So Queen Anne kept rabbits roaming in the bedroom - and why not? Local histories often come up with tales of people who had eccentric wonts and lives. Is this peculiar to the English or is this an unwarranted claim? Being raised among many I  suggest we are. Today I thought on the aunt who adjusted the clock to 1pm just before serving lunch which she prepared when it suited often round about 4pm in real time or perhaps 11am if she had plans for later.

Good idea for a thread, Priscilla, though I'm not sure the rabbits and Queen Anne were true to history [url=https://www.historyextra.com › Period › Stuart]https://www.historyextra.com › Period › Stuart[/url]  One of my great-aunts (this is going by what my mother told me) kept sundry pets including a macaw and a rat (though I don't know if they were kept simultaneously).  She wasn't a dotty old maiden lady either, she'd been divorced (though as a single lady - with a cat - myself I don't know why ageing single ladies were singled out as being dotty).

Last year when the Very English Scandal was discussed on this site, there was some thought that Arthur Gore, 8th Earl of Arran and his wife may have been somewhat eccentric.

We just got A Very English Scandal here and have taped it but not watched it yet. Comments here and more so on another board directed me to it, so when it came on SKY here we recorded it.

It's not that we are particularly eccentric.

It's the rest who are prosaic, boring and lacking in originality.

GG,

as usual you hit the nail on the head (je slaat de nagel op de kop)...

PR

I was thinking of the "toads crossing" road signs https://www.highwaysmagazine.co.uk/Toads-on-the-roads/2673 and toad patrols perhaps being an English eccentricity but it seems they are not solely an English phenomenon https://prodigalthought.net/2012/03/14/toad-crossing-sign/

I was given a lovely little book this Christmas: The Revd. Fergus Butler-Gallie's "Field Guide to the English Clergy".

Butler-Gallie MA (Oxon), BA (Cantab), Clerk in Holy Orders, writes of some fifty or so English eccentrics who were all ordained priests in the Church of England. They include one Lancelot Blackburne, Archbishop of York and part-time pirate, and the Reverend Dr Edward Drax Free who, beseiged by his Bishop for his disorderly conduct, locked himself in his rectory with a brace of pistols, his favourite maid and an enormous stack of French pornography (collecting pornography was his hobby).

One of my favourite eccentric clerics died only a few years ago - in 2001. Canon Brian Dominic Frederick Titus Leo Brindley was appointed by the Bishop of Oxford to the role of Vicar of Holy Trinity in Reading. His church was a vast Victorian barn of building which Brindley soon crammed full of "stuff" he  had collected on his travels around Europe, including Gothic reliquaries and an Augustus Pugin-designed choir screen which he had "got" from a major Cathedral somewhere. On top of the Vicar's  huge ornament collection, Holy Trinity (eat your heart out Holy Trinity, Brompton) became known for its outrageously camp liturgy: Brindley liked to process around the church holding the Sacrament while being fanned by ostrich feathers.

The vicar was an instantly recognisable sight in Reading - he insisted on wearing his hair in the style of a Georgian periwig and would wear red high heels under his cassock while doing his weekly shopping at Tesco.

He was eventually removed from his position: he left the Church of England, converted to Roman Catholicism and went to live in Brighton, where he set about turning the interior of his town house into a replica of the Indo-Chinese Banqueting Room of Brighton Pavilion.

Do you think Lancelot Blackburne might have inspired Russell Thorndyke's "Dr Syn" stories, Temperance?

I know of one CofE vicar who converted to Catholicism (along with his wife and children) and is now a Catholic priest.  I know one lady who while she has no rancour against that priest for himself finds it terribly unfair that her brother (no longer with us but apparently good in his priestly role) had to leave the Catholic priesthood when he found a lady he liked.  It was an either/or situation and he chose the lady and married her (he subsequently became a teacher and I think they had children).  But my acquaintance thinks either all Catholic priests should be allowed to marry or married CofE vicars who convert shouldn't be made Catholic priests.  Perhaps that quirk is an eccentricity of Catholicism.

I wonder if MM has ever heard of the Reverend James Woodforde, Vicar of Weston Longville (1740 - 1803)? Butler-Gallie describes this chap as "the father of food blogging". Won't go into detail, but this cleric had a gargantuan appetite for food and alcohol: the amount of booze (mainly port and claret) he could put away beggars belief. It is described as "phenomenal" even for the times. All is recorded in the diaries which he kept.

Apparently this good parson (I had never heard of him before I got my book) is "not without legacy: not only is his diary now a must-read for historians and gourmands alike, but the pub where he was so crushingly short-changed on his plum pudding * see below) was later renamed the Parson Woodforde in his honour."

Woodforde was certainly guilty of the sin of gluttony, but I hope he is now enjoying excellent food and drink in Heaven, because he showed a genuine care for his lowly parishioners: he regularly invited the poor and the lonely to the Rectory on Christmas Day where they were served, not just delicious plum pudding (with custard), but were offered "a veritable feast of puddings".

Sometimes, however, his pastoral care for his flock was a bit odd: he attempted to cure a serving boy of a bad cold by giving him a large glass of gin and then throwing him in the village pond. Whether a cure was or was not effected is not recorded in the diary.


*The diary mentions the King's Arms in Norwich: the portion sizes there, especially of plum pudding, were disapprovingly described by the food-loving vicar as "tiny".

LiR crossed posts. Back later.

