Section Three: Early Important Writers and Works

Washington Irving(1783-1859)

I. Life and Works

The youngest of 11 children born to a well-to-do New York merchant family, Washington Irving became a cultural and diplomatic ambassador to Europe, like Benjamin Franklin and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Through friends, he was able to publish his The Sketch Book (1819-1820) simultaneously in England and America, obtaining copyrights and payment in both countries.

The Sketch Book of Geoffrye Crayon (Irving's penname) contains his two best-remembered stories, "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. This book aptly describes Irving's delicate, elegant, yet seemingly casual style. In The Sketch Book, Irving transforms the Catskill Mountains along the Hudson River north of New York City into a fabulous, magical region.

American readers gratefully accepted Irving's imagined "history" of the Catskills, despite the fact (unknown to them) that he had adapted his stories from a German source. Irving gave America something it badly needed in the brash, materialistic early years: an imaginative way of relating to the new land.

No writer was as successful as Irving at humanizing the land, endowing it with a name and a face and a set of legends. The story of "Rip Van Winkle," who slept for 20 years, waking to find that the colonies had become independent, eventually became folklore. It was adapted for the stage, went into the oral tradition, and was gradually accepted as authentic American legend by generations of Americans.

Irving discovered and helped satisfy the raw new nation's sense of history. His numerous works may be seen as his devoted attempts to build the new nation's soul by recreating history and giving it living, breathing, imaginative life. For subjects, he chose the most dramatic aspects of American history: the discovery of the New World, the first president and national hero, and the westward exploration. His earliest work was a sparkling, satirical History of New York (1809) under the Dutch, written by Diedrich Knickerbocker (hence the name of Irving's friends and New York writers of the day, the "Knickerbocker School"). His later writings include biographies of Christopher Columbus and George Washington, travel books, and---especially---a series of wonderful tales, modeled on folklore but containing a humorous, typically American (and typically Romantic) fascination with the exotic, the ancient, and the odd.

In 1832 Irving returned from Europe to New York where he established his home Sunnyside in Tarrytown.  On November 28, 1859, on the eve of the Civil War, Washington Irving died at Sunnyside surrounded by his family. He was buried in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery at the Old Dutch Church in Sleepy Hollow, N.Y.

II. Contributions

1. He was the first American writer to gain international fame, which is a sign to show that American literature independent.

2. He started the writing of short story as a literary genre.

3. His writing marked the beginning of Romanticism in American literature.

III. His Writing Characteristics

1. His writing is humorous. He intends to amuse readers instead of teaching and instructing them.

2. The characters in his works are both vivid and true.

3. He is apt at finished, refined and musical language.

IV. Introduction to the Story of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow takes place in Tarrytown. It tells the story of schoolmaster, Ichabod Crane, a Connecticut native, who comes to teach in a one-room schoolhouse. Subsequently, he becomes the neighborhood song master, reads Cotton Mather and makes himself in local folklore. Foremost of all, he competes with Brom Bones for the love of Katrina. One afternoon, after being refused by Katrina, he briskly rides off on his landlord's horse. On his way, he sees a specter of a headless horseman, and is never seen again in Sleepy Hollow. The townspeople have a lot of guesses about his disappearance.

Selected Reading of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

In the bosom of one of those spacious coves which indent the eastern shore of the Hudson, at that broad expansion of the river denominated by the ancient Dutch navigators the Tappan Zee, and where they always prudently shortened sail, and implored the protection of St. Nicholas when they crossed, there lies a small market-town or rural port, which by some is called Greensburgh, but which is more generally and properly known by the name of Tarry Town. This name was given, we are told, in former days, by the good housewives of the adjacent country, from the inveterate propensity of their husbands to linger about the village tavern on market days. Be that as it may, I do not vouch for the fact, but merely advert to it, for the sake of being precise and authentic. Not far from this village, perhaps about two miles, there is a little valley, or rather lap of land, among high hills, which is one of the quietest places in the whole world. A small brook glides through it, with just murmur enough to lull one to repose; and the occasional whistle of a quail, or tapping of a woodpecker, is almost the only sound that ever breaks in upon the uniform tranquillity.    

