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Books: England’s Darlings

5 minute read
TIME

ENGLISH ECCENTRICS (376 pp.)—Dome Edith Sitwell—Vanguard ($5).

Robert Coates, self-styled “Gifted Amateur,” was not just a bad actor—he was so execrable that Londoners of the early 19th century fought at the box office to see his performances. Groundlings came to the theater carrying almost every conceivable throwable object,* causing such terror among Mr. Coates’s fellow actors that they invariably skewed and pied all the best-known lines of the great tragedies, transforming them into matchless comedies. Coates himself cared little for the lines but much for his costumes: playing Romeo on one occasion, he cried, “Oh, let me hence, I stand on sudden haste,” and then, as if wording the action to his suit, dropped “on all fours and crawled round and round the stage,” searching for a buckle that had burst from his trousers. It was in a performance of Romeo and Juliet that 1) Mr. Coates was almost struck by a flung Bantam cock, 2) Paris, lying dead on the stage, was instantaneously “raised to life by ‘a terrific blow on the nose from an orange.’ “

Coates is one of the gems in this glittering, endearing ensemble of eccentric Englishmen. Dame Edith Sitwell collected her eccentrics nearly 30 years ago, when she and her brothers Osbert and Sacheverell were daring moderns, and their father, Sir George Sitwell—not included in this book —was setting one of the most glorious examples of eccentricity in English history (he was an aristocrat with an almost Renaissance-like variety of interests, including the invention of a musical tooth-brush). English Eccentrics, now revised and expanded, is still as fresh, invigorating and delightful as on the day it was written.

Dame Edith believes that eccentricity is particularly British chiefly for two reasons: 1) “that peculiar and satisfactory knowledge of infallibility that is the hallmark of the British nation,” 2) “all great gentlemen are eccentric [because] their gestures are not born to fit the conventions or the cowardice of the crowd.” Cynical sociologists might remark that it is not gentlemanliness that makes for eccentricity so much as having lots of money with which to buy absolute liberty. Among the scores of eccentrics cited, a great many were born with silver spoons in their mouths and golden bees in their bonnets:

¶ Squire Mytton (born 1796), known to his friends as “Mango, the King of the Pickles.” was so rich that he yearned for discomfort. Wintertimes, Mytton went hunting wearing as little as possible, once horrified the gamekeepers by duck hunting in the nude. He once cured himself of hiccups by putting a candle to his nightgown: “enveloped in flames,” he was soon too badly burned to burp. Despite his Spartan attire, Mytton “had a hundred and fifty-two pairs of trousers,” spent half a million pounds in 15 years, died of d.t.s in a debtor’s prison at 38.

¶ Mr. Jemmy Hirst was a wealthy, mid-19th century ex-tanner who developed an un-British distaste for the horse “excepting on the racecourse.” Hippophobe Hirst went shooting mounted on a massive bull of “uncertain temper,” and used in place of pointers “a crowd of vivacious and sagacious pigs, all of whom answered to their names.” In the Hirst living room the conversation piece was a large coffin which Mr. Hirst used as a bar. He was 90 when he died; the coffin was finally emptied of potables and, filled at last with Hirst, was “borne to the grave by eight stout widows.” Mr. Hirst’s wish had been for eight old-maid pallbearers, but the promise of a guinea apiece “was not large enough to overcome the shyness habitual to the maiden state; so, in the end, Mr. Hirst had to fall back upon widows, who, being more accessible, were regarded by him as not being worth more than half a crown each.”

¶ Mr. William Huntington, “The Coal-heaver Preacher” (born 1774) would have been poor had he not “found God’s promises to be the Christian’s banknotes.” Briefly, this meant that whenever Mr. Huntington wanted something, he prayed for it, and then made his prayer known to impressionable people who were glad to oblige. Soon, God’s overdraft was alarming, as Mr. Huntington had put on his tab “a country house, a well-stocked farm, a coach.” Huntington died leaving a self-written epitaph which ended:

For England and its Metropolis shall know That there hath been a prophet Among them.

¶ Lord Rokeby (born 1712) had a yen for recitations, beards and baths (fresh or salt). “With commendable firmness,” he would remain in the ocean “until he fainted and had to be withdrawn forcibly.” At his country seat, Lord Rokeby built a bath “rendered tepid by the rays of the sun only,” sat in it, reciting, with his long beard below the water line. In his declining years, he rarely left his bath, only relented on special occasions, e.g.: 1) “in order to receive Prince William of Gloucester at dinner,” 2) to vote “in the general election of 1796” (Tory William Pitt the Younger was re-elected).

¶ Dr. James Graham pleased Londoners in the 1780s by opening a “Hymeneal Temple.” Centerpiece of this edifice was the “Celestial Bed,” over which “presided” a pretty young healer named Miss Emma Lyons. Gentlemen who found the “Celestial Bed” (fee: £100 per night) somewhat fatiguing could retreat to another bed to be refreshed with charges of “Magneto-Electric” virility (fee: £50 per night). Dr. Graham soon abdicated from his “Electrical Throne,” but Emma Lyons married Sir William Hamilton and, in due course, became the historic sharer of the celestial bed of Admiral Lord Nelson.

* Actor Coates did not show the ingenuity of the Cherry Sisters, famed in the early 1900s as “America’s Worst Act.” A net was spread for them in front of the stage to catch vegetables and eggs tossed by the audience.

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