I don't suppose he was exactly an eccentric but the Reverend Alfred Merle Norman was a clergyman who became interested in natural history and the the second link I am providing called him a "different kind of gentleman".  I became familiar with his name when I had the fixed-term contract job transferring entries from museum registers on to a database. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Merle_Norman and https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1096-3642.1980.tb01919.x  I wouldn't have known that Finnmark was a county of Norway (sorry nordmann if you see this) if I hadn't come across Reverend Norman (by reputation not in person of course).

The chap going round Tesco's with the high heels under his cassock takes the cake though.

Priscilla wrote:

Local histories often come up with tales of people who had eccentric wonts and lives. Is this peculiar to the English or is this an unwarranted claim?

If the claim is that personal eccentricity is peculiar to English people then of course it is unwarranted. In fact so unwarranted as to render it quite an eccentric claim in its own right - or simply so very insular, nationalistic, and self-serving an assessment of a particularly evident and universal human trait as to call into question the motive behind even thinking such a ludicrous thing.

I had always thought however that it wasn't the presence of eccentrics within its society that allegedly distinguished England from "the rest", but the common belief held by the English that it was in England alone where such a trait was more typically lionised by others rather than rebuked (Temp's clergymen might serve as an example of this), though even this rather benign attempt at distinguishing "we English" from others conveniently ignores the rather inconvenient evidence of how narrow the parameters have always been which might denote such "eccentricity" as being acceptable, and of course acceptable enough to then be circulated as popular anecdotal "proof" of how the subsequent lionising of such a selectively chosen set of exemplars is a valid contribution to the adoptive myth of a society completely comfortable with the deviants within it. A rather closer look at English society and its recorded development over the centuries may reveal something rather less palatable and harder to digest when attempting to incorporate this particular national capacity for tolerance of such innocent eccentricities into a prevailing mythical "national characteristic" setting the English apart from everyone else in their own eyes, such as that expressed in GG's (hopefully tongue in cheek) assertion above.

However, with all that said, I have to admit that we are still in fact indebted to the English trait of lionising personal eccentricity (however selectively) and translating this into anecdote, even when such anecdote pretends to an historical veracity that can rarely be fully substantiated. Such quibbles with motive and honesty aside, these anecdotes have insinuated themselves into something far more worthwhile than whatever passes for "English self-identity" these days (one of those areas of contemplation where one recently has to remind oneself that "toxic" alone is never a sufficient adjective to impart the entirety of one's dismay). They could be said to constitute a form of bedrock upon which much of classical English literature rests, or at least those most glorious gems from that broad body of work which have proven most endurable. From Shakespeare through Dickens, through Hardy and Lawrence, and later through Orwell, Greene and Amis (and so many others in between), whether played for laughs, for tragic effect, for narrative drama, for political point, or just for the sheer hell of it, English literature is gloriously dotted with dotty characters who - whether intended by the author or not - have found themselves woven into the national psyche. Every country may point to similar inventions in its own literary lore, but I would wager there are few that can point to quite so many who have transcended their literary origins and assumed such immortality as their still functioning role as justifications for whatever passes these days as "English identity" appears to suggest.

There is of course a sinister angle to all this too - such an obsession with and reliance on anecdotal eccentricity does terrible damage to critical thinking in many important fields, Queen Anne's recent acquisition of rabbits in her bedroom being only a very benign example of how historical analysis may obviously suffer. And at a time in which it has suddenly become so crucial for once and for all to actually decide upon some form of consensus regarding what exactly may constitute a collective English identity and purpose, a reliance on anecdotal appreciation has recently become one of the first things to have been so cruelly (and somewhat unfairly) publicly exposed within recent social debate as a fundamental national weakness rather than a strength. After all, the solution to the current national identity crisis in England may well yet lie in a long overdue acceptance that, however laughable and worthy of derision such eccentrics may often have been presented for public consumption in the past, the fact that this has led to their survival as striking exemplars of a capacity for rather individualistic lateral thought may render them about the only useful thing from English history (whether they really lived or were invented) that might now be presented as a practical guide through teasing out myth from reality, subjugation from true independent innovation, and all the other very important existentialist choices now facing every individual English citizen who genuinely wishes to find a way out of the sorry social morass into which they have been plunged by those who "were meant to know" and stumble towards a solution.

Maybe it's time everyone in England should urgently take a step back from the precipice over which they are sleepwalking and place themselves quite literally in the shoes of the aforementioned Canon Brian Dominic Frederick Titus Leo Brindley for a while (other supermarkets are available, of course). I would also recommend to stop pretending to have read Dickens and actually read a few of his books from cover to cover (though it should be advised not while simultaneously attempting perambulation in high heels). And of course Eric Blair's brilliant essay on why George Orwell's contemporary classification as "radical eccentric" did justice to neither word.  Whether you all can achieve this between now and March 29th is of course extremely doubtful, but then that's what the doomsayers would have said on the eve of Dunkirk. Great rescues require great (and extremely lateral-thinking) effort!

Now I think of it, nordmann, the great-aunt I mentioned with all her pets was Welsh not English.  I'm sure there have been people who "danced to a different drum" from all nations throughout history.  Well, it looks as if Britain's leaving the EU may be pushed back so perhaps an attempt to find a better solution can be made.  Believe me I don't want the work done by the late Mo Mowlam and by her counterparts on the Irish side to achieve the Good Friday agreement to go up in smoke.  I voted Remain.  As I've said before my worry about possibly overturning the Leave vote re: Brexit is that it would set a precedent for overturning referenda (referendums?) and next time something is overturned it might be a matter which would play into the hands of those who wish to restrict individual freedoms.  And as I've also said before I wonder how many people who are now grumbling about Brexit couldn't be ar**d to go and vote on the day of the referendum?  I think Mrs May is doing her best in a difficult situation but some members of the Conservative Party have been ignoble (trying to use the Brexit problem as a vehicle for personal one-upmanship).  I'm not mentioning any names as I'm sure folk can work it out.