I recollect that, when a stripling, my first exploit in squirrel-shooting was in a grove of tall walnut-trees that shades one side of the valley. I had wandered into it at noon time, when all nature is peculiarly quiet, and was startled by the roar of my own gun, as it broke the Sabbath stillness around, and was prolonged and reverberated by the angry echoes. If ever I should wish for a retreat, whither I might steal from the world and its distractions, and dream quietly away the remnant of a troubled life, I know of none more promising than this little valley.    

From the listless repose of the place, and the peculiar character of its inhabitants, who are descendants from the original Dutch settlers, this sequestered glen has long been known by the name of SLEEPY HOLLOW, and its rustic lads are called the Sleepy Hollow Boys throughout all the neighboring country. A drowsy, dreamy influence seems to hang over the land, and to pervade the very atmosphere. Some say that the place was bewitched by a high German doctor, during the early days of the settlement; others, that an old Indian chief, the prophet or wizard of his tribe, held his pow-wows there before the country was discovered by Master Hendrick Hudson. Certain it is, the place still continues under the sway of some witching power, that holds a spell over the minds of the good people, causing them to walk in a continual reverie. They are given to all kinds of marvellous beliefs; are subject to trances and visions; and frequently see strange sights, and hear music and voices in the air. The whole neighborhood abounds with local tales, haunted spots, and twilight superstitions; stars shoot and meteors glare oftener across the valley than in any other part of the country, and the nightmare, with her whole nine fold, seems to make it the favorite scene of her gambols.    

The dominant spirit, however, that haunts this enchanted region, and seems to be commander-in-chief of all the powers of the air, is the apparition of a figure on horseback without a head. It is said by some to be the ghost of aHessian trooper, whose head had been carried away by a cannon-ball, in some nameless battle during the revolutionary war; and who is ever and anon seen by the country folk hurrying along in the gloom of night, as if on the wings of the wind. His haunts are not confined to the valley, but extend at times to the adjacent roads, and especially to the vicinity of a church at no great distance. Indeed, certain of the most authentic historians of those parts, who have been careful in collecting and collating the floating facts concerning this spectre, allege that the body of the trooper, having been buried in the church-yard, the ghost rides forth to the scene of battle in nightly quest of his head; and that the rushing speed with which he sometimes passes along the Hollow, like a midnight blast, is owing to his being belated, and in a hurry to get back to the church-yard before daybreak.    

Such is the general purport of this legendary superstition, which has furnished materials for many a wild story in that region of shadows; and the spectre is known, at all the country firesides, by the name of the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow.    

It is remarkable that the visionary propensity I have mentioned is not confined to the native inhabitants of the valley, but is unconsciously imbibed by every one who resides there for a time. However wide awake they may have been before they entered that sleepy region, they are sure, in a little time, to inhale the witching influence of the air, and begin to grow imaginative-to dream dreams, and see apparitions.     

I mention this peaceful spot with all possible laud; for it is in such little retired Dutch valleys, found here and there embosomed in the great State of New-York, that population, manners, and customs, remain fixed; while the great torrent of migration and improvement, which is making such incessant changes in other parts of this restless country, sweeps by them unobserved. They are like those little nooks of still water which border a rapid stream; where we may see the straw and bubble riding quietly at anchor, or slowly revolving in their mimic harbor, undisturbed by the rush of the passing current. Though many years have elapsed since I trod the drowsy shades of Sleepy Hollow, yet I question whether I should not still find the same trees and the same families vegetating in its sheltered bosom.     

In this by-place of nature, there abode, in a remote period of American history, that is to say, some thirty years since, a worthy wight of the name of Ichabod Crane; who sojourned, or, as he expressed it, “tarried,” in Sleepy Hollow, for the purpose of instructing the children of the vicinity. He was a native of Connecticut; a State which supplies the Union with pioneers for the mind as well as for the forest, and sends forth yearly its legions of frontier woodsmen and country schoolmasters. The cognomen of Crane was not inapplicable to his person. He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weather-cock, perched upon his spindle neck, to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield.     

