Opium by Martin Booth

written almost entirely under the influence of opium. Unable to write himself, Collins dictated the novel to a staunch-hearted secretary: her two predecessors had resigned their jobs, unable to face working with Collins as he writhed and groaned in pain. The plot, which is complex and tightly written, turns upon opium: the moonstone, a magnificent diamond, was taken by the hero of the tale while he was sleep-walking after having been unknowingly fed opium. When he read the book through, Collins could not recall the ending as being his work. It was not his only plot featuring opium: his earlier stories No Name (1862) and Armadale (1866) also involved laudanum.
    Sir Walter Scott took laudanum whilst writing The Bride of Lammermoor, his doctor prescribing 6 grains of laudanum a day for a painful stomach complaint. Scott disliked opium for it depressed him and, to overcome its effects, he took long morning horse-rides to rid himself of what he called ‘the accursed vapours’. When the novel was finished, and Scott read the manuscript, he stated he could remember not one incident, character or conversation from the story. As Scott’s method of working was to ‘lie in bed in the mornings simmering over things for an hour or so before I get up – and there’s the time when I am dressing to overhaul my half-sleeping, half-waking project de chapitre – and when I get the paper before me, it commonly runs off pretty easily’, it is no wonder The Bride of Lammermoor was so alien to its author he would be waking and writing after a night of opium depression, a state superbly described in the heroine of the novel, Lucy Ashton, whose neurosis and anxiety lead to insanity.
    That neither Wilkie Collins nor Sir Walter Scott recognised their own work does not suggest opium gave them something which had not originally existed within them in the first place. Collins had researched gemmology, India and somnambulism before embarking upon his novel and the historical background and geographical settings of Scott’s tale were familiar to him. Just as De Quincey had pointed out, if one talked of oxen, opium represented them: here were sustained examples of knowledge being recycled by opium.
    Other writers were indebted and, in some instances, enslaved to opium. As Wilkie Collins reported, Bulwer Lytton took opium as a tranquilliser and stimulant, most probably introduced to it as a painkiller for the excruciating earaches he experienced throughout his life: his elder brother, who lived in Constantinople, might have prompted his first dose, for he suffered from migraines and was an addict who described the effects of taking opium as being like having one’s soul rubbed down with silk. Bramwell Brontë, the brother of the Brontë sisters, was an addict, whilst Byron and Shelley were occasional users. James Thomson experimented with it but he was to die from alcoholism whilst, towards the end of the nineteenth century, the poet Francis Thompson was heavily addicted. Baudelaire, born in 1821, was a heavy hashish user for many years but he turned late in life to opium, his poetry paying homage to it. There are reasons to consider others as candidates for opium usage: Hector Berlioz, Gérard de Nerval and, in later years, Arthur Rimbaud and Maurice Rollinat were also either addicted or influenced by it.
    It is fair to say most writers came across opium in the first place as an anodyne and only subsequently fell under its sway, the dreams and nightmares weaving themselves into their work often to become an essential and unavoidable part of it. Yet there were those who regarded opium as a boon to their writing, who had been afforded the opportunity of giving it up but chose to keep on with it. For them, opium was a path to the unattainable, a doorway into the cosmos. None realised, or chose to heed, De Quincey’s remarks that opium only displayed what was already in the mind.
    For many addicted writers, opium