I don't claim to have read all of Dickens' works, nordmann, but I've read some.  School saw to that.  I liked A Tale of Two Cities but I thought it was far-fetched.  Great Expectations was a bit more believable.

I think social media are selective sometimes with the "hate crimes" they pick up on.  I thought Boris Johnson's comments about the Muslim ladies' burkah costume was silly I certainly didn't think it merited report to the police (which one lady did).  Nothing was done about Bo-Jo though but the Scots (Scottish?) YouTuber Count Dankula was fined £800 for the "Nazi pug" video - which I agree was daft but he only made it to try and annoy his girlfriend.  I don't think he has paid the fine as yet and doesn't intend to.  I don't think the Nazi Pug video deserved a fine but then Scottish law is slightly different from English and Welsh law.

Some folk in the USA (do they only get their information about the UK from Rebel Media) seem to think Tommy Robinson is the only person speaking up for freedom in the UK.  Now I COULD believe that mainstream media have edited TR's interviews but I don't agree that he is the only person representing freedom in the UK.

People who visit this site from countries other than the UK (nordmann, MM, Paul, Nielsen, ID and Caro - sorry if I've missed anyone out) can you think of any eccentrics in your countries of origin/residence?

I hope you're not asking me to ream off a list of Irish eccentrics, LiR. It would be a bit like asking for a brief bio for everyone in the national phone book (I'm old enough to remember such a thing, alas).

However I don't think listing or citing colourful eccentrics from other cultures is the way to answer Priscilla's question, or at least to address the assumption within it. Far better to take a rather more critical view of what constitutes eccentricity in popular English culture and then find, if possible, a reason for how this definition has been arrived at and why it plays so large a role in current English "self-identity", for whatever worth may still adhere to such a term these days.

I even avoid commenting on the apparently "innocent" eccentricities of Anglican clergymen these days. They came up in conversation here before and I feel I introduced an unwelcome stench in the room when I pointed out that one or two of the popular historical examples of such dottiness were, as clergymen operating in Ireland at the time, regarded in quite a different light by the locals - and for good reason, what with them being party to and sometimes instigators of some extreme cruelties towards their fellow man to which their institutions and state not only turned a blind eye but actively protected them, atrocities which these days would often have one up before a war crimes tribunal. However the same individuals are remembered in England as loveably eccentric members of that peculiar assembly of "dotty" clerics, and may even feature in Temp's book (I haven't read it yet).

On the matter of a second "referendum" setting a precedent in Britain for overturning a first "referendum", I think you need not fear. Neither the second nor indeed the first are in any way binding, as per what passes for British constitutional practice and interpretation. In fact, under British Common Law, the first was illegal in concept, illegally prosecuted by both sides, criminally prosecuted by one side, and not even a good opinion poll as it turned out anyway. However that is a strictly legal definition of what transpired, and while Britain is held to ransom by self-interest groups to whom legality is only a concept worth considering when it can be employed in one's favour, hardly relevant any more.

As long as Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon (who for some reason wishes to project his bile under the Robinson pseudonym, though has utilised Andrew McMaster, Paul Harris, and Wayne King to such purposes also in the past) can claim "freedom to hate" as a "freedom by right", then it seems futile suggesting even that recourse to a constitutional definition of freedom as might be gleaned from the sorry mess that is Britain's "uncodified" version of such a thing might be employed to prevent him too from becoming, in time, a typically English "loveable eccentric", anecdotes about whom over which future generations shall chortle nostalgically.

Are we not allowed to laugh anymore - at ourselves and at others? Life has got so dismally serious since all this Brexit nonsense took hold. One daren't say anything anymore - and that is a very dangerous sign.

I wish the vicar in red high heels had been my spiritual advisor: had he been our last incumbent he might have saved me from myself.

There were some crackingly eccentric Popes - my favourite is the one with the elephant who squirted water over visiting dignitaries, much to the delight of the reprobate Holy Father.


EDIT: Just checked my facts (always wise): it was of course Leo X who had the pet elephant.



Hanno was also the subject of a satirical pamphlet by Pietro Aretino titled "The Last Will and Testament of the Elephant Hanno." The fictitious will cleverly mocked the leading political and religious figures of Rome at the time, including Pope Leo X himself. The pamphlet was such a success that it kickstarted Aretino's career and established him as a famous satirist, ultimately known as "the Scourge of Princes."




PS There are four sketches of Hanno, done in life with red chalk, in the collection of the Ashmolean in Oxford.

Dante, of all people, would have heartily approved of your sentiment - in the book he laughs harder at each level of descent into hell he is shown in sucession, often to the dismay and bewilderment of his guide.

The genius behind the Divine Comedy was in not calling it the Divine Tragedy.

EDIT (following your EDIT): His predecessor, Julius, had a personal harem (and a public brothel, one presumably financing the other). I reckon after that a mere elephant was considered a moral step in the right direction.

nordmann wrote:

 

As long as Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon (who for some reason wishes to project his bile under the Robinson pseudonym, though has utilised Andrew McMaster, Paul Harris, and Wayne King to such purposes also in the past) can claim "freedom to hate" as a "freedom by right", then it seems futile suggesting even that recourse to a constitutional definition of freedom as might be gleaned from the sorry mess that is Britain's "uncodified" version of such a thing might be employed to prevent him too from becoming, in time, a typically English "loveable eccentric", anecdotes about whom over which future generations shall chortle nostalgically.

