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 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 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 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 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 _outré_. 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 siècle
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
everyday 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 me in 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
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
faucal 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 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 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 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 endeavours
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
master 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 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 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.