, of my own and foreign lands,
came thronging to my lips, with many, many fair titles of the
gentle, and the happy, and the good. What prompted me then to
disturb the memory of the buried dead? What demon urged me to
breathe that sound, which in its very recollection was wont to make
ebb the purple blood in torrents from the temples to the heart?
What fiend spoke from the recesses of my soul, when amid those dim
aisles, and in the silence of the night, I whispered within the
ears of the holy man the syl- lables—Morella? What more than fiend
convulsed the features of my child, and overspread them with hues
of death, as start- ing at that scarcely audible sound, she turned
her glassy eyes from the earth to heaven, and falling prostrate on
the black slabs of our ancestral vault, responded—"I am
here!"
Distinct, coldly, calmly
distinct, fell those few simple sounds
within my ear, and thence like
molten lead rolled hissingly into my brain. Years—years may pass
away, but the memory of that epoch never. Nor was I indeed ignorant
of the flowers and the vine—but the hemlock and the cypress
overshadowed me night and day. And I kept no reckoning of time or
place, and the stars of my fate faded from heaven, and therefore
the earth grew dark, and its figures passed by me like flitting
shadows, and among them all I beheld only—Morella. The winds of
the
firmament breathed but one sound
within my ears, and the ripples upon the sea murmured
evermore—Morella. But she died; and with my own hands I bore her to
the tomb; and I laughed with a long and bitter laugh as I found no
traces of the first in the channel where I laid the
second.—Morella.
Lionizing
—all people went
Upon their ten toes in wild
wondernment. Bishop Hall's Satires.
I am, that is to say I was, a
great man, but I am neither the author of Junius nor the man in the
mask, for my name, I be- lieve, is Robert Jones, and I was born
somewhere in the city of Fum-Fudge.
The first action of my life was
the taking hold of my nose with both hands. My mother saw this and
called me a geni- us:—my father wept for joy and presented me with
a treatise on Nosology. This I mastered before I was
breeched.
I now began to feel my way in the
science, and soon came to understand that, provided a man had a
nose sufficiently con- spicuous, he might by merely following it,
arrive at a Lionship. But my attention was not confined to theories
alone. Every morning I gave my proboscis a couple of pulls and
swallowed a half-dozen of drams.
When I came of age my father
asked me, one day, if I would step with him into his study.
"My son," he said, when we were
seated, "what is the chief end of your existence?"
"My father," I answered, "it is
the study of Nosology." "And what, Robert," he inquired, "is
Nosology?"
"Sir," I said, "it is the science
of Noses."
"And can you tell me," he
demanded, "what is the meaning of a nose?"
"A nose, my father," I replied,
greatly softened, "has been variously defined by about a thousand
different authors." [Here I pulled out my watch.] "It is now noon,
or thereabouts—We shall have time enough to get through with them
all before midnight. To commence then: The nose, according to
Barth- olinus, is that protuberance—that bump—that excres-
ence—that—"
"Will do, Robert," interupted the
old gentleman. "I am thun- derstruck at the extent of your
information—I am posit- ively—upon my soul." [Here he closed his
eyes and placed his hand upon his heart.] "Come here!" [Here he
took me by the
arm.] "Your education may now be
considered as finished—it is high time you should scuffle for
yourself—and you cannot do a better thing than merely follow your
nose—so—so—so—" [Here he kicked me down stairs and out of the
door.]-"So get out of my house, and God bless you!"
As I felt within me the divine
afflatus, I considered this acci- dent rather fortunate than
otherwise. I resolved to be guided by the paternal advice. I
determined to follow my nose. I gave it a pull or two upon the
spot, and wrote a pamphlet on Noso- logy forthwith.
All Fum-Fudge was in an uproar.
"Wonderful genius!" said the Quarterly.
"Superb physiologist!" said the
Westminster. "Clever fellow!" said the Foreign.
"Fine writer!", said the
Edinburgh. "Profound thinker!" said the Dublin. "Great man!" said
Bentley.
"Divine soul!" said Fraser. "One
of us!" said Blackwood.
"Who can he be?" said Mrs.
Bas-Bleu. "What can he be?" said big Miss Bas-Bleu.
"Where can he be?" said little
Miss Bas-Bleu.—But I paid these people no attention whatever—I just
stepped into the shop of an artist.
