Tales of mystery and imagination

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This is No. 336 of Everyman's Library. A
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FICTION

TALES OF

MYSTERY AND IMAGINATION
BY EDGAR ALLAN POE • INTRO
DUCTION BY PADRAIC COLUM

EDGAR ALLAN POE, born in Boston,
U.S.A., on igth January 1809. Brought
up as an adopted child ; educated in England
and Virginia. Abandoned a business career;
was dismissed for neglect of duty from West
Point Academy (1831), and thereafter sup
ported himself by writing. Most of his
life was spent in poverty, and he died on
8th October 1849 in Baltimore.

LONDON: J. M. DENT & SONS LTD.
NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO. INC.

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Made in Great Britain

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and decorated by Eric Rarilious

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Aldine House Bedford St. London
First Published in this Edition 1908
Reprinted 1909, 1910, 1912, 1914, 1916
1917, 1921, 1925, 1928,
1938

INTRODUCTION

I

WHEN we say that Poe's imagination moves amongst excep
tional things, we imply that he is familiar by temperament
with the matter proper to the brief narrative or tale. The
tale, on account of its brevity, is precluded from expounding
facts and experiences that are socially important; therefore
it deals with the exceptional — with something that arrests
our curiosity from the start. It was a French critic, M.
Brunetiere, who noticed the social insignificance of the
incident upon which the tale is based; and he has pointed
out that the material for the tale is to be sought in " certain
peculiarities or variations of passion, which, though physiologi
cally or pathologically interesting, are socially insignificant,"
and M. Brunetiere goes on to say that the incident is never
taken out of the mainway of life, but out of its border —
" things that happen on the margin," M. Brunetiere says
suggestively.

That phrase " on the margin " admirably describes the
whole of Poe's imaginative work, his verse as well as his prose.
It is marginal, not central ; it comes, not out of the mainway
of life, but out of the border of existence. Poe gives us ex
periences that are on the margin of sanity, or on the border of
unconsciousness. He reports, with extraordinary literalness
and lucidity, the last swoon of the nerves, as in the passage
where he describes the sensations of one who has just been
sentenced by the Inquisition.

" The sentence — the dread sentence of death — was the last
of distinct accentuation which reached my ears. After that
the sound of the inquisitorial voices seemed merged in one
dreamy, indeterminate hum. It conveyed to my soul the
idea of revolution — perhaps from its association in fancy with
the burr of a mill wheel. This only for a brief period, for
presently I heard no more. Yet, for a while I saw — but with
how terrible an exaggeration! — I saw the lips of the black-
robed judges. They appeared to me white — whiter than the

vii

viii Introduction

sheet upon which I trace these words — and thin even to
grotesqueness ; thin with the intensity of their expression oi
firmness — of immovable resolution — of stern contempt of
human torture. I saw that decrees of what to me was Fate
were still issuing from those lips. I saw them writhe with a
deadly locution. I saw them fashion the syllables of my
name, and I shuddered because no sound succeeded. I saw,
too, for a few moments of delirious horror, the soft and nearly
imperceptible waving of the sable draperies which enwrapped
the walls of the apartment. And then my vision fell upon the
seven tall candles upon the table. At first they wore the
aspect of charity, and seemed white slender angels who would
save me; but then, all at once, there came a most deadly
nausea over my spirit, and I felt every fibre in my frame thrill
as if I had touched the wire of a galvanic battery, while the
angel forms became meaningless spectres, with heads of flame,
and I saw that from them there would be no help. And then
there stole into my fancy, like a rich musical note, the thought
of what sweet rest there must be in the grave."

Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, U.S.A., on January
19, 1809. Certain peculiarities in his work have been put
down to racial tendencies, for his father, though American
born, was of Irish descent. But we notice the profession of
the parents as a fact more immediate than their racial deriva
tion. Both parents were actors, and the stage seems to have
been in keeping with certain tendencies in the father. He
seems to have been a Bohemian, or rather a vagabond. It is
said that he had made an imprudent marriage; it is fairly
certain that he deserted his wife before the child Edgar was
born. The mother died when Poe was two years old, and
Edgar, one of her three children, was adopted by a childless
pair, the Allans, wealthy Scotch folk of Richmond in Virginia.
Four years later the Allans made a tour through Ireland,
Scotland and England. They settled in England for a while,
and young Edgar Allan, now six years of age, was given five
years' schooling at Stoke Newington. Ke was eleven when
he returned to America with the Allans, and we hear of him
afterwards as a youngster at the Richmond school, brilliant
indeed, but defiant, irritable and solitary — " a descendant of a
race whose imaginative and easily excitable temperament has
at all times rendered them remarkable," as he says, in what
seems to be an autobiographical note.

