 |
| Wilson and his "double" at the carnival in an illustration by Byam Shaw for a London edition dated 1909 |
By Edgar Allen Poe
First published in Burton’s
Gentleman’s Magazine, October 1839.
What say of it? what say conscience grim,
That spectre in my path?
--Chamberlain's Pharronida.
Let me call
myself, for the present, William Wilson. The page now lying before me need not
be sullied with my real name. 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 for ever
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 today, 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 [a deviant Roman Emperor murdered in 222 AD]. 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 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
indefinable 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 neighboring
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 any thing
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
holydays.
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 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
similar boxes, far less reverenced, indeed, but still greatly matters of awe.
One of these was the pulpit
of the "classical" usher, one of the "English and
mathematical." Interspersed about the room, crossing and recrossing in
endless irregularity, were 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 apparently 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 gray 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 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 excitement the most passionate and spirit-stirring. "Oh,
le bon temps, que ce siecle de fer!"
In truth, the ardor, the
enthusiasm, and the imperiousness of my disposition, soon rendered me a marked
character among my schoolmates, and by slow, but natural gradations, gave me an
ascendancy over all not greatly older than myself;—over all with a single
exception. This exception was found in the person of a scholar, who, although
no relation, bore the same 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 prescriptive right, to have been,
time out of mind, the common property of the mob. In this narrative I have
therefore designated myself as William Wilson,—a fictitious title not very
dissimilar to the real. My namesake alone, of those who in school-phraseology
constituted "our set," presumed to compete with me in the studies of
the class—in the sports and broils of the play-ground—to refuse implicit belief
in my assertions, and 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 embarrassment; the more so as, in spite of the bravado
with which in public I made a point of treating him and his pretensions, I
secretly felt that I feared him, and could not help thinking the equality which
he maintained so easily with myself, a proof of his true superiority; since not
to be overcome cost me a 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 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 behavior to arise from a consummate self-conceit assuming the vulgar
airs of patronage and protection.
Perhaps it was this latter
trait in Wilson's conduct, conjoined with our identity of name, and the mere
accident of our having entered the school upon the same day, which set afloat
the 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 in which, yielding
me publicly the palm of victory, he, in some manner, contrived to make me feel
that it was he who had deserved it; yet a sense of pride on my part, and a
veritable dignity on his own, kept us always upon what are called
"speaking terms," while there were many points of strong congeniality
in our tempers, operating to awake in 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 unnecessary to say, in addition, that Wilson and myself
were the most inseparable of companions.
It was no doubt the anomalous
state of affairs existing between us, which turned all my attacks upon him,
(and they were many, either open or covert) into the channel of banter or
practical joke (giving pain while assuming the aspect of mere fun) rather than
into a more serious and determined hostility. But my endeavors 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 prænomen. 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 twofold
repetition, who would be constantly in my presence, and whose concerns, in the
ordinary routine of the school business, must inevitably, on account of the
detestable coincidence, be often confounded with my own.
The feeling of vexation thus
engendered grew stronger with every circumstance tending to show resemblance,
moral or physical, between my rival and myself. I had not then discovered the
remarkable fact that we were of the same age; but I saw that we were of the
same height, and I perceived that we were even singularly alike in general
contour of person and outline of feature. I was galled, too, by the rumor
touching a relationship, which had grown current in the upper forms. In a word,
nothing could more seriously disturb me, (although I scrupulously concealed
such disturbance,) than any allusion to a similarity of mind, person, or
condition existing between us. But, in truth, I had no reason to believe that
(with the exception of the matter of relationship, and in the case of Wilson
himself,) this similarity had ever been made a subject of comment, or even
observed at all by our schoolfellows. That he observed it in all its bearing,
and as fixedly as I, was apparent; but that he could discover in such
circumstances so fruitful a field of annoyance, can only be attributed, as I
said before, to his more than ordinary penetration.
His cue, which was to perfect
an imitation of myself, lay both in words and in actions; and most admirably
did he play his part. My dress it was an easy matter to copy; my gait and
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 of 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 produced in my bosom the intended effect, he
seemed to chuckle in secret over the sting he had inflicted, and was
characteristically disregardful of the public applause which the success of his
witty endeavors might have so easily elicited.
That the school, indeed, did
not feel his design, perceive its accomplishment, and participate in his sneer,
was, for many anxious months, a riddle I could not resolve. Perhaps the
gradation of his copy rendered it not so readily perceptible; or, more
possibly, I owed my 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 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
embodied 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 connexion as schoolmates, my feelings in regard
to him might have been easily ripened into friendship; but, in the latter
months of my residence at the academy, although the intrusion of his ordinary
manner had, beyond doubt, in some measure, abated, my sentiments, in nearly
similar proportion, partook very much of positive hatred. Upon one occasion he
saw this, I think, and afterwards avoided, or made a show of avoiding me.
