Alternate spellings: MacDonald Clarke; M'Donald Clarke
McDonald Clarke 1798-1842 Born in Bath, Maine, the illegitimate son of a wealthy ship builder. He was associated with the Bohemian set in New York in the first half of the nineteenth century.
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Clarke is sometimes remembered for a couplet from his poem, "Death in Disguise," which is sometimes used as a quotation:
"Now twilight lets her curtain down,
And pins it with a star."
And for an epigram he wrote:
"Tis vain for present fame to wish--
Our persons first must be forgotten;
For poets are like stinking fish--
They never shine until they're rotten."
His, "Elixir of Moonshine by the Mad Poet" was published in 1822. That was followed by, "The Gossip” in 1925 and five other collections in the next 15 years, including his collected works in 1836.
When Clarke was twelve his mother died at sea, from there he's next heard of in Philadelphia where, in Lydia Child's "Letters From New-York" she states that, "he habitually slept in the graveyard on Franklin's monument."1 Mostly forgotten today, Clarke was a well-known figure in the New York Broadway area, where he arrived around 1819, eventually becoming known as the "Mad Poet of Broadway" for his eccentric behavior and attire. "Clarke was an imitator of Byron, and copied his airs and costumes,"2 and was seen along Broadway wearing a cloth cap and "sporting a dark blue coat and red neckerchief."3 Though he early attempted to earn a living at journalism, it appears that Clarke's only source of income for most of his adult life came from his poetry. Clarke's style was humorous, sentimental, and satirical, sometimes sometimes exhibiting grotesqueness and idiosyncrasies. His early poems were directed to a select audience, the people he knew and understood. As American publishing expanded, however, Clarke adapted his style, becoming less intimate and more commercial, catering to those of a wider audience.
It's difficult to separate the truth from the apocryphal in much of Clarke's life. There are any number of stories of his eccentric exploits, some which tend to test credulity, but they do indicate the notoriety which accompanied his life.
One such account retells a story of Clarke entering a restaurant where he is noticed by a group of patrons who praise his poetry, but poke fun at his character. Speaking loudly to be over-heard by Clarke, one member of the group suggested that he'd pay a quarter to meet The Mad Poet and each member of the group, agreed the same. Clarke then walked over and addressed himself to the group, pleasantries were exchanged and each then gave the poet a quarter. Clarke then returned a nine pence to each person, which was half the sum of the quarter, stating, "Children half price!"
He fell in love with a Miss Brundage, a struggling actress, but her mother disapproved of Clarke and so the two eloped. The marriage was an impractical one, Clarke's finances were poor and as one source indicates, "he treated her so badly that she was compelled to leave him."4 Despite that treatment, In later years, when he became destitute, she took pity on MacDonald and supplied him with food. As with much of Clarke's life, these accounts are told second hand and in Child's Letters she gives a different account, more or less exonerating Clarke of the ill treatment of his wife. Child's sympathetic account of the Mad poet however, reads more like romance than biography, and is yet another impediment in gathering the real details of Clarke's life.
It seems Clarke had a fanciful, excitable nature and that compounded by constant poverty may have taken its toll for he increasingly showed signs of mental illness, and was placed in an asylum. On March 5, 1842, Clarke was found in a demented condition and was placed in a jail cell. He was then transferred to an asylum for the insane where was found dead a few days later from drowning. Among the attendees of his funeral at the Green-wood Cemetery in Brooklyn was his friend and benefactor, the poet Fitz Greene Halleck. His death was eulogized by Walt Whitman in two editorials and in a poem, "The Death and Burial of McDonald Clarke." It seems stories of Clarke's capricious and offbeat nature continued years after his death, for The New York Times facetiously recounted a purportedly true story of a group of Mediums who held a séance at Clarke's grave site, claiming he would appear and recite a new poem; and like so much of what is written on Clarke's life, it reads more like fiction than fact.
Notes:
1: Letters from New-York by Lydia Maria Francis Child, 1844
2 & 4: The New York Times Archive, "THE MAD POET.; An Old Print of McDonald Clarke Found in a Hartford Attic" November 12, 1893
3: The Chronology of American Literature, edited by Daniel S. Burt. Copyright 2004 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