His school-house was a low building of one large room, rudely constructed of logs; the windows partly glazed, and partly patched with leaves of old copy-books. It was most ingeniously secured at vacant hours, by a withe twisted in the handle of the door, and stakes set against the window shutters; so that, though a thief might get in with perfect ease, he would find some embarrassment in getting out; an idea most probably borrowed by the architect, Yost Van Houton, from the mystery of an eel-pot. The school-house stood in a rather lonely but pleasant situation just at the foot of a woody hill, with a brook running close by, and a formidable birch tree growing at one end of it. From hence the low murmur of his pupils’ voices, conning over their lessons, might be heard in a drowsy summer’s day, like the hum of a bee-hive; interrupted now and then by the authoritative voice of the master, in the tone of menace or command; or, peradventure, by the appalling sound of the birch, as he urged some tardy loiterer along the flowery path of knowledge. Truth to say, he was a conscientious man, and ever bore in mind the golden maxim, “Spare the rod and spoil the child.”-Ichabod Crane’s scholars certainly were not spoiled.   

I would not have it imagined, however, that he was one of those cruel potentates of the school, who joy in the smart of their subjects; on the contrary, he administered justice with discrimination rather than severity; taking the burthen off the backs of the weak, and laying it on those of the strong. Your mere puny stripling, that winced at the least flourish of the rod, was passed by with indulgence; but the claims of justice were satisfied by inflicting a double portion on some little, tough, wrong-headed, broad-skirted Dutchurchin, who sulked and swelled and grew dogged and sullen beneath the birch. All this he called “doing his duty by their parents;” and he never inflicted a chastisement without following it by the assurance, so consolatory to the smarting urchin, that “he would remember it, and thank him for it the longest day he had to live.”   

When school hours were over, he was even the companion and playmate of the larger boys; and on holiday afternoons would convoy some of the smaller ones home, who happened to have pretty sisters, or good housewives for mothers, noted for the comforts of the cupboard. Indeed it behooved him to keep on good terms with his pupils. The revenue arising from his school was small, and would have been scarcely sufficient to furnish him with daily bread, for he was a huge feeder, and though lank, had the dilating powers of an anaconda; but to help out his maintenance, he was, according to country custom in those parts, boarded and lodged at the houses of the farmers, whose children he instructed. With these he lived successively a week at a time; thus going the rounds of the neighborhood, with all his worldly effects tied up in a cotton handkerchief.    

That all this might not be too onerous on the purses of his rustic patrons, who are apt to consider the costs of schooling a grievous burden, and schoolmasters as mere drones, he had various ways of rendering himself both useful and agreeable. He assisted the farmers occasionally in the lighter labors of their farms; helped to make hay; mended the fences; took the horses to water; drove the cows from pasture; and cut wood for the winter fire. He laid aside, too, all the dominant dignity and absolute sway with which he lorded it in his little empire, the school, and became wonderfully gentle and ingratiating. He found favor in the eyes of the mothers, by petting the children, particularly the youngest; and like the lion bold, which whilom so magnanimously the lamb did hold, he would sit with a child on one knee, and rock a cradle with his foot for whole hours together.    

In addition to his other vocations, he was the singing-master of the neighborhood, and picked up many bright shillings by instructing the young folks in psalmody. It was a matter of no little vanity to him, on Sundays, to take his station in front of the church gallery, with a band of chosen singers; where, in his own mind, he completely carried away the palm from the parson. Certain it is, his voice resounded far above all the rest of the congregation; and there are peculiar quavers still to be heard in that church, and which may even be heard half a mile off, quite to the opposite side of the mill-pond, on a still Sunday morning, which are said to be legitimately descended from the nose of Ichabod Crane. Thus, by divers little make-shifts in that ingenious way which is commonly denominated “by hook and by crook,” the worthy pedagogue got on tolerably enough, and was thought, by all who understood nothing of the labor of headwork, to have a wonderfully easy life of it.   

The schoolmaster is generally a man of some importance in the female circle of a rural neighborhood; being considered a kind of idle gentlemanlike personage, of vastly superior taste and accomplishments to the rough country swains, and, indeed, inferior in learning only to the parson. His appearance, therefore, is apt to occasion some little stir at the tea-table of a farmhouse, and the addition of a supernumerary dish of cakes or sweetmeats, or, peradventure, the parade of a silver tea-pot. Our man of letters, therefore, was peculiarly happy in the smiles of all the country damsels. How he would figure among them in the churchyard, between services on Sundays! gathering grapes for them from the wild vines that overrun the surrounding trees; reciting for their amusement all the epitaphs on the tombstones; or sauntering, with a whole bevy of them, along the banks of the adjacent mill-pond; while the more bashful country bumpkins hung sheepishly back, envying his superior elegance and address.   

