“When one subtracts from life infancy (which is vegetation),—sleep, eating, and swilling—buttoning and unbuttoning—how much remains of downright existence? The summer of a dormouse.”—Byron*
In 1792, or thereabouts, though in no way depressed,
Clad in a figured blue velvet tailcoat,
Colonel —— blew his brains out, leaving a paper on his desk
Saying that he’d been weary above all of getting dressed;
All that buttoning and unbuttoning, he opined,
exhausted one. No doubt!
George Gordon, Lord Byron, portrait by Thomas Phillips, ca. 1813
Lady ——, informed, too thought it best,
And donning a fashionable new petticoat,
Hanged herself in her bedroom closet like a stoat.
Luckily we aren’t reduced to such ostentatious means
Of escaping the tedium of the day-to-day,
Having handy by our bedsides phone, T-shirt and jeans,
We can accessorize our poor ends nowadays the digital way.
*Life, Letters, and Journals of Lord Byron (London: John Murray, 1833), entry for December 7, 1813, p. 213.
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