The Duchess of Bless-my-Soul was
sitting for her portrait; the Marquis of So-and-So was holding the
Duchess' poodle; the Earl of This-and-That was flirting with her
salts; and his Royal Highness of Touch-me-Not was leaning upon the
back of her chair.
I approached the artist and
turned up my nose. "Oh, beautiful!" sighed her Grace.
"Oh, my!" lisped the Marquis.
"Oh, shocking!" groaned the Earl.
"Oh, abominable!" growled his
Royal Highness. "What will you take for it?" asked the artist. "For
his nose!" shouted her Grace.
"A thousand pounds," said I,
sitting down.
"A thousand pounds?" inquired the
artist, musingly. "A thousand pounds," said I.
"Beautiful!" said he,
entranced.
"A thousand pounds," said
I.
"Do you warrant it?" he asked,
turning the nose to the light. "I do," said I, blowing it
well.
"Is it quite original?" he
inquired, touching it with reverence. "Humph!" said I, twisting it
to one side.
"Has
no
copy
been
taken?"
he
demanded,
surveying
it through a
microscope.
"None," said I, turning it
up.
"Admirable!" he ejaculated,
thrown quite off his guard by the beauty of the manoeuvre.
"A thousand pounds," said I. "A
thousand pounds?" said he. "Precisely," said I.
"A thousand pounds?" said he.
"Just so," said I.
"You shall have them," said he.
"What a piece of virtu!" So he drew me a check upon the spot, and
took a sketch of my nose. I engaged rooms in Jermyn street, and
sent her Majesty the ninety-ninth edition of the "Nosology," with a
portrait of the proboscis. That sad little rake, the Prince of
Wales, invited me to dinner.
We are all lions and
recherches.
There was a modern Platonist. He
quoted Porphyry, Iam- blicus, Plotinus, Proclus, Hierocles, Maximus
Tyrius, and Syrianus.
There was a human-perfectibility
man. He quoted Turgot, Price, Priestly, Condorcet, De Stael, and
the "Ambitious Stu- dent in Ill-Health."
There was Sir Positive Paradox.
He observed that all fools were philosophers, and that all
philosophers were fools.
There was Aestheticus Ethix. He
spoke of fire, unity, and atoms; bi-part and pre-existent soul;
affinity and discord; prim- itive intelligence and
homoomeria.
There was Theologos Theology. He
talked of Eusebius and Arianus; heresy and the Council of Nice;
Puseyism and consub- stantialism; Homousios and Homouioisios.
There was Fricassee from the
Rocher de Cancale. He men- tioned Muriton of red tongue;
cauliflowers with veloute sauce; veal a la St. Menehoult; marinade
a la St. Florentin; and or- ange jellies en mosaiques.
There was Bibulus O'Bumper. He
touched upon Latour and Markbrunnen; upon Mosseux and Chambertin;
upon Richbourg and St. George; upon Haubrion, Leonville, and Medoc;
upon Barac and Preignac; upon Grave, upon Sauterne, upon Lafitte,
and upon St. Peray. He shook his head at Clos de Vougeot, and told
with his eyes shut, the difference between Sherry and
Amontillado.
There was Signor Tintontintino
from Florence. He discoursed of Cimabue, Arpino, Carpaccio, and
Argostino—of the gloom of Caravaggio, of the amenity of Albano, of
the colors of Titian, of the frows of Rubens, and of the waggeries
of Jan Steen.
There was the President of the
Fum-Fudge University. He was of the opinion that the moon was
called Bendis in Thrace, Bubastis in Egypt, Dian in Rome, and
Artemis in Greece.
There was a Grand Turk from
Stamboul. He could not help thinking that the angels were horses,
cocks, and bulls; that somebody in the sixth heaven had seventy
thousand heads; and that the earth was supported by a sky-blue cow
with an incal- culable number of green horns.
There was Delphinus Polyglott. He
told us what had become of the eighty-three lost tragedies of
Aeschylus; of the fifty-four orations of Isaeus; of the three
hundred and ninety-one speeches of Lysias; of the hundred and
eighty treatises of Theophrastus; of the eighth book of the conic
sections of Apol- lonius; of Pindar's hymns and dithyrambics, and
of the five and forty tragedies of Homer Junior.
