Poe's Appearance in Baltimore

Jeffrey A. Savoye in his essay, "Two Biographical Digressions: Poe's Wandering Trunk and Dr. Carter's Mysterious Sword Cane" notes that there were two first-hand witnesses that saw Edgar Allan Poe, before he was medically treated and died. They described his appearance when they saw him on a Baltimore street.

Although neither man “was scrupulous in his recollection,” their testimonies record Poe’s appearance.

Snodgrass says:

His face was haggard, not to say bloated, and unwashed, his hair unkempt, and his whole physique repulsive. His expansive forehead, with its wonderful breadth between the points where the phrenologists locate the organ of ideality—the widest I ever measured—and that full-orbed and mellow, yet soulful eye, for which he was so noticeable when himself, now lusterless and vacant, as shortly I could see, were shaded from view by a rusty, almost brimless, tattered and ribbon-less palmleaf hat. His clothing consisted of a sack-coat of thin and sleezy [sic]black alpaca, ripped more or less at several of its seams, and faded and soiled, and pants of a steel-mixed pattern of cassinette, half-worn and badly-fitting, if they could be said to fit at all. He wore neither vest nor neck-cloth, while the bosom of his shirt was both crumpled and badly soled. On his feet were boots of coarse material, and giving no sign of having been blacked for a long time, if at all.

Moran gives a shorter but equally detailed account:

A stained faded, old bombazine coat, pantaloons of a similar character, a pair of worn-out shoes run down at the heels, and an old straw hat.

Haggard, bloated, unwashed, tattered says the first account.

Stained, faded, worn-out, run down says the second.

Look around. See the face of mental illness. More Poes are out there.