THOMAS HOLLEY CHIVERS, M.D “THE WILD MAZEPPA OF LETTERS” By ROBERT L. PITFIELD, M.D.

PHILADELPHIA LARGE marble urn, draped view. He was not as mad as Blake after the fashion of long ago, but very much like him in many ways. stands in the town ceme- Not only did he, like that celebrated tery of Decatur, Georgia, English poet and artist, write mystic Aabove the grave of a forgottenpoetry, poet. but he had the same sort of On a cubical of stone on which the unbridled imagination soaring in and urn stands is this inscription: out of heaven, seeing all the company of celestial regions, communing with Here Lie the Remains of angels and other spirits. He saw THOMAS HOLLEY CHIVERS, M.D. visions, wrote the same kind of Of His Excellence rhythmic verse, and became in after As a Lyric Poet His works will remain a Monument years something of an artist, and like for Ages Blake adopted Swedenborgianism later After this temporary tribute of love in life. Is in his dust forgotten. He was born in a sparsely settled This soul winged its flight Heaven- portion of Georgia in 1809. His father ward came of good Virginia stock, his December 19th, 1858 * Aged 52 Years mother, a Miss Digby, is said to have descended from an old English family This mortuary urn may be taken as of that name. Little more is known of the chief motif of this essay, for it the ancestry of this frontier poet; symbolizes death, the constant recur- no one appears to have distinguished ring theme of the poet through most himself in the arts or letters, among of his work. Chivers was a most the forebears of this raw rhymster singular man, eccentric and in many of the live oaks and savannahs. ways uncouth. To many of his neigh- Nothing is known of their mental bors in Georgia, he appeared to be abilities or health. In considering mad. The ordinary man in the street, the man’s life, it must be borne in on reading his verses, would say that mind that he was never in want and there was no question about it and never suffered pecuniary worries and would unhesitatingly subscribe to that privations that hampered and tor- tured so many men of his profession. * Shortly before he died Chivers ante- His father, Col. Robert Chivers, was dated the year of his birth two years, making a wealthy planter and mill owner. it 1807 instead of 1809 as is accepted as his His son had certain lyric powers that true birth year. He did this to make him older than Poe, on account of the matter of cannot be denied. He wrote volumi- priority of publication, etc. The gravestone nously, his out-pourings were very often inscription states that he was fifty-two years huge affairs of eighty or more stanzas. old instead of forty-nine which was his correct He wrote much of celestial matters, age. he ransacked all of heaven to procure poetical materials for his works, but his marked rhythmic gifts from hear- he was far below his famous English ing the negroes chant their spirituals prototype in sheer mental powers. in field and kitchen. He loved his All medical men will agree that he parents dearly, especially his mother, was somewhat mentally unbalanced, and never wearied of writing lauda- of a highly emotional nature and tory poems in her tribute. He was religious to a bigoted degree. Born in a probably like Poe, an indulged spoiled strict Baptist family he early adopted boy. He was brought up to consider their narrow and stern views in himself an elegant Southern gentleman every particular. The Southern Bap- with all that such a social station tists of that period were of a very entails; he was proud and wholly bigoted, self-satisfied kind. Like Dr. Southern in his views always, espe- Beddoes, another doctor poet, he was cially in regards to slavery. As a boy obsessed with death; there is hardly he saw visions, as did Blake, and later a poem of his in which he does not in life wrote of his experiences in one muse upon that dreary subject. Like of them in Davis’ weekly magazine Blake and Swedenborg he was wholly The Univercoelum, which was con- an introvert. Being highly sensitive ducted by Davis, a well-known spirit- his emotions were very easily excited. ualist in the early days of this country. Damon in his clever biography of This is quoted in part to appraise the him says: extent of his mental disorder and his high pitched religious emotionalism: He had his eyes turned inward by means of fidelity to psychological fact, I had been sick but was now convales- he was blindly reaching upward for the cent—(the Elysium of this poor life) and tendencies afloat in the atmosphere of was lying in bed in the middle of the the new world. Much of the fruit he room, reading the Psalms of David, when gathered was green, some of it was rotten, this vision appeared to me. I knew that but that was the fault of his intelligence God had couched my eyes to see it, for and not his genius. with my naked eyes I knew that I could not see a spirit; and, for fear that I was Later he continues:—“We must pick deceived or, that it might be a mere and choose in his rare volumes, much delusion—I placed my hands over my there is trash, but amongst the trash eyes, but the glorious vision still appeared are a few amazing specimens of rare to me as beautiful as before. Still doubt- species that deserve salvation.” ing the Truth of the Appearance—think- Born on a plantation near Oaky ing, perhaps