BIRTH OF EDGAR ALLAN POE
Edgar Allan Poe, was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic.
Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre.
Poe is credited with developing the gothic horror story, and being a significant early forerunner of Science~Fiction.
Poe is also credited for creating the genre of detective fiction with his 1841 story, ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’.
This paved the way for fictional sleuths, from Sherlock Holmes, to Nancy Drew.
It is fitting, then, that the author’s own death in 1849, remains one of American literature’s, great unsolved mysteries……
On 27th September 1849, Poe was supposed to board a ferry from Richmond, Virginia, to Baltimore, Maryland, and then on to New York.
The night before the ferry trip he visited a doctor in Richmond, for a fever.
The next few days of Poe’s life, very little is known for certain.
Poe arrived in Baltimore on 28th September, but he didn’t go on to New York.
He turned up in a tavern in Baltimore on 3rd October, in bad shape, nearly unresponsive in what onlookers assumed was an alcoholic stupor.
A note was sent to a local doctor, and Poe was soon admitted to a hospital.
One odd detail is that the clothes Poe had on, did not appear to be his own.
Instead of his usual black wool suit, he was wearing a cheap ill-fitting suit, and a straw hat.
In the hospital, Poe continued to drift in and out of consciousness, hallucinating and speaking nonsense when he was awake.
On 7th October, he passed away, he was just 40 years old.
A Baltimore newspaper reported enigmatically, that the cause of death, had been “congestion of the brain.”
Several theories about Poe’s cause of death have emerged.
The most prominent is that he died from complications of alcoholism.
J.E. Snodgrass, the doctor who saw Poe in the tavern, believed that Poe had been drinking heavily, and that he ultimately succumbed to the tremors and delirium that can accompany alcohol withdrawal.
A number of secondhand accounts seem to support this theory, saying that Poe had encountered acquaintances in Baltimore and gone on a drinking bender.
This would not have been entirely out of character, as Poe had engaged in bouts of heavy drinking throughout his life.
At the time of his death, however, he had recently joined a temperance society.
John Moran, the attending physician at the hospital, was convinced that Poe was not drunk, and hadn’t been drinking in the days leading up to his death.
The duration of his final illness, and the fact that he seemed to recover slightly in the hospital, before worsening and dying, also seemed inconsistent with alcohol withdrawal.
A number of diseases have been proposed as possible causes of Poe’s death, including diabetes, heart disease, epilepsy, and tuberculosis.
One of the most intriguing possibilities, is that Poe may have died from rabies!
Poe’s delirium seemed to get better, and then worsen again over the last days of his life, a pattern observed in patients with late-stage rabies.
Furthermore, Poe’s hospital records indicated that Poe had difficulty drinking water.
This may have been a manifestation, of one of rabies’ characteristic symptoms – a fear of water.
Another theory holds that Poe may have been a victim of a violent crime.
The tavern where Poe was found, was being used as a polling place, it has been proposed that he may have been caught up in an unusual form of electoral fraud known as “cooping.”
In a cooping scheme, gangs working for corrupt politicians, would grab unwilling bystanders off the street and force them to vote repeatedly for a certain candidate.
Victims were often beaten, or forced to drink alcohol, to make them comply.
Disguises were used, to allow the victims to vote multiple times.
This could explain the bizarre outfit, that Poe was wearing when he was discovered.
With the fragmentary, and sometimes contradictory evidence that exists regarding Poe’s last days, it’s hard to imagine that there will ever be a completely satisfactory answer as to what killed him..
? This is one of my favourite Edgar Allan Poe poems,
Annabel~Lee
? It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
? I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea:
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.
? And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.
? The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me—
Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.
? But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we—
Of many far wiser than we—
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:
For the moon never beams,
without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
.
