Disjointed thoughts on prolific writers, prolific facial hair, pubic hair, and so on

George Saintsbury 

Here is an interesting list of 'the top ten literary beards ranked in order of increasing awesomeness'. A shame though that Edward Lear is missing.

Edward Lear

Not only did he have a prolific beard but he penned the most famous poem about a beard.

There was an Old Man with a beard, Who said, 'It is just as I feared! Two Owls and a Hen, Four Larks and a Wren, Have all built their nests in my beard!'

Schopenhauer was revolted that women were sexually attracted by men with pubic hair on their faces. He was beardless and never married. 

Schopenhauer was not just a (hilariously funny) misogynist on paper but violent towards women. He threw his landlady down the stairs and had to pay her an annuity. She lived to a great age and when she died he wrote in his diary: 

Anis obit, onus abit. 

He had had more than thirty years to come up with that.

John Ruskin, of course, was famously shocked to discover, on his wedding night, that women had pubic hair at all. Mrs. Ruskin had her marriage dissolved for non-consummation and married Millais the painter, who was also a virgin on his wedding night, as was usual then. Some unkind person said that had the Ruskins' marriage been consummated Ruskin would have written Bubbles.

Which reminds me of a conversation about another unconsummated literary marriage of the same era, the Carlyles'. Someone young woman said what a shame it was that Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle ever married to which her interlocutor replied

Not at all. That way two people are unhappy instead of four.

I am not sure this blog post has a theme, any more than the pudding served to Churchill, but then life does not seem to have themes either.