There was Ferdinand
Fitz-Fossillus Feltspar. He informed us all about internal fires
and tertiary formations; about aeri- forms, fluidiforms, and
solidforms; about quartz and marl; about schist and schorl; about
gypsum and trap; about talc and calc; about blende and horn-blende;
about micaslate and pudding-stone; about cyanite and lepidolite;
about haematite and tremolite; about antimony and calcedony; about
man- ganese and whatever you please.
There was myself. I spoke of
myself;—of myself, of myself, of myself;—of Nosology, of my
pamphlet, and of myself. I turned up my nose, and I spoke of
myself.
"Marvellous clever man!" said the
Prince.
"Superb!" said his guests;—and
next morning her Grace of Bless-my-soul paid me a visit.
"Will you go to Almack's, pretty
creature?" she said, tapping me under the chin.
"Upon honor," said I. "Nose and
all?" she asked. "As I live," I replied.
"Here then is a card, my life.
Shall I say you will be there?" "Dear, Duchess, with all my
heart."
"Pshaw, no!—but with all your
nose?"
"Every bit of it, my love," said
I:—so I gave it a twist or two, and found myself at Almack's.
The rooms were crowded to
suffocation.
"He is coming!" said somebody on
the staircase. "He is coming!" said somebody farther up.
"He is coming!" said somebody
farther still.
"He is come!" exclaimed the
Duchess, "He is come, the little love!"—and, seizing me firmly by
both hands, she kissed me thrice upon the nose.
A marked sensation immediately
ensued. "Diavolo!" cried Count Capricornutti. "Dios guarda!"
muttered Don Stiletto.
"Mille tonnerres!" ejaculated the
Prince de Grenouille. "Tousand teufel!" growled the Elector of
Bluddennuff.
It was not to be borne. I grew
angry. I turned short upon Bluddennuff.
"Sir!" said I to him, "you are a
baboon."
"Sir," he replied, after a pause.
"Donner und Blitzen!"
This was all that could be
desired. We exchanged cards. At Chalk-Farm, the next morning, I
shot off his nose—and then called upon my friends.
"Bete!" said the first. "Fool!"
said the second. "Dolt!" said the third. "Ass!" said the fourth.
"Ninny!" said the fifth. "Noodle!" said the sixth. "Be off!" said
the seventh.
At all this I felt mortified, and
so called upon my father. "Father," I asked, "what is the chief end
of my existence?" "My son," he replied, "it is still the study of
Nosology; but in
hitting the Elector upon the nose
you have overshot your mark.
You have a fine nose, it is true;
but then Bluddennuff has none. You are damned, and he has become
the hero of the day. I grant you that in Fum-Fudge the greatness of
a lion is in pro- portion to the size of his proboscis—but, good
heavens! there is no competing with a lion who has no proboscis at
all."
William Wilson
What say of it? what say of
CONSCIENCE grim, That spectre in my path?
Chamberlayne's Pharronida.
Let me call myself, for the
present, William Wilson. The fair page now lying before me need not
be sullied with my real ap- pellation. This has been already too
much an object for the scorn—for the horror—for the detestation of
my race. To the uttermost regions of the globe have not the
indignant winds bruited its unparalleled infamy? Oh, outcast of
all outcasts most abandoned!—to the earth art thou not forever
dead? to its honors, to its flowers, to its golden aspirations?—and
a cloud, dense, dismal, and limitless, does it not hang eternally
between thy hopes and heaven?
I would not, if I could, here or
to-day, embody a record of my later years of unspeakable misery,
and unpardonable crime. This epoch—these later years—took unto
themselves a sudden elevation in turpitude, whose origin alone it
is my present pur- pose to assign. Men usually grow base by
degrees. From me, in an instant, all virtue dropped bodily as a
mantle. From compar- atively trivial wickedness I passed, with the
stride of a giant, into more than the enormities of an
Elah-Gabalus. What chance—what one event brought this evil thing to
pass, bear with me while I relate. Death approaches; and the
shadow which foreruns him has thrown a softening influence over my
spirit. I long, in passing through the dim valley, for the sym-
pathy—I had nearly said for the pity—of my fellow men. I would
fain have them believe that I have been, in some meas- ure, the
slave of circumstances beyond human control. I would wish them to
seek out for me, in the details I am about to give, some little
oasis of fatality amid a wilderness of error. I would have them
allow—what they cannot refrain from allow- ing—that, although
temptation may have erewhile existed as great, man was never thus,
at least, tempted before—certainly, never thus fell. And is it
therefore that he has never thus suffered? Have I not indeed been
living in a dream? And am I not now dying a victim to the horror
and the mystery of the wildest of all sublunary visions?