that I might be deceived—I Grove, little is known of his early called my mother into the room and education. He lived in a handsome crying out in the ecstacy of delight, I cottage surrounded by finely kept said: “Mother, look up there on the wall at the beautiful angels singing and play- lawns, tall trees and gravel walks. His ing on their harps.” At which she looked childhood was happy; plenty of slaves up intently for sometime but could discern worked the fields and served in the nothing. She then said: “My dear, you home. They wanted nothing, life are distracted! I can see nothing.” flowed easily and placidly along under “Now,” said I, “they are gone. And they the live oaks and beside slow moving went away just as I told you.” When I rivers. It is more than likely that in turned my face toward the right side of Chivers’ early childhood he acquired the room, I saw a fountain of crystal water running down the wall and break- poet with sentimentality on every ing into a beautiful musical, cooling and hand, with the blacks chanting their purifying cascade. ... I told her to melodies with admirable rhythm amid hold her hand under the glass and I saw green meadows, groves, hills and the living crystal water splash down into streams. With a religious tension and the palm of her hand. conviction that was pathological, or Such an experience would qualify at least most unwholesome, equipped Chivers to membership in that singu- with an impressionable high strung lar band called the illuminati or system far from balanced, the condi- vision seers. tions were just the kind to make him During Chivers’ boyhood religious the sort of lyrist he became. It was rivalry and even strife between the easy to woo the Muse, such as she two predominant religious sects, was in the plantations of Georgia in Methodists and Baptists, was ramp- the nineteenth century. His mind ant in Georgia. The conflict was was, no doubt, deeply stirred and widespread and rancorous. swayed by his religious teachers. The Baptist ministers of his day were The Methodists held their camp meet- highly emotional, unbalanced men. ings, spectacular, orgiastic and deeply Dressed in dolorous black, gaunt, emotional; the Baptists were more digni- lean, long haired, fanatical, often fied, and duller. Conversion and death were the two great events in the lives of melodramatic, they moved multitudes those people, and as infant mortality was enormously, feeding them the kind exceedingly high, both sects specialized of religious pap they hungered for. in edifying death-bed scenes and the black Every gesture was intensely theatrical, pomp of funerals. their strident voices as they related in intimate detail accounts of edifying America was raw, uncouth, un- death-bed scenes, shook with emotion. lettered, culture was crude and so Some claimed to have looked unto colored with sentimentalism that it hell and to have witnessed the tor- was a matter of detestation on the ments of the unconverted. Sin, death, part of visiting foreigners. Life was a conversion, salvation and damnation melodrama, highly colored and pas- were the themes of their weird dis- sionate. Prejudices ruled men rather courses. They dealt little with Divine than reason. Damon says: Love, the beatitudes, spiritual grace, Crying out that America had no bards, service and Christian beauty. Prob- everybody rushed into print. A thousand ably, most of their texts were taken mocking birds struck up imitating a from the Book of Revelations. They thousand nightingales whose haunt did wanted to make sinners quake in not happen to be America—into each their shoes and this they often did. other’s albums youths and maidens re- Their victims groaned and wept. corded (in impeccable copper script) Many were seized with convulsions undying sentiments and attachments of or swooned or fell into hysterical an ardour which would startie today’s trances. Fear was the great weapon flaming youth. of these preachers against sin; love That was the mental atmosphere was not preached or especially com- into which this starry child Chivers mended. Sexual excitement was ramp- was born. We see the makings of a ant, it so prevailed that it was difficult for the onlooker to note when reli- they lived in married bliss. Chivers gious ardour left off and was succeeded wrote a poem to his mate, so happy by libidinousness. Such emotional and content was he. Then some ugly experiences profoundly moved this rumors were bruited abroad in the impressional, imaginative boy. These town; according to Chivers they were unbridled preachers were his instruc- wholly without foundation. One night tors in that uncouth school of religion. his dear wife stole from his home with Once Georgia had been favored with her child; Chivers never saw them visits by great and sound preachers, again, nor did he forgive the errant the Wesleys and Whitfield. The good woman. It is quite likely that the work that they did in that benighted wife seized upon the rumors as an region cannot be adequately told. excuse to escape from an intolerable The boy believed all that he heard, marriage relation; no one now knows, his parents so believed, that was it is easy to surmise that such was the enough for him; he held to those stern, case. The episode upset him tremen- adamant teachings throughout his dously. Later he wrote a long, dreary