Abstract
Not long after Cavendish died, and probably before, his behavior was associated with eccentricity. In this chapter, his traits, described in Chaps. 3 and 4, are compared with traits that came to be seen as distinctive of the English character in the eighteenth century. They are also compared with traits of individuals who lived in or around Cavendish’s time who were seen as having marked eccentricities. Placed in the society of his day, Cavendish’s odd behaviors are seen as exaggerations of common behaviors rather than as original departures. He may seem stranger to us than he did to his contemporaries, who granted wide latitude to individuality. This chapter views Cavendish as having eccentricities.
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Notes
- 1.
Victoria Caroll, Science and Eccentricity: Collecting, Writing and Performing Science for Early Nineteenth-Century Audiences (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2008), 164.
- 2.
Young, “Cavendish,” 444.
- 3.
Wilson, Cavendish, 170.
- 4.
We can imagine another scale, with traits associated with absolute conformity at one end and those associated with absolute eccentricity at the other. Such a scale is considered in Weeks and James, Eccentrics, 11.
- 5.
Pickover thinks that obsessive behavior like Cavendish’s is probably a “disorder” as well as an eccentricity, having its origin in abnormal physical characteristics of the brain. He also thinks that eccentricity probably plays a positive role in some great scientists. Clifford A. Pickover, Strange Brains and Genius: The Secret Lives of Eccentric Scientists and Madmen (New York: Quill, 1999), xi, 106 112, 252.
- 6.
Sophie Aymes-Stokes and Laurent Mellet, “Introduction,” In and Out: Eccentricity in Britain, eds. S. Aymes-Stokes and L. Mellet (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012), 5. Caroll, Science and Eccentricity, 12–13. Anon., “Eccentricity (Behavior),” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eccentricity_(behavior).
- 7.
Ibid., 107–8. An atypical eccentric in their sample, Cavendish was an introvert who held normal ideas, whereas most of their eccentrics were extroverts who held eccentric ideas.
- 8.
David Weeks and Jamie James, Eccentrics: A Study of Sanity and Strangeness (New York: Villard, 1995), 10–12, 42, 49–50.
- 9.
Ibid., 27–28, 32–33, 181–82. The empirical findings of Weeks’s studies tell us about categories of eccentricity and about the personality traits that accompany them, but his method of selection of eccentric persons fails to identify some kinds of eccentrics. If Cavendish had been alive at the time of his studies, he would not have been included, for he would not have volunteered as a self-defined eccentric to undergo an interview with the researchers.
- 10.
Paul Langford, Englishness Identified: Manners and Character 1650–1850 (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 301–6. Miranda Gill, “Rethinking Eccentricity,” http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/features/rethinking-eccentricity.
- 11.
Edward Wortley Montague, author, politician, and world traveler, had a wife at home and also “wives of almost every nation.” Anon., Biographical Sketches of Eccentric Characters (n.p., 1832), 121.
- 12.
An example is Jonathan Wild, who headed a gang of thieves, and was hanged at Tyburn. Ibid., 338–44.
- 13.
The Reverend Mr. Trueman of Daventry is included in a collection of eccentrics. He stole from his parishioners when he called on them to offer spiritual comfort. He earned only £400 a year but left £50,000 when he died. Edith Sitwell, English Eccentrics (1933; Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1976), 250–51.
- 14.
14 July 1795, Charles Blagden Diary 3: 65 (back). Pickover, Strange Brains and Genius, 96.
- 15.
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (London, 1859). Quoted in Carroll, Science and Eccentricity, 11.
- 16.
Edith Sitwell, Taken Care of: The Autobiography of Edith Sitwell (New York: Atheneum, 1965), 145.
- 17.
David Weeks and Kate Ward, Eccentrics, the Scientific Investigation (East Kilbridge, Scotland: Stirling University, 1988); quoted in Pickover, Strange Brains and Genius, 279.
- 18.
Timbs, English Eccentrics 1: iii–iv.
- 19.
