revkryssie:

falloopidydoop:

vassraptor:

transcoranic:

how the fuck did all of those renaissance dilettantes learn so much crap? Like they spoke 3 languages and were foremost in several branches of science, plus they wrote poetry, played the violin, and were master artists? And they still had time to be gay? 

none of them ever did any laundry at all

Seriously though, I’m not much of a historian but even when you delve into classic literature and learn the backstories of the authors you very, very quickly realize that history loves to pass down the tales of the wealthy and disregard the lower classes entirely. 

Newton was born into the literal Manor and was already being exposed to expensive schooling in Latin and Greek at the age of 12. He may still have been a genius, but his upbringing would have been typical of a child from his class. Newton just got that much more out of it. At no point in the life story of this great scientist and his copious hair will you be told about how he had to get a jobby job, though his mother did try to make him a farmer. Instead of resigning himself to this as lower class children might be obligated, he just walked away from it and went off to do cool science shit.

I could dig up other examples for sure, but you get the point. Wherever you find a dilettante with inexplicable amounts of free time for utterly impractical things, you will most often find a life beginning in wealth. More importantly you’ll find lives beginning in a high social class, with fathers named Lord Somethingorother. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, poet and contemporary of so many famous dilettantes, did not simply adopt that title. He got it on birth.

Nearly all of them had a family manse which they could kick around in until they died of old age, unless they felt like striking out toward something. They could attend college long, long before that became common, could gad about the world on stipends doing enriching things, and most commonly were in a position to secrete a bit of work here and there, art and such appropriate to their social class. Wilde only published a few things of note: one play, a novel or two, some poems. Any working class modern writer trying to produce so feebly would have zero chance of sharing his lifestyle.

They spent their days, idle or not, coasting on good fortune and availing themselves of teaching unheard of for nearly everyone else. So of course they knew three languages and so forth. Imagine how many you’d master if you never had to bother with a job but always had the means for travel.

This is specific to the dilettante. Many great artists got that way by grinding it out from dusk til dawn trying to please some patron or another. But we aren’t discussing them. We’re discussing people who never had to do any laundry at all, because that wasn’t just a joke.

Preach. it!