I am the descendant of a race
whose imaginative and easily excitable temperament has at all times
rendered them remark- able; and, in my earliest infancy, I gave
evidence of having fully inherited the family character. As I
advanced in years it was more strongly developed; becoming, for
many reasons, a cause of serious disquietude to my friends, and of
positive injury to myself. I grew self-willed, addicted to the
wildest caprices, and a prey to the most ungovernable passions.
Weak-minded, and beset with constitutional infirmities akin to my
own, my par- ents could do but little to check the evil
propensities which dis- tinguished me. Some feeble and ill-directed
efforts resulted in complete failure on their part, and, of course,
in total triumph on mine. Thenceforward my voice was a household
law; and at an age when few children have abandoned their leading-
strings, I was left to the guidance of my own will, and became, in
all but name, the master of my own actions.
My earliest recollections of a
school-life, are connected with
a large, rambling, Elizabethan
house, in a misty-looking village of England, where were a vast
number of gigantic and gnarled trees, and where all the houses were
excessively ancient. In truth, it was a dream-like and
spirit-soothing place, that vener- able old town. At this moment,
in fancy, I feel the refreshing chilliness of its deeply-shadowed
avenues, inhale the fragrance of its thousand shrubberies, and
thrill anew with undefinable delight, at the deep hollow note of
the church-bell, breaking, each hour, with sullen and sudden roar,
upon the stillness of the dusky atmosphere in which the fretted
Gothic steeple lay imbedded and asleep.
It gives me, perhaps, as much of
pleasure as I can now in any manner experience, to dwell upon
minute recollections of the school and its concerns. Steeped in
misery as I am—misery, alas! only too real—I shall be pardoned for
seeking relief, however slight and temporary, in the weakness of a
few ram- bling details. These, moreover, utterly trivial, and even
ridicu- lous in themselves, assume, to my fancy, adventitious
import- ance, as connected with a period and a locality when and
where I recognise the first ambiguous monitions of the destiny
which afterwards so fully overshadowed me. Let me then
remember.
The house, I have said, was old
and irregular. The grounds were extensive, and a high and solid
brick wall, topped with a bed of mortar and broken glass,
encompassed the whole. This prison-like rampart formed the limit of
our domain; beyond it we saw but thrice a week—once every Saturday
afternoon, when, attended by two ushers, we were permitted to take
brief walks in a body through some of the neighbouring fields—and
twice during Sunday, when we were paraded in the same form- al
manner to the morning and evening service in the one church of
the village. Of this church the principal of our school was pastor.
With how deep a spirit of wonder and perplexity was I wont to
regard him from our remote pew in the gallery, as, with step solemn
and slow, he ascended the pulpit! This reverend man, with
countenance so demurely benign, with robes so glossy and so
clerically flowing, with wig so minutely powdered, so rigid and so
vast,—could this be he who, of late, with sour visage, and in
snuffy habiliments, administered, fer- ule in hand, the Draconian
laws of the academy? Oh, gigantic paradox, too utterly monstrous
for solution!
At an angle of the ponderous wall
frowned a more ponderous
gate. It was riveted and studded
with iron bolts, and surmoun- ted with jagged iron spikes. What
impressions of deep awe did it inspire! It was never opened save
for the three periodical egressions and ingressions already
mentioned; then, in every creak of its mighty hinges, we found a
plenitude of mystery—a world of matter for solemn remark, or for
more solemn meditation.
The extensive enclosure was
irregular in form, having many capacious recesses. Of these, three
or four of the largest con- stituted the play-ground. It was level,
and covered with fine hard gravel. I well remember it had no trees,
nor benches, nor anything similar within it. Of course it was in
the rear of the house. In front lay a small parterre, planted with
box and other shrubs; but through this sacred division we passed
only upon rare occasions indeed—such as a first advent to school or
final departure thence, or perhaps, when a parent or friend having
called for us, we joyfully took our way home for the Christmas or
Midsummer holy-days.
