Poe, Edgar Allen - The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe

by Volume 01-05 (lit)

  clear that I had wandered from the road to the village, and I had

  thus good traveller's excuse to open the gate before me, and inquire

  my way, at all events; so, without more ado, I proceeded.

  The road, after passing the gate, seemed to lie upon a natural ledge,

  sloping gradually down along the face of the north-eastern cliffs. It

  led me on to the foot of the northern precipice, and thence over the

  bridge, round by the eastern gable to the front door. In this

  progress, I took notice that no sight of the out-houses could be

  obtained.

  As I turned the corner of the gable, the mastiff bounded towards me

  in stern silence, but with the eye and the whole air of a tiger. I

  held him out my hand, however, in token of amity -- and I never yet

  knew the dog who was proof against such an appeal to his courtesy. He

  not only shut his mouth and wagged his tail, but absolutely offered

  me his paw-afterward extending his civilities to Ponto.

  As no bell was discernible, I rapped with my stick against the door,

  which stood half open. Instantly a figure advanced to the threshold

  -- that of a young woman about twenty-eight years of age -- slender,

  or rather slight, and somewhat above the medium height. As she

  approached, with a certain modest decision of step altogether

  indescribable. I said to myself, "Surely here I have found the

  perfection of natural, in contradistinction from artificial grace."

  The second impression which she made on me, but by far the more vivid

  of the two, was that of enthusiasm. So intense an expression of

  romance, perhaps I should call it, or of unworldliness, as that which

  gleamed from her deep-set eyes, had never so sunk into my heart of

  hearts before. I know not how it is, but this peculiar expression of

  the eye, wreathing itself occasionally into the lips, is the most

  powerful, if not absolutely the sole spell, which rivets my interest

  in woman. "Romance, provided my readers fully comprehended what I

  would here imply by the word -- "romance" and "womanliness" seem to

  me convertible terms: and, after all, what man truly loves in woman,

  is simply her womanhood. The eyes of Annie (I heard some one from the

  interior call her "Annie, darling!") were "spiritual grey;" her hair,

  a light chestnut: this is all I had time to observe of her.

  At her most courteous of invitations, I entered -- passing first into

  a tolerably wide vestibule. Having come mainly to observe, I took

  notice that to my right as I stepped in, was a window, such as those

  in front of the house; to the left, a door leading into the principal

  room; while, opposite me, an open door enabled me to see a small

  apartment, just the size of the vestibule, arranged as a study, and

  having a large bow window looking out to the north.

  Passing into the parlor, I found myself with Mr. Landor -- for this,

  I afterwards found, was his name. He was civil, even cordial in his

  manner, but just then, I was more intent on observing the

  arrangements of the dwelling which had so much interested me, than

  the personal appearance of the tenant.

  The north wing, I now saw, was a bed-chamber, its door opened into

  the parlor. West of this door was a single window, looking toward the

  brook. At the west end of the parlor, were a fireplace, and a door

  leading into the west wing -- probably a kitchen.

  Nothing could be more rigorously simple than the furniture of the

  parlor. On the floor was an ingrain carpet, of excellent texture -- a

  white ground, spotted with small circular green figures. At the

  windows were curtains of snowy white jaconet muslin: they were

  tolerably full, and hung decisively, perhaps rather formally in

  sharp, parallel plaits to the floor -- just to the floor. The walls

  were prepared with a French paper of great delicacy, a silver ground,

  with a faint green cord running zig-zag throughout. Its expanse was

  relieved merely by three of Julien's exquisite lithographs a trois

  crayons, fastened to the wall without frames. One of these drawings

  was a scene of Oriental luxury, or rather voluptuousness; another was

  a "carnival piece," spirited beyond compare; the third was a Greek

  female head -- a face so divinely beautiful, and yet of an expression

  so provokingly indeterminate, never before arrested my attention.

  The more substantial furniture consisted of a round table, a few

  chairs (including a large rocking-chair), and a sofa, or rather

  "settee;" its material was plain maple painted a creamy white,

  slightly interstriped with green; the seat of cane. The chairs and

  table were "to match," but the forms of all had evidently been

  designed by the same brain which planned "the grounds;" it is

  impossible to conceive anything more graceful.

  On the table were a few books, a large, square, crystal bottle of

  some novel perfume, a plain ground -- glass astral (not solar) lamp

  with an Italian shade, and a large vase of resplendently-blooming

  flowers. Flowers, indeed, of gorgeous colours and delicate odour

  formed the sole mere decoration of the apartment. The fire-place was

  nearly filled with a vase of brilliant geranium. On a triangular

  shelf in each angle of the room stood also a similar vase, varied

  only as to its lovely contents. One or two smaller bouquets adorned

  the mantel, and late violets clustered about the open windows.

  It is not the purpose of this work to do more than give in detail, a

  picture of Mr. Landor's residence -- as I found it. How he made it

  what it was -- and why -- with some particulars of Mr. Landor himself

  -- may, possibly form the subject of another article.

  ~~~ End of Text ~~~

  ======

  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

  appellation. 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 purpose to assign. Men

  usually 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 thro
wn a softening influence over my

  spirit. I long, in passing through the dim valley, for the sympathy

  -- 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 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 remarkable; 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 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 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 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 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 surmounted 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 constituted 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 innumerable -- inconceivable -- and so

  returning in upon themselves, 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