HISTORY
*
PROMENADE
DANS
LE
PASSE
Once
upon
a
midnight
dreary:
The
life
and
addictions
of
Edgar
Allan
Poe
Robert
Patterson,
MD
E
dgar
Allan
Poe
was
one
of
America's
most
celebrated
storytellers
and
poets
but
his
life
was
full
of
misfortune
and
disappointment
and
this
may
have
been
the
reason
he
turned
to
alcohol
and
opium.
Evidence
of
his
mental
anguish
and
addictions
is
reflected
in
his
writings.
Mad-
ness
is
commonplace,
strong
drink
is
associated
with
violent
crime,
and
opium
brings
on
peaceful,
dreamlike
states.
Poe
was
born
in
Boston
in
1809,
the
son
of
itinerant
actors.
His
father,
the
son
of
a
famous
Revolutionary
War
general,
was
a
heavy
drinker
and
deserted
the
family
when
Poe
was
18
months
old;
he
died
a
short
time
later
of
tuberculosis.
A
few
months
later
his
TB-stricken
mother
suc-
cumbed
to
a
pneumonia.
At
age
3
Poe
was
adopted
by
a
childless
couple,
John
and
Fran-
ces
Allan,
and
their
surname
be-
came
his
middle
name.
His
new
father,
a
wealthy
Virginia
mer-
chant,
was
miserly
and
emotional-
ly
indifferent
toward
Poe,
but
his
new
mother
was
much
more
affec-
tionate;
she
and
Poe
were
very
close.
The
Allan
family
left
America
to
spend
5
years
in
England,
Robert
Patterson
is
a
resident
in
general
surgery
in
Calgary.
where
Poe
did
well
in
school.
While
abroad,
his
second
mother
contracted
TB.
The
family
re-
turned
to
the
US,
where
Poe
con-
tinued
to
excel
in
academics
and
athletics.
In
1826
he
entered
the
Uni-
versity
of
Virginia.
He
was
briefly
engaged
but
his
fiancee's
father
forced
an
end
to
the
relationship;
it
marked
the
first
of
several
un-
happy
courtships
for
Poe.
He
proved
a
superior
student
but
inferior
gambler,
and
ran
up
large
debts.
At
age
17
he
began
a
lifelong
habit
of
alcohol
abuse.
One
classmate
recalled:
"He
would
always
seize
the
tempting
glass,
generally
unmixed
with
sugar
or
water
-
in
fact,
perfectly
straight
-
and
without
the
least
apparent
pleasure,
swallow
the
contents,
never
pausing
until
the
last
drop
had
passed
his
lips.
One
glass
at
a
time
was
all
that
he
could
take;
but
this
was
sufficient
to
rouse
his
whole
nervous
nature
into
a
state
of
strongest
excite-
ment,
which
found
vent
in
a
con-
tinuous
flow
of
wild,
fascinating
talk
that
irresistibly
enchanted
every
listener
with
siren-like
pow-
er."l
When
news
of
his
adopted
son's
behaviour
reached
John
Al-
lan,
he
withdrew
his
financial
sup-
port
and
Poe
had
to
leave
univer-
sity;
he
enlisted
in
the
military,
spending
2
years
in
the
ranks.
During
this
time,
much
to
Poe's
sorrow,
his
stepmother
died.
Poe
found
refuge
in
the
army
and
later
sought
and
obtained
an
appointment
to
West
Point,
the
military
academy.
There,
with
the
encouragement
of
fellow
cadets,
he
published
a
book
of
poetry.
However,
officer
life
and
its
em-
phasis
on
rigid
obedience
did
not
suit
Poe;
he
was
expelled
from
the
academy
after
just
1
year.
He
moved
to
Baltimore
to
live
with
his
aunt
and
work
as
an
editor.
In
1836,
at
age
27,
he
married
his
13-year-old
cousin,
Virginia
Clemm.
Editing
suited
Poe's
literary
talents
and
allowed
him
time
to
publish
more
of
his
own
poems
and
prose.
Drinking,
however,
remained
a
problem;
after
several
warnings,
he
was
forced
to
resign
his
position.
Having
established
a
reputa-
tion
as
a
writer,
Poe
adopted
a
lifestyle
similar
to
that
of
his
orig-
inal
parents,
making
frequent
moves
that
took
him
from
Rich-
mond,
Virginia,
to
Boston,
New
York
and
Philadelphia.
Although
writing
brought
him
fame,
fortune
was
nowhere
in
sight,
partly
because
of
the
lack
of
copyright
protection.