But the house!—how quaint an old
building was this!—to me how veritably a palace of enchantment!
There was really no
end to its windings—to its
incomprehensible subdivisions. It was difficult, at any given time,
to say with certainty upon which of its two stories one happened
to be. From each room to every other there were sure to be found
three or four steps either in ascent or descent. Then the lateral
branches were in- numerable—inconceivable—and so returning in upon
them- selves, that our most exact ideas in regard to the whole man-
sion were not very far different from those with which we pondered
upon infinity. During the five years of my residence here, I was
never able to ascertain with precision, in what re- mote locality
lay the little sleeping apartment assigned to my- self and some
eighteen or twenty other scholars.
The school-room was the largest
in the house—I could not
help thinking, in the world. It
was very long, narrow, and dis- mally low, with pointed Gothic
windows and a ceiling of oak. In a remote and terror-inspiring
angle was a square enclosure of eight or ten feet, comprising the
sanctum, "during hours," of our principal, the Reverend Dr.
Bransby. It was a solid struc- ture, with massy door, sooner than
open which in the absence of the "Dominic," we would all have
willingly perished by the peine forte et dure. In other angles were
two other similar boxes, far less reverenced, indeed, but still
greatly matters of awe. One of these was the pulpit of the
"classical" usher, one of the "English and mathematical."
Interspersed about the room, crossing and recrossing in endless
irregularity, were innumer- able benches and desks, black, ancient,
and time-worn, piled desperately with much-bethumbed books, and so
beseamed with initial letters, names at full length, grotesque
figures, and other multiplied efforts of the knife, as to have
entirely lost what little of original form might have been their
portion in days long departed. A huge bucket with water stood at
one ex- tremity of the room, and a clock of stupendous dimensions
at the other.
Encompassed by the massy walls of
this venerable academy,
I passed, yet not in tedium or
disgust, the years of the third lustrum of my life. The teeming
brain of childhood requires no external world of incident to occupy
or amuse it; and the ap- parently dismal monotony of a school was
replete with more in- tense excitement than my riper youth has
derived from luxury, or my full manhood from crime. Yet I must
believe that my first
mental development had in it much
of the uncommon—even much of the outre. Upon mankind at large the
events of very early existence rarely leave in mature age any
definite impres- sion. All is gray shadow—a weak and irregular
remem- brance—an indistinct regathering of feeble pleasures and
phantasmagoric pains. With me this is not so. In childhood I must
have felt with the energy of a man what I now find stamped upon
memory in lines as vivid, as deep, and as dur- able as the exergues
of the Carthaginian medals.
Yet in fact—in the fact of the
world's view—how little was there to remember! The morning's
awakening, the nightly sum- mons to bed; the connings, the
recitations; the periodical half- holidays, and perambulations; the
play-ground, with its broils, its pastimes, its intrigues;—these,
by a mental sorcery long for- gotten, were made to involve a
wilderness of sensation, a world of rich incident, an universe of
varied emotion, of excitement the most passionate and
spirit-stirring. "Oh, le bon temps, que ce siecle de fer!"
In truth, the ardor, the
enthusiasm, and the imperiousness of my disposition, soon rendered
me a marked character among my schoolmates, and by slow, but
natural gradations, gave me an ascendancy over all not greatly
older than myself;—over all with a single exception. This exception
was found in the person of a scholar, who, although no relation,
bore the same Christi- an and surname as myself;—a circumstance, in
fact, little re- markable; for, notwithstanding a noble descent,
mine was one of those everyday appellations which seem, by
prescriptive right, to have been, time out of mind, the common
property of the mob. In this narrative I have therefore designated
myself as William Wilson,—a fictitious title not very dissimilar to
the real. My namesake alone, of those who in school phraseology
constituted "our set," presumed to compete with me in the studies
of the class—in the sports and broils of the play- ground—to refuse
implicit belief in my assertions, and submis- sion to my
will—indeed, to interfere with my arbitrary dictation in any
respect whatsoever. If there is on earth a supreme and unqualified
despotism, it is the despotism of a master mind in boyhood over the
less energetic spirits of its companions.