Let us pray (well, me, not you) that that never happens. Robinson, like the other lot at Momentum - equally as mad, bad and dangerous - are not typically English, neither are they loveable nor are they "ecccentric". They are  vicious, mad dogs, foaming at the mouth. 

Most people realise that - I think...

But I think the vicar who liked puddings was OK...

If he didn't also engage in massacring Irish peasants in his spare time, we'll give him a break.

I hope he didn't make the custard mandatory, though - now that would have been bloody cruel!

He didn't go in for massacring peasants but Temp's pudding-loving parson, the Rev James Woodforde, was sometimes perhaps lacking in empathy and certainly didn't let much prevent him from enjoying his food. In his diary for 25 ]une 1783 he records that he and his niece Nancy dined, as they often did, with the local squire, Mr. Custance and his family:

"Nancy and myself dined and spent part of the afternoon at Weston House with Mr. and Mrs. Custance … whilst we were at Dinner Mrs. Custance was obliged to go from Table about 4 o’clock labour Pains coming on fast upon her. We went home soon after dinner on the Occasion – as we came in the Coach. We had for Dinner some Beans and Bacon, a Chine of Mutton rosted, Giblett Pye, Hashed Goose, a Rabbit rosted and some young Peas, - Tarts, Pudding and Jellies. Mrs. Custance was brought to bed of a fine girl about 7 o’clock and as well as could be expected."

Clearly then, he didn't let the 'trivial' matter of the hostess suddenly going into labour during the meal spoil his appetite and although as he says they left early, they still managed to pack the food in, while Mrs  Custance was giving birth upstairs in the same house.

You think custard awful, nordmann. My father said it went best with fried Christmas pudding but then he would only eat strawberries with a tin of condensed milk to hand; each to his own. May be that is not eccentric enough to prove anything - but then he did not ill treat peasants badly..... not even on weekdays.

I wonder if Woodforde could have been the inspiration for Dr Grant in Austen's Mansfield Park. Grant was a bon viveur par excellence, and Austen records that he died of a surfeit of green goose. What is green goose, please - I never did know?

PS What about the Vicar who lived down the road from me (at Morwenstow) who, in the 19th century, liked to sit on a rock in the sea off the beautiful North Devon coast and pretend he was a mermaid? He was usually off his head on opium. He wore a "wig" of seaweed (to make him look more like a mermaid). He also, in a fit of pique, excommunicated his cat.



EDIT: Must correct myself: Dr Grant had a row with his wife about green goose, but it may not have been too much goose that actually killed him. He did, however, die as a result of overindulgence. Mary Crawford didn't have much time for her brother-in-law...


“I have been so little addicted to take my own opinions from my uncle,” said Miss Crawford, “that I can hardly suppose; – and since you push me so hard, I must observe, that I am not entirely without the means of seeing what clergymen are, being at this time the guest of my own brother, Dr Grant. And though Dr Grant is most kind and obliging to me, and though he is really a gentleman, and I dare say a good scholar and clever, and often preaches good sermons, and is very respectable, I see him to be an indolent, selfish bon vivant, who must have his palate consulted in every thing, who will not stir a finger for the convenience of any one, and who, moreover, if the cook makes a blunder, is out of humour with his excellent wife. To own the truth, Henry and I were partly driven out this very evening, by a disappointment about a green goose which he could not get the better of. My poor sister was forced to stay and bear it.”


Dr Grant's death is noted in Chapter 48: he expired "having brought on apoplexy and death by three great institutionary dinners in one week."

Temperance wrote:

I now genuinely believe that Woodforde was the inspiration for Dr Grant in Austen's Mansfield Park. Grant was a bon viveur par excellence, and Austen records that he died of a "surfeit of green goose." What is green goose, please - I never did know?

A 'green goose' is a young (only a few months old, hence they're 'green' as in not yet fully grown) unhung goose, so typically available from mid summer to early autumn. It is traditionally served with a complimentary 'green' sharp-flavoured sauce. (And although a 'surfeit of green goose' would indeed be very fatty, goose fat is not actually that high in 'bad' cholesterol. Maybe Dr Grant just had a pre-existing heart condition ... or, more likely, it was actually his liver wot dun 'im in).

Anyway, for example, Mrs Beeton (1861) suggests using gooseberry and watercress;

TO DRESS A GREEN GOOSE.
969. INGREDIENTS: Goose, 3 oz. of butter, pepper and salt to taste.
Mode: Geese are called green till they are about four months old, and should not be stuffed. After it has been singed and trussed, the same as in the preceding recipe, put into the body a seasoning of pepper and salt, and the butter to moisten it inside. Roast before a clear fire for about ¾ hour, froth and brown it nicely, and serve with a brown gravy, and, when liked, gooseberry-sauce. This dish should be garnished with water-cresses.
Time : About ¾ hour. Average cost : 4s. 6d. each.
Sufficient : for 5 or 6 persons.
Seasonable : in June, July, and August.


But older 'green goose sauce' recipes often use sorrel - which nowadays is not a common flavouring in England, whilst in France although it's much more common, it is most usually used as an accompaniment to fish. Nevertheless the sharp acidity of the sorrel - or gooseberry - perfectly compliments the fattiness of the young plump goose (and for exactly the same reason that duck-in-orange has remained popular for centuries).

For example this from 'English Housewifry' by Elizabeth Moxon (1764);

268. To make another SAUCE for a GREEN-GOOSE.
Take the juice of sorrel, a little butter, and a few scalded gooseberries, mix them together, and sweeten it to your taste; you must not let it boil after you put in the sorrel, if you do it will take off the green.
You must put this sauce into a bason.