Poe, as a youth, had a rare aptitude for athletic feats, and

Introduction ix

Baudelaire notes with satisfaction that, though made with the
feet and hands of a woman, Poe was capable of great muscular
exertion; as a youth he excelled his contemporaries in swim
ming. He had high personal distinction; he was graceful,
good-looking, and endowed with noticeable eloquence. He
was fond of dramatic recitation. Once he recited some
speeches out of Julius Ceesar, impersonating Cassius, and he
gave his audience the impression that he was "a born actor."
This evidence of declamatory power is interesting, and the
reminiscence of the theatre accounts for a great deal in Poe's
work. At seventeen he was sent to the University of Virginia.
Here he won high honours in Latin and French, but within a
year he was withdrawn on account of some gambling trans
actions. We may be sure that Edgar Allan Poe was loth to let
his eighteenth year pass unmarked ; unlike most young literary
aspirants he succeeded in making it memorable. He went up
to Boston and published a book — verse, of course — Tamer
lane and Other Poems (1827). Mr. Allan seems to have in
terested himself in this volume, but soon after the publication
of Tamerlane there came a breach between the poet and his
patron. Edgar Allan Poe now entered the army of the
United States, and in two years he had risen to the rank of
sergeant-major. He was now twenty; his foster-mother
died, and then there came a reconciliation between Edgar and
Mr. Allan. In 1830 he entered the College at West Point as
a military cadet. Meanwhile (1829) he had published his
second volume. It contained Tamerlane (re- written) and Al
Aaraaf. His conduct at the Military College was considered
irregular, and he was dismissed in 1 83 1 . Affairs had now taken
a serious turn. Mr. Allan had married again ; this time he was
blessed with offspring, and his wife knew not Edgar Allan.
Poe insisted upon seeing his foster-parent, but the interview
led only to a definite breach. When he left Allan's house he
seems to have turned his back on settled ways of living. It is
curious that he did not at this point try the stage; it would
have fitted his temperament and his gifts; but perhaps the
career of his parents had biassed him against the theatre. He
published a third book of verse, poems old and new, and we
hear of him next in Baltimore. He went into the office of the
Saturday Visitor to claim a prize he had won with the story,
A MS. found in a Bottle, and it was noticed that his coat was
fastened to hide a lack of shirt, and that his face bore traces of
illness and destitution. Afterwards he got an engagement on

* 336

x Introduction

the Southern Literary Messenger, and he returned to his native
Richmond. It was in The Messenger that he first published
the studies Berenice and Morella, reveries belonging to the
Ligeia group, and connected in theme with The MS. found in
a Bottle, and the splendid Fall of the House of Usher. He did
literary criticisms for this paper and eventually became
assistant editor. At twenty-six he married his cousin,
Virginia Clemm, a girl of fourteen. He made some reputation
in Richmond, but he left the place in 1837, sanguine of a New
York success. The New York Review, however, did little for
him, and Poe and his wife had to move on to Philadelphia.
There he published various tales, including Ligeia, William
Wilson, and The Fall of the House of Usher. In 1839, Tales of
the Grotesque and the Arabesque, Poe's first collection, were
given to the public, and then for a while he occupied himself
with analytical subjects, writing a great deal about crypto
grams, and exercising bis extraordinary analytical talent in
solving those sent to the paper. His power of analysis enabled
him to invent something new in the narrative form, The
Murders in the Rue Morgue, contributed to Graham's Magazine
in April 1841. This remarkable story was followed by A
Descent into the Maelstrom. By this time he had won a place
for himself in Philadelphia; he was the editor of Graham's
Magazine, and he was known as the author of some tales that
had made a stir in London and Paris.

