Text: Philip Alexander Bruce, “Was Poe a Drunkard?,” South Atlantic Quarterly (Durham, NC), vol. XI, no. 1, January 1912, pp. 3-21

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The testimony is practically unanimous as to the attractiveness of Poe's personal appearance and as to the polished decorum of his general demeanor. That face of singular beauty, with its pallid complexion, its projecting brow, luminous eyes, scornful mouth, infirm chin, and overhanging mass of dark hair, stands out before us with all the clear perfection of the countenance of an antique bust. The air of irrepressible melancholy, which seemed to invest his face and figure alike, becomes as perceptible to us as if we ourselves had seen him, not in our imagination, but with our corporal eye. The native refinement, the proud reserve, and the grave dignity of his general manner, — we take it all in, through the recollections of others, with the distinctness of contemporary vision.

Would not one possessing such qualities as these be the last to be suspected of the infirmity which plunged the poet so often into that polluted stream of conduct which appeared so utterly repugnant to his own better nature, — conduct that his enemies, during his life and since his death, have used as a powerful weapon with which to destroy his reputation, — conduct which has compelled even his defenders to fall into a strain of apology that weakens the force of the tribute which they justly pay the general character of the man. Before considering the extent to which judgment on Poe's particular weakness should be moderated, let us see how far his indulgence of that weakness was carried at the different stages of his career.

It has been often affirmed that Edgar when a child, not more that three or four years old, was encouraged by his foster-parents at dinner parties at their home to drink to their guests’ health in sherry or madeira poured from the decanters on the table. Mrs. Weiss contradicts this assertion so far as to say that the liquor really swallowed by the boy was a little sweetened wine diluted with water; and this only on occasions of some distinction. There was no prejudice in the household against the enjoyment of wines; and for this reason, it is not supposable that Edgar, as he [page 4:] grew older, was denied at dinner what all were then in the habit of taking with that meal. Mrs. Shelton, who, as Miss Royster, was for a short time betrothed to him, declares that, throughout their intimate association in Richmond in their youth, she never once perceived him to be under the influence of liquor, although his boon comrade, during that period, was a young man, Ebenezer Berling by name, who was reported to be somewhat inclined to dissipation.

We have seen the extent of the license prevailing at the University when Poe matriculated.* He unquestionably took some part in the reckless gambling which many of his fellow students constantly practiced during his single session. How far did he gratify a taste for drinking in the course of that period? His indulgence could not really have been flagrant, as there is no record of his having been summoned for any offence of this kind before the authorities of the University or the town. Mr. Wirtenbaker [[Wertenbaker]] who kept the minutes of the faculty said that “the often saw Poe in the lecture room and in the library, but never in the slightest degree under the influence of intoxicating liquors’. Among the professors, he had the reputation of being a sober, quiet, and orderly young man. Indeed, the only instance of intemperance clouding his conduct at this time occurred during a frolic in one of the dormitories. His intimate college-mate, Mr. ‘Tucker, remembered that both his card playing and his drinking at the University were “carried on under the spell of impulse or uncontrolled excitement”’. His favorite beverage while a student there was peach and honey though he is said to have cared little for the mere flavor of the liquor itself, — it was the stimulant that he desired, which this mixture probably supplied most quickly. He was never seen to taste his wine with the lingering gusto of a connoisseur. As it was the effect alone that he was seeking, he preferred his liquor to be unadulterated with sugar and water, since these would only serve to dilute it. His manner of drinking was thought by his companions to be peculiar, — he would grasp his full glass with eagerness, and not pausing to draw a single breath, would swallow the contents to the last drop. The work of the fumes was soon perceptible, — before his mates had had time to grow even [page 5:] slightly mellow, his head was in a whirl. One glass was sufficient to upset his balance; but his intoxication seemed only to further inflame his intellectual brilliancy; Mr. Tucker remembered that the excitement caused by the liquor found vent in a “continuous flow of wild, fascinating monologue.”

