Text: Joel Benton, “Thomas Holley Chivers,” In the Poe Circle (1899), pp. 61-68

[page 61:]

UNTIL a recent date it has been difficult to give any definite or detailed account of Chivers, the eccentric Southern poet. The few relatives and friends of the author — and he was quite a voluminous author, for a poet — have not been aware that there was much popular interest in him; or else, for reasons of their own, they have not wished to gratify this curiosity as to his life. His name is not to be found in any biographical cyclopedia, though it is mentioned in Allibone's “Dictionary of Authors,” a book that limits its function mainly to titles and names.

When Appleton's “Cyclopedia of American Biography” was being compiled, a few years ago, the editors were unable to find enough facts about Chivers to warrant the [page 62:] insertion of even a short paragraph. All that a limited number of literary men knew about him was that such a man had been born early in the century ; that he was of a Southern family, but had spent some time in New England; that he was a physician in full standing ; and finally — a fact of more interest and importance — that he wrote lyrics which, when he employed his best style, were strangely like Poe's. Added to this piquant revelation was the strong assertion of himself, and of competent and distinguished persons, that his style was not borrowed from Poe, but that it appeared prior to Poe's characteristic work, and therefore set the pace by which Poe became famous; giving the suggestion from which grew the latter's mystic fascination. To be brought into relations like these may not constitute fame, but it is a sort of second cousin to it, and must always beget an alluring interest in the author who came so near to a high goal. [page 63:]

The facts which the reviewer now finds at his disposal are due in great measure to Mr. John Quincy Adams, of Washington, Ga., a relative of Chivers, and himself a writer of skill and vigor. The father of the poet was Col. Robert Chivers, who had three sons and four daughters. Thomas Holley, the eldest, was born in 1807, two years before Poe, at Digby Manor, a few miles south of Washington, Ga. His pro genitors were English on both sides, and settled originally in Virginia. On the mother's side the name was Digby, her ancestors having been prominent in England during the latter part of the seventeenth century.

Mr. Adams states that Colonel Chivers was a rich planter and mill-owner. Recognizing the genius of his son, he became over-indulgent to him, so that the young man was imbned with a full sense of his own importance. He graduated with distinction in medicine at Transylvania, now [page 64:] the University of Kentucky, in or about 1828. The statement which has been made that he was a graduate of Yale is erroneous. “He cared only for the scientific cult of his profession,” Mr. Adams says, “though to the day of his death he never failed to serve gratis those too poor to hire a doctor. After a few years’ practice he chose literature as an occupation, and having always abundant means for his solitary and temperate life, he lived and died in the pride of his intellectuality. He despised all mere pretense toward scholarship. Among ordinary people he was a most ‘unclubbable’ man, but among his equals he was a charming companion.”

His correspondence discloses the fact that he was held in high esteem, and that he was an authority on a wide range of subjects, particularly the Hebrew language and literature. Many of these letters, now in the possession of Mr. Adams, were writ ten by men of note to Chivers, and among [page 65:] them is one by Poe himself, pathetic with lament, mentioning the Stylus, which he intended to start and of which so much has been written. In this Poe says: “Please lend me $50 for three months — I am so poor and friendless I am half distracted; but I shall be all right when you and I start our magazine.” (It was $500 for which Poe had asked Halleck when he started the Broadway Journal.)

At the age of twenty-five Chivers went North to live, shortly afterward marrying Miss Harriet Hunt, who is described as having been a woman of great beauty. Four children were born to them. The tragical fact is mentioned that these children were all carried off by a virulent form of typhoid fever while the family was staying at Digby Manor. A son and two daughters were afterward born and grew up. When the son died, his four children were adopted by his second sister, Mrs. Isabel Brown, now living in Decatur, Ga. [page 66:] The other daughter, Mrs. Potter, lives in Connecticut.

In 1856 Chivers returned to the South and made his final home in Decatur. A physiological professorship in a medical college in Savannah was offered him, but his health was impaired, and he was obliged to decline the appointment. Mr. Adams mentions that he was a painter, and that he made frequent portraits of his family. He also made some notable pen-and-ink sketches. He appears to have had an inventive turn of mind as well, for he originated a machine for unwinding the fibre from silk cocoons, a device of so much merit that it received a silver cup at one of the Southern expositions.

It is not pleasant to recall the fact that the poet's library, being on the line of Sherman's march to the sea, was destroyed or confiscated, and that all his manuscripts were more or less injured. This was after Chivers's death, which occurred at Decatur [page 67:] December 18th, 1858. His demise received wide notice in the North, and the breadth of his territory of renown among scholars is indicated by the fact that Professor Gierlow, a Danish author, wrote a beautiful poem on the event.

William Gilmore Simms, at that time one of the greatest names in Southern literature, took much interest in Chivers, and called him “the wild Mazeppa of letters.” He frequently rallied his friend on his choice of strange words and on “the monotony of his sorrow.” In good-humored retaliation, no doubt, the doctor advised Simms to cease writing stupid novels and “take up literature as a pleasure.”

Chivers's face was of poetic cast. The fine lines of the mouth alone gave it distinction, and the intent, piercing eye and dark, flowing hair, as well as the contour of the head, with its massive forehead, completed an intellectual ensemble at least competent for fame. [page 68:]

The pathetic conclusion of the whole matter of his life and work is embodied in the one word “almost.” He did not quite touch the high and ambitious empyrean at which he aimed. There were great visions before him, but he could not put them into perfectly clarified expression. At times he nearly found the vehicle of words that up lifts us, but some lack of needed impulse or finish, some want of surrounding atmosphere, or some other partial defect, tells the story of defeat. But there is room enough for a hospitable memory of him, and reason enough to honor his daring. We may put him at least in the Poe rubric, and recall, in exalting Poe, a few of the typical attributes which gave Chivers his place in poetry.