Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. II, No. X., March 1851

by Various

I.

The sapling, green and tender, yields readily to wind and sun and the hand of the trainer; the grown tree resists the storm, and 'tis well with it if it be not torn up by the roots; the aged trunk, dried to the core, spreads out its branches and perishes. This is human life.

At first, all wonder and curiosity, we are moulded by surrounding circumstances, which often affect our after lives, as colors laid at the root of bulbous plants are said to transmit their tints to the blossom; next comes the age of knowledge, when reason struggles with passion, and is not always the victor; lastly, the decay, when passion is extinct, and we live on a little longer on our memories, and then drop into dust.

When I formed the resolution to set down the events that have agitated my life, and marked it out with a strange difference from the lives of other men, I did not see the difficulties that beset my confession on the very threshold. They grew upon me by degrees. The more I reflected on it, the more reluctance I felt at the thought of writing about things which no man would believe. Looking back upon them from the verge of the grave, which can not now be long untenanted, they seem, even to me, more like fantastic dreams or wild allegories than real occurrences. How then can I expect others to accept as true a narration which contradicts their experience and convictions, and which I can not elucidate myself? I can explain nothing; I can only relate what has happened to me, careful not to deviate a hair's breadth into exaggeration. It would be little to the purpose to say that truth is stranger than fiction, an axiom which every body admits as a loose generality, but which nobody will consent to apply in the instances by which it is illustrated. I can attest, out of my own knowledge, that truth often presents inexplicable phenomena, and is sometimes irreconcilable with the laws of nature. But who will credit me, I said, when I narrate such things?

Again and again I approached the subject, and as often recoiled from the execution of my design. It was only by repeated efforts that I summoned up sufficient moral courage to overcome the fear and shame that overwhelmed me, from the apprehension that I should be regarded as one who had been himself deceived, or who was practicing a deception on others. A patient examination of the motives upon which my resolution was founded, determined me, however, to brave all such risks, in the assurance that they who, exercising their literal judgment, as they have a right to do, might see reason for doubting my veracity, could not fail, upon the whole, to draw a practical moral from my revelations. For the rest, I must appease my own scruples by declaring that I have herein written nothing that is not strictly true, and related exactly as it occurred.

II.

My earliest recollections of my father do not extend to his form or lineaments. I remember nothing of him except his voice, the tone of which lingers as distinctly in my ear to this hour as if I had heard it yesterday. It was low and tremulous, and seemed to have a thrill in it of suffering, or anger, I know not which. The only parent I knew was my mother, with whom I lived in a solitude that I can not contemplate at this distance of time without shuddering.

Our house was situated on a lonely moor in the north of England, close upon the bleak border—a dismal neighborhood, savage, cold, and desolate. It was built so far back as the reign of Richard II., and with its flanking walls, crumbling on all sides into ruin, and its paved court-yards, covered a considerable area. Most of the apartments were large and gloomy, and hung with arras of so great an age, that the colors had grown dim, and the thread in many places appeared to be dropping into powder. Long corridors and smaller rooms ran round the quadrangle; and as the uses for which this huge pile was designed by its founders had long since passed away with the bands of retainers and extravagant pomp that distinguished the days of feudal hospitality and royal progresses, only a small part of it was kept up in an inhabitable condition by my mother. Unfortunately for my after life, the part so preserved lay in the very centre of the mansion, approachable only by dark passages, utterly obscure at night, and barely lighted in the day-time by narrow latticed windows, such as we see indented in the thick walls of old cloisters. To reach the inhabited rooms it was necessary to make many windings, to twine up a short spiral stair that led from the outer court, and to traverse two sides of the quadrangle.

This was always a fearful thing to me, which use by no means deprived of its terrors. There were many legends whispered from one to another in the winter nights of revolting crimes which had taken place there in former times, and which rose re-embodied before me as I cowered past the spots where they were said to have been enacted. The aspect of the dreary building, within and without, by day and night, made it all real. If the moon shone brightly into the passages, strange shadows were discernible flitting across the floor or creeping up the walls; and as I involuntarily glanced through shattered doors and inner casements, remnants of armor hanging about, and fragments of tapestry fluttering against the windows, and other relics of a 'sheeted ancestry,' would seem to glide out of the darkness, and fill the open spaces with forms swaying and undulating before my eyes. I remember how my limbs used to totter under me as I tried not to see these sights, and crept on, stifling the fear that was distilling drops of agony over my body by the greater fear of uttering a cry, lest the slightest noise might bring worse horrors round me. I am speaking of my childhood—and children will understand me.

Let no man scoff at these terrors. The wisest and bravest have quailed under them. Skepticism may laugh, but it would be more profitably employed in endeavoring to solve the problems which concern the connection between the material and the spiritual universe. Why is it that adults, as well as children, are impressed with a certain uneasiness in the dark? Not a fear of ghosts, or robbers, or accidents, or of any thing upon which the mind can reason, or of which the senses are cognizant; but a vague consciousness of invisible influences. In the daylight we have no such sensations; they belong exclusively to silence and darkness.