Poe
strug-
gled
against
poverty
all
his
life
-
for
his
most
famous
poem,
The
Raven,
he
received
$15.
Tragedy
struck
Poe
again
when
tuberculosis
afflicted
his
1246
CAN
MED
ASSOC
J
1992;
147
(8)
LE
15
OCTOBRE
1992
young
wife.
For
years
she
had
suffered
from
recurrent
bouts
of
exsanguinating
hemoptysis,
and
Poe
spent
long
hours
at
her
bed-
side
in
a
vain
effort
to
nurse
her
back
to
health.
TB
provided
the
model
for
the
scourge
in
The
Masque
of
the
Red
Death.
"The
'Red
Death'
had
long
devastated
the
country.
No
pestilence
had
ever
been
so
fatal
or
so
hideous.
Blood
was
its
Avatar
and
its
seal
-
the
redness
and
the
horror
of
blood.
There
were
sharp
pains,
and
sudden
dizziness,
and
then
profuse
bleeding
at
the
pores,
with
dissolution.
The
scarlet
stains
upon
the
body
and
especially
upon
the
face
of
the
victim,
were
the
pest
ban
which
shut
him
out
from
the
aid
and
from
the
sympa-
thy
of
his
fellow-men."
Another
disease
that
might
have
served
as
the
basis
for
one
of
Poe's
tales
is
porphyria.
In
The
Fall
of
the
House
of
Usher,
Roder-
ick
Usher
and
his
twin
sister,
Madeline,
suffered
from
a
familial
disorder
characterized
by
photo-
sensitivity,
hirsutism,
pallor
(ane-
mia),
dysphoric
moods,
peripheral
neuropathies
and
cranial
nerve
dysfunction.
Poe's
apparent
de-
scription
of
the
disease,
perhaps
based
on
the
maladies
of
King
George
III,
preceded
the
first
pub-
lished
cases
of
porphyria
by
50
years.2
Virginia
died
in
1847,
at
age
24.
Poe
grieved
greatly
and
for
a
period
abused
both
alcohol
and
opium,
attempting
suicide
by
overdose.
He
would
later
recall:
"
.
.six
years
ago,
a
wife
whom
I
loved
as
no
man
ever
loved
before
ruptured
a
blood
vessel.
Her
life
was
despaired
of
.
. .
she
recov-
ered
partially
and
I
again
hoped.
At
the
end
of
a
year
the
vessel
broke
again
.
.
.
then
again
.
. .
then
again
.
.
.
again.
I
became
insane,
with
long
intervals
of
hor-
rible
sanity.
During
these
fits
of
absolute
unconsciousness
I
drank
...
God
only
knows
how
often
or
how
much.
As
a
matter
of
course,
my
enemies
referred
the
insanity
to
the
drink
rather
than
the
drink
to
the
insanity."3
The
death
of
a
young
bride
is
one
of
many
recurrent
themes
in
Poe's
writings.
He
wrote
frequent-
ly
of
premature
burial,
opium
dreams,
alcohol
abuse
and
"mad-
ness."
In
several
of
his
short
sto-
ries
the
narrator
is
obviously
mad
and
his
deeds
are
characterized
by
insane
behaviour
and
monologue,
such
as
the
psychotic
ramblings
of
the
murderer
in
Tell-Tale
Heart:
"True!
Nervous,
very,
very
dread-
fully
nervous
I
had
been
and
am;
but
why
will
you
say
that
I
am
mad?
The
disease
had
sharpened
my
senses
-
not
destroyed,
not
dulled
them.
Above
all
was
the
sense
of
hearing
acute.
I
heard
all
things
in
the
heaven
and
in
the
earth.
I
heard
many
things
in
hell.
How,
then,
am
I
mad?"
At
other
times
Poe,
who
suf-
fered
bouts
of
depression,
treated
mental
illness
as
a
much
more
complex
issue,
hinting
that
it
may
even
be
a
gift.
"I
am
come
of
a
race
noted
for
vigor
of
fancy
and
ardor
of
passion,"
he
wrote
in
Eleanora.
"Men
have
called
me
mad:
but
the
question
is
not
yet
settled
whether
madness
is
or
is
not
the
loftiest
intelligence;
whether
much
that
is
glorious,
whether
all
that
is
profound,
does
not
spring
from
disease
of
thought...."
Although
Poe
did
not
fre-
quently
imbibe,
when
he
did
par-
take
he
was
often
a
binge
drinker.