But in 1842 he left Philadelphia under the influence of a
tragedy more pitiful and terrible than any tragedy in literary
history. His wife had burst a blood vessel while singing.
Poe took leave of her for ever. He underwent all the agonies
of her death, but she recovered and he was delivered to the
torture of hope. The vessel broke again, and again, and even
once again! He drank to escape from the terrible suspense.
He was a man sensitive and nervous to an abnormal degree,
and he loved his wife with a passion that went beyond the
grave. " I became insane," he said, " with long intervals of
horrible sanity. ... I drank — God only knows how often or
how much. As a matter of course my enemies referred the
insanity to the drink rather than the drink to the insanity."
He could do no work under those agonising conditions, and he
lost the editorship of Graham's Magazine. His wife died in
1847. Poe was only. thirty-eight, but his life was over. He
occupied himself with a work which was to explain the uni
verse, Eureka. We can say of Eureka that it gave its author

Introduction xi

solace, and that it is a medley which Baudelaire has taken
seriously. He died on October 8, 1849, and his end must have
seemed the height of tragic mockery to the divine spectator of
the pessimists. He came into New York city and fell in with
a gang of ruffians who were rushing some election business.
They seized the unfortunate man, plied him with drink, put
papers into his hand and dragged him round the booths. His
friends found him dying in some sordid place. It remains to
be said that his Literary executor disapproved of Poe's tempera
ment and Poe's methods. And he treated the poet with a
rigour that reads like malignity.

II

There is a distinction seldom made in criticism between the
short story and the tale. This distinction can best be seen in
examples; thus Maupassant's Vain Beauty is a short story,
and A Piece of String by the same author is a tale. There is a
difference in the extent of the narratives, and there is a differ
ence in the value of the respective incidents upon which the
narratives are based. A Piece of String could not be ex
panded by " complications and diversities of many episodes
and details " without attributing to the incident " an import
ance which, socially and historically, it does not possess."
But the incident in Vain Beauty might be expanded without
investing it with an undue importance. It is curious that
M. Bruneti^re (whose notes on the NOUVELLE I have been
quoting), does not make a distinction between the short
story and the tale. His notes apply to the tale rather than
to the short story. Yet though the substance of the tale
is amongst " peculiarities or variations of passion," it is
not the less effective on this account. It is the most
ancient of compositions, the most wide -spread, the most
immediately interesting; through its brevity it can be made
the most perfect of prose forms. Edgar Allan Poe was well
aware of the high place that the tale must always hold in
literature, and his intimate knowledge of exceptional things,
together with his sense of form and language, have enabled
him to produce some of the world's best tales — The Cask of
Amontillado, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Fall of the House
of Usher, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Gold Bug,
William Wilson, Ligeia. In The Murders in the Rut Morgu*

xii Introduction

and in The Gold Bug, Poe brought a new and fascinating method
into the narrative — a method which has been re-discovered in
our own day and used with much public success. The Cask of
A montillado, The Pit and the Pendulum, and Ligeia are so rounded
and so perfect that they offer no crevice for the critical knife.
William Wilson is perhaps the least impeccable of these tales ;
one notices a certain staginess here — a theatricality that
flaunts out in the speech of the last encounter. " Scoundrel,"
I said, in a voice husky with rage ..." Scoundrel, impostor,
accursed villain! You shall not — you shall not dog me unto
death! Follow me, or I will stab you where you stand."
The theatricality in this speech is but the excess of a quality
shown abundantly in William Wilson — the quality of drama
tisation. All the speeches carry across the footlights and all
the situations are visualised as if for the stage. But the situa
tions and speeches in William Wilson are not the most notice
able instance of Poe's faculty for dramatisation. There is
that memorable scene which prepares the reader for the tragic
return of the Lady Madeline in The Fall of the House of Usher.
This scene is conceived as a dramatist would conceive it. The
reading of the romance, the stressing of the passages which
correspond with the unseen drama is a device well known to
the dramatist. Poe has the dramatist's faculty for projecting
situations and he has also the faculty of anticipating difficul
ties that are peculiar to the dramatic action. Several instances
of this could be given from the tales that follow — instances of
that suspended or retrospective action which is more necessary
in a play than in a narrative. The theatre would, I am con
vinced, have given full scope for Poe's genius. He could not
have reached it through his poetic talent, but he could have
reached it through the invention which he has shown hi The
Cask of Amontillado. Poe could have done perfectly a form
of work which perhaps he had no models for at the time — the
" thrill " of the French vaudeville. It is a matter for regret
that he did not come into contact with the theatre; for, with
his delight hi novelty, with his wonderful ingenuity, he could
have added many devices to the dramatist's stock. But his
spirit has not been quite shut out from the theatre. Surely
the dramatist of the Plays for Marionettes owes a good deal to
The House of Usher, with its elaborate atmosphere, and its
remote and agonising situations.

