Only Half-Alive

Unprepossessing in appearance—small and so strikingly thin that his clothes shrouded rather than covered him; his close-cropped hair, and wide, heavily lipped mouth, and eyes sunk deep into darkened sockets, lent him a gauntly simian look—George Tyrrell suffered more or less constantly from a sharp sting in the flesh. Severe migraine headaches and their accompanying nausea left him often prostrate days on end, only "half-alive," as he put it, unable to abide any human contact. Sick to his stomach so much, he ate carelessly and seldom, reducing himself to a virtual state of malnutrition and thus further aggravating his illness. The doctors solemnly warned him that mental fatigue from overwork brought about the pain and the bilious attacks, and yet it was only work that afforded him any lasting relief.

—Marvin R. O'Connell, Critics on Trial (1994)