From his half itinerant life, also, he was a kind of travelling gazette, carrying the whole budget of local gossip from house to house; so that his appearance was always greeted with satisfaction. He was, moreover, esteemed by the women as a man of great erudition, for he had read several books quite through, and was a perfect master of Cotton Mather’s history of New England Witchcraft, in which, by the way, he most firmly and potently believed....

Topic Discussion:
1. How would you like to comment on Ichabod Crane in the story?
2. What are the artistic features of Irving’s writing?

James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851)

I. Life and works

James Fenimore Cooper was America's first successful popular novelist. Son of the prominent federalist William Cooper, founder of the Cooperstown settlement, James was educated at Yale in preparation for a genteel life as a federalist gentleman. He was expelled in his junior year because of improper behavior. He went and spent five years at sea; then, while still in his early twenties, he inherited his father's vast fortune and settled down to a life of comfort and even luxury. Cooper quickly squandered his inheritance, and at thirty was on the verge of bankruptcy. His career as an author began quite by accident. One day while reading an English novel, he was so disgusted with it that he threw it down and said he could do better. His wife challenged him and he decided to try his hand at writing as a career, carefully modeling his work after Sir Walter Scott's successful Waverley Novels. His first novel, Precaution (1820), a domestic comedy set in England, lost money, but Cooper had discovered his vocation.

Cooper established his reputation after his second novel, The Spy, and in his third book, the autobiographical Pioneers (1823), Cooper introduced the character of Natty Bumppo, a unique American personification of rugged individualism and the pioneer spirit. Emerson called Pioneers "our first national novel." A second book featuring Bumppo, The Last of the Mohicans (1826), quickly became the most widely read work of the day, consolidating Cooper's popularity in the U.S. and in Europe.

Cooper was a prolific writer, publishing 32 novels, 12 works of nonfiction, a play and numerous pamphlets and articles. His most lasting contributions to American literature were his five books about Natty Bumppo, varying in genre from romantic adventure to realistic narrative. Later anthologized as The Leatherstocking Tales, they are best read in the order written: The Pioneers (1823), The Last of the Mohicans (1826), The Prairie (1827), The Pathfinder (1840), and The Deerslayer (1841). Cooper's popularity declined in his later years as he entered into the nationalistic and partisan disputes of the Jacksonian era, becoming increasingly contentious toward reviewers and the public. His Leatherstocking series, however, continue to maintain a cultural significance in the American literary canon.

II. His significance

1. He is the first real national writer

Irving's writing is based on European legend; however, Cooper's writing is based on the real American settings, scenes and characters.

2. He is considered the first American writer in the writing of three types of novels.

Historical romance---The Spy (1821)

Sea adventure tale---The Pilot (1824)

Frontier novel---Leatherstocking Tales (1823-1841)

3. He wrote about Indians who are among the first Indians to appear in American fiction.

He is called the American Scott.

III. Writing features

1. Strong Points: there is a variety of incidents and tension, complicated plot and structure, and a beautiful description of nature.

2. Weak Points: his style is dreadful, his characterization is weak and his language, especially his use of dialect, is not authentic.

IV. Leatherstocking Tales

1. The Pioneers (1823): The story takes place in a raw frontier-village on Lake Champlain, at the end of the eighteenth century. Natty Bumppo, who insists on man’s old forest freedom conflicts with Judge Temple, standing at the head of the squire-archy on the frontier, for whom man remains savage without law and order. Judge Temple makes some deer-laws forbidding shooting out of season, but Leatherstocking, Natty Bumppo’s another name, breaks it somehow. He is arrested, tried and found guilty. He finally escapes with his young friend, Oliver Effingham’s help, who tells the truth about his own identity as the grandson of Major Effingham, with whom Leatherstocking has served in the frontier wars, before Oliver and Elizabrth, Judge temple’s daughter, are duly married.

