∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
[column 5:]
Dr. Browne Says There Is No Evidence That Poe Was Drunk When Taken To Hospital
BY WILLIAM HAND BROWNE, M. D.
[Professor of English literature in the Johns Hopkins University; editor of the Southern Review, the Southern Magazine, the Archives of Maryland, the Historical Magazine, etc.]
ALL (or nearly all) the writers who mention the tragic end of Poe's life tell us that on October 3, 1849, he was wandering about Baltimore in a state of intoxication; that he was seized, carried off to a “coop,” drugged, voted at various places and then thrust into the street to die.
Readers will probably be surprised to learn that while these things are possible, there is no proof of any one of them. There is no proof that he was intoxicated, that he was “cooped,” that he was drugged, that he was voted or that he was turned into the street.
The attested facts are these: According to the letter of Mrs. Weiss, of Richmond (cited by Professor Harrison in his biography), Poe was “quite sober” when he took the boat for Baltimore. The next certain news of him is contained in the pencil note from Mr. Walker to Dr. Snodgrass, which I quote in full from a copy made by myself from the original, then in the possession of Mrs. Snodgrass:
BALTIMORE CITY, Oct. 3, 1849.
Dear Sir — There is a gentleman, rather the worse for wear, at Ryan's Fourth ward polls, who goes under the cognomen of Edgar A. Poe, and who appears in great distress, and he says he is acquainted with you, and I assure you he is in need of immediate assistance. Yours in haste,
JOS. W. WALKER.
To Dr. J. E. Snodgrass. [column 6:]
All that we can learn from this is that there was at Ryan's “a gentleman” named Poe, alarmingly ill. There is no intimation of intoxication. It is true that Dr. Snodgrass, writing a statement 18 years later, in which a very shaky memory is helped out by a lively imagination, quotes Walker as saying “in a state of beastly intoxication,” but, unfortunately for himself, the Doctor neglected to destroy the original letter, and we now know that Walker said no such thing.
From Ryan's Poe was taken in an unconscious state to the Washington University Hospital, on Broadway, where he died four days later. Of his condition and last hours we have an account in a letter of Dr. Moran, the resident physician, to Mrs. Clemm, dated November 15, and reproduced by Professor Harrison. In this the Doctor speaks of delirium, but says nothing of intoxication.
Mrs. Moran, who helped to nurse the dying poet, says, in a statement furnished by her nephew: “When the young man was brought into the hospital in a stupor it was supposed he was overcome by drink * * * We soon saw that he was a gentleman,” and the Doctor had him removed to a room near his own apartments. During his intervals of consciousness this good woman read the Bible to him.
As for the “coop,” Mr. E. Spencer, in an article in the New York Herald (cited by Professor Harrison), says that it was not at Ryan's. As for the drugging, voting and turning into the street, there is no evidence at all.
Now, while I concede that the generally accepted account may be true, it entirely lacks proof. There is nothing in the authenticated facts incompatible with the [column 7:] theory that Poe was attacked by brain fever and sought shelter in Ryan's, perhaps the nearest refuge, where his desperate condition alarmed Mr. Walker.
————
Was Poe A Drunkard?
THAT Poe was an habitual drunkard is believed by nearly all of his admirers, but nevertheless there is something to be said against the notion. Poe himself, in a letter to Dr. J. S. Snodgrass, dated April 1, 1841, made the following denial:
I pledge you before God the solemn word of a gentleman that I am temperate even to rigor. * * * At no period of my life was I ever what men call intemperate; I never was in the habit of intoxication; I never drank drams, etc., but for a brief period, while I resided in Richmond and edited the Messenger. I certainly did give way, at long intervals, to the temptation held out on all sides by the spirit of Southern conviviality. My sensitive temperament could not stand an excitement which was an everyday matter to my companions. For some days after each excess I was invariably confined to bed. * * * I have only to repeat to you, in general, my solemn assurances that my habits are as far removed from intemperance as the day from the night. My sole drink is water.
In a letter to George W. Eveleth, January 4, 1848, Poe said:
Six years ago a wife who I loved as no ma ever loved before, ruptured a blood vessel in singing. Her life was despaired of. * * * She recovered partially, and I again hoped. At the end of a year the vessel again broke — then again — again. Each time I felt all the agonies of her death. * * * I am constitutionally sensitive, nervous in an unusual degree. I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity. During these fits of absolute unconsciousness I drank — God only knows how often or how much. As a matter of course my [column 8:] enemies referred the insanity to the drink rather than the drink to the insanity.
Dr. John J. Moran, the physician who attended Poe in his last hours, says in his book, “A Defense of Poe”: “I here affirm that Edgar Allan Poe did not die under the influence of any kind of intoxicating drink,” and Dr. Moran details the circumstances of Poe's being followed on his return to Baltimore, after starting to Philadelphia, by two men who had shadowed him in the train, and being waylaid, drugged and robbed by them, causing his death. Both the conductor of the train and the hackman who took him to the hospital declare he was perfectly sober. Dr. Moran again says:
I here avow that there is no evidence, and never has been, that Poe was ever seen drunk, or that he ever got drunk, from the year 1845 to 1849. We have the clearest testimony that he was a temperate man.
————
Says Poe Was Born Here.
IN an article in the Cosmopolitan Magazine for February, Miss Elizabeth Ellicott Poe, of Washington, writing on the life of Poe, says that the poet was born in Baltimore, despite the usually recorded assertion that he birthplace was Boston, where his parents happened to be playing in a theatrical company.
Miss Poe says that the poet was born at 9 North Front street, in a theatrical boarding house kept by a Mrs. Beard. She submits as evidence “statements of relatives, the fact that he was in Baltimore when two days old at a time when Boston was a week's ride away by coach; the testimony of Mrs. Beard, his statements in memoranda prepared for Griswold, his biographer, and verbally to others; the Encyclopædia Britannica, English biographers and English school records.”
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
Notes:
The main portion of article is a topic that has long been the most contentious and controversial of Poe's life — the idea that drinking was or was not the cause of his mysterious death.
Although there is no definite record of his birth, it is generally accepted that Poe was born in Boston, and this assumption is confirmed by an examination of performances in which his parents appeared. Poe himself stated on more than one occasion that he was a native Bostonian, although he seems to have allowed the misconception that he was born in Baltimore to stand in published biographical information.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
[S:0 - BS, 1909] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - A Poe Bookshelf - Dr. Browne Says That There Is No Evidence That Poe Was Drunk When Taken To Hospital (William Hand Browne, 1909)