life, except that late in his career he poem recounting his wrongs and sor- forsook the Baptist faith for Sweden- rows, “The Path of Sorrow.” borgianism. He abandoned all levity, While but a boy he witnessed the life was always a very serious matter death of a younger sister. All the and yet he made much of his bedside partings and agonies were opportunities. according to the prevailing religious Many medical men have observed fashions of that time in Georgia, and that the abnormal and low-minded most edifying to all of the family. have an acute sense of the rhythmical. They all believed that all the griefs Blake exhibited it, so did Poe, who that they experienced in this life was distinctly pathological. It is said would be more than compensated for to be a sign of dyspituitarism. Lower in the life to come; bliss throughout in the scale of mentality, poor Blind eternity made deathbed partings Tom, the super idiot, displayed mar- more endurable. This harrowing scene velous powers of performing rhythmic moved this uncouth youth to poetry. music. I consider that this acute sense It gave him the outlet that he needed of the rhythmic in Chivers was a for his pent emotions. These verses symptom of his abnormal mind. Very are so extravagant, so lacking in good often it was entirely original in its taste and turgid with emotion and a form. senseless imagery that they must be All his life he lived in a Paradise in part quoted in the study of this peopled with angels and peris who con- abnormal character. They serve not stantly communed with him. Damon only as an index to the nature of his says: “Hell in his writings was only disordered mind but to the kind of a literary convention, while heaven cheap, clap-trap sentimentality that was more real to him than Georgia.” was indulged in by all of his family He was so sure of heaven that he and friends. The Introductory lines little considered hell. put the reader on his guard as to When but hardly more than a boy what to expect and to prepare him he married Angeline. One child was for the shocking horrors of the latter born to the couple. For some time parts of the poem. Witness the scene made all the more terrible by these by symbols, flaming stars, tombs, over-wrought people. wreaths, doves, anchors, weeping wil- Oh! I shall never forget that eye lows and crosses. Thus they expressed That dying eye! which closed upon her sight, the romantic that was in them; and yea such emblems were very often used Closed communion with the world! I heard her in expressing their uncouth and extrav- Bid her mother come and see her last, Oh! agant religious worship and faith. Wisdom of eternity! exalt my When a pioneer or frontier people Thought to tell of grief and woe—expand my Soul to realize the dying thrill. Great suddenly assume or affect culture, the God! is this benevolence in nature’s result is often very grotesque; it was Laws? God of truth! upon her cheek I saw so among these good folk of Georgia. The shadow of an inward strife and on Very downcast and with a sense Her breast I saw comparisoned, both life of having been terribly wronged the And death—the struggle was to marry death To immortality . . . disconsolate youth who still loved Upon the icy breast of love his runaway wife and child began the I saw the lily and the rose study of medicine in the Transylvania Stand at intervals, then fade away, like University in Kentucky. He did this Candles glimmering in the midnight glory largely to get away from the surround- Of a morn that has no eve beyond it! ings of his home and idle tongues Of course, the poor youth was which wagged none to kindly. It is thrilled, he gloried in such scenes. He surmised that he had received his continued always morbidly to do so, early education in a good Georgia it was more than a thrill, it was a preparatory school and had been rapture which he thought divine and tutored by Mr. Thomas Lacey, for to most seemly to witness. The poem him he wrote a laudatory ode. He is is a long one full of mixed metaphors said to have been widely educated and preposterous description. He and to have had a good knowledge of related all that the poor girl was Hebrew. He never practiced his pro- supposed to see. He confesses that he fession much, he was too introverted could not visualize all of it. He con- and self-centered. While in the medical tinues in morbid ejaculations: school he wrote many poems, the chief of which is his “ Path of Sorrow.” . . . There she saw a holy His griefs and sense of wrong were Harp! She saw a harp, Oh! dying rendered more poignant when he sister How can I emblem that I never saw, learned that his wife was accepting how attentions from another man. He Can a brother’s words depict that published this long poem at his own which he expense, as he did all of his work Only saw reflected from the mirror except magazine poems. It is not Of your infant soul? Yes, she saw a harp! recorded that he ever received a penny for any of his efforts. Yet this “Wild Harps, among other heavenly em- Mazeppa of Letters,” as Simms called blems, played a great role in the him, was to earn wide reputation, symbolism of the distorted fanatics more notorious than noted. Today of those days. In that “Rococo period collectors gather up fragments of his in American history,” according to work with avidity. Much of it is cared