Character and temperament have long been distinguished by psychologists: character is what people become intentionally; temperament is their inborn emotional predisposition. For the purposes of psychobiological research, the distinction is put differently, though not incompatibly. Character and temperament each have distinct brain systems, and each has several independent dimensions. Temperament is the “dynamic organization of the psychobiological systems that regulate automatic responses to emotional stimuli,” and it is “moderately heritable and stable throughout life.” Character, by contrast, is “moderately influenced by family environment and only weakly heritable,” and it develops into adulthood. To temperament belong the “automatic associative responses to emotional stimuli that determine habits and moods”; to character belong “self-aware concepts that influence our voluntary intentions and attitudes.” C. Robert Cloninger, “Temperament and Personality,” Current Biology 4 (1994): 266–73, on 266–67.
- 20.
Langford, Englishness, 1–2, 7–8, 26.
- 21.
Ibid., 291. Before Priestley, the philosopher David Hume used almost the same words: because of the “great liberty and independency which every man enjoys,” the English “of any people in the universe, have the least of a national character.” Ibid., 22.
- 22.
Langford, Englishness, 292, 300, 303.
- 23.
Caroll, Science and Eccentricity, 14, 36, 40.
- 24.
Advertisement in Anon., Eccentric Biography, or, Memoirs of Remarkable Characters …, 2d rev. London ed., 1st American ed. (Boston, 1804).
- 25.
Timbs, English Eccentrics 1: 142–46.
- 26.
Langford, Englishness, 305.
- 27.
John Davy, quoted in Wilson, Cavendish, 168.
- 28.
Anon., Kirby’s Wonderful and Eccentric Museum; or, Magazine of Remarkable Characters …, vol. 2 (London, 1820), 471–72.
- 29.
Yolanda Foote, “Waterton, Charles (1782–1865),” DNB 57: 573–575, on 575.
- 30.
Young, “Cavendish,” 444.
- 31.
Timbs, English Eccentrics 2: 150–61, on 160. Geoffrey V. Morson, “Porson, Richard (1759–1808),” DNB 44: 919–24, on 920.
- 32.
David Huddleston, “Hamilton, James, eighth earl of Abercorn (1712–1789),” DNB 24: 854.
- 33.
Timbs, English Eccentrics 2: 286. Donaldson, Brewer’s Rogues, 3.
- 34.
Langford, Englishness, 304. Roland Thorne, “Hastings, Francis Rawdon, first marquess of Hastings and second earl of Moira (1754–1826),” DNB 25: 744–49.
- 35.
Langford, Englishness, 175–77, 179–80, 185–88, 216.
- 36.
Brougham, Lives 1: 259.
- 37.
Ibid., 179, 215–16.
- 38.
Constance Lubbock, The Herschel Chronicle: The Life Story of William Herschel and His Sister Caroline Herschel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1933), 102.
- 39.
John Davy, Memoirs 1: 222.
- 40.
Langford, Englishness, 250.
- 41.
Quote from one of his informants, Wilson, Cavendish, 173.
- 42.
Timbs, English Eccentrics, 40–41.
- 43.
Thomson, History of Chemistry 1: 337. Barrow, Royal Society, 144.
- 44.
Langford, Englishness, 226, 291.
- 45.
Wilson, Cavendish, 173.
- 46.
Pepys, quoted in Wilson, Cavendish 168. Langford, Englishness, 238, 249, 255.
- 47.
From K. Bruhn’s Life of Alexander von Humboldt, in James Thorne, Environs of London (London, 1876) 1: 111.
- 48.
Children, quoted in Wilson, Cavendish, 169.
- 49.
Patricia Meyer Spacks, Privacy: Concealing the Eighteenth-Century Self (Chicago, London: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 7–8, 21, 27–28.
- 50.
Langford, Englishness, 106–8.
- 51.
Philip Lucas and Anne Sheeran, “Asperger’s Syndrome and the Eccentricity and Genius of Jeremy Bentham,” Journal of Bentham Studies 8 (2006): 1–37, on 7, 17. The authors make the case that Bentham had Asperger’s syndrome. John Stuart Mill, who knew Bentham well, said, “In many of the most natural and strongest feelings of human nature he had no sympathy; from many of its graver experiences he was altogether cut off; and the faculty by which one mind understands a mind different from itself, and throws itself into the feelings of that other mind, was denied him by his deficiency of Imagination.” Ibid., 7. This is a textbook description of a “theory of mind” deficiency, commonly present in persons with Asperger syndrome. Other than for their hermit-like behaviors, Bentham and Cavendish were not very much alike. Bentham treated human emotions and motivations in his work. Cavendish studied the laws of the physical world. The authors point to a number of Bentham’s traits that, so far as we know, do not apply to Cavendish: vanity, overconfidence, egocentricity, and unclear expression in writing.