That these bouts did not occur often enough to seriously clash with the prosecution of his studies, was shown by the high place he kept in his daily recitations, and by his success at the first examinations in winning certificates in the Latin and French languages. And that he left the University without any fixed habits of tippling is proved by his record as a private soldier, and as a petty officer in the regular army, for the space of two years. He enlisted at Boston on May 26, 1827, only a few months after his graduation, and, therefore, before any irregular practices of his college life could have lost their grip upon his tastes. Lieutenant Howard, who was in immediate command over him at Fortress Monroe, testified in April, 1829, that the “young man's conduct was unexceptional”; and that no accusation of drinking could be justly laid against him. ‘His deportment”, said Captain Griswold, ‘has been exemplary, — he has been prompt and faithful in the discharge of his duties, and is highly worthy of confidence”. The language of Colonel Worth was equally commendatory; “Sergeant Poe,” he said, ‘appears to be free from bad habits; and understanding that he is, through his friends, an applicant for a cadet's warrant, I unhesitatingly recommend him as promising to acquit himself of the obligations of that station studiously and faithfully.”

Having obtained the appointment to the West Point Academy, Poe, in a spirit of calculated perversity, failed to sustain without a blot the sober record which he had made as a private soldier. A fellow cadet recalls the fact that he always kept a bottle of brandy in his room; but this may have been as much for his friends’ gratification as for his own, since the same witness was unable to remember a single instance of his having been accused of drunkenness. Whatever the extent of his private dissipation during his sojourn at the Academy, there is no proof that his indulgence in his cups there surpassed his companions’, or that it even equalled theirs. His stay there came to an end in a few months, and while, during a part of this time, he was persistently [page 6:] hatching numerous devices to have himself dismissed, he did not apparently have recourse to intoxication in the public eye to accomplish his purpose the more surely and the more quickly.

In the interval between his return to Baltimore and his departure for Richmond to become the associate editor of the Messenger, his sobriety was so unbroken that Mr. L. A. Wilmer, who was then his constant and intimate companion, declared “that he might have been supposed to be a member of the cold water army”. “His moral deportment,” this witness adds, “so far as my observation extended, was altogether correct.” This was in 1833. Poe was now residing with his aunt, Mrs. Clemm, and was absorbed in romantic composition, both prose and verse. Tamerlane and Al Aaraaf had already been given to the world, as yet indifferent and unappreciative; and the young man further sustained his character as a poet by wearing Byronic collars and a black stock.

This spruceness seems to have been preserved to a remarkable degree even in his fits of drunkenness. The assertion by Mr. Ferguson, a printer on the Messenger, that the poet, when intoxicated, “had as soon lie down in the gutter as anywhere else”, was contradicted with emphasis by Mrs. Weiss, who had been careful to obtain information about his habits from the circle of his surviving friends in Richmond. They declared ‘that never at any time, or by any person,” was he seen reeling through the streets or grovelling on the ground, — “that, in reality, he was deeply mortified, as might have been predicted of him from his pride and reserve, by the thought of even his male friends observing him when in that condition; and that he shrank, with a feeling little short of horror, from exposure to the gaze of ladies when he was disguised by one of these drunken sprees.

Poe himself afterwards sadly acknowledged that, during this part of his life, he yielded to the allurements held out on every side in a southern community, where an invitation to drink was the most frequent expression of the spirit of universal hospitality, and where occasional excesses were not looked upon as altogether unpardonable even in a gentleman. ‘For a brief period”, said he, “while I resided in Richmond as editor of the Messenger, I certainly did give way at long intervals to the temptation . . . my sensitive temperament could not stand an excitement [page 7:] which was an every day matter to my companions. In short, it sometimes happened that I was completely intoxicated. For some days after each excess, I was invariably confined to bed.”

No one deplored this infirmity in his youthful and brilliant assistant more deeply than Mr. White, the owner of the Messenger. “No man is safe,” he wrote, in friendly warning, as early as September, 1835, “‘who drinks before breakfast; no man can do so and attend to business properly.”

There is additional testimony in corroboration of the poet's own confession of his weakness at this time. It was perhaps not simply grief over mere self-abuse in a man of so much genius which caused his friends at this stage of his life to lament his unhappy infirmity. Mr. Ferguson, who knew him in 1835, was no doubt correct in saying that “Mr. Poe was a fine gentleman when he was sober, — he was ever kind and courtly, and at such times everybody liked him, — but when he was drinking, he was about one of the most disagreeable men I ever met.” It was this contrast between the poet sober and the poet tipsy which must have made his spells of intoxication appear all the more deplorable in the eyes of those who were jealous for his reputation. But that Poe was strictly truthful in asserting that his drunken fits, during the time of his connection with the Messenger, were only occasional, is proved by the extraordinary industry which he exhibited during that comparatively short period; he not only served as the editor of the magazine, — and as such performed the recurring drudgery of the office in reading new contributions, and in correcting proofs, — but also found time to compose for its pages a series of polished and matured articles ranging in their variety over a wide field of literature, — poems, tales, romances, critical reviews, and satires, — all in that vein of original genius which is now recognized as one of the most precious possessions of the world.