In considering the drama of The Fall of the House of Usher,
we are brought into contact with Poe's dominant idea. Part

Introduction xiii

of this idea is expressed explicitly in his favourite tale, Ligeia.
Ligeia belongs to that group of studies of which Eleanor a is
the most charming, Berenice the most repulsive, and Moretta
the least noteworthy. Ligeia is less a tale than a prose poem ;
it is a reverie, a meditation upon that mystical sentence of
Joseph Glanville's — " And the will therein lieth, which dieth
not. Who knoweth the mysteries of the will, with its vigour ?
For God is but a great will pervading all things by nature of its
intentness. Man doth not yield himself to the angels, nor
unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his
feeble will." It was Poe's conviction that consciousness per
sisted even in the grave, and that the will, because of some
great passion, could resist dissolution, and that the persistence
of the human will gave sentience to inanimate things. Thus
the walls of the house of Usher and the tarn beyond have been
given a sort of organisation and in A MS. found in a Bottle the
ship that holds the ancient voyagers has grown in bulk.

Poe's mentality was a rare synthesis; he had elements in
him that corresponded with the indefiniteness of music and
the exactitude of mathematics. He was a penetrating critic
of literature, and he could have written well on aesthetics and
psychology ; I have already dwelt upon his sense of the theatre.
He desired to be striking and original as the great creators
desire to be sincere, and because of that rare synthesis of his
mind (helped out, it must be said, by a wonderful ingenuity),
he succeeded in making forms and formulas that have in-
iiuenced a definite side of literature. His often-quoted dictum
that poetry cannot be sustained in the epic form has forced
many poets (Whitman amongst them) to reconsider the poetic
form. His achievements in verse and his theories of versifi
cation influenced an important literary movement in France,
and that movement has reacted on contemporary English
literature. He made the idea of " atmosphere " self-conscious
in literary art. The Murders in the Rue Morgue and William
Wilson have been models for such diverse writers as Conan
Doyle and Oscar Wilde. He is popularly regarded as the type
of the imaginative man, but those who have come into contact
with his mind have reason to believe that his critical faculties
were in excess of his imaginative and creative faculties. In
The Domain of Arnheim he says some subtle thing on our ideas
of the beautiful. His aesthetics, however, are a little strained
by the undue importance he gives to strangeness as an element
of beauty. He was a psychologist in the critical rather than

xiv Introduction

In the creative sense, and had a deep knowledge of the mental
movements connected with fear. In Arthur Gordon Pym he
has some enlightening observations on the effect of a ghostly
apparition.

" Usually, in cases of a similar nature, there is left in the
mind of the spectator some glimmering of doubt as to the
reality of the vision before his eyes ; a degree of hope, however
feeble, that he is the victim of chicanery, and that the appari
tion is not actually a visitant from the old world of shadows.
It is not too much to say that such remnants of doubt have
been at the bottom of almost every such visitation, and that
the appalling horror which has sometimes been brought about
is to be attributed, even in the cases most in point, and where
most suffering has been experienced, more to a kind of anti-
cipative horror, lest the apparition might possibly be real, than
to an unwavering belief in its reality."

This reads like an authentic pronouncement from a chair
of psychology. And in The Fall of the House of Usher he has
a sentence which anticipates, even in its formal presentment,
a recently formulated law of the American psychologists —
" There can be no doubt that the consciousness of the rapid
increase of iny superstition . . . served mainly to accelerate
the increase itself. Such, I have long known, is the para
doxical law of all sentiments having terror as a basis."