Alcohol
cost
him
dearly
in
terms
of
employment,
relationships,
re-
putation
and
health.
He
struggled
constantly
in
a
one-man
war
against
alcoholism
and
near
the
end
of
his
life
was
active
in
a
temperance
society.
Alcohol
appears
frequently
in
Poe's
stories,
usually
associated
with
some
violent
event.
In
The
Cask
of
Amontillado,
love
of
wine
leads
Fortunato
to
an
early
grave.
In
some
of
Poe's
work
the
narra-
tor
is
an
alcoholic,
as
in
The
Black
Cat,
and
one
cannot
help
but
wonder
how
many
of
the
passages
are
derived
from
personal
experi-
ence:
"
.
.
.
my
general
tempera-
ment
and
character
-
through
the
instrumentality
of
the
Fiend
In-
temperance
-
had
(I
blush
to
confess
it)
experienced
a
radical
alteration
for
the
worst.
I
grew,
day
by
day,
more
moody,
more
irritable,
more
regardless
of
the
feelings
of
others
. .
.
my
disease
grew
upon
me
-
for
what
disease
is
like
Alcohol!"
In
this
story,
written
in
the
style
of
19th-century
temperance
literature,
the
narrator
continues
to
drink
and
violence
soon
creeps
into
the
tale:
"One
night,
return-
ing
home,
much
intoxicated,
from
one
of
my
haunts
about
town,
I
fancied
that
the
cat
avoided
my
presence.
I
seized
him;
when,
in
his
fright
at
my
violence,
he
in-
flicted
a
slight
wound
upon
my
hand
with
his
teeth.
The
fury
of
a
demon
instantly
possessed
me.
I
CAN
MED
ASSOC
J
1992;
147
(8)
1247
Poe
was
often
a
binge
drinker,
and
alcohol
cost
him
dearly
in
terms
of
employment,
relationships,
reputation
and
health.
OCTOBER
15,
1992
knew
myself
no
longer.
My
origi-
nal
soul
seemed,
at
once,
to
take
its
flight
from
my
body;
and
a
more
than
fiendish
malevolence,
gin-nurtured,
thrilled
every
fibre
of
my
frame.
I
took
from
my
waistcoat-pocket
a
penknife,
opened
it,
grasped
the
poor
beast
by
the
throat,
and
deliberately
cut
one
of
its
eyes
from
the
socket....
When
reason
returned
with
the
morning
-
when
I
had
slept
off
the
fumes
of
the
night's
debauch-
ery
-
I
experienced
a
sentiment
half
of
horror,
half
of
remorse,
for
the
crime
of
which
I
had
been
guilty;
but
it
was,
at
best,
a
feeble
and
equivocal
feeling,
and
the
soul
remained
untouched.
I
again
plunged
into
excess,
and
soon
drowned
in
wine
all
memory
of
the
deed."
It
is
worth
noting
that
this
is
not
a
simple
tale
of
all
evil
being
caused
by
alcohol:
the
narrator
is
stone
sober
when
he
murders
his
wife,
suggesting
that
Poe
did
not
blame
all
his
troubles
on
the
bot-
tle.4,5
Poe's
encounters
with
opium
were
less
frequent
than
his
bouts
with
the
bottle,
but
he
would
drink
laudanum,
a
mixture
of
opium
and
alcohol.
In
contrast
to
the
violent
alcohol-inspired
events
he
described,
his
writings
about
opium
often
described
a
trance-
like
state
in
which
the
senses
were
distorted.
In
the
poem
Dream-
land
there
are
seas
without
shores,
bottomless
vales,
shapeless
forms
and
a
landscape
summarized
as
"a
wild,
weird
clime
that
lieth,
sub-
lime,
Out
of
Space
-
out
of
Time."
The
theme
of
altered
percep-
tion
is
explored
further
in
Ligeia,
in
which
the
narrator
is
an
opium
addict
who
was
"habitually
fet-
tered
in
the
shackles
of
the
drug"
and
confesses:
"I
had
become
a
bounden
slave
in
the
trammels
of
opium;
and
my
labours
and
my
orders
had
taken
a
colouring
from
my
dreams."
Reality
and
dreams
intermin-
gle
to
such
an
extent
that
as
the
narrator
sits
by
the
corpse
of
his
second
wife,
the
room
fills
with
shadows
and
patterns
and
the
body
changes
gradually
before
his
eyes
to
that
of
his
first
wife.6-8
In
1849,
life
appeared
to
be
going
well
for
Poe,
who
was
en-
gaged
once
again
and
staying
so-
ber.