Damon, people lived and moved for in large university libraries. Har- vard has a number of his works tographic. He had certain graphic deposited by none other than Lowell. powers, undeniably. In the poem the General Sherman’s troops on their cold corpse slowly comes back to life, famous march to the sea devastated the stiff, frigid fingers become flexible, Chivers’ old home, destroying manu- the pulse returns, yet he declares scripts and books. Much has been lost that the wrists were pulseless. by the ruthless rummaging of these Our poet was so absorbed in his vandals A little of his poetry of own inward visions and introspections those college days was cheerful, for that he little interpreted the beauties he burst into song with “Georgia of nature which lay most bountifully Waters,” perhaps at the instigation on every hand. He uses some of them of friends, it is as commonplace as in his descriptions to adorn his lines. a college song, platitudinous mostly, But he rarely at this period attempted with conventional rhymes. In it he any such charming pastorals as Blake’s displays his extraordinary rhythmic “Songs of Innocence” or Keats “I powers, full of lilt and alliteration, Stood Tip-Toe on a Little Hill,” yet it does not ascend above the written by that poet while a medical commonplace. But it reveals a lifting student. Chivers was never naive or of the depression that weighed upon charming, he was too self-absorbed him in the early twenties. After he was and overwhelmed with the awfulness graduated he mounted a horse and of life to be so. If he employed any set forth on a long excursion among scene from nature it was always the Indians. Little is known of what bound up with some morbid, moral happened on that journey, what de- or supernatural relation. The reader pressions and complexes afflicted his can find little pleasure in reading them. mind. He wrote some poems about Herbert’s poems are as deeply reli- what he saw. It is more than probable gious as any of Chivers are, but they are that his mental health was low; his charmingly simple and lovely with all religious morbidity continues in all their expressions of faith and Divine of the works. It is possible that he love. Indeed they are true songs; verged very close to a dementia Chivers had not his art nor his fine precox, he was of the age in which it feelings, he rarely was fine. “The is wont to appear, and the hard study Soaring Swan” is wholly an exception in the medical school exhausted, some- to this, it is really a notable poem, what, his nervous reserve. He was full of stately music, but he could not intoxicated with God; he confesses keep his bird out of heaven, he had this in his poetry. But he ever recurs him fly a few turns about in that to his favorite subject, death; this celestial place at the apex of his flight. was his theme in most of his work Shakespeare exercised far more re- always. After graduating he wrote straint in his song “Hark! Hark! the “The Raising of Tabitha.” He em- Lark at Heaven’s Gate Sings.” This ployed his newly acquired medical is sheer loveliness, while it is restrained knowledge in his descriptions of the yet joyous abandon makes it most scene. The dear girl is restored to life charming. This poem of Chivers is by Christ in a very realistic manner wholly sane and in better taste than in this poem. It is grotesque and most of his other essays in poesy. A few rather painful reading and most pho- lines from it are given to show some- thing of its quality and its exhalted Like Elijah she passed through the temper. air To the City of God golden-gated While in the welkin of the skies, the clouds, To the home of my Lily Adair Like undulating isles spread out upon Of my star crowned Lily Adair The ocean of eternity, appear Of my God loved Lily Adair In lawny prospect, like the sweets of some Of my beautiful, dutiful Lily Ambrosial grove whose incense waves to Adair. heaven. And far away they gather into floods “Goshen” was introduced to rhyme Of glory like the waves of sound that came with “ocean”; the same is true of From ocean, when the wings of angels flew “On,” it was invented to rhyme with To Salem with the music of the Lord. “gone.” Poetry of this kind was much appreciated in those days, everything He bids the bird take no second mate. went that had a lilt and a swing; Soon after this, however, he forsook almost any kind of sense was fitted that advice and married a Miss Hunt to the meter. It is on the same level of Massachusetts. He was then twenty- as a college song but less coherent. eight years old and the bride but Chivers defied the laws of physics sixteen years. He lived for a time in very often, probably on the grounds various cities in the North, largely of poetic license, witness: because of literary companionship, but settled at last in Georgia for the Lofty piles of echoing thunder Drowning all the stars in wonder . . . rest of his life. There was never any need to earn money and his life was This would be good poetry were it not the easy, comfortable existence of a that he piles up “thunder” like so Southern gentleman. Poetry was as much lumber. Damon thinks that much of an industry to him as it is Chivers anticipated Whitman by writ- an art to other poets. He wrote reams ing in long, irregular lines, imitating of it on long foolscap paper. This he the regular, irregular