... or this one from 'A New System Of Domestic Cookery by A Lady' (Mrs. Maria Eliza Ketelby Rundell, 1807);

SAUCE FOR A GREEN GOOSE.
Take half a pint of sorrel-juice, two glasses of white wine, a nutmeg quartered, a cupful of fried crumbs, and two lumps of sugar; let all boil together, then beat it smooth, adding a piece of fresh butter, and serve it very hot in a tureen, or in the dish with the goose: it should not be made too thick with the bread-crumbs, and if much acid should not be approved, the wine must be equal in quantity to the sorrel-juice.

Thank you, MM, for such detailed and precise instructions. I shall take care, in future culinary endeavours, lest I inadvertently "take off" the green.  

There is surely nothing worse than a scalded gooseberry.

We had scolded gooseberry bushes in our area. I distinctly recall hearing them being blamed for ever increasing families down Mill Lane. I was quite scared but half hoped also that our little gooseberry bush might one day produce a squalling baby and often checked. Most children have eccentric concepts - some never quite get over it, either - or so   my family tell me. Actually,  I think I am the only normal one of them.
I have  been excommunicated by cats - usually when packing or just returned from a long stay away from home.

nordmann, I hesitate to get mingled in this debate as I have only personal impressions to expose, not studies, studies, which can as many perhaps been tainted by nationalistic feelings, even from "real" historians.

"However, with all that said, I have to admit that we are still in fact indebted to the English trait of lionising personal eccentricity (however selectively) and translating this into anecdote, even when such anecdote pretends to an historical veracity that can rarely be fully substantiated.  They could be said to constitute a form of bedrock upon which much of classical English literature rests, or at least those most glorious gems from that broad body of work which have proven most endurable."
For the English, I don't know if their literature is based on lionising personal excentricity? But that too can be a personal view, as I have had only access to the general "library" books from my six years on. But there was everytime an international choice, for instance in the local library of Bruges more than 500 works in French and the same in English, some 200 or more in Spanish.
And to take the example of Spain. I read for example (as I the last decades only read historical novels) "The Flanders Panel" from Arturo Pérez-Reverte and some of the Alatriste series (in Spanish (with a dictionary at hand)) and in my opinion it don't differ that much from the many that I read from English authors.
Personally, I can't judge about the English, as the only ones I met were the tourists in Spain, Germany, France, with whom I had nevertheless some in depth conversations and they all didn't differ from me on the first sight, perhaps because we all, at least the "autochtones", have the same historical background. I had more contact with Germans, talking with several, hours and hours...

Perhaps, but I say it again it can be an impression, I find that the English have a more light-hearted approach and putting everything in question, no fundamental truths, as the more "land-based" Germans with a heavy handed approach and more sticking to dogmas. But it can be an at random impression because there were too less "samples" to make a serious "poll"...

As for the situation in which the English ended up. I find it quite normal that such a separation gives  a lot of trouble. Perhaps nearly every country of the EU, which wants to separate would have the same trouble? Let's hope that they come to a compromis, but a compromis means that there have to come something from both sides. And I hope that there still comes something from the EU. One has not to underestimate populist national feelings, as they seem to re-emerge again back from the Thirties. and it seems that it is not only in the UK that there are UKIP's and Nigel Farage's, there seems to be some in nearly every country of the EU. Lucky that we in the Benelux are too small to have such big aspirations as the big brothers.


Kind regards from Paul.

This is slightly tangential but someone I knew in my teens (not seen her for decades) spent her 2nd to approximately her 12th year in Canada and her family (the kids anyway) used to say they had seen a "real Englishman" if they saw a chap in plus fours/knickerbockers/knee breeches (britches?) whatever  you like to call them.  It's a bit unusual to see such attire nowadays and was rather even in the 1960s except maybe in the huntin', shootin', fishin', set when going through the bracken and other undergrowth.  Of course the knee breeches were an item of everyday wear in the 18th century and I THINK they were what the 'sans-culotte' wore in the lead-up to the French Revolution rather than full-length trousers.  (I'm sure someone will tell me if I'm wrong).

PaulRyckier wrote:

For the English, I don't know if their literature is based on lionising personal excentricity? But that too can be a personal view, as I have had only access to the general "library" books from my six years on.
...
Perhaps, but I say it again it can be an impression, I find that the English have a more light-hearted approach and putting everything in question, no fundamental truths, as the more "land-based" Germans with a heavy handed approach and more sticking to dogmas. But it can be an at random impression because there were too less "samples" to make a serious "poll"...

Paul - my point was that it has traditionally been a societal trait in England to lionise eccentricity, and that it is this which probably lies behind the English literary tradition of not only including some of the best drawn eccentric characters in literature, but also some which have long since become more relevant than the work they first appeared in, and have accordingly entered the national consciousness and culture in a manner that few other countries can claim to emulate from within their own cultural oeuvres. As a non-British person, perhaps, you may fail to appreciate how Scrooge became such a fundamental feature of Christmas (and beneficiary of far more sympathy than Tiny Tim), or how generations of politicians lived in terror of being seen as a Dogberry (alas the opposite is true now), or how many who wouldn't know their Maynard Keynes from their Polanyi would yet swear by the economic advice imparted by a certain Mr Wilkins Micawber, or how modern (and many not so modern) feminists have always championed Beatrice ... the list goes on. What these characters have in common is that they are all fictional, all gloriously eccentric, and in English culture all the more believable for that. Unlike Don Quixote, another globally famous fictional eccentric from Spanish literature, none of them are present in the narrative as a cautionary tale against eccentricity. Instead they turn up always on their own terms whether useful to the story or not, and whereas this would relegate them to a minor role in the national consciousness of many other countries and cultures, in England it is actually their launchpad to surpass in importance the context of the story into which they were insinuated. How many English people acquainted with these characters, for example, could even say which works they came from?