In a period so crowded with intellectual achievement, which called imperatively for the utmost concentration of all his abilities, mental and physical, there could not, in the long run, have been many intervals of indulgence in crippling and paralyzing dissipation. It is possible that he sometimes sought to hold himself up, — hard pressed as he was under his burden of literary [page 8:] work, — by the use of stimulants; or it may be that this very rush of recurring tasks led him, from time to time, to a complete relaxation of mind, from which the only relief for him was in the diversion of the cup; or it may be that these lapses were to be attributed to the natural discontent of a sensitive intellect conscious of its great powers, but also aware that these powers were being exerted to the utmost, not for the advancement of his own enterprise but for the promotion of another's.

It is easy enough to understand the scorn which a highly bred man and an exquisite artist, like Poe, must have felt in his intercourse with White, so essentially bourgeois as well from a social as from a literary point of view. It was, however, a combination of motives which probably caused him to sever his connection with the Messenger, — the restlessness of a naturally roving spirit; the ambition to acquire control of a magazine of his own in a more profitable field; and a growing distaste for Richmond, where his social position must have been seriously damaged by the loss of his prospective fortune, and by the exaggerated tales to his discredit spread abroad by the Allan family and their friends. It was, perhaps, these mixed feelings rather than the consequences of occasional drunkenness, which drove him from the scenes of his childhood and of his first literary triumphs to the greatest city of the North.

After his removal to New York, an improvement in his habits took place, now that he was withdrawn from the temptation to drink which assailed him on all sides in Richmond, in consequence of the hospitable disposition of the people and the generous style of life which they led. New York was already a metropolis where men were too much engrossed in money-making to cultivate the prodigal spirit of good fellowship that had long prevailed in the South. An Englishman who resided under the same roof as Poe for the space of eight months, — Mr. William Gowans, — declared that, during that period, he had never seen him ‘in the least affected by liquor, nor ever descend to any known vice,” while he was one of the “most courteous, gentlemanly, and intellectual companions” that Mr. Gowans “had met with during his journeyings and haltings through divers divisions of the globe,” — a just and disinterested panegyric on the poet's general deportment. During this interval of eight months, there [page 9:] were no stiff and involuntary restraints to compel him to live temperately, — such as there had been during the time of his enlistment in the regular army. His dissipation at the University, never extreme, as we have seen, had been followed by two years of exemplary conduct under the weight of a rigid military discipline while confined to the narrow limits of a Federal fortress. But in New York, after his untrammelled existence in Richmond, during which, by his own confession, he had occasionally indulged to excess, he led a life of complete abstinence, without any other compulsion than that set by his own unhampered will.

Mrs. Clemm affirmed that during several years he shunned the use of all intoxicants. She was, perhaps, speaking of the period between 1837 and 1841, at the end of which he was settled in Philadelphia. Writing from that city to Dr. Snodgrass, in April, 1841, he asserted positively that, at no time, ‘”’was he ever what men call intemperate. I never was in the habit of intoxication. { never drank drams.”’ Burton, whose magazine he had been successfully editing, accused him of drunkenness, which the poet resented with a heat that demonstrates the entire groundlessness of the charge so far as it related to his very recent conduct. “I pledge you before God,” he wrote to Dr. Snodgrass, “the solemn word of a gentleman that I am temperate even to rigor. From the hour in which I first saw this basest of calumniators to the hour at which I retired from his office in uncontrollable disgust at his chicanery, arrogance, ignorance, and brutality, nothing stronger than water ever passed my lips.”

The offended Burton, looking about for some weapon of attack, had apparently raked up the discreditable memories of the sprees in Richmond, and used them as if they were as true of the present as of the past. That this was also the poet's impression would seem to be shown by the continuation of his letter to Dr. Snodgrass: “You can see,” he further wrote, “the blackness of that heart which could revive slander of this nature.”