sounds of the sent to many editors, some accepted waves on the shore. Some of this his effusions gladly, many others physics and sense defying verse reads: rejected them. And there heard the loud thunders, rolled The poem “Lily Adair,” resounding off from the prows of the crystalline spheres with jingling syllables, is so senti- Break balmily against the white shore of my mental and commonplace that it has panting soul, in utterance sublime. little appeal save to the unthinking Lamenting the death of his children persons who will be captivated by its he wrote in “Avalon”: tumult of light, almost meaningless, euphony. It is the prototype of many Four little Angels killed by one cold death of Poe’s verses (Anabelle Lee). He To make God glad. could not keep his new inamorata out A notorious sex murder in Kentucky of heaven, witness some of her flight stirred the South, when a hair-brained upwards: wight named Beauchamp, a neuro- tic, killed Col. Sharpe on the insistence From her paradise Isles of the ocean of a Miss Young who had been To the beautiful city of On The mellifluent rivers of Goshen seduced by the colonel. Challenging My beautiful Lily is gone! the colonel to a duel with daggers, In her chariot of fire translated Beauchamp, on receiving the colonel’s declination to that resort, murdered poems.” Again his judgment and sense him. Of course, our high-minded poet of values is faulty, he includes Andrew felt called upon to write a melodrama Jackson and Felicia Hernans as of in five acts, all in blank verse about undying renown among the great this tragedy. This was never produced, heroes of this world. but it was printed by Chivers. Later His beloved daughter, Allegra in life he wrote more plays that never Florence, died after a brief illness of saw the glitter of the footlights. Pure typhoid fever. The poor father was so poetry was his forte, he thought, as grief stricken and distressed that he well as his delight. He invented all was not able to give any medical aid sorts of rhythms and verse forms. to his beloved daughter; he was filled Damon says of his work: with remorse after her death because of this. She is said to have resembled Inspiration and technique are the twin her mother who was very beautiful. wings on which every poet soars; both of Chivers’ lacked many feathers. But Most probably she had been named occasionally in his eccentric flights, he after Byron’s illegitimate daughter, shot high—much higher, I believe, than Allegra. The blow staggered him, the world has ever realized. staggered him into writing two elegies, chiefly to her whom he thought as At this period he was about thirty- “a living hymn sung to the glory of three years of age, he planned many God.” Of the first, “The Lost Pleiad,” new poems on grander conceptions. Damon says: “It is a terrible poem, He aspired to be a Milton and write an out-pouring of despair.” Of course, epics. He made the acquaintance of the death scene was intimately de- Poe, then editor of Graham’s Magazine scribed in horrid details, sunken eyes, in Philadelphia. This journal pub- cyanotic nails and fetid breath. He lished many of his short poems but who wrote so fearsomely of death, declined his long elegy “The Mighty which throughout his life had en- Dead” on the ground that it was over thralled him, was to know him even long. It was made up of eighty-five, more terribly, for “this fell sergeant six-line stanzas. The manuscript was was strict in his arrest.” Three more lost and remained so for years. Finally of his daughters stricken, one after Chivers recovered it and published another, with a virulent form of it in a volume entitled “Eonchs of typhoid succumbed in rapid succes- Ruby.” He coined the word “Eonchs” sion. The shock and poignancy of the by substituting E for C in “conch” bereavements overwhelmed the poor a pink sea shell common along Georgia parents. The shaken poet in stricken beaches and in streams. This is one numbers pours out his woe in “Allegra of his whimsicalities. Among others Florence in Heaven.” This is the he coined a number of new words second of his elegies to his children. mostly because they were euphoni- Few if any poets have ever had ous and suited his rhythms. Some this experience, none had so much have stuck in the language, notably grief to sing about. But after his “Labyrinthine.” Thompson is usually darling daughters were swept from credited with its coining. Of his him by death, his wife presented “Mighty Dead,” Damon says: “It is him with three more children, two the best sustained of any of his daughters and a son. They survived him. Nothing now is known of their considered the maxim that it is but careers. “Allegra Florence in Heaven” “a short step from the sublime to is very interesting to students of the ridiculous,” he might not have literature, for in this poem he uses the written many of his awful stanzas, rhythm that he had invented and notably those to “Allegra Florence in which he later declared in no amiable Heaven.” Damon says of one stanza: words had been stolen from him by “what may be the vilest and most Poe. “The Raven” is certainly written excruciating stanza he ever penned.” in this rhythm, we have Chivers’ That it is a prototype of “The Raven” word for it. On the other hand, Prof. leads me to produce it. Here is some Damon emphatically declares that: of his woe: “The Raven rhythm came not from ‘Allegra’ at all but from ‘Isadore.’ As an egg when broken never Can be mended but must ever One stanza is quoted here: Be the same crushed egg forever— While the wodd lay round me sleeping So shall this dark heart of mine I alone for Isadore Which tho broken, still is breaking, Patient vigils lonely keeping. And shall never more cease aching, Someone said to me while weeping; For the sleep which has no waking Why this grief for evermore? For the sleep that now is thine. And I answered: “I am wreeping (Great wits are sure to madness near allied For my blessed Isadore. And thin partitions do their bounds divide . . . Dryden.) That Chivers wrote and published his poems, “Isadore” and “Allegra But another of the stanzas is more Florence in Heaven” prior to the clearly the rhythm of “The Raven.” publication of the Raven is proved by Poor man, he must indeed have felt the dates of publication or composition the loss of his beautiful daughter of these several poems. “Isadore” keenly. appeared in print in 1841. “Allegra Holy angels now are bending to receive Florence” was composed in December, thy soul ascending 1842, “The Raven” was published in Up to heaven to joys unending, and to 1845 nearly three years after Chiver’s bliss which is divine; poems were published. Poe greatly While thy pale, cold form is fading under Death’s cold wings now shading admired “Allegra Florence” and read Thee with gloom which is pervading, this it about the time of its publication. poor, broken heart of mine! Damon wrote that “Nachoochee” And as God doth lift the spirit up to was taken directly into Poe’s heaven to inherit “Ulalume.” Chivers declared that Those rewards which it doth merit, such Poe’s idea of his poem “The Bells” was as none have reaped before Thy dear father will tomorrow, lay thy derived from his poem “The Mother’s body with deep sorrow, Lament on the Death of Her Child” In the grave which is so narrow, there which he wrote in 1842. Its first line to rest for evermore. reads: Poe liked the echoing refrain of “ever- Funeral bells are tolling tolling more,” it suited the rhythm and sense “Rhyme,” says Damon, “led the of “The Raven,” so he borrowed it poet into absurdities that no music and made it “nevermore.” Each could atone for.” If Chivers had stanza of his poem ends with it, adding greatly to the effectiveness of its weird Around the grave of poor Allegra appeal. the frantic father planted four cedars: Rossetti, Swinburne and Kipling Four verdant angels round the head borrowed from Chivers. Elizabeth And feet of her who now is dead, Browning, writing to Poe about his Whose soul is in the heavens high “Raven,” declared that “All England With wings of evergreen out-spread, rang with its music and that none To emblem that which cannot die. other than Robert Browning, the “Wings of evergreen” is atrocious; author of Paracelsus was very much had he no sense of the fitness of things taken with its rhythm.” At least in nor any taste? The most glaring of one high quarter in the literary world his deficiencies was a total lack of the Chivers’ invention was appreciated. sense of humor. This was fatal to Not only was the rhythm of “ Isadore ” the success of many of his poems. and “Allegra Florence” used by Poe Another of his absurdities that even for his “Raven,” but his “Ulalume” far-fetched poetic license cannot ex- resembles Chivers’ long poem “Na- cuse is: coochee” very much indeed; he acknowledged that to Chivers he Like the black wings of the Raven owed much. Edmund Gosse wrote: In the sun’s glow On her neck from morn to eve “Poe has proved himself to be the Whiter than snow. ‘Piper of Hamelin’ to all later English poets. From Tennyson to Austin No doubt, he was grandiose and Dobson there is hardly one whose conceited enough to consider that verse music does not show traces of he was a true prophet and interpreter Poe’s influence.” Saintsbury called of immortality. Comparing his rhapso- him “the greatest master of prosodiac dies and elegies with Browning’s “La effects that the United States has Sasiaz,” is like comparing primers produced.” with Plato. He improved as he grew The poem “The Lost Pleiad,” in older, becoming more subdued and spite of its obscurity in places and restrained. He read copiously, borrow- sheer ugliness, contains some fine ing ideas and rhythms freely. He flights and cadences, and the flow and ceased mixing up Greek, Hebrew, discharge of ideas is musical and Irish and Christian mythologies so complete occasionally. carelessly. He had acquired some sobering culture. The spirit’s soul delighting face Once Bayard Taylor visited Swin- Was smothered in the soft embrace Of angels when they from the skies burne and in the course of his visit Leant down with their sweet melodies he mentioned the name of Chivers. In rapturous joy to hail thee theirs, At which Swinbourne exclaimed: “OhI And by the keen light of the stars, Chivers! Chivers!—if you know Behold thee like the snow white Dove Chivers give me your hand.” Stedman Ascending through the heavens above, related that this pair used to repeat the And caught thee frantic with delight, And bore thee singing out of sight. strange stanzas at each other with shouts of delight. Damon says: Any poet would be proud of these “Swinburne found Chivers’ rhythmic lines, their appeal is great and the and alliterative stanzas very much sentiment natural and not over-spilled. to his liking.” Once Chivers wrote a charming the tempo and the kind of sense that little pastoral after the manner of it conveyed. It, of course, has in it Blake. His darling angels and other religious references. religious objects throng its lines. It is Thus eternities rose in fruitious as good as many of the Songs of Inno- sweet blossom cence. The last verse is very pleasing: Blazed out from its bud in new beauties alway, There little boy blue That Sweet Nosegay of Freedom which Blow aloud on your horn grows in Christ’s bosom Songs as soft as the dew And fills the wide world with its From the mountains of morn. fragrance today.