Wilson's rebellion was to me a
source of the greatest embar-
rassment;—the more so as, in
spite of the bravado with which
in public I made a point of
treating him and his pretensions, I secretly felt that I feared
him, and could not help thinking the equality which he maintained
so easily with myself, a proof of his true superiority; since not
to be overcome cost me a per- petual struggle. Yet this
superiority—even this equality—was in truth acknowledged by no one
but myself; our associates, by some unaccountable blindness, seemed
not even to suspect it. Indeed, his competition, his resistance,
and especially his im- pertinent and dogged interference with my
purposes, were not more pointed than private. He appeared to be
destitute alike of the ambition which urged, and of the passionate
energy of mind which enabled me to excel. In his rivalry he might
have been supposed actuated solely by a whimsical desire to thwart,
astonish, or mortify myself; although there were times when I could
not help observing, with a feeling made up of wonder, abasement,
and pique, that he mingled with his injuries, his in- sults, or his
contradictions, a certain most inappropriate, and assuredly most
unwelcome affectionateness of manner. I could only conceive this
singular behavior to arise from a consummate self-conceit assuming
the vulgar airs of patronage and protection.
Perhaps it was this latter trait
in Wilson's conduct, conjoined
with our identity of name, and
the mere accident of our having entered the school upon the same
day, which set afloat the no- tion that we were brothers, among the
senior classes in the academy. These do not usually inquire with
much strictness in- to the affairs of their juniors. I have before
said, or should have said, that Wilson was not, in the most remote
degree, connec- ted with my family. But assuredly if we had been
brothers we must have been twins; for, after leaving Dr. Bransby's,
I casu- ally learned that my namesake was born on the nineteenth of
January, 1813—and this is a somewhat remarkable coincid- ence; for
the day is precisely that of my own nativity.
It may seem strange that in spite
of the continual anxiety oc- casioned me by the rivalry of Wilson,
and his intolerable spirit of contradiction, I could not bring
myself to hate him altogeth- er. We had, to be sure, nearly every
day a quarrel in which, yielding me publicly the palm of victory,
he, in some manner, contrived to make me feel that it was he who
had deserved it; yet a sense of pride on my part, and a veritable
dignity on his
own, kept us always upon what are
called "speaking terms," while there were many points of strong
congeniality in our tempers, operating to awake me in a sentiment
which our posi- tion alone, perhaps, prevented from ripening into
friendship. It is difficult, indeed, to define, or even to
describe, my real feel- ings towards him. They formed a motley and
heterogeneous admixture;—some petulant animosity, which was not yet
hatred, some esteem, more respect, much fear, with a world of
uneasy curiosity. To the moralist it will be unnecessary to say, in
addition, that Wilson and myself were the most inseparable of
companions.
It was no doubt the anomalous
state of affairs existing between us, which turned all my attacks
upon him, (and they were many, either open or covert) into the
channel of banter or practical joke (giving pain while assuming the
aspect of mere fun) rather than into a more serious and determined
hostility. But my endeavours on this head were by no means
uniformly successful, even when my plans were the most wittily con-
cocted; for my namesake had much about him, in character, of that
unassuming and quiet austerity which, while enjoying the poignancy
of its own jokes, has no heel of Achilles in itself, and absolutely
refuses to be laughed at. I could find, indeed, but one vulnerable
point, and that, lying in a personal peculiarity, arising, perhaps,
from constitutional disease, would have been spared by any
antagonist less at his wit's end than myself;—my rival had a
weakness in the faucal or guttural organs, which precluded him from
raising his voice at any time above a very low whisper. Of this
defect I did not fall to take what poor ad- vantage lay in my
power.
Wilson's retaliations in kind
were many; and there was one
form of his practical wit that
disturbed me beyond measure. How his sagacity first discovered at
all that so petty a thing would vex me, is a question I never could
solve; but, having discovered, he habitually practised the
annoyance. I had al- ways felt aversion to my uncourtly patronymic,
and its very common, if not plebeian praenomen. The words were
venom in my ears; and when, upon the day of my arrival, a second
Willi- am Wilson came also to the academy, I felt angry with him
for bearing the name, and doubly disgusted with the name be- cause
a stranger bore it, who would be the cause of its twofold
repetition, who would be
constantly in my presence, and whose concerns, in the ordinary
routine of the school business, must inevitably, on account of the
detestable coincidence, be often confounded with my own.