Neither can you fail to perceive how desperate the malignity of the slanderer must be, — how resolute he must be to slander, and how slight the grounds upon which he would build up a defamation, since he can find nothing better with which to charge me than an accusation which can be disproved by each and every man with whom I am in the habit of daily intercourse.” [page 10:]

It is much to be lamented that the poet could not have continued to write in this indignant strain throughout his stay in Philadelphia, a city where, owing to its Quaker sympathies, such an infirmity as his was peculiarly likely to be judged with harshness; and that it was so judged is manifest in the merciless stigma attached to him towards the end of his residence there. Unfortunately, there was only too tenable ground for this opprobrium.

Mr. L. A. Wilmer, corresponding in 1843 with John Tomlin, remarked: “It gives me inexpressible pain to notice the vagaries to which Poe has lately been subject. Poor fellow he is not a teetotaler by any means, and I fear he is going headlong to destruction, moral, physical, and intellectual.”“ Colonel Du Solle, who knew and liked him at this period of his life, sadly admitted that “his dissipation was too notorious to be denied.”

It was in 1843 that the poet became a candidate for public office; and in order to urge his claims in person, and to redouble the efforts of his friends who were on the ground, he visited Washington. There, as in Richmond, he was at once exposed to temptations which he had not thestrength toresist. Mr. Thomas, his most ardent and indefatigable backer, has given a graphic description of the dark side of this unlucky adventure. “‘A place had been promised him, and in that state of suspense which is so trying to all men, and particularly to men of imagination, he presented himself in Washington certainly not in a way to advance his interests. I have seen a great deal of Poe, and it was his excessive, and at times morbid, sensibility which forced him into his frolics rather than any mere morbid appetite for drink. He fought against the propensity as hard as ever Coleridge fought against it; and I am inclined to believe, after his sad experience and suffering, if he could have gotten office, with a fixed salary beyond the need of returning labor, that he would have redeemed himself, — at least at this time. The accounts of his derelictions in this respect when I knew him were very much exaggerated. I have seen men who drank bottles of wine to Poe's wine glasses, who yet escaped all imputation of intemperance. His was one of those temperaments whose only safety was in total abstinence. He suffered terribly after any indiscretion. And after all, what Byron said of Sheridan was true of Poe: [page 11:]

The same spirit of commiseration, the same impulse of generous sympathy, which had its springs in a like familiar knowledge of the poet's sensitive and yielding nature, was exhibited by Mr. J. E. Dow, another friend who strove to assist him on the same unfortunate occasion. Writing to Mr. J. C. Clarke, a third friend, who, however, had not come to Washington, Mr Dow informed him that the disappointed aspirant would be placed on board of the cars bound for Philadelphia; “but we fear,” he added, “he might be detained in Baltimore, and not be out of harm's way. | do this under a solemn responsibility. Mr. Poe has the highest order of intellect, and I cannot bear that he should be the sport of senseless creatures, who, like oysters, keep sober, gape, and swallow everything.”

Precisely the same tone of mingled pity for weakness, and admiration for genius, runs through the recollections of Poe, at this stage of his career, recorded by Mr. C. W. Alexander, the publisher of the Gentleman's Magazine during the poet's editorship of that periodical. ‘That he had his faults,” says Mr. Alexander, “faults seriously detrimental to his own interests, none of course will deny. They were, unfortunately, too well known in the literary circle of Philidelphia [[Philadelphia]], if there were any disposition to conceal them. But he alone was the sufferer, and not those who received the benefit of his preëminent talents, however irregular his habits or uncertain his contributions may have been.”

Poe himself, in March, 1843, painfully confessed that he had recently been given “to spreeing upon an extensive scale”. But that his intemperance was still only occasional and accidental, as it were, even at this period of relaxed will and weakened stamina, is demonstrated by the statement of Thomas Dunn English, who wus an avowed enemy, and a most voluble detractor of the poet: “His offenses against sobriety were committed at irregular intervals. He had not that physical constitution that would permit him to be a regular drinker. He was not even a frequent drunkard when I knew him.”

In the summer of 1843, Poe, accompanied by his wife and her mother, removed te Mrs. Brennan's on the outskirts of New York; and here, as was always characteristic of him after leaving behind [page 12:] the scenes of his worst dissipation, he seems to have been successful in checking his deplorable infirmity. During the two years he spent here, Mrs. Brennan declares that she never saw him, even to a moderate degree, under the influence of liquor. It was not until March, 1845, that he reverted to his cups, owing to the partial miscarriage of his sanguine expectations as a lecturer. Lowell, passing through New York in May, met Poe for the first time, and during the interview, short as it was, “detected in his appearance and bearing, unmistakable signs of recent dissipation.” “Oh, if you only knew his bitter sorrow,” Mrs. Clemm wrote to Lowell afterwards, “when I told him how unlike himself he was while you were here.”

