ABSTRACT
As those who knew William Maginn grayed and the world of their youth receded, 'the Doctor' became almost exclusively a subject for Victorian moralizing. His great talents were enumerated only to demonstrate that they had been ruined by feckless Irishness, wasted in scribbling to a deadline, debased by his era's penchant for 'personalities', and most of all drowned in alcohol. Even the publisher Charles Knight, who knew and admired Maginn, had to confess that he was 'best of a morning'; his evenings were unspeakable. He joked about his propensities and once projected an essay 'to discuss the causes of the universal bibacity of the tribe of pedagogues'; like so much, his history of the mayors of Cork, the volume of tales from the Talmud, the flaneur novel set in Paris, this was never written. After Maginn was buried on that turbulent August day in Walton-on-Thames, Ellen and the children relied on friends to help them in their distress.