The feeling of vexation thus
engendered grew stronger with every circumstance tending to show
resemblance, moral or physical, between my rival and myself. I had
not then dis- covered the remarkable fact that we were of the same
age; but I saw that we were of the same height, and I perceived
that we were even singularly alike in general contour of person and
outline of feature. I was galled, too, by the rumor touching a
relationship, which had grown current in the upper forms. In a
word, nothing could more seriously disturb me, although I
scrupulously concealed such disturbance,) than any allusion to a
similarity of mind, person, or condition existing between us. But,
in truth, I had no reason to believe that (with the excep- tion of
the matter of relationship, and in the case of Wilson himself,)
this similarity had ever been made a subject of com- ment, or even
observed at all by our schoolfellows. That he ob- served it in all
its bearings, and as fixedly as I, was apparent; but that he could
discover in such circumstances so fruitful a field of annoyance,
can only be attributed, as I said before, to his more than ordinary
penetration.
His cue, which was to perfect an
imitation of myself, lay both
in words and in actions; and most
admirably did he play his part. My dress it was an easy matter to
copy; my gait and gen- eral manner were, without difficulty,
appropriated; in spite of his constitutional defect, even my voice
did not escape him. My louder tones were, of course, unattempted,
but then the key, it was identical; and his singular whisper, it
grew the very echo of my own.
How greatly this most exquisite
portraiture harassed me, (for it could not justly be termed a
caricature,) I will not now ven- ture to describe. I had but one
consolation—in the fact that the imitation, apparently, was noticed
by myself alone, and that I had to endure only the knowing and
strangely sarcastic smiles of my namesake himself. Satisfied with
having produced in my bosom the intended effect, he seemed to
chuckle in secret over the sting he had inflicted, and was
characteristically disregard- ful of the public applause which the
success of his witty
endeavours might have so easily
elicited. That the school, in- deed, did not feel his design,
perceive its accomplishment, and participate in his sneer, was, for
many anxious months, a riddle I could not resolve. Perhaps the
gradation of his copy rendered it not so readily perceptible; or,
more possibly, I owed my se- curity to the master air of the
copyist, who, disdaining the let- ter, (which in a painting is all
the obtuse can see,) gave but the full spirit of his original for
my individual contemplation and chagrin.
I have already more than once
spoken of the disgusting air of patronage which he assumed toward
me, and of his frequent officious interference withy my will. This
interference often took the ungracious character of advice; advice
not openly giv- en, but hinted or insinuated. I received it with a
repugnance which gained strength as I grew in years. Yet, at this
distant day, let me do him the simple justice to acknowledge that I
can recall no occasion when the suggestions of my rival were on the
side of those errors or follies so usual to his immature age and
seeming inexperience; that his moral sense, at least, if not his
general talents and worldly wisdom, was far keener than my own; and
that I might, to-day, have been a better, and thus a happier man,
had I less frequently rejected the counsels em- bodied in those
meaning whispers which I then but too cordi- ally hated and too
bitterly despised.
As it was, I at length grew
restive in the extreme under his
distasteful supervision, and
daily resented more and more openly what I considered his
intolerable arrogance. I have said that, in the first years of our
connexion as schoolmates, my feelings in regard to him might have
been easily ripened into friendship: but, in the latter months of
my residence at the academy, although the intrusion of his ordinary
manner had, beyond doubt, in some measure, abated, my sentiments,
in nearly similar proportion, partook very much of positive hatred.
Upon one occasion he saw this, I think, and afterwards avoided, or
made a show of avoiding me.
It was about the same period, if
I remember aright, that, in an altercation of violence with him, in
which he was more than usually thrown off his guard, and spoke and
acted with an openness of demeanor rather foreign to his nature, I
dis- covered, or fancied I discovered, in his accent, his air,
and
general appearance, a something
which first startled, and then deeply interested me, by bringing to
mind dim visions of my earliest infancy—wild, confused and
thronging memories of a time when memory herself was yet unborn. I
cannot better de- scribe the sensation which oppressed me than by
saying that I could with difficulty shake off the belief of my
having been ac- quainted with the being who stood before me, at
some epoch very long ago—some point of the past even infinitely
remote. The delusion, however, faded rapidly as it came; and I
mention it at all but to define the day of the last conversation I
there held with my singular namesake.