But not even this mortifying experience with the unsympathetic and perhaps hypercritical New Englander could move him to abandon his degrading intemperance; — Briggs, his associate on the Broadway Journal, writing in June, remarks: “he has lately got into his bad habits, and I fear will injure himself irretrievably.” In a second letter, he adds: “I believe Poe had not drunk anything for more than eighteen months until within the past three months; but in this time, he has been frequently carried home in a wretched condition.” “I felt a loathing disgust for his habits,” was the final sentence of a third letter. Such was the natural and justifiable impression of a witness who had also business entanglements with the poet to aggravate his emotion of repulsion.

Poe continued to drink heavily, — at times certainly, — far into the year. On December 10, number 24 of the Journal was issued. “He went off,” says Thomas Dunn English, perhaps not without malice, ‘in one of his fits of drunkenness, leaving the material for number 25 partly finished. . . . After vain attempts to get him into sobriety, and failing in them, Mr. Lane determined to close the publication.” In the comparatively long interval between March and December, the poet must, at least occasionally, have striven to put some check on his proneness to drink, for, on September 9, Thomas Holley Chivers, from his distant home in Georgia, wrote him as follows: “You say you have not touched a drop of the ashes of hell since I left New York. . . . For God's sake, but more for your own, never touch another drop. Why should a man, whom God by nature has endowed with such [page 13:] transcendent abilities, so degrade himself into the veriest automaton?”

The intemperance was prolonged into the following year, when the poet, chiefly through this pernicious habit, sank into a desperate state of penury. “He came into the office (of the Home Journal) with his usual gait and manner,” says Willis, ‘and with no symptoms of ordinary intoxication, he talked like a man insane. Perfectly self possessed in all other respects, his brain and tongue were evidently beyond his control.” Accused in the rudest and coarsest manner by Dr. English of protracted fits of drunkenness, he replied with sadness and dignity: ‘The errors and frailties which I deplore it cannot at least be said that I have been the coward todeny.”’ Writing to him in July, 1846, William Gilmore Simms, the distinguished novelist, animated toward him by the same feeling of friendship and sorrow as Chivers had been, urged him to trample under foot the temptations which, when yielded to, so degraded his person. ‘You may do all this by a little circumspection. It is still within your power.”

This sensible and kindly warning, so delicately and so disinterestedly pressed, probably had little influence at the moment: but eighteen months later, Poe was able truthfully to say, in a letter to one of his correspondents: “‘My habits are rigorously abstemious, and I omit nothing of the natural regimen requisite for health i.e. I rise early, eat moderately, drink nothing but water, and take abundant and regular exercise in the open air.”

How had he been able to subdue his propensity? He was now living in almost complete seclusion. In the same letter he continues: “The desire for society comes upon me only when I have become excited by drink. Then only I go, — at these times only I have been in the practice of going, — among my friends, who seldom, in fact never, having seen me unless excited, take it for granted that I am always so. Those who know me, know better. . . . But enough of this, — the causes which maddened me to the drinking point are no more, and I have done with drinking forever.” Again he writes: “I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life, and reputation, and reason. It has been in the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories.” [page 14:]

But not even the consuming fever of his courtship of Mrs. Whitman could make perfectly stable his resolution to give up liquor permanently. Writing to her November 25, 1848, he thus expresses himself: ‘You say that all depends on my own firmness. If this be so, all is safe, for the terrible agony which I have so lately endured, an agony, however, known only to my God and myself, — seems to have passed my soul through fire and purified it from all that was weak. Henceforth I am strong, — this, those who love me shall see, as well as those who have so relentlessly endeavored to ruin me.”