Edgar Allan Poe has written some gloomy tales and several
morbid tales, but his lines,

" The play is the tragedy Man,
And the hero the conquering Worm,"

do not represent his normal opinion. He has told us that
" in general, it is from the violation of a few simple laws of
humanity, arises the wretchedness of mankind — that as a
species we have in our possession the as yet unwrought
elements of content." His Mr. Ellison admitted but four
principles or conditions of bliss — free exercise in the open air.
the love of some lovable woman, a contempt of ambition, and
an object of unceasing pursuit. " He held that, other things
being equal, the extent of attainable happiness was in propor
tion to the spirituality of this object."

" NOR WAS I INDEED IGNORANT OF THE FLOWERS AND THE
VINE, BUT THB HEMLOCK AND THE CYPRESS OVERSHADOWED
MB NIGHT AND DAY." ,

PADRAIC COLUM.

April 1908.

Introduction xv

The following is a list of his published works: —

Tamerlane and other Poems, 1827; new edition with additions, " Al
Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems," 1829; Poems, 1831; A Manuscript
found in a Bottle (prize tale for the Baltimore Saturday Visitor), 1833;
Coliseum, Poem, 1833 (prize poem for same, but ruled out as being by
author of prize tale) ; Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pyrn (partly from the
Messenger, 1838; Conchologist's First Book (from Thomas Wyatt's
Manual of Conchology), 1839; Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque,
1839; Prediction of the Plot of Barnaby Rudge (Saturday Evening Post),
1841; Murders in the Rue Morgue (Graham's Magazine), 1841; The Gold
Bug (prize offered by the Dollar Newspaper), 1843; Balloon Hoax (in the
Sun), 1844; Tales, 1845; The Raven (Evening Mirror), 1845; The Raven
and other Poems, 1845 ; Eureka, a prose Poem (elaborated from his lecture
on the Cosmogony of the Universe), 1848.

Some of Poe's best tales and poems were first published in the Southern
Literary Messenger, 1835, of which magazine he became editor, but resigned
the post in 1837; other tales appeared in Graham's Magazine, of which
fie was for a time editor-in-chief. He was also a contributor to the New
York Review, Broadway Journal, and Godey's Lady's Book.

WORKS. — First collection, ed. R. W. Griswold (with memoir), three vols.,
1850; four vols., 1856; ed. H. Curwen (with life from French of C. Baude
laire), 1872; R. H. Stoddard (with memoir), 1873, 1884, 1896; J. H.
Ingram (with memoir), 1874-5; newly collected and edited by E. C. Sted-
man and G. E. Woodberry, 1895; in World's Classics, 1902, etc.

Poetical works, ed. J . Hannay, 1852, 1863; E. F. Blanchard, 1857; C. F.
Briggs, 1858; Memorial edition, Poems and Essays (including memoir),
by J. H. Ingram, Prof. Lowell, and Willis, 1876* Poems and Essays, with
an essay on his poetry by Andrew Lang, 1881; Poems and Essays, ed.
Lfgram, 1884; with biographical sketch by N. H. Dole, 1895, 1905; with
introduction by H. N. Williams, 1900; with critical memoir by S. Cody,
1903; with introduction by Arthur Symons, 1904; and other editions in
collections of classics.

LIFE. — Sarah H. Whitman, "Edgar Poe and His Critics," 1859; E. L.
Didier, 1876; W. F. Gill, 1877; J. H. Ingram, "Life, Letters, and
Opinions," 1880; G. E. Woodberry (American Men of Letters), 1885; J.
A. Joyce, 1901; J. A. Harrison. " Life and Letters," 1903.