The huge old house, with its
countless subdivisions, had sev- eral large chambers communicating
with each other, where slept the greater number of the students.
There were, however, (as must necessarily happen in a building so
awk- wardly planned,) many little nooks or recesses, the odds and
ends of the structure; and these the economic ingenuity of Dr.
Bransby had also fitted up as dormitories; although, being the
merest closets, they were capable of accommodating but a single
individual. One of these small apartments was occupied by
Wilson.
One night, about the close of my
fifth year at the school, and immediately after the altercation
just mentioned, finding every one wrapped in sleep, I arose from
bed, and, lamp in hand, stole through a wilderness of narrow
passages from my own bedroom to that of my rival. I had long been
plotting one of those ill-natured pieces of practical wit at his
expense in which I had hitherto been so uniformly unsuccessful. It
was my inten- tion, now, to put my scheme in operation, and I
resolved to make him feel the whole extent of the malice with which
I was imbued. Having reached his closet, I noiselessly entered,
leav- ing the lamp, with a shade over it, on the outside. I
advanced a step, and listened to the sound of his tranquil
breathing. As- sured of his being asleep, I returned, took the
light, and with it again approached the bed. Close curtains were
around it, which, in the prosecution of my plan, I slowly and
quietly with- drew, when the bright rays fell vividly upon the
sleeper, and my eyes, at the same moment, upon his countenance. I
looked;—and a numbness, an iciness of feeling instantly per- vaded
my frame. My breast heaved, my knees tottered, my
whole spirit became possessed
with an objectless yet intoler- able horror. Gasping for breath, I
lowered the lamp in still nearer proximity to the face. Were
these—these the lineaments of William Wilson? I saw, indeed, that
they were his, but I shook as if with a fit of the ague in
fancying they were not. What was there about them to confound me in
this manner? I gazed;—while my brain reeled with a multitude of
incoherent thoughts. Not thus he appeared—assuredly not thus—in the
vi- vacity of his waking hours. The same name! the same contour of
person! the same day of arrival at the academy! And then his dogged
and meaningless imitation of my gait, my voice, my habits, and my
manner! Was it, in truth, within the bounds of human possibility,
that what I now saw was the result, merely, of the habitual
practice of this sarcastic imitation? Awe- stricken, and with a
creeping shudder, I extinguished the lamp, passed silently from the
chamber, and left, at once, the halls of that old academy, never to
enter them again.
After a lapse of some months,
spent at home in mere idle-
ness, I found myself a student at
Eton. The brief interval had been sufficient to enfeeble my
remembrance of the events at Dr. Bransby's, or at least to effect a
material change in the nature of the feelings with which I
remembered them. The truth—the tragedy—of the drama was no more. I
could now find room to doubt the evidence of my senses; and seldom
called up the subject at all but with wonder at extent of human
credulity, and a smile at the vivid force of the imagination which
I hereditarily possessed. Neither was this species of scepticism
likely to be diminished by the character of the life I led at Eton.
The vortex of thoughtless folly into which I there so immediately
and so recklessly plunged, washed away all but the froth of my past
hours, engulfed at once every solid or seri- ous impression, and
left to memory only the veriest levities of a former
existence.
I do not wish, however, to trace
the course of my miserable
profligacy here—a profligacy
which set at defiance the laws, while it eluded the vigilance of
the institution. Three years of folly, passed without profit, had
but given me rooted habits of vice, and added, in a somewhat
unusual degree, to my bodily stature, when, after a week of
soulless dissipation, I invited a small party of the most dissolute
students to a secret carousal
in my chambers. We met at a late
hour of the night; for our de- baucheries were to be faithfully
protracted until morning. The wine flowed freely, and there were
not wanting other and per- haps more dangerous seductions; so that
the gray dawn had already faintly appeared in the east, while our
delirious extra- vagance was at its height. Madly flushed with
cards and intox- ication, I was in the act of insisting upon a
toast of more than wonted profanity, when my attention was suddenly
diverted by the violent, although partial unclosing of the door of
the apart- ment, and by the eager voice of a servant from
without. He said that some person, apparently in great haste,
demanded to speak with me in the hall.
Wildly excited with wine, the
unexpected interruption rather