Mad, Bad, And Dangerous To Know
My life these days is almost 100% schoolwork, as I am currently teaching five classes at two different colleges. (I spend my entire weekends grading; it’s exhausting.) This week, my literature class is going to start on the Romantics, and I was doing some reading about old friends like John Keats, Mary Wollstonecraft, and William Wordsworth.
One would think that this would in no way be relevant to this blog, so imagine my surprise when I ran across the following passage, in the Norton Anthology’s entry on Lord Byron:
Byron was extraordinarily handsome… Because of a constitutional tendency to obesity, however, he was able to maintain his looks only by resorting again and again to a starvation diet of biscuits, soda water, and strong purgatives.
Even before we had skinny celebrities on the cover of tabloids, way back at the turn of the nineteenth century, Lord Byron of all people was starving himself. Wow. Kind of crazy, no?
Who please, the more because they preach in vain,–
Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter,
Sermons and soda-water the day after.
-George Gordon, Lord Byron
Posted by mo pie
Filed under: Books, Celebrities, Old Timey, Personal
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LOVE IT! Well not “love” that he starved himself, but love the lit reference ;) Let’s keep perspective though…while Lord Byron may have cared about his weight, he sure didn’t mind sleeping with his sister and anything with legs. So…
I think this just goes to show how social and cultural norms dictate our taboos. Fat = Bad. Incest = A-Ok.
xoxo
I took a summer school course at Cambridge years back. I stayed at Trinity College and ate meals in their wonderful Hall. There are portraits of famous alumni on the walls of the hall. It was a bit intimidating to eat under the gaze of Newton, Milne, and yes, Byron!
Hey, she was only his half-sister! Hee.
I love that quote!
For some reason I always think of Bryon as someone who looks not at all like that picture of him. Ha ha. He’s pretty steamy, though. I always got the impression he was kind of a jerk. But, gosh, if I were only eating biscuits and soda water, I’d probably be a bit of a jerk, too.
I love this stuff!
Fascinating. Thank you.
Wow!
And people had a love-him-or-hate-him relationship with him, didn’t they?
Wow that is pretty interesting that even then people had insecurities.
how much do i love the reference to beverly hills 90210? let me count the ways. (wrong poet, i know).