Was Thomas Paine depressed, drunk, and diseased?

A "gem" of a slander published on the BBC's website

Was Thomas Paine depressed, drunk and diseased?

A 2011 article on a BBC website claims that

"Paine ... died in miserable circumstances in New York in 1809, having spent his last years in America often depressed, drunk and diseased."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/paine_01.shtml

The author of the BBC article is not the first historian to accept the common nineteenth-century account of Paine's circumstances and passing at the end of his life. Most of Paine's chief biographers -- including Conway, Keane and others -- have repeated it with neither amelioration nor critical analysis.

A closer reading of the historical data shows that history and historians have fallen for what amounts to anti-Paine propaganda popularized in the Federalist and conservative press before, during, and subsequent to Paine's death.

The fact is that Paine died a wealthy man. Paine's biographers have documented his financial worth at between $11,500.00 and $15,000.00 US at the time of his death ... a substantial amount at that time. Land accounted for about $10,000.00 of it, as I recall, but he was far from poor. The inflation calculator at officialdate.org puts the upper figure at $328,286.59 in current dollars U.S.

Nor was he any more or less alone than any of us are at the time of death.

Many of Paine's closest friends and associates were guillotined in the French Revolution and others died of old age and illness well before him. He lived to a ripe old age in spite of serious infirmity brought about by the ruination of his health during imprisonment. There is no reason to believe that he was more "depressed" than any other elderly, dying person deprived of paliative care. In fact, those who actually knew him during the period spoke of his clarity, kindness, resignation and firmness of mind even in the last period of his life.

Nobody who actually knew him intimately said that he was drunken, ever.

These accusations come solely from his political enemies, chiefly James Cheetham whose notorious attack biography of Paine was an early milestone in yellow journalism. In the early 1800s, the story of Paine's drunkenness was so nearly universal that his early biographer Gilbert Vale (1788-1866) accepted it without question when he set out to write the first American biography of Paine (1839). But in the course of research for his Life of Thomas Paine, Vale met and interviewed many persons who actually knew Paine - John Fellows, Aaron Burr, the artist John Wesley Jarvis among them. They all universally denied the allegation that Paine was drunken, filthy or particularly diseased. If you have not read Vale's account, it is a fascinating read.

Paine drank far less than either Washington or Jefferson. And yet we find no accounts of "Washington's filthy drunkenness" anywhere. Jarvis, with whom Paine lived in his old age, said that he himself drank FAR more than Paine and the New Rochelle store clerk who drove Paine's carriage and actually sold him his liquor and assisted him when he was ill says he never once saw Paine drunk ... ever. This at a time when Federalist sources universally excoriated his supposed drunkenness. Don't forget that for the temperance advocates of Paine's and later ages, just one drink was debauchery itself. Paine was known at that time to purchase about a quart of BRANDY per week for himself and friends and to take a glass of brandy and water after what we now call lunch and one again after supper. The fact is that prudish, evangelical, pro-temperance and most of all FEDERALIST writers attacked Paine's personal character in order to blunt his political and religious influence .... just as they do today.

This is not to say (begging your pardon) that Paine farted roses, unicorns, and butterflies. He was a human being ... which is to say, a complex being. Gilbert Vale had it about right:

"We are not, however, about to write a eulogy; to enhance his virtues, or to suppress his faults, or vices. Paine was a part of human nature, and partook of its imperfections; and our purpose is to fairly represent him as he was; but the greater part of Paine's life was public and as such we know of no man who had greater virtues or less vices."

What Vale found and documented in his own research on Paine -- and no biographer has added substantially or significantly to Vale's account -- was that virtually all of the received accounts of Paine's drunkenness traced back to James Cheetham's smear. Cheetham was a convicted libeler. Paine threatened to sue him when alive, so Cheetham waited to write his defamatory historical novel until after Paine's death ... in fact, immediately after Paine's death in order to maximize his sales.

Janet Mirsky and Allan Nevins, in their distinguished biography of Eli Whitney noted Whitney's disgust with Paine's shaking hand and drooping lip as he raised a glass of wine. This was in the later part of Paine’s life. Mirsky and Nevins, however, suggested that Whitney the Federalist and temperance advocate .. ignorant of medicine ...
mistook Paine's palsy. He had recently hurt himself in a fall down a flight of stairs after what he described as a "fit of apoplexy" that left him without the ability to speak or use his hands for some days. This was almost certainly a stroke. Mirsky, Nevins and other credible medical observers believe that Paine may have had Parkinson's and the conservative Whitney's disgust was prejudicial and medically oblivious.

A question: wouldn't it be more balanced, judicious and historically reasoned to say with Gilbert Vale that

"... he died in peace, in a good old age, the firm and consistent friend
of liberty."

and that to write otherwise is to perpetuate what was originally a politically motivated slander?

© Copyright - Kenneth W. Burchell 2012, All Rights Reserved.

note: the blogger has written the author of the BBC article and in nine years now received no response. Interested persons can find another elaboration of this argument in the introduction to my six-volume, fully edited and annotated collection of contemporary American replies to Thomas Paine formerly published by Pickering/Chatto, London in 2009 and now by Routledge/Taylor and Francis. This collection is available in many major university librarys, the LOC, British Library, etc. Yet another and similarly strained speculation by author Craig Nelson that Paine was the victim of bi-polar disease has been refuted and castigated here: https://kennethburchell.substack.com/p/thomas-paine-and-bi-polar-disorder