In spite of these brave words, so sincerely used, he yielded to the solicitations of certain young men stopping at the same hotel as himself in Providence, drank freely, and that evening appeared in a state of partial intoxication in Mrs. Whitman's drawing room. He was, however, very quiet; and the next morning, he expressed his poignant contrition for his discreditable condition the night before. It was on the occasion of this inauspicious visit that he was falsely represented by Griswold as having carried himself in so obstreperous and disorderly a manner that a policeman had to be hastily called in to eject him from the house, — a calumny refuted with indignant emphasis by the persons who were present. “Mr. Poe's friends,” so wrote Mr. W. J. Pabordie [[Pabodie]], one of these, “have no desire to palliate his faults, nor to conceal the fact of his intemperance, — a vice which was never habitual to him. . . . With the single exception of this fault, which he has so fearfully expiated, his conduct during my acquaintance with him (in Providence) was that of a man of honor and a gentleman; and I know that, in the hearts of all who knew him best amongst us, he is remembered with feelings of melancholy interest and generous sympathy.”

The abrupt adverse termination of his ardent courtship of Mrs. Whitman seems to have had the immediate effect of increasing the disappointed and unstrung poet's indulgence in liquor. He sank to the lowest point of self-abandonment in this respect in the course of the journey to Richmond in 1849. In passing through Philadelphia he met convivial acquaintances, who egged him onto such a state of frenzied intoxication that he became possessed with delusions as wild as those of positive insanity. Among other groundless impressions, he imagined that he was pursued [page 15:] by assassins; and he tried to disguise his appearance in order to elude their murderous hands. But for the vigilant care of his friend, Mr. Sartain, he would probably now have fallen into the abyss which so soon afterwards engulfed him in Baltimore.

These continued excesses ended in a violent fit of delirium tremens, the first, it would seem, from which he had suffered. “All was hallucination,” he wrote Mrs. Clemm from Richmond, in describing his mental condition at this time. “May Heaven grant that it prove a warning to me for the rest of my days. If so, I shall not regret even the unspeakable torments I have endured.”

Nowhere could he have found it more difficult to hold firm to his resolution to be strictly temperate. One who saw much of him during this last visit to Richmond, recalls the fact that the poet, in his daily strolls about the city, was again and again thoughtlessly buttonholed by hospitable friends and acquaintances and importuned to join in drinking a julep or an apple toddy; and that, on one morning alone, he declined twenty-four such invitations. Finally, as a means of further buttressing his determination, he signed the total abstinence pledge, and in the brief space of time before his death, is, on trustworthy ground, not supposed to have again yielded to his besetting propensity, — certainly not in Richmond. “I know it willbe gratifying to you to know,” writes Mrs. Shelton to Mrs. Clemm, September 22, “that he is all that you could desire him to be, sober, temperate, moral, and much beloved.” A young lady of Norfulk, Miss Ingram, who was a member of a small party accompanying him to Old Point Comfort a few days before he set out for Baltimore, declared that it was then obvious that “he had not been drinking for a long time.” “If I had not heard or read what had been said about his intemerance [[intemperance]],” she said, “I should never have had any idea of it from what I saw of him.”

A thick veil of sorrowful mystery hangs over the closing scenes of Poe's existence. There is no indisputable proof that, after leaving Richmond, he had violated his pledge. Dr. Moran, who prescribed for him on his death bed, positively and confidently affirmed that there was no odor of spirits tainting his breath when he was carried to the hospital. Let this testimony of his disinterested physician be accepted as irrefutable evidence that the ill-starred poet had remained faithful to the solemn vow which [page 16:] he had taken, — a vow that had been hailed at the time by his most loyal friends, and by the warmest admirers of his genius, as the beginning of a happier life and the starting point of still more brilliant literary achievement.

The varied testimony which I have adduced demonstrates that, during the early stages of his career, Poe gave a free rein to his special infirmity only after long intervals of complete abstinence; and that indulgence even then was never excessive in the length of time covered by it. In later life, he was unquestionably seduced into more protracted sprees, — sometimes for days without a break, — but even at that time, it would not be just to speak of him as an habitual drunkard in the ordinary sense. Were there no direct trustworthy evidence to uphold this general statement, it would be confirmed by the amount, as well as by the character, of his literary work, and also by the delicacy of his chirography; all of which was inconsistent with continuous or even with very prolonged drunkenness.

The existence of this infirmity being admitted as beyond the range of reasonable doubt, were there any features of it which should soften the judgment to be passed upon it? The indulgence of such a propensity is a vice, which, upon its face, we may pity, but cannot fail to condemn. The drunkard is his own worst enemy, — this can generally be said in his favor at least, — but, at the same time, apart from the degraded spectacle which he presents in the public eye, he wrongs those who are dependent on him for protection and subsistence. Poe had the burden of both his wife's and her mother's support to carry. While his industry was extraordinary, in spite of the excessive meagreness of the pecuniary reward for productions of such unique quality as his were, nevertheless, had his habits been uninterruptedly sober and steady, he would certainly towards the end of his life at least, have stood a better chance of being successful in starting and developing his independent literary enterprises and in securing the appointment to political office to which he at one time aspired. If we look at his conduct from this point of view, we cannot fail to censure his weakness without any reserve whatever.