CONTENTS

PACK

WILLIAM WILSON 3

A TALK OF THE RAGGED MOUNTAINS «

THE DOMAIN OF ARNHEIM ....... 3*

LANDOR'S COTTAGE .....••••45

THE ELK 56

THE ISLAND OF THE FAY ........60

THK SPHINX 65

THE GOLD-BUG *9

THE MAN OF THE CROWD ....... 101

SHADOW ........... 109

SILENCE . . . . . . • • • • .HI

THE COLLOQUY OF MONOS AND UNA ...... 115

THE CONVERSATION OF EIROS AND CHARMION .... 123

THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER 128

THE ASSIGNATION ......... 145

LlGEIA ........... 155

/ ELEONORA .......... 169

BERENICE .......... i?5

MORELLA ........... 182

THE OVAL PORTRAIT 187

KING PEST 195

THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH ...... 201

/THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO ....... 207

METZENGERSTEIN . ........ 213

THE PIT ANI> THE PENDULUM . aai

HOP-FROG 834

A DESCENT INTO THE MAKLSTRSM ...... 243

MS. FOUND IN A BOTTLE ........ 258

THE PREMATURE BURIAL ........ 268

THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF M. VALDEMAR .... 280

THX TELL-TALE HEART ........ 289

I

2 Contents

PAGE

MELLONTA TAUTA ......... 294

THK THOUSAND-AND-SECOND TALE OF SCHEHERAZADB . . 307

TRZ OBLONG Box 323

THE SPECTACLES ......... 333

X-INO A PARAGRAB . . .». • . . . . . 355

THE IMP or THE PERVERSE .•'•'» u ; . . . . . 361

THS BALLOON HOAX ........ 367

/ THB MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUB ..... 378

THE MYSTERY OF MARIE ROGIT .*. . . . . 410

THS PURLOINED LETTER ........ 454

"THOU ART THE MAN" ........ 471

Loss OF BREATH 484

BON-BON .. . . . . . . . . 496

THB DBVIL IN THH BELFRY 511

THE BLACK CAT ;,-.•;*-•.'.. • 518

FOE'S TALES

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 appel
lation. 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 honours, 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 usuallly grow base by degrees. From me,
in an instant, all virtue dropped bodily as a mantle. From
comparatively 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 measure,
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 allowing —
that, although temptation may have erewhile existed as great,
man was never thus, at least, tempted before — certainly, never

a

4 Poe's Tales

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
parents could do but little to check the evil propensities which
distinguished 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 venerable old
town. At this moment, in fancy, I feel the refreshing chilliness
of its deeply-shadowed avenues, inhale the fragrance of its thou
sand 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 1 only too real — I shall be pardoned for seeking relief, how
ever slight and temporary, in the weakness of a few rambling
details. These, moreover, utterly trivial, and even ridiculous
in themselves, assume, to my fancy, adventitious importance, as
connected with a period and a locality when and where I recog
nise the first ambiguous monitions of the destiny which after
wards so fully overshadowed me. Let me then remember.

The house, I have said, was old and irregular. The grounds

William Wilson 5

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 formal
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, ferule 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 sur
mounted 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 holidays.

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

6 Poc's Tales

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 mansion
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 remote
locality lay the little sleeping apartment assigned to myself 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
dismally 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
structure, with massy door, sooner than open which in the
absence of the " Dominie," we would all have willingly perished
by the peine forte et dure. In other angles were two other simi
lar 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
innumerable 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 extremity 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 appar
ently dismal monotony of a school was replete with more intense
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 impression.
All is grey shadow — a weak and irregular remembrance — 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

William Wilson 7

in lines as vivid, as deep, and as durable 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
summons 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 forgotten, were made to involve a wilderness of sensation, a
world of rich incident, an universe of varied emotion, of excite
ment the most passionate and spirit-stirring. "Oh, le bon
temps, que ce siecle de fer I "

In truth, the ardour, 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 ascendency 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
Christian and surname as myself; — a circumstance, in fact,
little remarkable; for, notwithstanding a noble descent, mine
was one of those every-day appellations which seem, by pre
scriptive right, to have been, time out of mind, the common
property of the mob. In this narrative I have therefore desig
nated myself as William Wilson, — a fictitious title not very dis
similar 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
submission 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 em
barrassment; — the more so as, in spite of the bravado with
which in public I made a point of treating him and his pre
tensions, 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 perpetual 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 impertinent and dogged interference with my

8 Poc's Tales

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 insults, or his contradictions, a
certain most inappropriate, and assuredly most unwelcome
affectionateness of manner. I could only conceive this singular
behaviour to arise from a consummate self-conceit assuming
the vulgar air 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
notion that we were brothers, among the senior classes in the
academy. These do not usually inquire with much strictness
into the affairs of their juniors. I have before said, or should
have said, that Wilson was not, in the most remote degree,
connected with my family. But assuredly if we had been
brothers we must have been twins; for, after leaving Dr.
Bransby's, I casually learned that my namesake was born on
the nineteenth of January, 1813 — and this is a somewhat
remarkable coincidence; for the day is precisely that of my
own nativity.

