Alcoholism

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The belief that Ellis was a chronic alcoholic stems from his having been characterized as an unfortunate "slave of drink" in a florid magazine article published four years after his death. That concept has been repeated--and indeed embellished--hundreds of times, continuing to this day. A family letter verifies that Ellis used alcohol at some point after his discharge from West Point. How much is immaterial, since any amount  of drinking was behavior that his temperance father likely would have abhorred and been concerned about. This letter, which is the only known contemporaneous document referring to Ellis's use of alcohol, was cited in the 1960s as proof of his alcoholism as well as of family strife. However, there is a difference between experimentation with alcohol and lifelong addiction. No contemporaneous documentation that Ellis's youthful drinking ballooned into lifelong addiction has been found. While he was alive, no charge of alcoholism was made by people who actually worked with Ellis or knew him socially.

   The author of the posthumous article was an architect and, for a time, a close personal friend of Ellis after he returned to Rochester from the Midwest. It is important to understand that the article, whose general tone can best be described as melodramatic, also contained other verifiably false as well as demeaning or condescending misleading statements about Ellis that have led researchers down the wrong path for over a century--including me initially. Entries over several years in a diary kept by the sister of the article's author, who knew Ellis socially, frequently mention him. They portray him in a manner that is significantly at odds with the characterization of him in the article later written by her brother. Later entries in the same diary lead to the conclusion that the friendship between the author, his sister and Ellis waned a few years before the latter's death. We are left to wonder why the posthumous article, whose entirety has been paraphrased by so many other writers, made so many misleading statements. The documented facts of Ellis's biography and the nationally recognized magnitude of his achievements as an architectural designer, perspectivist, and painter belie the denigrating characterization of him as a chronic, irresponsible alcoholic bypassed by fame. Quite the contrary: the documented facts of Ellis's life tell a vastly different story.

                    

                                                            *****

This was written in 2009 and reflects research based on sources that were available to me up to that time. New information recently available has caused me to modify my conclusion stated above. The modification will be included in a new post I am now preparing whose title is Mrs. Harvey Ellis.  

Eileen Manning Michels

November 15, 2010

....find details in Reconfiguring Harvey Ellis

....look for forthcoming posts

Reconfiguring Harvey Ellis
Beaver's Pond Press (Minneapolis, Minn.:: 2004)
9 x 12 hard cover, 364 pages, 245 b&w and 45 color illustrations, $70
Find description of the contents at
   http://reconfiguringharveyellis.blogspot.com/
Available at http://www.bookhousefulfillment.com/

© Eileen Manning Michels 2009

European Trip After West Point

The story that Ellis's family sent him to Europe after his expulsion from West Point while an annulment of  a secret marriage was arranged began to circulate in print in the 1960s, but it resides in the realm of undocumented conjecture. A manuscript about Venetian architecture, one of three in his handwriting about historic architecture, has been offered as proof of such a trip. It has been described as a dutiful son's report to his family about his studies while in Europe. In fact, Ellis himself identified part of its contents as a direct quotation from Charles Dickens. Although Ellis did not identify the exact source, it is the paragraph in Dickens's Pictures from Italy (1846) that begins,

It was a great Piazza, as I thought; anchored, like all the rest, in the deep ocean. On its broad bosom, was a Palace, more majestic and magnificent in its old age, than all the buildings of the earth in the high prime and foulness of their youth...

The manuscript more likely was prepared for some sort of verbal presentation, possibly for an architectural club meeting, which was a form of architectural education in the late nineteenth century. Documentation of Ellis's life for a few years after West Point is scarce, but correspondence places him variously in New York, Albany and Rochester, supporting himself by working--not necessarily full-time--as a draftsman, at least some of the time in an engineering firm. That he was in Europe more than a decade later can be documented.

....find details in Reconfiguring Harvey Ellis 

....look for forthcoming posts

Reconfiguring Harvey Ellis
Beaver's Pond Press (Minneapolis, Minn: 2004)
9x12 hard cover, 364 pages, 245 b&w and 45 color illustrations, $70
Find description of the contents at
   http://reconfiguringharveyellis.blogspot.com/
Available at http://www.bookhousefulfillment.com/


© Eileen Manning Michels 2009

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Annulment of a Secret Marriage

This story that Ellis's family arranged an annulment of  his secret marriage to an actress during his first year at West Point first appeared in print in the 1960s. It originated because of a misinterpretation of a remark made by Ellis's elderly nephew in the 1950s, who, it is now apparent, was then less than accurate about his uncle Harvey--Ellis's nephew was not yet born at the time the alleged marriage would have occurred. There is no public record of a such a youthful marriage, when Ellis would have been about twenty years old, or of an annulment. As was discussed in a previous post, Ellis's record at West Point was the sole cause of his expulsion. According to census records, Ellis married when he was thirty-three years old.

....find details in Rconfiguring Harvey Ellis

....look for forthcoming posts

Reconfiguring Harvey Ellis
Beaver's Pond Press (Minneapolis, Minn: 2004)
9x12 hard cover, 364 pages, 245 b&w and 45 color illustrations
Find description of contents at
   http://reconfiguringharveyellis.blogspot.com/
Available at  http//:www.bookhousefulfillment.com/.


© Eileen Manning Michels 2009

Discharge from the USMA at West Point
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The story that Ellis was dishonorably discharged because he secretly wed an actress began to circulate in print in the 1960s. The fact is, however, that Ellis was academically ill-prepared for study at West Point and was only conditionally admitted after failing the entrance examination. During the first year incoming students concentrated on just two subjects, mathematics and French. Ellis was near the bottom of his class in mathematics, and he failed a final oral exam in French. He was among a group of fifteen cadets in the same class who were honorably discharged at the same time for similar reasons. Ellis's full USMA record--a dismal story--is documented in its archives.

....find details in Reconfiguring Harvey Ellis

....look for forthcoming posts

Reconfiguring Harvey Ellis
Beaver's Pond Press (Minneapolis, Minn: 2004)
9x12 hard cover, 364 pages, 260 b&w and 45 color illustrations, $70
Find description of the contents at
   http://reconfiguringharveyellis.blogspot.com/
Available at http://www.bookhousefulfillment.com/


© Eileen Manning Michels 2009