But it would not be fair to test this weakness by a worldly standard like this alone; on the contrary, there are several moral reasons, far stronger than the strongest practical ones, why we [page 17:] should be lenient in our judgment. First, the proneness to drink had been inherited; his father, was very much inclined towards this form of indulgence; and it was acknowledged by William Poe, a cousin, that the taint was transmitted with the family blood. Secondly, drinking freely, though not necessarily to the point of intoxication, was one of the habitual practices of those hospitable times. It was distinctly a feature of that society in which the poet had been bred in his childhood and youth. There were never kinder and more generous men and women than those composing the refined and cultivated circle in which he had moved in Richmond; there the mint julep and the apple toddy were passed around, not so much for the gratification of an appetite, as for the expression of mutual goodwill and good fellowship. Nor was this variety of indulgence confined to the liberal and bountiful South, — a lady who was acquainted with Poe at Fordham asserts that it would have been difficult fora man of far firmer will than he possessed to present a face of adamant to the temptations to gratify a propensity for liquor held out even there on all sides. ‘”Those were days,” she writes, “when wine ran like water, and not to serve it would seem niggardly. I remember that, one day, Mrs. Clemm came to our house, and asked us not to offer wine to Edgar, as his head was weak, but that he did not like to refuse it.”

There is still a third and perhaps a more convincing reason for judging the poet's besetting infirmity without harshness. It has been mentioned in our account of his career at the University of Virginia that all his college mates were aware of his inability to swallow more than one glass without his being overcome by the fumes. This peculiarity was commented on by a lady of Baltimore, who knew him intimately in 1831. “He was made tipsy by a single glass,” was her distinct recollection. Thomas Dunn English, associated with him in Philadelphia, declared that “one glass of liquor would effect him visibly, and the second and third produce intoxication.” Mr. F. S. Thomas, a confidential friend, said that “if the poet swallowed but one glass of weak wine, or beer, or cider, the Rubicon of the cup was passed with him;” and that “it almost always ended in excess and sickness.”

This susceptibility to a small amount of spirits was a fact familiar to all who possessed his acquaintance. “We heard from [page 18:] one, who knew him well”, wrote Mr. Willis, “and it should be asserted in all mention of his lamentable irregularities, that with a single glass of wine, his whole nature was reversed; the demon became uppermost; and although none of the usual signs of intoxication were visible, his will was palpably insane.”

There is a singular confirmation of this statement in the recollections of a clergyman recorded by Mr. Gill. “I, the most innocent of divinity students at the time (1847), while walking with Poe, and feeling thirsty, pressed him to take a glass of wine with me; he declined, but finally compromised by taking a glass of ale with me. Almost instantly a great change came over him. Previously engaged in an indescribably eloquent conversation, he became as if paralyzed, and, with compressed lips and fixed glassy eyes, returned, without uttering a word, to the house which we were visiting. For hours, the strange spell hung over him. He seemed a changed being, as if stricken by some peculiar phase of insanity.”

Additional proofs of Poe's extraordinary susceptibility to the fumes of liquor, however small the quantity drunk, could be cited. Those adduced are sufficient to show that his intoxication in most cases arose, not from any inveterate craving for wine, such as consumes the habitual drunkard, but from the zest of a casual glass, such as would have simply refreshed without even exhilarating most men; and even this, as a rule, was only taken by him because too courteous to refuse to drink with a friend or an acquaintance who had invited him to partake.