2. The Last of the Mohicans (1826): Natty Bumppo, a matured and seasoned scout, is known as Hawkeye. The central event is the capture of the British Fort William Henry by the French and their Huron allies in 1757. The English commander’s daughters, Cora and Alice Munro, have been guided through the forest by Nagua, an Indian secret agent of the French, who hopes to gain possession of Cora by betraying the party to the French. Haweye has foiled this plot, assisted by his faithful friends, the Delaware chieftain Chingachgook and his warrior son Uncas, and by David Gamut, a wandering music master.

3.The Prairie (1827): Natty Bumpo, or Leatherstocking is nearly ninety at the time of his death in 1804. He has abandoned the dwindling forests of the East where, as he thinks, the new settlements have brought a kind of sophisticated softness; and he has followed the frontier to the Indian country of the great western plains. There in his old age his skill and bravery have won him the reverence due a “white sachem” from the Pawness, among whom he has settled down to meet his death, still “the trapper” with is hound Hector and the famous rifle, ill-deer.”

4. The Pathfinder (1840): The story takes place at The Great Lakes. Natty, a man of about thirty-five makes an abortive proposal to a beautiful girl, daughter of the Sergeant at the Fort. It is also set during the war, and mainly talks about betrayal and love. Jasper Western, a sailor is suspected of being disloyal to the English, is arrested to the despair of Mabel, who is in love with him. The real traitor is Muir - the lieutenant who had accused Jasper. He is killed by Arrowhead, a Tuscarora Indian.

5.The Deerslayer (1841): Young Natty is involved in the French and Indian Wars against the hostile Huron Indians (allies of the French) near Lake Otsego, New York. Early in the novel, he had been trained as a hunter by the friendly Delawares and had won the name Deerslayer. Now, however, the Hurons have captured him. They have released him to accomplish a mission for them, but he is on his word of honor to return at an appointed hour. The mission has been unsuccessful.   

V. Importance of the novels

1. It is a creation of American myth in its formative period.

D.H. Lawrence comments: "The Leatherstocking novels... go backward, from old age to golden youth. That is the true myth of America." It is about the creation of American nation: it started “old” with an old “skin” of European culture; then the colony died and a new nation was born.

2. It creates a typical American hero.

The central figure in the novel, Natty Bumppo, always with a pair of leatherstocking, goes by the various names of Leatherstocking, Deerslayer, Pathfinder and Hawkeye. He is a master of all skills and has deep love for nature and sympathy for people. He embodies the idea of brotherhood of man and of nature and freedom.

Edgar Allan Poe(1809-1849)

I. His life and works

Edgar Allan Poe was a famous American poet, short story writer, journalist, and literary critic who lived from 1809-1849. He was born in Boston on January 19th, 1809 and was orphaned at an early age, after which he was sent to live with a foster family (The Allans) in Richmond. He was never officially adopted by the Allans and he was eventually disowned by the family.

Poe won a short story contest in 1833, and two years later became a literary critic for the magazine (The Southern Literary Messenger). Shortly after, he then married his 13-year-old cousin, Virginia in 1836. He became nationally famous upon the publication of his poem The Raven in 1845.

His life was marred by infrequent but intense drinking, which gave him a bad reputation. However, he continued to produce excellent short stories (Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Gold Bug), which brought him acclaim in America, England, and especially in France.

Unfortunately, after the death of Poe's wife (1847), he fell apart and died two years later on October 7, 1849. Poe's controversial life and reputation have earned him the following comments no less:
With the aid of his psychological stories, critics have proclaimed him necrophilic, dipsomanic, paranoid, impotent, neurotic, oversexed, a habitual taker of drugs, until all that is left in the public eye is an unstable creature sitting gloomily in a dim room, the raven.

Poe is a great writer. In his whole life, he created about 50 short stories, 70 poems and several critical essays and plays. His popularity has been on the increase in the last half of 20th century.

II. His significance

1. He is famous for his various practices in literature forms.

He wrote short stories, poems, and criticism. He is credited with "father of detective story".

2. He is also noted for his criticism.

His critical ideas:

2.1.  Single effect.

2.2.  Beauty.

2.3.  Brevity

2.4.  Originality both in form and content.

2. He introduces the psychological treatment in his writing.

Prior to Freud's theory, he is the first writer in America to make the neurotic as protagonist in writing.