It may seem strange that in spite of the continual anxiety
occasioned me by the rivalry of Wilson, and his intolerable
spirit of contradiction, I could not bring myself to hate him
altogether. We had, to be sure, nearly every day a quarrel hi
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 " speak
ing terms," while there were many points of strong congeniality
in our tempers, operating to awake hi me a sentiment which
our position alone, perhaps, prevented from ripening into
friendship. It is difficult, indeed, to define, or even to describe,
my real feelings 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 un
necessary to say, in addition, that Wilson and myself were the
most inseparable of companions.

William Wilson 9

It was no doubt the anomalous state of affairs existing be
tween 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 concocted ;
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 faucial or guttural organs,
which precluded him from raising his voice at any time above a
very low whisper. Of this defect I did not fail to take what
poor advantage 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
always 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
William Wilson came also to the academy, I felt angry with
him for bearing the name, and doubly disgusted with the name
because a stranger bore it, who would be the cause of its two
fold 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 out
line of feature. I was galled, too, by the rumour 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

io Poe's Tales

a similailty 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
observed 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 hi actions; and most admirably did he play his
part. My dress it was an easy matter to copy; my gait and
general 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
»/ my own.

How greatly this most exquisite portraiture harassed me (for
it could not justly be termed a caricature), I will not now
venture 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 pro
duced in my bosom the Intended effect, he seemed to chuckle
in secret over the sting he had inflicted, and was characteristi
cally disregardful of the public applause which the success of his
witty endeavours might have so easily elicited. That the
school, indeed, did not feel his design, perceive its accomplish
ment, 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 security to the masterly air of the copyist, who,
disdaining the letter (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 with my will. This interference often took
the ungracious character of advice; advice not openly given,
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

William Wilson 1 1

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 cordially
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 connection 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 open
ness of demeanour rather foreign to his nature, I discovered, or
fancied I discovered, in his accent, his air, and general appear
ance, 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 describe the sensation
which oppressed me than by saying that I could with difficulty
shake off the belief of my having been acquainted with the
being who stood before me, at some epoch very long ago — some
point of the past even infinitely remote. The delusion, how
ever, 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
several large chambers communicating with each other, where
slept the greater number of the students. There were, how
ever (as must necessarily happen in a building so awkwardly
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 in
dividual. One of these small apartments was occupied by Wilson.

1 2 Poe's Tales

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 bed
room 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
intention, 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,
leaving the lamp, with a shade over it, on the outside. I ad
vanced a step, and listened to the sound of his tranquil breathing.
Assured 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 pervaded my
frame. My breast heaved, my knees tottered, my whole spirit
became possessed with an objectless yet intolerable horror.
Gasping for breath, I lowered the lamp in still nearer proximity
to the face. Were these — these the lineaments of William Wil
son ? 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 vivacity of his
waking hours. The same name I the same contour of person!
the same day of arrival at the academy 1 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 ? Awestricken, 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 idleness,
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

William Wilson 13

the subject at all but with wonder at the 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
serious 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
debaucheries were to be faithfully protracted until morning.
The wine flowed freely, and there were not wanting other and
perhaps more dangerous seductions; so that the grey dawn had
already faintly appeared in the east, while our delirious extrava
gance was at its height. Madly flushed with cards and intoxi
cation, 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
delighted than surprised me. I staggered forward at once, and
a few steps brought me to the vestibule of the building. In
this low and small room there hung no lamp; and now no light
at all was admitted, save that of the exceedingly feeble dawn
which made its way through the semi-circular window. As I
put my foot over the threshold, I became aware of the figure of
a youth about my own height, and habited in a white kersey
mere morning frock, cut in the novel fashion of the one I myself
wore at the moment. This the faint light enabled me to per
ceive; but the features of his face I could not distinguish.
Upon my entering he strode hurriedly up to me, and, seizing
me by the arm with a gesture of petulant impatience, whispered
the words " William Wilson ! " in my ear.

I grew perfectly sober in an instant.