He was prevailed upon to write a Poetry in long lines is easy to write Fourth of July oration one year. In because of the flexibility afforded it is revealed his narrow, intolerant the composer. The meter is easy to views about another religious sect. fit the words, and today such lyric It is so grandiose and exhibits such forms are despised by poets and a pathological megalomania that it poetasters alike. It is out of fashion. is worth reading as a curiosity. Wit- Very few great poems have been ness the last of his grandiloquent written in long lines of lilting meter. peroration: In September 1856 he was elected to the professorship of physiology “Let us, therefore, adopt the graphic and pathology in Oglethorpe College motto inscribed on the Glorious Ban - at Savannah. He declined the post, ner of the True Sons of Ameri ca — some would have it on the grounds of Ameri ca Shall Rule Ameri ca —for she poor health. That he did so was is as beautiful to her friends as the Moon- sensible. He who could write long, illuminated Night adorned with many alliterative elegies and a few plays was stars—but as terrible to her enemies as not in any way qualified to teach a day with ten thousand suns.” those abstruse and learned branches. Y et the trustees of that college thought Next year he wrote a poem which him qualified. He could never have he proposed to read, but it was so taught any subject in any institution, long that he contented himself with his thoughts were not ordered nor his printing it instead. It contains twenty- thinking much disciplined. nine stanzas of twelve lines each, and Yet this Georgia sentimentalist in- following each stanza is a chorus of vented a machine used in throwing eight lines. Damon says of this poem, silk in that industry and it was used “that in it anapests tumbled over considerably for a time. For it he themselves into paeons.” This rhap- received a silver cup at a Southern sody fitted the occasion. It is filled exposition. with references to “the sun playing In appearance he was strongly on his thunder harp; The Freeman’s knit in frame, his face was made up Thor-Hammer; the winged Phoenix of very rugged features, his brow was of Liberty and the Orphic Evangels of broad and massive, his nose long and the Angels.” It is a monstrosity, yet his chin strong and positive. His it was much appreciated by the people mouth expressed cruel bigotry, his of his day. But a few lines will give eyes were bold and staring. Damon thought they were sorrowful. To me, Of the friendship with Poe, but they are those of an abnormal-minded passing mention can be made of their man, unafraid, uncompromising, bold intercourse and the final controversy. and without the tenderness and sweet- Poe hoped to elicit Chivers’ interest ness that characterize a poet’s gaze. in his projects, in turn Chivers enjoyed There can be no doubt but that conversations with his fellow poet. Chivers was a mystic, that was the They met three times, on the first order of his mind. Mystics are not occasion Chivers had to help his always responsible for their utter- friend home, he was so deeply in his ances. Not understanding them, people cups. Poe had borrowed fifty dollars often scorn them, yet they have played which never was paid. Poe not only great roles in religious circles, found- freely adopted the rhythm of “Allegra ing new faiths or divisions of such. All Florence in Heaven” in his “Raven,” of the Christian faiths have had them but other rhythms also were taken. in their personnel. While he claimed There are two sides to the controversy to see celestial things, he never re- that arose. There can be no doubt but corded that he peered past the terrific that the borrowing was mutual; porter, into the North Gate of Heaven, Chivers obtained many ideas from as Blake constantly did. He was not Poe. To charge Poe with a mis- restricted, however, to many, some demeanor is like accusing the singer of his bold writing wTouId be held of a popular song melody of theft. as profane. He had none of the magne- Nevertheless, Chivers raged at Poe tism of Blake. It must be assumed and wrote letters to support his claims. that he had no charm. His neighbors Poe had before this written an offen- thought him insane, spoke of him as sive criticism of Chivers. It appeared being “cracked.” I have no doubt but in Graham’s Magazine, of which Poe that his actions were very singular was editor for a time. and eccentric. At times he wrote rather savage letters to editors when Dr. Chivers, of New York, is at the same time one of the best and one of the they hinted that his poems were not worst poets in