The dominant literary theory in the 20th century was the New Criticism, which taught that text was all, that the life and times of the author had little importance to the appreciation of art. Yet many readers ignore this too precious idea and assume that the writer is inspired by circumstances. Biography can lead to a greater appreciation of the work. In Dr. John Ross’ medical biography of a handful of great English authors, he accounts for some of the well known as well as the highly speculative details of their writing lives, occasionally reflecting on their works. Some of the details are TMI, far Too Much Information, especially in the descriptions of the treatments and poisonous potions given to these unfortunate sufferers. Here are the literary victims and their maladies:
Shakespeare shook. His handwriting became increasingly tremulous and some have surmised that he had syphilis or perhaps just a dose of the clap. But his tremor is the only known fact of his diminished scrawl and who knows, this could have been age itself. That his work frequently referenced venereal diseases is not evidence and neither is the difficult question of why he completely stopped writing at all. We do learn from Ross that syphilis probably came to Europe from the Caribbean, brought back by Columbus’ crew and the other early explorers. Perhaps this was only justice as the South Americans were gifted with smallpox and other Continental diseases.
John Milton was a pedantic and generally reprehensible SOB, but we knew that. He may have had Asperger syndrome. His blindness was probably caused by chronic glaucoma and retinal detachment related to severe myopia. Ross confirms what your mother told you, that reading in low light ruins the eyes, or at least a lot of reading does. Myopia is not common to pre-literate societies. Lead poisoning may have also given Milton intestinal problems (he was “afflicted with flatulence”) and the deterioration of his kidneys. The lead may have come from drinking vessels or from his physicians. None of his physicians were able to make him a better person.
Jonathan Swift became dizzy and deaf, probably from Meniere’s disease. He grew depressed, dull and demented. No doubt he had OCD, he was obsessively clean, hated filth and was disgusted by sex. This did not temper his love life with a Stella Johnson and Hester Vanessa Vanhomrigh, insisting on their fastidious cleanliness. Some of the smutty passages in his writing may have been a result of his increasing dementia. After his death, his fortune went to a hospital for the mentally ill which “now has wards named after Stella and Vanessa.”
The Bronte sisters and the whole sickly family suffered greatly from one awful thing or another. The girls father, Patrick Brunty (he adopted the less ruffian name Bronte) was a literary but pious tyrant and a vicar who enforced his moral rules with a strong left hook. He placed the famous Charlotte and Emily, together with the lesser known Maria and Elizabeth in a cruel Dickensian boarding school that was subsequently shut down for its vile and unhygienic conditions. It did not close in time to save several of the girls from death by tuberculosis. Both Maria and Elizabeth Bronte expired promptly and Charlotte and Emily went on to fame and the unfortunate life of chronic consumptives. A brother, Branwell, took to the wilder side of life and drugs, from which he too died young. Then there was Aspergers, depression, insomnia, hyperemesis, delirium, malnutrition, and possibly bipolar disorder. The youngest of the sisters, Anne, an early feminist writer, “died peacefully” of tuberculosis. Ross notes that Asperger syndrome may be conducive to the quiet, asocial life of a writer. And in an aside, Dr. Ross discusses how cystic fibrosis, when only one of the recessive genes is present, may actually provide protection from tuberculosis.
Nathaniel Hawthorne had a social phobia that was extreme and no doubt pathological. Attendant to this was depression and alcoholism. His intense shyness led him to slight a visiting publisher, but then run after him as he left and he “shyly handed him a bundle of papers.” This was the manuscript of The Scarlet Letter, one of the perennial contenders for Great American Novel. Long a depressive but physically healthy for most of his life, Hawthorne began to decline in health and weight and energy and finally succumb, probably due to stomach cancer.
Herman Melville’s father suffered bipolar disorder leading to an acute breakdown called Bell’s mania and ultimately death. Melville was no stranger to mental disorders and even Melvilles’s sons suffered likewise. Melville writes of the debauchery and drunkenness among the sailors in the South Seas and may well have indulged in some of the same. Wild and uninhibited sex is a not too subtle theme in his writing although there is no real evidence he engage in anything like physical love for Nathaniel Hawthorne his friend and neighbor to whom he clearly was enormously attracted. There is what must only be called a love letter to Hawthorne that has led to speculation about Melville’s most personal life, but there is no smoking gun. His bipolar affliction resulted in maniacal bouts of writing for which the reading public can only be grateful. Melville also suffered debilitating back pain attributed to rheumatism but which Dr. Ross contends must have been ankylosing spondylitis. AS also could account for Melville’s eye affliction, chest pain and even loss in height. All this assortment of ailments may well account for the gloomy writing. He live long with his many illnesses but the one that killed him was heart failure. After his death, Billy Budd was published, but of course, it was Moby Dick that places this long-suffering author in the first rank of novelists in the English language.