What they also have in common is that, as eccentrics, they join an already well populated pantheon of others, real and unreal, in whom English people invest credibility, support and trust which, in other cultures, would be reserved for more typical beneficiaries of adulation - national heroes and the like. In England, to be a national hero it is not enough that you do something tremendous in the national interest (it's appreciated if you do this, of course, but therein does not necessarily lie immortality). To become truly immortal then, like Churchill, you should run a war from your bathtub while drinking cognac and smoking Cuban cigars, or like Wellington refuse to enter a battle without sporting your own design of footwear, and so on through all notable PMs who the English have decided should also be "memorable". And of course immortality is not reserved for great leaders - like the "Mad Marquess" Henry de la Poer Beresford who, when caught "speeding" on his horse through a busy London Street, brought the animal into court to speak on his behalf as "only he knew how fast he was going", or like Queen Anne's cousin Lord Cornbury who, when sent by her majesty to become Governor of New York, decided henceforth he should honour the sex of his regent by dressing in similar attire to her (bankrupting himself in the process when the silk gowns bill arrived), or like the original "queen of the desert", Lady Hester Stanhope, who became her country's first great archaeological explorer of Syria and Mesopotamia while dressed as an arab (complete with fake beard) and then, when her books didn't sell as well as expected, got her servants to brick her up permanently in her bedroom where she died over 30 years later.

None of these characters are distinguishable from their fictional fellows in that pantheon at all, which is why there is no snobbery on the part of the English when affording these people the respect they are deemed deserved of. Real or unreal, they capture a crucial element of the English psyche with such clarity that they are lionised rather than derided, and if derided then derided affectionately, garnering affection and respect that otherwise they might never have been afforded, no matter what great thing they might otherwise have done. When writing a book therefore, and especially one purporting to accurately reflect traditional English society, you would be a fool indeed to omit a specimen!

The best thing about a thread on eccentricity is following it through likewise. Paul tries out a profound link with Brexit (I think), nordmann  can air  his knowledge of English outage in Ireland, GG is brief but to the point, MM gives a recipe and now we know  what to order whilst awaiting a birth. Temps manages a daft clergyman, I am just being myself and LIR really really ought to open  thread devoted entirely to knickers. What a useful word that has become..... knickers.

Priscilla wrote:

nordmann  can air  his knowledge of English outage in Ireland

There is a long tradition of English emerging from closets in Irish history, true, but I wasn't aware I had referred to this at all ...

Sorry, nord, I crossed posted and then find you  waxing long on lionisation with eccentricity crucial to it..... you have my full permission to say … well..... knickers.

No worries - I'll regard it as just another "outage".

Somewhere above you mentioned clergy and stuff that came close to war crimes. I would do a quote but I am awaiting  deliveries of wool, rocks  and a timing clock = nothing to do with  knitting your own bomb with shrapnel - not totally, anyway.

Ah out age and outrage - should I edit it? Using my best Mark Rylance voice, 'Would it make any difference?' He got an Oscar for that. ….. and quite rightly too.

Leave it - dropping one's 'orse can be a relief to the poor beast on occasion.

Actually the definition of "eccentric" is very important. When does eccentricity become madness?  It's a fine line. I suppose being harmlessly "dotty" is one thing, but murdering people as well is quite another. If Caligula had just made his horse a Consul and had left it at that, he might have gone down in history as a delightfully eccentric Roman Emperor.

Were there genuine eccentrics in Rome or Athens? Rather than madmen or war criminals, that is?

I suppose in England you have to be very rich - preferably aristocratic, but upper-middle class will do -  to qualify as a true eccentric.  English eccentrics were usually posh until recently. These days anyone can be eccentric - have green hair or dress outrageously or do generally mad things: it's all got quite boring really. Being totally "normal" is considered eccentric these days.


PS Found this. I do like the idea of the 2nd Baron Rothschild using zebras rather than horses for his horse zebra-drawn carriage: he drove this equipage to Buckingham Palace once to show the monarch how nice his zebras were. Not sure which monarch or how he/she responded.

I have no idea how harmless or otherwise this Rothschild was: I do hope he was not a complete villain.

Not sure if these qualify as eccentricities or not. Folly buildings are fairly widespread, though the British Isles has more than its' fair share.


Some follies had a serious purpose, being built to provide employment in times of hardship.



Broadway Tower in Worcestershire:




Kinnoul Tower in Perthshire:




The Casino ( lit; small house, not a gambling establishment) at Marino in Dublin:

Semantically "eccentric" is defined as a "complex expression" - someone who is only starting to learn the language and using a dictionary as an aid (ie. depending on its "lexical meaning") finds, in most definitions, the very unhelpful "slightly strange" as its principal meaning. The problem with this definition is the same as that which one encounters when someone is described as "slightly pregnant", or "slightly offside" in football. One is either pregnant or not, offside or not, and therefore strange or not. However in all cases we think we know what is meant by adding "slightly" to the definition, even if in fact no two of us are sure to be actually deducing the exact same nuanced meaning semantically at all. Hence "eccentric" is not considered a "basic" expression and acquires a complexity due almost entirely to its inability to be ascribed a universally accurate definition in semantic terms.