It was about the same period,
if I remember aright, that, in an altercation of violence with him, in which he
was more than usually thrown off his guard, and spoke and acted with an
openness of demeanor rather foreign to his nature, I discovered, or fancied I
discovered, in his accent, his air, and general appearance, a something which
first startled, and then deeply interested me, by bringing to mind dim visions
of my earliest infancy—wild, confused and thronging memories of a time when
memory herself was yet unborn.
I cannot better 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, however, faded rapidly as it came; and I mention it at all but to
define the day of the last conversation I there held with my singular namesake.
The huge old house, with its
countless subdivisions, had several large chambers communicating with each
other, where slept the greater number of the students. There were, however, (as
must necessarily happen in a building so 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 individual. One
of these small apartments was occupied by Wilson.
One night, about the close of
my fifth year at the school, and immediately after the altercation just
mentioned, finding every one wrapped in sleep, I arose from bed, and, lamp in
hand, stole through a wilderness of narrow passages from my own bedroom to that
of my rival. I had long been plotting one of those ill-natured pieces of
practical wit at his expense in which I had hitherto been so uniformly
unsuccessful. It was my 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
advanced 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 withdrew, 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 Wilson? I saw, indeed, that
they were his, but I shook as if with a fit of the ague, in fancying they were
not. What was there about them to confound me in this manner? I gazed;—while my
brain reeled with a multitude of incoherent thoughts. Not thus he
appeared—assuredly not thus—in the vivacity of his waking hours.
The same name! the same
contour of person! the same day of arrival at the academy! And then his dogged
and meaningless imitation of my gait, my voice, my habits, and my manner! Was
it, in truth, within the bounds of human possibility, that what I now saw was
the result, merely, of the habitual practice of this sarcastic imitation?
Awe-stricken, and with a creeping shudder, I extinguished the lamp, passed
silently from the chamber, and left, at once, the halls of that old academy,
never to enter them again.
After a lapse of some months,
spent at home in mere 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 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 skepticism 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, ingulfed 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 gray dawn had already faintly appeared in the east,
while our delirious extravagance was at its height. Madly flushed with cards
and intoxication, 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 apartment, 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 kerseymere
morning frock, cut in the novel fashion of the one I myself wore at the moment.
This the faint light enabled me to perceive; 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.
There was that in the manner
of the stranger, and in the tremulous shake of his uplifted finger, as he held
it between my eyes and the light, which filled me with unqualified amazement;
but it was not this which had so violently moved me. It was the pregnancy of
solemn admonition in the singular, low, hissing utterance; and, above all, it
was the character, the tone, the key, of those few, simple, and familiar, yet
whispered syllables, which came with a thousand thronging memories of by-gone
days, and struck upon my soul with the shock of a galvanic battery. Ere I could
recover the use of my senses he was gone.
Although this event failed
not of a vivid effect upon my disordered imagination, yet was it evanescent as
vivid. For some weeks, indeed, I busied myself in earnest inquiry, or was
wrapped in a cloud of morbid speculation. I did not pretend to disguise from my
perception the identity of the singular individual who thus perseveringly
interfered with my affairs, and harassed me with his insinuated counsel. But
who and what was this Wilson?—and whence came he?—and what were his purposes?
Upon neither of these points
could I be satisfied—merely ascertaining, in regard to him, that a sudden
accident in his family had caused his removal from Dr. Bransby's academy on the
afternoon of the day in which I myself had eloped. But in a brief period I
ceased to think upon the subject, my attention being all absorbed in a
contemplated departure for Oxford. Thither I soon went, the uncalculating
vanity of my parents furnishing me with an outfit and annual establishment,
which would enable me to indulge at will in the luxury already so dear to my
heart—to vie in profuseness of expenditure with the haughtiest heirs of the
wealthiest earldoms in Great Britain.
Excited by such appliances to
vice, my constitutional temperament broke forth with redoubled ardor, and I
spurned even the common restraints of decency in the mad infatuation of my
revels. But it were absurd to pause in the detail of my extravagance. Let it
suffice, that among spendthrifts I out-Heroded Herod, and that, giving name to
a multitude of novel follies, I added no brief appendix to the long catalogue
of vices then usual in the most dissolute university of Europe.
