Poets Ranked by Beard Weight!
Our new favorite terms for divination: "Box, Claus-esque, Dutch Elongated, Full Velutinous, Garibaldi Elongated, Hibernator, Italian False Goatee, Maltese, Mock Forked Elongated, Queen's Brigade, Spade, Spatulate Imperial, Van Dyke, Van Winkle, Wandering Jim..." What could they describe, you ask? Why, these are beard types! In fact, they represent much more than that--the language of the beard was used in the late 19th century in the ancient art of pogonomancy, or divination by beard reading.
We've just come across Poets Ranked By Beard Weight (Skyhorse Publishing), thanks to 50 Watts. The book is "a classic of Edwardian esoterica, a privately printed leaflet offered by subscription to the informed man of fashion and as a divertissement au courant for reading bins and cocktail tables of parlor cars and libraries and smoking lounges of gentlemen's clubs."
Its author was Upton Uxbridge Underwood (1881–1937), whose masterpiece was The Language of the Beard: "an epicurean treat confected for the delectation of fellow bon vivants, vaunts the premise that the texture, contours, and growth patterns of a man's beard indicate personality traits, aptitudes, and strengths and weaknesses of character. Underwood was "a deipnosophist, clubman, and literary miscellanist with a special interest in tonsorial subjects." Hmm? Tonsorial: "Adjective: Relating to hairdressing: 'she had a go at me over tonsorial neglect.'" Underwood's concepts were almost mystical, however:
That "exalted dignity, that certain solemnity of mien," lent by an imposing beard, "regardless of passing vogues and sartorial vagaries," says Underwood, is invariably attributable to the presence of an obscure principle known as the odylic force, a mysterious product of "the hidden laws of nature." The odylic, or od, force is conveyed through the human organism by means of "nervous fluid" which invests the beard of a noble poet with noetic emanations and ensheathes it in an ectoplasmic aura. This, according to Underwood, is the same force which facilitates the divinatory faculty and affords occult insight into matters of travel, voyages and accidents. More importantly, magnetic waves sparked by the od force give off a radiation whose "wattage" can be calibrated in angstroms of net effect. These waves generate electrical essences which register on special laboratory equipment developed by Underwood and a team of researchers. Testing is conducted in a relaxed setting free from any sense of restriction or cramped confinement.
He also had this down to an exact science. "Underwood's Pogonometric Index, plotted by means of numerical values designating 'poetic gravity' and relative 'beard weights,' yields readings ranging from zero to a positive value of sixty. The normal range for the average individual is ten to twenty-four. For exceptional individuals, it can run to a value of forty and above."
Par exemple, let's take Samuel Morse, pictured above. His stats include "Beard type: Garibaldi Elongated," "Typical opus: What Hath God Wrought," "Gravity (UPI rating): 58." Furthermore:
As will be noted, Underwood awards the highest ranking to Samuel F. B. Morse, laconic linguist and perfecter of the practical telegraph, whose name will be forever linked with that ingenious system of stripped-down prosody masterfully devised for conveying writing over distances by means of a wire which enabled him to transmit from Washington to Baltimore the immortal message: "What hath God wrought." In conferring the prize upon Morse, Underwood cites both the prominence of his whiskerage and the pre-eminence of his poetic gravity ratio, and recalls the little-known circumstances of Morse's poignant demise: "...as the eminent inventor-poet lay on his deathbed huskily breathing his last, and dusk and death's shadow competed to cast their palls over the hushed, but crowded room, vigil-keepers gasped as a sparrow descended from a nearby wire, lit at the windowsill, and began to tap rapidly with its tiny beak." Perhaps the bewildering bird was only attracted by the nest-worthiness of Morse's monolithic mass of whiskers. But, instead of flitting to nestle in the cottony tufts of the moribund seer's chin-fringe, the sparrow, according to astonished onlookers, tapped on the sill in perfect telegraphic code "…that nurtureth speech from silence…," at the precise moment the old sage expired. The testimony of the numerous sober witnesses to this incident is a matter of historical record.
Read more about the beards of Walt Whitman, Dante Gabriel Rosetti, Sir Walter Raleigh, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William Cullen Bryant, Henry David Thoreau, and more right oer here (with accompanying portraiture).