III. Introduction to The Fall of the House of Usher

1. Plot Overview:

It is narrated by a friend of Roderick Usher, whose family used to be rich. Roderick has a twin sister called Madeline, both of whom lived in a decaying and disintegrating house. The sister is so ill that the brother buries her alive and puts the coffin away in one secluded part of the house. Having buried his sister alive, Roderick asked his friend to his house. Then on a stormy night, the sister breaks out of her coffin and dies in embrace of her brother, who then also dies. The house collapses into the lake on the shore of which it has stood. The friend flees in panic and then recalls the story.
  

2. Features of the story

2.1. Brevity: There are 15 pages in all.

2.2. Single effect: to make gloomy and horror atmosphere, which is the center of the writing.

There are many words used to strength the horror atmosphere, such as winter evening, dry land, broken house and half-cut-tree likewise.

2.3. Originality in the theme---a man going mad

The house in the story is the symbol of Roderick, therefore when Roderick dies, the house falls down. Further Madeline is the emblem of Roderick’s reason, in fact, his double. From his death, we know when one's reason is buried, one is mad. This is in agreement with Poe's idea that the death of a beautiful woman gives a sense of beauty.

Selected Reading of THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER

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, I 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 reveler 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 re-modelled 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 pitiable mental idiosyncrasy which oppressed him - and of an earnest desire to see me, as his best, and indeed his only personal friend, with a view of attempting, by the cheerfulness of my society, some alleviation of his malady.  It was the manner in which all this, and much more, was said - it was the apparent heart that went with his request - which allowed me no room for hesitation; and I accordingly obeyed forthwith what I still considered a very singular summons.

Although, as boys, we had been even intimate associates, yet I really knew little of my friend.  His reserve had been always excessive and habitual.  I was aware, however, that his very ancient family had been noted, time out of mind, for a peculiar sensibility of temperament, displaying itself, through long ages, in many works of exalted art, and manifested, of late, in repeated deeds ofmunificent yet unobtrusive charity, as well as in a passionate devotion to the intricacies, perhaps even more than to the orthodox and easily recognizable beauties, of musical science.  I had learned, too, the very remarkable fact, that the stem of the Usher race, all time-honored as it was, had put forth, at no period, any enduring branch; in other words, that the entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and had always, with very trifling and very temporary variation, so lain.  It was this deficiency, I considered, while running over in thought the perfect keeping of the character of the premises with the accredited character of the people, and while speculating upon the possible influence which the one, in the long lapse of centuries, might have exercised upon the other - it was this deficiency, perhaps, of collateral issue, and the consequent undeviating transmission, from sire to son, of the patrimony with the name, which had, at length, so identified the two as to merge the original title of the estate in the quaint and equivocal appellation of the "House of Usher" - an appellation which seemed to include, in the minds of the peasantry who used it, both the family and the family mansion.

I have said that the sole effect of my somewhat childish experiment - that of looking down within the tarn - had been to deepen the first singular impression.  There can be no doubt that the consciousness of the rapid increase of my superstition - for why should I not so term it? --- served mainly to accelerate the increase itself.  Such, I have long known, is the paradoxical law of all sentiments having terror as a basis.  And it might have been for this reason only, that, when I again uplifted my eyes to the house itself, from its image in the pool, there grew in my mind a strange fancy - a fancy so ridiculous, indeed, that I but mention it to show the vivid force of the sensations which oppressed me.  I had so worked upon my imagination as really to believe that about the whole mansion and domain there hung an atmosphere peculiar to themselves and their immediate vicinity - an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed trees, and the gray wall, and the silent tarn - a pestilent and mystic vapor, dull, sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaden-hued. Shaking off from my spirit what must have been a dream, I scanned more narrowly the real aspect of the building. Its principal feature seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity. The discoloration of ages had been great.  Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in a fine tangled web-work from the eaves.  Yet all this was apart from any extraordinary dilapidation. No portion of the masonry had fallen; and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts, and the crumbling condition of the individual stones.  In this there was much that reminded me of the specious totality of old wood-work which has rotted for long years in some neglected vault, with no disturbance from the breath of the external air.  Beyond this indication of extensive decay, however, the fabric gave little token of instability.  Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing observer might have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag direction, until it became lost in the sullen waters of the tarn.