It could hardly be credited,
however, that I had, even here, so utterly fallen from the gentlemanly estate,
as to seek acquaintance with the vilest arts of the gambler by profession, and,
having become an adept in his despicable science, to practise it habitually as
a means of increasing my already enormous income at the expense of the
weak-minded among my fellow-collegians. Such, nevertheless, was the fact. And
the very enormity of this offence against all manly and honorable sentiment
proved, beyond doubt, the main if not the sole reason of the impunity with
which it was committed. Who, indeed, among my most abandoned associates, would
not rather have disputed the clearest evidence of his senses, than have
suspected of such courses, the gay, the frank, the generous William Wiison—the
noblest and most liberal commoner at Oxford—him whose follies (said his
parasites) were but the follies of youth and unbridled fancy—whose errors but inimitable
whim—whose darkest vice but a careless and dashing extravagance?
I had been now two years
successfully busied in this way, when there came to the university a young
parvenu nobleman, Glendinning—rich, said report, as Herodes Atticus—his riches,
too, as easily acquired. I soon found him of weak intellect, and, of course,
marked him as a fitting subject for my skill. I frequently engaged him in play,
and contrived, with the gambler's usual art, to let him win considerable sums,
the more effectually to entangle him in my snares.
At length, my schemes being
ripe, I met him (with the full intention that this meeting should be final and
decisive) at the chambers of a fellow-commoner, (Mr. Preston,) equally intimate
with both, but who, to do him justice, entertained not even a remote suspicion
of my design. To give to this a better coloring, I had contrived to have
assembled a party of some eight or ten, and was solicitously careful that the
introduction of cards should appear accidental, and originate in the proposal
of my contemplated dupe himself. To be brief upon a vile topic, none of the low
finesse was omitted, so customary upon similar occasions, that it is a just
matter for wonder how any are still found so besotted as to fall its victim.
We had protracted our sitting
far into the night, and I had at length effected the manœuvre of getting
Glendinning as my sole antagonist. The game, too, was my favorite ecarte. The
rest of the company, interested in the extent of our play, had abandoned their
own cards, and were standing around us as spectators. The parvenu, who had been
induced by my artifices in the early part of the evening, to drink deeply, now
shuffled, dealt, or played, with a wild nervousness of manner for which his
intoxication, I thought, might partially, but could not altogether account.
In a very short period he had
become my debtor to a large amount, when, having taken a long draught of port,
he did precisely what I had been coolly anticipating—he proposed to double our
already extravagant stakes. With a well-feigned show of reluctance, and not
until after my repeated refusal had seduced him into some angry words which
gave a color of pique to my compliance, did I finally comply. The result, of
course, did but prove how entirely the prey was in my toils: in less than an
hour he had quadrupled his debt.
For some time his countenance
had been losing the florid tinge lent it by the wine; but now, to my
astonishment, I perceived that it had grown to a pallor truly fearful. I say,
to my astonishment. Glendinning had been represented to my eager inquiries as
immeasurably wealthy; and the sums which he had as yet lost, although in
themselves vast, could not, I supposed, very seriously annoy, much less so
violently affect him. That he was overcome by the wine just swallowed, was the
idea which most readily presented itself; and, rather with a view to the
preservation of my own character in the eyes of my associates, than from any
less interested motive, I was about to insist, peremptorily, upon a discontinuance
of the play, when some expressions at my elbow from among the company, and an
ejaculation evincing utter despair on the part of Glendinning, gave me to
understand that I had effected his total ruin under circumstances which,
rendering him an object for the pity of all, should have protected him from the
ill offices even of a fiend.
What now might have been my
conduct it is difficult to say. The pitiable condition of my dupe had thrown an
air of embarrassed gloom over all; and, for some moments, a profound silence
was maintained, during which I could not help feeling my cheeks tingle with the
many burning glances of scorn or reproach cast upon me by the less abandoned of
the party. I will even own that an intolerable weight of anxiety was for a brief
instant lifted from my bosom by the sudden and extraordinary interruption which
ensued. The wide, heavy folding doors of the apartment were all at once thrown
open, to their full extent, with a vigorous and rushing impetuosity that
extinguished, as if by magic, every candle in the room. Their light, in dying,
enabled us just to perceive that a stranger had entered, about my own height,
and closely muffled in a cloak. The darkness, however, was now total; and we
could only feel that he was standing in our midst. Before any one of us could
recover from the extreme astonishment into which this rudeness had thrown all,
we heard the voice of the intruder.
