Even here, however, one can trace the modern aesthetic aversion to fat. Chaucer undoubtedly took sly pleasure in stressing his difference from the current conception of the poet, which was typified so well by the handsome young squire, who
Coude songes make, and wel endyte.
[Footnote: Prologue.]
Such, at least, is the interpretation of Percy Mackaye, who in his play, The Canterbury Pilgrims, derives the heartiest enjoyment from Chaucer's woe lest his avoirdupois may affect Madame Eglantine unfavorably. The modern English poet who is oppressed by too, too solid flesh is inclined to follow Chaucer's precedent and take it philosophically. James Thomson allowed the stanza about himself, interpolated by his friends into the Castle of Indolence, to remain, though it begins with the line,
A bard here dwelt, more fat than bard beseems.
And in these days, the sentimental reader is shocked by Joyce Kilmer's callous assertion, "I am fat and gross…. In my youth I was slightly decorative. But now I drink beer instead of writing about absinthe." [Footnote: Letter to Father Daly, November, 1914.]
Possibly it would not be unreasonable to take difference in weight as another distinction between idealistic and sensuous poets. Of one recent realistic poet it is recorded, "How a poet could not be a glorious eater, he said he could not see, for the poet was happier than other men, by reason of his acuter senses." [Footnote: Richard Le Gallienne, Joyce Kilmer.] As a rule, however, decadent and spiritual poets alike shrink from the thought of grossness, in spite of the fact that Joyce Kilmer was able to win his wager, "I will write a poem about a delicatessen shop. It will be a high-brow poem. It will be liked." [Footnote: Robert Cortez Holliday, Memoir of Joyce Kilmer, p. 62.] Of course Keats accustomed the public to the idea that there are aesthetic distinctions in the sense of taste, but throughout the last century the idea of a poet enjoying solid food was an anomaly. Whitman's proclamation of himself, "Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating and drinking and breeding" [Footnote: Song of Myself.] automatically shut him off, in the minds of his contemporaries, from consideration as a poet.
It is a nice question just how far a poet may go in ignoring the demands of the flesh. Shelley's friends record that his indifference reached the stage of forgetting, for days at a time, that he was in a body at all. Even more extreme was the attitude of Poe, as it is presented at length in Olive Dargan's drama, The Poet. So cordial is his detestation of food and bed that he not only eschews them himself, but withholds them from his wife, driving the poor woman to a lingering death from tuberculosis, while he himself succumbs to delirium tremens. In fact, excessive abstemiousness, fostering digestive disorders, has been alleged to be the secret of the copious melancholy verse in the last century. It is not the ill-nourished poet, however, but enemies of the melancholy type of verse, who offer this explanation. Thus Walt Whitman does not hesitate to write poetry on the effect of his digestive disorders upon his gift, [Footnote: See As I Sit Writing Here.] and George Meredith lays the weakness of Manfred to the fact that it was
Projected from the bilious Childe.
[Footnote: George Meredith, Manfred.]
But to all conscious of possessing poetical temperament in company with emaciation, the explanation has seemed intolerably sordid.
To be sure, the unhealthy poet is not ubiquitous. Wordsworth's Prelude describes a life of exuberant physical energy. Walt Whitman's position we have quoted, and after him came a number of American writers, assigning a football physique to their heroes. J. G. Holland's poet was the superior of his comrades when brawn as well as brain, contended. [Footnote: Kathrina.] William Henry Burleigh, also, described his favorite poet as