William Butler Yeats suffered much from his lungs and had the kind of heart trouble that leads to the agonies of the lovelorn the most compelling of poetry. It was his heart the finally did him in, dying of heart failure, “his wife and two mistresses in attendance.” Like Dante and Beatrice, Yeats forever loved his Maude Gonne, who repeatedly spurned his marriage proposals, as did Maude Gonne’s daughter. Yeats did marry the loyal Georgina Hyde Lees, a friend of Ezra Pound. The young American Ezra Pound was a genius poet who worshipped the elder poet. Yeats frequently lived with Pound in Italy, until madness and cynicism turned Ezra Pound into a fascist and traitor. Brucellosis was the worst of the ailments for Yeats, if love-sickness does not count. Caused by a bacterium transmitted through contaminated milk, brucellosis is a devastating lung disease that was difficult to treat before the age of antibiotics. Yeats was treated with arsenic, a valuable remedy for infections known from ancient Greek times and is still used in veterinary medicine. Yeats may have had a bit too much of the stuff and had a slow recovery. He also voluntarily endured a “Steinach procedure”. Steinach, a wacko charlatan, gave patients what was only a vasectomy, which he apparently convinced his dupes would restore the youthful vigor of their manly parts. Surely Yeats had enough troubles without this, but the poor Irish patriot wrote some of the most moving and transcendent poetry in the English language.
On the other hand, there are those who consider Jack London a hack who wrote a couple of worthy stories. Nonetheless, London became enormously popular and quite rich. Jack London was bipolar and his maniacal bouts of energy produced volumes of rip-roaring adventure stories. On one of his own adventures in the Solomon Islands, London contracted yaws, a disease that is a first-cousin to syphilis but can be contracted by only casual contact. He suffered from terrible skin ulcers, a rectal fistula, and from the regimen of the attempted cure: arsenic and mercury. As a wealthy celebrity writer, physicians would prescribe for him most anything. For later ailments, in addition to the toxic mercury, but possibly effective arsenic, London was given heroin, strychnine, belladonna, and a plethora of other snake oils. He died of an overdose.
James Joyce had a dose of the gleet. The clap. Gonorrhea. Neisseria gonorrhoeae. The description of the symptoms, and worse, the treatment, is given by Dr. Ross, but not to be repeated here. Joyce apparently took the cure for this awful malady and survived unscathed. He may also have contracted chlamidia resulting in reactive arthritis. Reactive arthritis, triggered by the genital infections is an autoimmune disease. This in turn may have triggered his iritis, an inflammation of the iris. This became chronic and led to his near blindness. What was the treatment? Do you want to know? Yes, he was treated with leeches applied to the eye. During the writing of one of the greatest of literary feats, the magnificent Ulysses, his afflicted eyes worsened with severe glaucoma. Ross reports that frequently in Ulysses, many passages refer to the aforementioned gleet and other STD manifestations. Joyce’s eyes continued to worsen, and he had to suffer the repeated cruelties of ocular surgeries. What did the great wordsmith in at last was acute peritonitis. Ross relates a doubtful anecdote, but one that rings so true about Joyce and his lifelong argument with Irish Catholicism. A priest offered to give Joyce a church requiem and burial, but the writer’s wife Nora said, no, “I couldn’t do that to him.”
George Orwell had a bad cough. Trouble with breathing, congestion, and bronchitis began to bedevil Orwell, born Eric Blair in 1903, as early as infancy. He had a brilliant academic career but being decidedly among the common classes in snooty England, he took on the role of a policeman in Burma. His weak lungs suffered in the East and he only worsened his condition upon an early retirement by a Bohemian lifestyle as scruffy writer in London. Here he was given to fits of coughing up blood, attacks of pneumonia, and later tuberculosis. The cruelties of his venture in fighting the fascists in the Spanish civil war did not help. He took a bullet to the neck in that war and miraculously survived. His incessant smoking could not have helped either. When the world war came to England in 1940, the adventurous socialist volunteered his services, but of course, he failed his physicals. Ross provides copious details of Orwell’s failing health, including various gruesome descriptions, which probably ought to be skipped by the squeamish. No doubt Orwell’s suffering was not only from his diseases, but from the awful medical procedures which may have inspired some of the torture and institutional cruelties in Nineteen Eighty-four. The critical and financial success of that novel came too late in life for Orwell as he was already dying. He enjoyed a brief reprieve from his impending end, and sought to take a rest in the Swiss Alps but before his flight was to leave he died alone in the hospital, a gloomy genius to the last.
Two Strikes 