"Gentlemen," he
said, in a low, distinct, and never-to-be-forgotten whisper which thrilled to
the very marrow of my bones, "Gentlemen, I make no apology for this
behavior, because in thus behaving, I am but fulfilling a duty. You are, beyond
doubt, uninformed of the true character of the person who has tonight won at
ecarte a large sum of money from Lord Glendinning. I will therefore put you
upon an expeditious and decisive plan of obtaining this very necessary
information. Please to examine, at your leisure, the inner linings of the cuff
of his left sleeve, and the several little packages which may be found in the
somewhat capacious pockets of his embroidered morning wrapper."
While he spoke, so profound
was the stillness that one might have heard a pin drop upon the floor. In
ceasing, he departed at once, and as abruptly as he had entered. Can I—shall I
describe my sensations? Must I say that I felt all the horrors of the damned?
Most assuredly I had little time for reflection. Many hands roughly seized me
upon the spot, and lights were immediately re-procured. A search ensued.
In the lining of my sleeve were
found all the court cards essential in ecarte, and, in the pockets of my wrapper,
a number of packs, facsimiles of those used at our sittings, with the single
exception that mine were of the species called, technically, arrondees; the
honors being slightly convex at the ends, the lower cards slightly convex at
the sides. In this disposition, the dupe who cuts, as customary, at the length
of the pack, will invariably find that he cuts his antagonist an honor; while
the gambler, cutting at the breadth, will, as certainly, cut nothing for his
victim which may count in the records of the game.
 |
| Discovered! |
"Mr. Wilson," said
our host, stooping to remove from beneath his feet an exceedingly luxurious
cloak of rare furs, "Mr. Wilson, this is your property." (The weather
was cold; and, upon quitting my own room, I had thrown a cloak over my dressing
wrapper, putting it off upon reaching the scene of play.) "I presume it is
supererogatory to seek here (eyeing the folds of the garment with a bitter
smile) for any farther evidence of your skill. Indeed, we have had enough. You
will see the necessity, I hope, of quitting Oxford—at all events, of quitting
instantly my chambers."
Abased, humbled to the dust
as I then was, it is probable that I should have resented this galling language
by immediate personal violence, had not my whole attention been at the moment
arrested by a fact of the most startling character. The cloak which I had worn
was of a rare description of fur; how rare, how extravagantly costly, I shall
not venture to say. Its fashion, too, was of my own fantastic invention; for I
was fastidious to an absurd degree of coxcombry, in matters of this frivolous
nature.
When, therefore, Mr. Preston
reached me that which he had picked up upon the floor, and near the
folding-doors of the apartment, it was with an astonishment nearly bordering
upon terror, that I perceived my own already hanging on my arm (where I had no
doubt unwittingly placed it,) and that the one presented me was but its exact
counterpart in every, in even the minutest possible particular. The singular
being who had so disastrously exposed me, had been muffled, I remembered, in a
cloak; and none had been worn at all by any of the members of our party, with
the exception of myself. Retaining some presence of mind, I took the one
offered me by Preston; placed it, unnoticed, over my own; left the apartment with
a resolute scowl of defiance; and, next morning ere dawn of day, commenced a
hurried journey from Oxford to the continent, in a perfect agony of horror and
of shame.
I fled in vain. My evil
destiny pursued me as if in exultation, and proved, indeed, that the exercise
of its mysterious dominion had as yet only begun. Scarcely had I set foot in
Paris, ere I had fresh evidence of the detestable interest taken by this Wilson
in my concerns. Years flew, while I experienced no relief. Villain!—at Rome,
with how untimely, yet with how spectral an officiousness, stepped he in
between me and my ambition! At Vienna too—at Berlin—and at Moscow! Where, in
truth, had I not bitter cause to curse him within my heart? From his
inscrutable tyranny did I at length flee, panic-stricken, as from a pestilence;
and to the very ends of the earth I fled in vain.
And again, and again, in
secret communion with my own spirit, would I demand the questions "Who is
he?—whence came he?—and what are his objects?" But no answer was there
found. And now I scrutinized, with a minute scrutiny, the forms, and the
methods, and the leading traits of his impertinent supervision. But even here
there was very little upon which to base a conjecture. It was noticeable,
indeed, that, in no one of the multiplied instances in which he had of late
crossed my path, had he so crossed it except to frustrate those schemes, or to
disturb those actions, which, if fully carried out, might have resulted in
bitter mischief. Poor justification this, in truth, for an authority so
imperiously assumed! Poor indemnity for natural rights of self-agency so
pertinaciously, so insultingly denied!