America. His productions worthy of publication. affect one as a wild dream—strange, Taken acutely ill on December 18, incongruous, full of images of more than 1858, Chivers made his will and in a Arabesque monstrosity, and snatches of few hours died in the early morning sweet, unsustained song. Even his worst of the 19th. That was the end of this nonsense (some of it is horrible) has an queer man. His volumes of poetry and indefinite charm of sentiment and melody. his tomb ornamented by a large We can never be sure that there is any mortuary urn with its extravagant meaning in his words—neither can there inscription are the relics of him who be any meaning in our finest musical airs worshipped beauty and wrote so fear- —but the effect is very similar in both. fully of death throughout his life. Now His figures of speech are metaphors run mad, and his grammar is often none at all. Soft on her lap her laureate son reclines . . . Yet there are fine individual passages to be found in the poems of Dr. Chivers. A Danish poet, one Professor Gierlow, wrote a poem commemorat- Poe afterwards retracted much of this ing his death. It is said to be quite criticism; he learned that Chivers good. might become financially interested in 7 he Stylus which Poe planned to one of the cardinal signs of insanity. establish. But in the Southern maga- This Chivers displayed constantly zines the controversy raged for some in his verse. On the internal evidence years. Friends of Chivers took up his of his poetry alone, the man in the cause and denounced Poe. Chivers street would never acquit him of himself wrote under the nom de plume madness. His art is crude, unrefined of Fiat Justitia bitterly assailing and over-emotional. It bears few tool poor Poe. But hearing of the sudden marks of careful artistry. An essential and unseemly death of Poe and of good poetry is evidence of restraint. reading Griswold’s dastardly life of To know what to leave out and to do this unfortunate, Chivers seems to it is a faculty that makes great art. have had a change of heart and Chivers exhibited little of this faculty, immediately began a life of his col- he simply overflowed unrestrainedly league. This never was finished. It and always. He lacked sustained effort was extravagantly dedicated to the in most of his works; in his “Soaring spirit of Shelley. Swan” he displays unsuspected powers Poets, it has been said, are half mad; in this faculty, which is an essential if that is a needful qualification to of all great poetry. His poems are write good poetry, then Chivers was “a succession of poetic excitements.” in no wise lacking. He was hallucina- The reason why Chivers did not tory, we have first-hand evidence of become a religious revivalist of a this, for his visions were as lucid as militant, morbid type, is, because he any that Blake experienced; on the most probably found an outlet in other hand he was at times much poetry that he could not find to his depressed, and he brooded bitterly liking in the ministry. It was well over his wrongs. His excursion on for the people of Georgia that he horse back, about which no one has chose to write poetry. He must have recorded very much, started when been a difficult person many times. he was depressed. He probably had a His work cannot be found in public breakdown. His writings are morbid libraries, nor are specimens of it and his life-long infatuation with contained in anthologies. Histories death and its somber trappings, leads of American Literature make no men- one to suspect that this was patho- tion of him. He enjoyed a vogue logical. In all of his works there is no during his lifetime among his own display of nicely balanced judgment people largely, now few know of him. and sense of the appropriate. His Except among bibliophiles and other thoughts were so disordered that collectors his books are not freely often his poetry was little more than found. Dr. Anderson in a recent sketch illogical jargon. He cannot be excused of Chivers says that seven or eight for his extravagances on the grounds volumes of his works are to be found of poetic license; there is a danger on the shelves of the British Museum. point always beyond which no true That fact speaks for their value. The poet can ever pass; Chivers constantly Encyclopedia of American Biography did this. His emotional balance too devotes two pages to the life of this was woefully distorted. I gather that singular Georgian. his temper at times was violent and Of his private life, no one can uncontrolled. Lack of inhibition is authoritatively point a finger charging him with any moral irregularities. I poet by some, and in spite of his believe the scandal in his early life morbidity and extravagances, as a to have no foundation in fact. Prob- prophet and soothsayer. He cannot ably his eccentric behavior led him to have done any harm and perhaps did be accused of wrong. He was a total good. abstainer as to alcohol and tobacco. It is not what a man does that Once he lectured Poe for his inebriate exhalts him habits. But what man would do. (Browning.) He had a wide influence in his day. The writer owes much to “The Life of Perhaps many were entertained and Thos. Holley Chivers” written by Professor a few felt uplifted and solaced by his Damon of Brown University and to other verse. He was accepted as a religious sources.