THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER
written in 1839
DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of
the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, had
been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of
country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew
on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it
was --but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of
insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the
feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because
poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the
sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the
scene before me --upon the mere house, and the simple landscape
features of the domain --upon the bleak walls --upon the vacant
eye-like windows --upon a few rank sedges --and upon a few white
trunks of decayed trees --with an utter depression of soul which I can
compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the
after-dream of the reveller upon opium --the bitter lapse into
everyday life-the hideous dropping off of the reveller upon opium
--the bitter lapse into everyday life --the hideous dropping off of
the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart
--an unredeemed 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 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
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-honoured 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 vapour,
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
scrutinising 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
trellised 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 ennuye 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 eve, 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 odours 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 said,
with a bitterness which I can never forget, "would leave him (him
the hopeless and the frail) the last of the ancient race of the
Ushers." While he spoke, the lady Madeline (for so was she called)
passed slowly through a remote portion of the apartment, and,
without having noticed my presence, disappeared. I regarded her with
an utter astonishment not unmingled with dread --and yet I found it
impossible to account for such feelings. A sensation of stupor
oppressed me, a s my eyes followed her retreating steps. When a door,
at length, closed upon her, my glance sought instinctively and eagerly
the countenance of the brother --but he had buried his face in his
hands, and I could only perceive that a far more than ordinary wanness
had overspread the emaciated fingers through which trickled many
passionate tears.
The disease of the lady Madeline had long baffled the skill of her
physicians. A settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person,
and frequent although transient affections of a partially cataleptical
character, were the unusual diagnosis. Hitherto she had steadily borne
up against the pressure of her malady, and had not betaken herself
finally to bed; but, on the closing in of the evening of my arrival at
the house, she succumbed (as her brother told me at night with
inexpressible agitation) to the prostrating power of the destroyer;
and I learned that the glimpse I had obtained of her person would thus
probably be the last I should obtain --that the lady, at least while
living, would be seen by me no more.
For several days ensuing, her name was unmentioned by either Usher
or myself: and during this period I was busied in earnest endeavours
to alleviate the melancholy of my friend. We painted and read
together; or I listened, as if in a dream, to the wild
improvisations of his speaking guitar. And thus, as a closer and still
intimacy admitted me more unreservedly into the recesses of his
spirit, the more bitterly did I perceive the futility of all attempt
at cheering a mind from which darkness, as if an inherent positive
quality, poured forth upon all objects of the moral and physical
universe, in one unceasing radiation of gloom.