If we accept that, like "dotty", it just means "mad" but in a very innocent and relatively inconsequential way when it comes to how such a person may impact others around them, then we do a lot of notable eccentrics over the years a huge disservice, I think. We also risk overlooking the fact that a person perceived as eccentric in one context can, if viewed within or subjected to another context entirely, suddenly be seen as quite dangerously mad indeed, and indeed may very well be - as the pastor Wight who arrived in Ireland as a chaplain in Cromwell's army certainly proved when he ordered the murder of scores of captured children in New Ross to save the state the expense of taking them on as orphans (after having murdered all their parents, thereby affording them this problematic status anyway) and citing the apostle James when challenged by the troops as to whether it would be right; "Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin". But then, as chaplain to college in Oxford later in life, he certainly fitted the "eccentric parson" persona to a tee as he gained a reputation for his tendency to turn up to lead prayers in church dressed in full armour and armed to the teeth, until well into his eighties, on each anniversary of his beloved Lord Protector's demise. Unsurprisingly it is the latter behaviour by which he is fondly remembered in England.

"Slightly strange"? Certainly. "Dangerously mad"? Certainly in the eyes of the Irish, and even a few of his fellow soldiers. So the semantic confusion does sometimes mirror real life examples.

Mr Stop Brexit Shouty Man, Steve Bray, is an eccentric for our times. People here in the UK know that if there is a BBC outside broadcast from Westminster, Steve will be there with his instantly recognisable "Stop Brexit" shout. He was hugely irritating at first, but we've all become rather fond of him now - even some Brexiteers. He has trained a few followers to shout like him, but Steve's shout is still the best - well, certainly it's the loudest. Every time the BBC tries to thwart him, Steve outwits them. 

The Follies above pale into insignificance compared with schemes of Ludwig II of Bavaria:

Schloss Neuschwanstien, a colourised photo from 1890:



wiki:
Though many considered Ludwig peculiar, the question of clinical insanity remains unresolved. The prominent German brain researcher Heinz Häfner has disagreed with the contention that there was clear evidence for Ludwig's insanity. Others believe he may have suffered from the effects of chloroform used in an effort to control chronic toothache rather than any psychological disorder. His cousin and friend, Empress Elisabeth held that, "The King was not mad; he was just an eccentric living in a world of dreams. They might have treated him more gently, and thus perhaps spared him so terrible an end."
One of Ludwig's most quoted sayings was "I wish to remain an eternal enigma to myself and to others."
Today visitors pay tribute to King Ludwig by visiting his grave as well as his castles. Ironically, the very castles which were causing the king’s financial ruin have today become extremely profitable tourist attractions for the Bavarian state. The palaces, given to Bavaria by Ludwig III's son Crown Prince Rupprecht in 1923, have paid for themselves many times over and attract millions of tourists from all over the world to Germany each year.

But Neuschwanstien is not really a folly is it? Ludwig wanted a castle in the neo-medieval style (very popular at the time) and frankly it's not really much different in ethos from, say, the current Palace of Westminster, is it? Neuschwanstien is not a fake or shame: it was envisaged to be a perfectly functioning castle/palace ... with plumbing, electricity, sewerage, kitchens, servants accommodation, road access etc.

Ludwig had the money to pay for what he wanted, or at least he thought he did, ... and Neuschwanstien is what he wanted.

nordmann, now I understand perfectly what you meant and yes it was all there in your first message. I see now that I replied beside your reasoning. Perhaps it comes by the fact that I am not that embedded in English life, nor fully in their literature. My first encounters and talking with British people was end of the Fifties as "commis de table" in the restaurant on the carferry Ostend Dover and only some weeks, while I was always seasick and had to leave. And the people I talked to were honest people and families as you and me, at least in those times. Since, I hadn't that much contact or it had to be contacts with a branch factory in England and those people who came visit us. Then from 2002 on on the BBC messageboard I learned a lot about the English, even from the Scottish or English? "Stalteri is ok", that as an Englishman in a Scottish café you had to be ducked and quiet otherwise it could come to verbal and even physical agression. I think I said it to him, that we hadn't had "that" even on the highest of our language struggle in our Flemish-Francophone relationship...

KInd regards, Paul.

nordmann, I wanted also to speak about the concept of the word "eccentric", but you were (why is it not was, it is a singular you ) before me. And I guess that you as usual will have treated the subject more in depth than I can. First I learn now that your "semantically speaking" is better than my "concept".
In Dutch we have the same difficulty about the semantics with "eccentric" I wanted first to write "excentric" as in the Dutch "excentrisch", which goes more to the meaning of "ex center": out of the center, which is I guess in English too, not such a bad connotation as "abnormal" (abnormaal), although it means the same as ex centric, ab normal, away from normal away from the center. I have already mentioned it in a Dutch discussion, when people said about another one: there is nothing to do with him, he is abnormal in the connotation of : he is mad. While I said no he is not mad he reacts otherwise, in another manner than most of us. He lays in his behaviour not in the top of the curve of Gauss about behaviour...
But that ex-centricity can perhaps turn into malignity as in your example, as even "centric", "normal" people can turn into monsters as in my example of Priscilla's Holocaust thread of "normal" Belgian people, who turned in the Waffen SS on the East front into murderers in the "Holocaust par balles" and I read also that normal soldiers were driving with the trucks to kill people with the gasses of the exhaust pipe. And so we are back to Temperance's thoughts about this subject.

I wanted to add a reply about Triceratops' Ludwig II of Bavaria, as I read a French booklet about "La folie au pouvoir" (the madness in power), which included the said Ludwig, but also our "Johanna", wife of Philip the Fairsome? (Filips de Schone) son of our "Maria van Bourgondië". It included also Hitler. And as usual I wasn't in agreement with the opinion of the French author on nearly every person that he named. But I will start again tomorrow as reaction on Triceratops' message...