In
September
he
left
Rich-
mond
to
travel
to
New
York
on
business.
What
happened
next
re-
mains
a
mystery.
He
was
found
unconscious
in
the
streets
of
Balti-
more
and
taken
to
hospital.
He
had
a
brief
lucid
period
during
which
he
complained
of
a
severe
headache.
Although
offered
alco-
hol
and
an
opiate
to
relieve
the
pain,
he
refused
both.
He
became
restless
and
suffered
from
delu-
sions,
similar
to
an
attack
of
delir-
ium
tremens.
He
then
lapsed
into
unconsciousness,
both
pupils
di-
lated
and
he
died;
the
official
cause
of
death
was
listed
as
"con-
gestion
of
the
brain."
Poe
was
40.
Originally
it
was
thought
he
died
of
encephalitis
secondary
to
hepatic
failure
after
a
drinking
binge.9
An
alternate
hypothesis
is
that
he
may
have
contracted
pneumonia
in
the
cold,
rainy
au-
tumn
weather
-
he
was
still
weak
from
a
bout
of
cholera
that
had
occurred
3
months
earlier.'0
Still
another
possibility
is
that
he
suf-
fered
a
blow
on
the
head.
Poe
was
found
on
an
election
day
on
the
sidewalk
outside
a
polling
station;
he
may
have
been
press-ganged
into
voting,
then
assaulted
and
abandoned.
The
history
of
his
last
few
days
does
appear
consistent
with
a
diagnosis
of
epidural
hema-
toma.3
One
last
mystery
surrounds
Poe's
final
resting
place.
The
day
after
his
death
he
was
buried
qui-
etly
in
an
unmarked
grave
in
the
Poe
family
plot
in
a
Baltimore
cemetery.
Only
three
people
at-
tended
the
funeral.
In
1875,
a
body
thought
to
be
Poe's
was
dug
up
and
moved
to
a
different
site
in
the
same
cemetery
so
that
a
large
monument
could
be
erected.
However,
the
exhumed
body
was
178
cm
tall
and
had
been
buried
in
a
military
uniform;
Poe
was
173
cm
tall
and
had
been
buried
in
civilian
clothing.
It
is
therefore
unlikely
that
the
body
beneath
the
large
headstone
is
Poe's,
a
last
jest
that
would
have
appealed
to
his
love
of
the
bizarre
and
macabre.
How
would
Edgar
Allan
Poe
have
fared
in
today's
world?
Cer-
tainly
the
combination
of
sub-
stance
abuse
and
writing
is
not
uncommon
in
20th-century
au-
thors.
Would
Poe
be
another
Hun-
ter
S.
Thompson,
exploring
the
drug
culture
through
personal
ex-
perience,
or
would
he
fit
in
with
Ken
Kesey's
Merry
Pranksters,
and
tour
the
country
in
a
psyche-
delic
haze?
Perhaps
neither.
His
style
was
too
disciplined
and
his
stories
are
independent
of
the
values
es-
poused
by
any
one
generation.
Poe,
a
loner
who
was
dubbed
"the
High
Priest
of
the
Beautiful,"
left
behind
a
timeless
body
of
works
that
are
as
intriguing
today
as
they
were
150
years
ago.
References
1.
Bonaparte
M:
The
Life
and
Works
of
Edgar
Allan
Poe,
Imago
Publ,
London,
1949:
31-32
2.
Rickman
LS,
Kim
CR:
'Poe-phyria',
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Fall
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the
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1989;
261:
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3.
Courtney
JF:
Addiction
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Allan
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Med
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1972;
100:
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4.
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TJ:
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a
critique
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Mosaic
1986;
19:
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5.
Fisher
BF:
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Very
Spirit
of
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ty.
the
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of
Alcohol
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in
the
Tales
of
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Allan
Poe,
U
of
Maryland,
Baltimore,
1978
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A:
Opium
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the
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U
of
Cal
Pr,
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1968:
132-150
7.
Reece
JB:
Poe's
'Dream-Land'
and
the
imagery
of
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dreams.
In
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8:
24
8.
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JR:
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45:
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Gin,
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FE:
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Poe:
Richmond's
bright
star.
Va
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C:
A
tale
of
ratiocination:
the
death
and
burial
of
Edgar
Allan
Poe.
Md
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1978;
73:
360-374
1248
CAN
MED
ASSOCJ
1992;
147(8)
LE
15
OCTOBRE
1992