Noticing these things, I rode over a short causeway to the house.  A servant in waiting took my horse, and I entered the Gothic archway of the hall.  A valet, of stealthy step, thence conducted me, in silence, through many dark and intricate passages in my progress to the studio of his master.  Much that I encountered on the way contributed, I know not how, to heighten the vague sentiments of which I have already spoken.  While the objects around me - while the carvings of the ceilings, the sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon blackness of the floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies which rattled as I strode, were but matters to which, or to such as which, I had been accustomed from my infancy - while I hesitated not to acknowledge how familiar was all this - I still wondered to find how unfamiliar were the fancies which ordinary images were stirring up.  On one of the staircases, I met the physician of the family.  His countenance, I thought, wore a mingled expression of low cunning and perplexity.  He accosted me with trepidation and passed on.  The valet now threw open a door and ushered me into the presence of his master.

The room in which I found myself was very large and lofty.  The windows were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance from the black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from within. Feeble gleams ofencrimsoned light made their way through the trelliced panes, and served to render sufficiently distinct the more prominent objects around; the eye, however, struggled in vain to reach the remoter angles of the chamber, or the recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling.  Dark draperies hung upon the walls.  The general furniture was profuse, comfortless, antique, and tattered.  Many books and musical instruments lay scattered about, but failed to give any vitality to the scene.  I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow.  An air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded all.

Upon my entrance, Usher arose from a sofa on which he had been lying at full length, and greeted me with a vivacious warmth which had much in it, I at first thought, of an overdone cordiality - of the constrained effort of the ennuyé; man of the world. A glance, however, at his countenance, convinced me of his perfect sincerity. We sat down; and for some moments, while he spoke not, I gazed upon him with a feeling half of pity, half of awe.  Surely, man had never before so terribly altered, in so brief a period, as had Roderick Usher!  It was with difficulty that I could bring myself to admit the identity of the wan being before me with the companion of my early boyhood.  Yet the character of his face had been at all times remarkable.  A cadaverousness of complexion; an eye large, liquid, and luminous beyond comparison ;  lips somewhat thin and very pallid, but of a surpassingly beautiful curve ;  a nose of a delicate Hebrew model, but with a breadth of nostril unusual in similar formations ;  a finely moulded chin, speaking, in its want of prominence, of a want of moral energy; hair of a more than web-like softness and tenuity ;  these features, with an inordinate expansion above the regions of the temple, made up altogether a countenance not easily to be forgotten.  And now in the mere exaggeration of the prevailing character of these features, and of the expression they were wont to convey, lay so much of change that I doubted to whom I spoke.  The now ghastly pallor of the skin, and the now miraculous lustre of the eye, above all things startled and even awed me.  The silken hair, too, had been suffered to grow all unheeded, and as, in its wild gossamer texture, it floated rather than fell about the face, I could not, even with effort, connect its Arabesque expression with any idea of simple humanity.

In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an incoherence - an inconsistency; and I soon found this to arise from a series of feeble and futile struggles to overcome an habitual trepidancy - an excessive nervous agitation.  For something of this nature I had indeed been prepared, no less by his letter, than by reminiscences of certain boyish traits, and by conclusions deduced from his peculiar physical conformation and temperament.  His action was alternately vivacious and sullen.  His voice varied rapidly from a tremulous indecision (when the animal spirits seemed utterly in abeyance) to that species of energetic concision - that abrupt, weighty, unhurried, and hollow-sounding enunciation - that leaden, self-balanced and perfectly modulated guttural utterance, which may be observed in the lost drunkard, or theirreclaimable eater of opium, during the periods of his most intense excitement.

It was thus that he spoke of the object of my visit, of his earnest desire to see me, and of the solace he expected me to afford him.  He entered, at some length, into what he conceived to be the nature of his malady.  It was, he said, a constitutional and a family evil, and one for which he despaired to find a remedy - a mere nervous affection, he immediately added, which would undoubtedly soon pass off.  It displayed itself in a host of unnatural sensations.  Some of these, as he detailed them, interested and bewildered me; although, perhaps, the terms, and the general manner of the narration had their weight.  He suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses; the most insipid food was alone endurable; he could wear only garments of certain texture; the odors of all flowers were oppressive ;  his eyes were tortured by even a faint light ;  and there were but peculiar sounds, and these from stringed instruments, which did not inspire him with horror.

