debauchee

He was like an all-night debauchee who scrubs up well in a suit the next morning only to abandon all restraint again the next night.

In the book’s most-arresting image, an old goat looks truly goatish, half Pan, half jaded debauchee, as he casts a rakishly appraising glance at the reader.

She is the poet of nature – “Inebriate of air am I / And debauchee of dew … ” The poet of loneliness – “The soul selects her own society / Then shuts the door … ” The poet of adventure – “Exultation is the going / Of an inland soul to sea … ” The poet of passion – “Wild nights! Wild nights! / Were I with thee / Wild nights should be / Our luxury!”

Here was a writer who unabashedly proclaimed her rapture for the mere “bumble of a bee” and scent of a new blossom, who described herself as a “debauchee” routinely getting drunk off nature—a poet who filled her verse with the Latin names of flowers and the habits of tiny, oft-overlooked creatures.

I remember the portrait of him up in Gatsby's bedroom, a grey, florid man with a hard empty face--the pioneer debauchee who during one phase of American life brought back to the eastern seaboard the savage violence of the frontier brothel and saloon.