Kind regards, Paul.

"Off centre" is of course exactly what a Roman would have understood by the term.

There is a branch of semantics (etiological semantics) which equates with archaeology in that it attempts to trace the spores of consistent meaning philologically back to whatever linguistic source as may be adduced to exist. What is often found is that, for example in the case of words with Latin roots, the nuanced meaning ascribed the modern manifestation actually existed also at the time of the word's apparent conception, but that it has undergone a weird and wonderful journey in the meantime, through umpteen languages and with umpteen variations of meaning, serendipitously arriving (it seems) back to its original nuance.

"Eccentric" could be a case in point - Cicero used the term "ex centrii" to describe some of the plotters against Caesar. While most of the assassins, he argued, were cold-blooded and pragmatic in their political aims, there were amongst them some "ex centrii" who attached themselves to the others' cause for no better reason than the action proposed was out of the norm, this attraction exceeding any political consideration. He also noted that it was these people who were most likely to have survived the backlash, and most likely to be forgiven by everyone (he probably envied them - and as things turned out, he was probably justified in that).

If you fast forward over a thousand years, but staying with Latin, then you have popes using the term extremely pejoratively indeed. For the church "excentra" was the absolute worst - meaning that one had positioned one's theological beliefs at an extreme and risked the other big "ex" that was in the power of the pope to confer on potential heretics. So loaded did the term become that one didn't even use it in jest about someone else - as calumnies went it was one that was very likely to "stick" and very difficult for the person labelled "eccentric" to claw their way back into church favour.

Then, when you jump ahead to the Reformation you find that a lot of these phrases which had been used to identify heretics and unbelievers suddenly started to acquire, in some Protestant circles, the status almost of a badge of honour. Much as modern "queers" and "niggers" reclaimed such words for their own use and switched the semantic polarity of the terms, late medieval Protestants prided themselves on their eccentricities, even if they still meant the term primarily as theological deviation from the old, now suspect, "centre".

Which allowed the semantic meaning at last to come back to something akin to how Cicero would also have meant it - once stripped of its theological context it meant anyone, though more likely a good person, who still insisted on deviating from conventional behaviour. It made that last transition into non-ecclesiastical vernacular along the same transmission lines that brought such complimentary terms as "saint", "paragon", "virtuous", and quite a few others, from their theological application, via natural philosophy and the academies promoting such language, into common use.

Or put another way - if only a little over 500 years ago you had described someone as a saintly, virtuous, paragon of an eccentric, you would (semantically) have managed to convey rather confusingly that they were a "consecrated sharer of Jesus's inner wisdom with the quality of those touchstones used to transmogrify base metal into gold, and therefore a complete heretic deserving of excommunication and death".

Eccentrics being off centre has always been my feeling for the word (semantics never being a strength.)

And it has nothing to do with  attention seeking  evident  currently in tattoos, green hair  and many other 'look at me,' devices. eccentricity - with aberration not part of it, either,  is often rather private. Eccentrics seem to often prefer a reclusive life and unaware of the stir they cause when they do emerge in odd clothes or transport. They too are often the collectors of things both remarkable and odd which only come to light at death. Intellectual eccentricity is another area, I hazard. What is further interesting is a desire by many to be thought eccentric with choosing to exhibit odd fashion and life styles. Need to go off and think on that.

Priscilla wrote:

Eccentrics seem to often prefer a reclusive life and unaware of the stir they cause when they do emerge in odd clothes or transport.

And this is essentially what we both might believe is quintessentially "eccentric" or at least a very good indicator of true "eccentricity", especially in the sense that you meant when you opened the thread (and which I - and I believe Temp - fell in line with immediately too).

However the rest of your comment shows why, semantically, the word is regarded as complex, and probably why this thread has already gone all over the place. You dismiss "intentional eccentricity" as being less "eccentric" (maybe, but who decides this?) and wonder, if the quality is restricted to a person's intellectual behaviour, can it still be regarded as genuinely "eccentric"? Of course it can, even as all these extra equally valid applications dissolve and detract from the word as you (and we) originally took it to mean.

Hence Trike's departure into architectural follies, equally valid an application but somehow missing the central intention of your OP, I think. And if the word is taken to the nth degree semantically in every sense that it is currently used then we could also use a thread about "eccentricity" as an opportunity to discuss everything from gene mutation to psychopaths.

Hopefully not.

I appreciate nordmann's trying to nudge us back to the true kernel of this thread but I thought this clip about using eccentric circles (on cards) to train people to focus their eyes inwards was quite interesting (apart from the irritating robot voice).  Though nordmann is quite right that the meaning of an "eccentric" as in an eccentric person differs from "eccentric" as an adjective describing a circle.

Just stay focused, LIR.

The attention seeking - those who effect weird things about them have decided themselves to be eccentric and make damn sure others are aware of it and hopefully will react to it in some way; always fodder for the media to use when things are quiet. The use of social sites must be a boon to them. And people who have to draw attention to themselves actually have little to impress the world otherwise.

 A true eccentric does not decide anything for effect, I suggest. They adapt circumstances solely to suit themselves. The more I think on them so I realise I had many in my family - an elderly aunt, for instance who delivered all her local mail abd odd gifts from her garden by motorbike in the early hours of the morning and then never got up before noon, neither did she ever lock a door. When almost blind she said she opened tins of food without knowing the contents and had only peas for a week...… someone was paid to shop for her.

I rather left myself open to being teased about staying "focused", didn't I Priscilla?

I've decided to delete the name of one possible fake eccentric I had mentioned.