To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden slave.  "I shall perish," said he, "I must perish in this deplorable folly. Thus, thus, and not otherwise, shall I be lost.  I dread the events of the future, not in themselves, but in their results.  I shudder at the thought of any, even the most trivial, incident, which may operate upon this intolerable agitation of soul.  I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect - in terror.  In this unnerved - in this pitiable condition - I feel that the period will sooner or later arrive when I must abandon life and reason together, in some struggle with the grim phantasm, FEAR."

I learned, moreover, at intervals, and through broken and equivocal hints, another singular feature of his mental condition. He was enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the dwelling which he tenanted, and whence, for many years, he had never ventured forth - in regard to an influence whose supposititious force was conveyed in terms too shadowy here to be re-stated - an influence which some peculiarities in the mere form and substance of his family mansion, had, by dint of long sufferance, he said, obtained over his spirit - an effect which the physique of the gray walls and turrets, and of the dim tarn into which they all looked down, had, at length, brought about upon the morale of his existence.

He admitted, however, although with hesitation, that much of the peculiar gloom which thus afflicted him could be traced to a more natural and far more palpable origin - to the severe and long-continued illness - indeed to the evidently approaching dissolution - of a tenderly beloved sister - his sole companion for long years - his last and only relative on earth.  "Her decease," he 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, as 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 endeavors 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 closer 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.

I shall ever bear about me a memory of the many solemn hours I thus spent alone with the master of the House of Usher.  Yet I should fail in any attempt to convey an idea of the exact character of the studies, or of the occupations, in which he involved me, or led me the way.  An excited and highly distempered ideality threw a sulphurous lustre over all.  His long improvised dirges will ring forever in my ears.  Among other things, I hold painfully in mind a certain singular perversion and amplification of the wild air of the last waltz of Von Weber. From the paintings over which his elaborate fancy brooded, and which grew, touch by touch, into vaguenesses at which I shuddered the more thrillingly, because I shuddered knowing not, why from these paintings (vivid as their images now are before me) I would in vain endeavor to educe more than a small portion which should lie within the compass of merely written words.  By the utter simplicity, by the nakedness of his designs, he arrested and overawed attention.  If ever mortal painted an idea, that mortal was Roderick Usher.  For me at least - in the circumstances then surrounding me - there arose out of the pure abstractions which the hypochondriac contrived to throw upon his canvass, an intensity of intolerable awe, no shadow of which felt I ever yet in the contemplation of the certainly glowing yet too concrete reveries ofFuseli.

One of the phantasmagoric conceptions of my friend, partaking not so rigidly of the spirit of abstraction, may be shadowed forth, although feebly, in words.  A small picture presented the interior of an immensely long and rectangular vault or tunnel, with low walls, smooth, white, and without interruption or device.  Certain accessory points of the design served well to convey the idea that this excavation lay at an exceeding depth below the surface of the earth.  No outlet was observed in any portion of its vast extent, and no torch, or other artificial source of light was discernible ; yet a flood of intense rays rolled throughout, and bathed the whole in a ghastly and inappropriate splendor.

I have just spoken of that morbid condition of the auditory nerve which rendered all music intolerable to the sufferer, with the exception of certain effects of stringed instruments.  It was, perhaps, the narrow limits to which he thus confined himself upon the guitar, which gave birth, in great measure, to the fantastic character of his performances. But the fervid facility of his impromptus could not be so accounted for.  They must have been, and were, in the notes, as well as in the words of his wild fantasias (for he not unfrequently accompanied himself with rhymed verbal improvisations), the result of that intense mental collectedness and concentration to which I have previously alluded as observable only in particular moments of the highest artificial excitement. The words of one of these rhapsodies I have easily remembered.  I was, perhaps, the more forcibly impressed with it, as he gave it, because, in the under or mystic current of its meaning, I fancied that I perceived, and for the first time, a full consciousness on the part of Usher, of the tottering of his lofty reason upon her throne.  The verses, which were entitled "The Haunted Palace," ran very nearly, if not accurately, thus:...


Topic Discussion:
1. D.H. Lawrence saw Poe’s stories as the disintegrating process of the soul. What do you think of this comment according to our selected reading?

2. What, do you perceive, are the features of Poe’s short stories after reading the selected pieces?