dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could
torture into aught of the sublime. What was it - I paused to think -
what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of
Usher ? It was a mystery all insoluble ; nor could I grapple with
the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced
to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond
doubt, there _are_ combinations of very simple natural objects which
have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power
lies among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I
reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of
the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to
modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful
impression ; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the
precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled
lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down - but with a shudder even more
thrilling than before - upon the remodelled and inverted images of
the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and
eye-like windows.
Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom I now proposed to myself a
sojourn of some weeks. Its proprietor, Roderick Usher, had been one
of my boon companions in boyhood ; but many years had elapsed since
our last meeting. A letter, however, had lately reached me in a
distant part of the country - a letter from him - which, in its
wildly importunate nature, had admitted of no other than a personal
reply. The MS. gave evidence of nervous agitation. The writer
spoke of acute bodily illness - of a mental disorder which oppressed
him - and of an earnest desire to see me, as his best, and indeed his
only personal friend, with a view of attempting, by the cheerfulness
of my society, some alleviation of his malady. It was the manner in
which all this, and much more, was said - it was the apparent _heart_
that went with his request - which allowed me no room for hesitation;
and I accordingly obeyed forthwith what I still considered a very
singular summons.
Although, as boys, we had been even intimate associates, yet I
really knew little of my friend. His reserve had been always
excessive and habitual. I was aware, however, that his very ancient
family had been noted, time out of mind, for a peculiar sensibility
of temperament, displaying itself, through long ages, in many works
of exalted art, and manifested, of late, in repeated deeds of
munificent yet unobtrusive charity, as well as in a passionate
devotion to the intricacies, perhaps even more than to the orthodox
and easily recognisable beauties, of musical science. I had learned,
too, the very remarkable fact, that the stem of the Usher race, all
time-honored as it was, had put forth, at no period, any enduring
branch ; in other words, that the entire family lay in the direct
line of descent, and had always, with very trifling and very
temporary variation, so lain. It was this deficiency, I considered,
while running over in thought the perfect keeping of the character of
the premises with the accredited character of the people, and while
speculating upon the possible influence which the one, in the long
lapse of centuries, might have exercised upon the other - it was this
deficiency, perhaps, of collateral issue, and the consequent
undeviating transmission, from sire to son, of the patrimony with the
name, which had, at length, so identified the two as to merge the
original title of the estate in the quaint and equivocal appellation
of the "House of Usher" - an appellation which seemed to include, in
the minds of the peasantry who used it, both the family and the
family mansion.
I have said that the sole effect of my somewhat childish
experiment - that of looking down within the tarn - had been to
deepen the first singular impression. There can be no doubt that the
consciousness of the rapid increase of my superstition - for why
should I not so term it ? - served mainly to accelerate the increase
itself. Such, I have long known, is the paradoxical law of all
sentiments having terror as a basis. And it might have been for this
reason only, that, when I again uplifted my eyes to the house itself,
from its image in the pool, there grew in my mind a strange fancy - a
fancy so ridiculous, indeed, that I but mention it to show the vivid
force of the sensations which oppressed me. I had so worked upon my
imagination as really to believe that about the whole mansion and
domain there hung an atmosphere peculiar to themselves and their
immediate vicinity - an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air
of heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed trees, and the
gray wall, and the silent tarn - a pestilent and mystic vapor, dull,
sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaden-hued.
Shaking off from my spirit what _must_ have been a dream, I
scanned more narrowly the real aspect of the building. Its principal
feature seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity. The
discoloration of ages had been great. Minute fungi overspread the
whole exterior, hanging in a fine tangled web-work from the eaves.
Yet all this was apart from any extraordinary dilapidation. No
portion of the masonry had fallen ; and there appeared to be a wild
inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts, and the
crumbling condition of the individual stones. In this there was much
that reminded me of the specious totality of old wood-work which has
rotted for long years in some neglected vault, with no disturbance
from the breath of the external air. Beyond this indication of
extensive decay, however, the fabric gave little token of
instability. Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing observer might have
discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the
roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag
direction, until it became lost in the sullen waters of the tarn.
Noticing these things, I rode over a short causeway to the house.
A servant in waiting took my horse, and I entered the Gothic archway
of the hall. A valet, of stealthy step, thence conducted me, in
silence, through many dark and intricate passages in my progress to
the _studio_ of his master. Much that I encountered on the way
contributed, I know not how, to heighten the vague sentiments of
which I have already spoken. While the objects around me - while the
carvings of the ceilings, the sombre tapestries of the walls, the
ebon blackness of the floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial
trophies which rattled as I strode, were but matters to which, or to
such as which, I had been accustomed from my infancy - while I
hesitated not to acknowledge how familiar was all this - I still
wondered to find how unfamiliar were the fancies which ordinary
images were stirring up. On one of the staircases, I met the
physician of the family. His countenance, I thought, wore a mingled
expression of
low cunning and perplexity. He accosted me with
trepidation and passed on. The valet now threw open a door and
ushered me into the presence of his master.
