Where Is My Lady

Scene 1 of Usher House
Roderick greets his old school chum Poe at the door of his library, and leads him in as they share lively memories. Roderick has arranged a ball that night in Poe’s honor. The other guests will all be family members who are old guests at Usher House. Poe guesses correctly that the house was built in Anglo-Saxon and Celtic times in Cornwall or Devon. Roderick shows him old references to it in books on his shelves. All warn of danger. Exon Domesday Book is quoted: Edward the Confessor had ordered Usher House to be torn apart, stone by stone, and the stones cast into a neighboring tarn. Both men laugh at such monkish superstition. Roderick confirms, however, that his father had drained the tarn, found the stones, and rebuilt the house in Georgia next to a tarn like the first.

A knock on the door. Enter Roderick’s sister Madeline, mad and yet angelic, like Ophelia or Lucia, with her physician Primus. Both men have the breeding to notice nothing amiss. Poe had met her, still sane, when she had visited Roderick at school. Poe sings a song, “Where is my Lady?”, which she had sung there to verse written by Poe and music composed by Roderick. Madeline and Primus leave. Roderick assures Poe that the medical knowledge stored in Usher House will restore her sanity. Then he collapses. He begs Poe to take her to Boston at daybreak, at Roderick’s expense, to find a cure. Poe swears that he will. Another knock. The guests have arrived.