There are other reasons still which should temper the judgment to be passed on his infirmity. One of these, which was applicable only to a certain stage of his career, has been set forth with vivid pathos in a letter written by him in January, 1848: “Six years ago, a wife whom I loved as no man ever loved before, ruptured a blood vessel in singing. Her life was despaired of, — I took leave of her for ever, and underwent all the agonies of her death. She recovered partially, and I again hoped. At the end of a year, the vessel broke again. I went through precisely the same scene. Then again, again, and even once again, at varying intervals. Each time I felt all the agonies of her death, and at each occasion of the disorder, I loved her more dearly and clung to her life with more desperate pertinacity. But I am constitutionally sensitive, — [page 19:] nervous in a very unusual degree. I became insane with long intervals of horrible insanity. During these fits of absolute unconsciousness I drank, — God only knows how often and how much. As a matter of course, my enemies referred the insanity to the drink, rather than the drink to the insanity. I had indeed nearly abandoned all hope of a permanent cure when I found one in the death of my wife. This I can and do endure as becomes a man. It was the horrible, never ending oscillation between hope and despair which I could not have longer endured without total loss of reason. In the death of what was my life then, I received a new, but, oh God, how melancholy an existence.”

Towards the close of his career, there seems to have been a special physical reason for Poe's quick susceptibility to the influence of spirits. It was the opinion alike of his friend, Mrs. Shew, who was educated as a physician, and of Dr. Mott, the famous surgeon, who together diagnosed his general condition not long after his wife's death, that he was suffering from a lesion of the brain which would not permit him to use any form of stimulants without plunging him into a state of temporary insanity.

While it was perhaps true, as Mr. Ferguson of the Messenger asserted, that Poe, when in his cups, could be a very unpleasant person, still there is no trustworthy instance of lawless acts on his part while in that condition. Mrs. Whitman spoke correctly in his defence when she said: “No authentic anecdote of coarse indulgence in vulgar orgies, or brutal riot, has ever been recorded of him. During the last years of his unhappy life, whenever he yielded to the temptation that was drawing him to its fathomless abyss, he always lost himself in sublime rhapsodies. . . . During one of his visits to Providence, in 1848, I saw him after one of these nights of wild excitement before reason had fully recovered its throne, yet even then in those frenzied moments, when the doors of the mind's haunted palace were left unguarded, his words were the words of a princely intellect overwrought, and of a heart only too sensitive and too finely strung.”

To what degree did Poe consume other stimulants besides fermented spirits? The earliest mention of his use of opium is to be found in the recollections of Miss Herring, who was visiting his family when his wife was prostrated by the rupture of a blood vessel. If this witness's assertion can be relied on, his fit of intoxication [page 20:] at that agonized moment was due to excessive indulgence in this pernicious drug. One of his biographers intimates that he had recourse to it in moderation even during periods of abstention from liquor. This opinion, so far as it would impute a common practice, does not seem to be confirmed by the testimony of two medical experts who, on different occasions, had studied his physical condition attentively. Dr. Thomas Dunn English, a personal enemy who did not mince his words, said: “Had Poe the opium habit when I knew him, I should, both as a physician and a man of observation, have discovered it during his frequent visits to my rooms, my visits to his house, and our meetings elsewhere”. Dr. John Carter, of Richmond, asserted emphatically: “(He never used opiates in any instance I am aware of.” “Had it been an habitual practice,” he adds, “it would have been detected, as the poet numbered among his associates half a dozen physicians. I never heard it hinted at; and, if he had contracted the habit, it would have accompanied him into Richmond.”

It is known that, on at least two occasions, he made an earnest entreaty for a dose of morphine, — one, after his return to Fordham, in 1846, when his sister, Rosalie, was visiting the family; and the other, during his detention in Philadelphia in a state of delirium, and too completely disabled to continue his journey southward.

But the most remarkable instance of all occurred in November, 1848, when he was sunk in a state of profound depression. It would be inferred from his own words that his intention was to commit suicide. He had passed what he no doubt correctly described as “a night of despair.” “When the day broke,” he continued, “I arose and endeavored to quiet my mind by a rapid walk in the cold, keen air, but all would not do, — the demon tormented me still. Finally, I procured two ounces of laudanum. . . I swallowed about half the laundanum, and hastened to the postoffice, but I had not calculated on the strength of the laudanum, — before I reached the post-office, my reason was entirely gone. Let me pass over the awful horrors that succeeded. A friend was at hand who aided, and, if it can be called saving, saved me.”

With these words, which throw such a ghastly light on the poet's infirmity of will, and reveal so vividly his frantic effort to [page 21:] escape by the most certain means in his reach from the sorrows which his propensity for intoxicants had largely, though not entirely, created, let us close our account of the darkest aspect of his unhappy life.

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 4:]

* See ‘Background of Poe's University Life” in the July, 1911, number of the SOUTH ATLANTIC QUARTERLY.