The room in which I found myself was very large and lofty. The
windows were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance
from the black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from
within. Feeble gleams of encrimsoned light made their way through the
trellissed panes, and served to render sufficiently distinct the more
prominent objects around ; the eye, however, struggled in vain to
reach the remoter angles of the chamber, or the recesses of the
vaulted and fretted ceiling. Dark draperies hung upon the walls.
The general furniture was profuse, comfortless, antique, and
tattered. Many books and musical instruments lay scattered about,
but failed to give any vitality to the scene. I felt that I breathed
an atmosphere of sorrow. An air of stern, deep, and irredeemable
gloom hung over and pervaded all.
Upon my entrance, Usher arose from a sofa on which he had been
lying at full length, and greeted me with a vivacious warmth which
had much in it, I at first thought, of an overdone cordiality - of
the constrained effort of the _ennuyé_ ; man of the world. A glance,
however, at his countenance, convinced me of his perfect sincerity.
We sat down ; and for some moments, while he spoke not, I gazed upon
him with a feeling half of pity, half of awe. Surely, man had never
before so terribly altered, in so brief a period, as had Roderick
Usher ! It was with difficulty that I could bring myself to admit
the identity of the wan being before me with the companion of my
early boyhood. Yet the character of his face had been at all times
remarkable. A cadaverousness of complexion ; an eye large, liquid,
and luminous beyond comparison ; lips somewhat thin and very pallid,
but of a surpassingly beautiful curve ; a nose of a delicate Hebrew
model, but with a breadth of nostril unusual in similar formations ;
a finely moulded chin, speaking, in its want of prominence, of a want
of moral energy; hair of a more than web-like softness and tenuity ;
these features, with an inordinate expansion above the regions of the
temple, made up altogether a countenance not easily to be forgotten.
And now in the mere exaggeration of the prevailing character of these
features, and of the expression they were wont to convey, lay so much
of change that I doubted to whom I spoke. The now ghastly pallor of
the skin, and the now miraculous lustre of the eye, above all things
startled and even awed me. The silken hair, too, had been suffered
to grow all unheeded, and as, in its wild gossamer texture, it
floated rather than fell about the face, I could not, even with
effort, connect its Arabesque expression with any idea of simple
humanity.
In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an
incoherence - an inconsistency ; and I soon found this to arise from
a series of feeble and futile struggles to overcome an habitual
trepidancy - an excessive nervous agitation. For something of this
nature I had indeed been prepared, no less by his letter, than by
reminiscences of certain boyish traits, and by conclusions deduced
from his peculiar physical conformation and temperament. His action
was alternately vivacious and sullen. His voice varied rapidly from
a tremulous indecision (when the animal spirits seemed utterly in
abeyance) to that species of energetic concision - that abrupt,
weighty, unhurried, and hollow-sounding enunciation - that leaden,
self-balanced and perfectly modulated guttural utterance, which may
be observed in the lost drunkard, or the irreclaimable eater of
opium, during the periods of his most intense excitement.
It was thus that he spoke of the object of my visit, of his
earnest desire to see me, and of the solace he expected me to afford
him. He entered, at some length, into what he conceived to be the
nature of his malady. It was, he said, a constitutional and a family
evil, and one for which he despaired to find a remedy - a mere
nervous affection, he immediately added, which would undoubtedly soon
pass off. It displayed itself in a host of unnatural sensations.
Some of these, as he detailed them, interested and bewildered me ;
although, perhaps, the terms, and the general manner of the narration
had their weight. He suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the
senses ; the most insipid food was alone endurable; he could wear
only garments of certain texture ; the odors of all flowers were
oppressive ; his eyes were tortured by even a faint light ; and
there were but peculiar sounds, and these from stringed instruments,
which did not inspire him with horror.
To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden slave.
"I shall perish," said he, "I must perish in this deplorable folly.
Thus, thus, and not otherwise, shall I be lost. I dread the events
of the future, not in themselves, but in their results. I shudder at
the thought of any, even the most trivial, incident, which may
operate upon this intolerable agitation of soul. I have, indeed, no
abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect - in terror. In
this unnerved - in this pitiable condition - I feel that the period
will sooner or later arrive when I must abandon life and reason
together, in some struggle with the grim phantasm, FEAR."
I learned, moreover, at intervals, and through broken and
equivocal hints, another singular feature of his mental condition. He
was enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the
dwelling which he tenanted, and whence, for many years, he had never
ventured forth - in regard to an influence whose supposititious force
was conveyed in terms too shadowy here to be re-stated - an influence
which some peculiarities in the mere form and substance of his family
mansion, had, by dint of long sufferance, he said, obtained over his
spirit - an effect which the _physique_ of the gray walls and
turrets, and of the dim tarn into which they all looked down, had, at
length, brought about upon the _morale_ of his existence.
He admitted, however, although with hesitation, that much of the
peculiar gloom which thus afflicted him could be traced to a more
natural and far more palpable origin - to the severe and
long-continued illness - indeed to the evidently approaching
dissolution - of a tenderly beloved sister - his sole companion for
long years - his last and only relative on earth. "Her decease," he
Poe, Edgar Allen - The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe Page 49