I had also been forced to
notice that my tormentor, for a very long period of time, (while scrupulously
and with miraculous dexterity maintaining his whim of an identity of apparel
with myself,) had so contrived it, in the execution of his varied interference
with my will, that I saw not, at any moment, the features of his face. Be
Wilson what he might, this, at least, was but the veriest of affectation, or of
folly. Could he, for an instant, have supposed that, in my admonisher at
Eton—in the destroyer of my honor at Oxford,—in him who thwarted my ambition at
Rome, my revenge at Paris, my passionate love at Naples, or what he falsely
termed my avarice in Egypt,—that in this, my arch-enemy and evil genius, I
could fail to recognise the William Wilson of my school-boy days,—the namesake,
the companion, the rival,—the hated and dreaded rival at Dr. Bransby's?
Impossible!—But let me hasten to the last eventful scene of the drama.
Thus far I had succumbed
supinely to this imperious domination. The sentiment of deep awe with which I
habitually regarded the elevated character, the majestic wisdom, the apparent
omnipresence and omnipotence of Wilson, added to a feeling of even terror, with
which certain other traits in his nature and assumptions inspired me, had
operated, hithero, to impress me with an idea of my own utter weakness and
helplessness, and to suggest an implicit, although bitterly reluctant
submission to his arbitrary will. But, of late days, I had given myself up
entirely to wine; and its maddening influence upon my hereditary temper
rendered me more and more impatient of control. I began to murmur,—to
hesitate,—to resist. And was it only fancy which induced me to believe that,
with the increase of my own firmness, that of my tormentor underwent a
proportional diminution? Be this as it may, I now began to feel the inspiration
of a burning hope, and at length nurtured in my secret thoughts a stern and
desperate resolution that I would submit no longer to be enslaved.
It was at Rome, during the
Carnival of 18——, that I attended a masquerade in the palazzo of the Neapolitan
Duke Di Broglio. I had indulged more freely than usual in the excesses of the
wine-table; and now the suffocating atmosphere of the crowded rooms irritated
me beyond endurance. The difficulty, too, of forcing my way through the mazes
of the company contributed not a little to the ruffling of my temper; for I was
anxiously seeking (let me not say with what unworthy motive) the young, the
gay, the beautiful wife of the aged and doting Di Broglio.
With a too unscrupulous
confidence she had previously communicated to me the secret of the costume in
which she would be habited, and now, having caught a glimpse of her person, I
was hurrying to make my way into her presence. At this moment I felt a light
hand placed upon my shoulder, and that ever-remembered, low, damnable whisper
within my ear.
In an absolute frenzy of wrath,
I turned at once upon him who had thus interrupted me, and seized him violently
by the collar. He was attired, as I had expected, in a costume altogether
similar to my own; wearing a Spanish cloak of blue velvet, begirt about the
waist with a crimson belt sustaining a rapier. A mask of black silk entirely
covered his face.
"Scoundrel!" I
said, in a voice husky with rage, while every syllable I uttered seemed as new
fuel to my fury; "scoundrel! impostor! accursed villain! you shall not—you
shall not dog me unto death! Follow me, or I stab you where you
stand!"—and I broke my way from the ball-room into a small ante-chamber
adjoining, dragging him unresistingly with me as I went.
Upon entering, I thrust him
furiously from me. He staggered against the wall, while I closed the door with
an oath, and commanded him to draw. He hesitated but for an instant; then, with
a slight sigh, drew in silence, and put himself upon his defence.
The contest was brief indeed.
I was frantic with every species of wild excitement, and felt within my single
arm the energy and power of a multitude. In a few seconds I forced him by sheer
strength against the wainscoting, and thus, getting him at mercy, plunged my
sword, with brute ferocity, repeatedly through and through his bosom.
At that instant some person
tried the latch of the door. I hastened to prevent an intrusion, and then
immediately returned to my dying antagonist. But what human language can
adequately portray that astonishment, that horror which possessed me at the
spectacle then presented to view? The brief moment in which I averted my eyes
had been sufficient to produce, apparently, a material change in the
arrangements at the upper or farther end of the room. A large mirror,—so at
first it seemed to me in my confusion—now stood where none had been perceptible
before; and, as I stepped up to it in extremity of terror, mine own image, but
with features all pale and dabbled in blood, advanced to meet me with a feeble
and tottering gait.
 |
| Wilson confronts his "double" in an illustration by Arthur Rackham 1935 |
It was Wilson; but he spoke
no longer in a whisper, and I could have fancied that I myself was speaking
while he said:
"You have conquered, and I yield. Yet,
henceforward art thou also dead—dead to the World, to Heaven and to Hope! In me
didst thou exist—and, in my death, see by this image, which is thine own, how
utterly thou hast murdered thyself."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
 |
| E.A. Poe, 1849 |
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