Louis Fitzgerald Tasistro (1808-1886)

Born in Ireland, he was first married to Elizabeth Bowen Willson at St. James' in London's Piccadilly, in 1826. He emigrated alone to New York from Fife in Scotland, circa 1836, styling himself as a "Count". On the voyage, he became friendly with a son of Lord Henry Gage who was coming to make the acquaintance of his kinsman, Mr. Gouverneur Kemble. Through Gage and subsequently Kemble, "the Count" was introduced into New York's most exclusive set, and soon became the lion of the hour. He didn't waste the opportunity, and in 1837 - while still married to his first wife - he married Adelaide Lynch. But his false persona was already raising eyebrows, and Adelaide's uncle, Dominick Lynch, exposed him as a fraud, prompting him to challenge another of Adelaide's uncles, Henry Lynch, to a duel, and 'posted' him when he refused.

His marriage to Adelaide was subsequently dissolved "on grounds of adultery" in 1841, and in Philadelphia the following year (still using the bogus title of 'Count') he was married to Katherine Baker of New York. In 1853, a year after she died, he married his fourth wife in Washington D.C., Catherine Quin, of Norfolk, Virginia. In addition to his four wives, between 1856 and 1862 he fathered three children in New York by a Margaret Sharpe. His son by Adelaide Lynch was raised entirely by his mother, dropping the name "Tasistro," he presented himself only as Louis Fitzgerald and became both distinguished and wealthy.

From 1840, in New York Tasistro became an actor known for playing Shakespearean roles, especially Othello and Macbeth. He toured the South appearing in plays and wrote two volumes on the southern states; later he lectured in New York, wrote for a Boston weekly, and published a novel. At some time prior to the Civil War he was a translator for the U.S. State Department, and then returned to the New York stage. Somewhere along the way, Tasistro had become friendly with Walt Whitman, perhaps from New York, but more likely during the period when he was teaching languages/translating in Washington. On April 26, 1872, the Washington Daily Morning Chronicle printed a letter from Whitman seeking, "pecuniary assistance for a man of genius, whose name, twenty or thirty years ago, was one of the bright stars." Now, at the age of seventy, Whitman says, he is "stranded, without a dollar, lingering, disabled by injuries, and down with obstinate, long-protracted ailments, starving, slowly dying, in this city." The appeal raised $122 to which Whitman added $10 before. Tasistro lived for another fourteen years, which may give a clue as to why Whitman abruptly stopped enquiring about him from 1874 onwards.

Marian Gouverneur had been at the same school in New York as Adelaide Lynch, and she remembered Tasistro from back then as, "an intellectual man of fine presence and skilled in a number of foreign languages." Years later, their paths crossed again in Washington when he was working as a translator, but after a few years, "owing to an affection of the eyes, he was obliged to give up this position, and his condition was one of destitution. Through the instrumentality of my husband (Samuel L. Gouverneur) he obtained an annuity from his son, whom, by the way, he never knew; and for some years, in a spirit of gratitude, taught my children French. His last literary effort was the translation of the first two volumes of the Comte de Paris's 'History of the Civil War in America.' His devotion to my husband was pathetic, and I have frequently heard him say during the last years of his life that he never met him without some good fortune immediately following."

John Bigelow recalled being asked to revise some notes for Josiah Gregg, to shape them for the publication of his book, Commerce of the Prairies (1844). He wrote: "He had previously confided his notes to Count Louis Fitzgerald Tasistro... but their views of the way in which the work they were engaged upon should be executed were so widely divergent that their partnership was speedily dissolved. As I became more acquainted with Mr. Gregg I had no difficulty in discerning the cause of their incompatibility. He had no notions of literary art and he knew it, but he was morbidly conscientious, and nothing would induce him to state anything that he did not positively know as if he did know it, or to overstate anything. Tasistro had no such infirmity. Then Gregg had about as little imagination as any man I ever knew, while Tasistro had such an excess of it that he had no difficulty in believing and affirming things that never happened. It was not strange, therefore, that they soon parted with opinions of each other not in the least improved by their association."

A few years before his death, his past caught up with him again. In 1848, a poem entitled "Agatha; A Necromaunt in Three Chimeras," by Louis Fitzgerald Tasistro, was printed in America, appearing in several numbers of Graham's Magazine. But the poem was in fact a word-for-word copy of "The Death-Wake" by the Scottish angler, Thomas Tod Stoddart. The "piracy" went unnoticed until 1876 when Dr. Appleton of the Academy sent Stoddart a letter on the subject from Mr. Ingram of the Illustrated London News. Mr. Ingram was writing a biography of Edgar Allan Poe, and it was suggested that Poe, whose works had been favorably reviewed by Tasistro, and who "read out of the way things, and was not too scrupulous, recognized, and robbed, a brother in Tom Stoddart". As for Mr. Stoddart, he "failed to appreciate the compliment which Mr. Tasistro's cool appropriation implied."

Tasistro died in not uncomfortable circumstances at 712 G Street in Washington D.C., when he was described somewhat respectably as a "widowed teacher".