- 52.
Dr. Sylvester, quoted in Wilson, Cavendish, 170. Barrow, Royal Society, 144.
- 53.
Langford, Englishness, 200, 248, 304.
- 54.
Wilson, Cavendish, 170.
- 55.
Timbs, English Eccentrics 1: 142.
- 56.
Aymes-Stokes and Mellet, “Introduction,” 12, 48–49.
- 57.
Donaldson, Brewer’s Rogues, 99. Timbs, English Eccentrics 1: 111–13. Jonathan R. Topham, “Egerton, Francis Henry, eighth earl of Bridgewater (1756–1829),” DNB 17: 994–95. Victorian Web, “Francis Egerton, 8th Earl of Bridgewater,” http://www.victorianweb.org/science/science_texts/bridgewater/b1.htm.
- 58.
Sitwell, English Eccentrics, 184–86. Timbs, English Eccentrics 2: 4–7. N. G. Coley, “Fordyce, George (1736–1802),” DNB 20: 358–60, on 359.
- 59.
Crowther, Scientists of the Industrial Revolution, 311.
- 60.
Brougham, Lives 1: 258–59.
- 61.
Donaldson, Brewer’s Rogues, 584–85, on 584. R. O. Bucholtz, “Seymour, Charles, sixth duke of Somerset (1662–1748),” DNB 49: 857–60, on 859.
- 62.
Langford, Englishness, 303.
- 63.
Ibid., 241–44.
- 64.
Wilson, Cavendish, 169–70. John Timpson, Great English Eccentrics (Norwich: Jarrold Publishing, 1991), 84.
- 65.
Wilson, Cavendish, 170.
- 66.
Spacks, Privacy, 6.
- 67.
Wilson, Eccentric Mirror, 1.
- 68.
Donaldson, Brewer’s Rogues, 241–42. Anon., Biographical Sketches, 169–76. Alexander Gordon, rev. Anita McConnell, “Elwes, John (1714–1789),” DNB 18: 370–71, on 370. Life of John Elwes, 36-page section, in G. H. Wilson, The Eccentric Mirror, Reflecting a Faithful and Interesting Delineation of Male and Female Characters …, vol. 3 (London, 1807).
- 69.
Donaldson, Brewer’s Rogues, 409.
- 70.
Anon., “Sir James Lowther, 4th Baronet,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_James_Lowther,_4th-Baronet.
- 71.
2 March 1810, Charles Blagden Diary, Royal Society 5: 429.
- 72.
Wilson, Cavendish, 181–82.
- 73.
Several clerics are included in Timbs, English Eccentrics, vol. 1.
- 74.
Langford, Englishness, 306.
- 75.
J. R. Harris, “Wilkinson, John (1728–1808),” DNB 58: 1010–13, on 1012. Anon., “John Wilkinson (industrialist),” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wilkinson.
- 76.
Timpson, Great English Eccentrics, 126–28.
- 77.
Brougham, Lives 1: 250.
- 78.
Langford, Englishness, 122.
- 79.
Nathaniel Wraxall, quoted in the entry on Lord George Augustus Cavendish, in The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1790–1820, ed. R. Thorne (London: Boydell and Brewer, 1986), http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1790-1820/cavendish-george-augustus.
- 80.
Blagden to Cavendish, August 1789.
- 81.
Henry Cavendish to Lord Frederick Cavendish, 3 December 1798, Devonshire Collections, Chatsworth.
- 82.
Langford, Englishness, 96, 99.
- 83.
Mandler, English National Character, 53.
- 84.
Joseph Banks to Count W., 2 June [n.y.], Banks Correspondence, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, vol. 3, l.3.
- 85.
Charles Blagden to William Cullen, 8 May 1784, Blagden Letters, Royal Society, C.70.
- 86.
Langford, Englishness, 87–92.
- 87.
Donaldson, Brewer’s Rogues, 45–46. H. T. Welch, “Barrett, John (1753/4-1821),” DNB 4: 45–46.
- 88.
Donaldson, Brewer’s Rogues, 507–8. Raymond Lamont-Brown, A Book of British Eccentrics (Newton Abbot, Devon: David & Charles, 1984), 52–53. “William Cavendish-Scott-Bentinck, fifth Duke of Portland,” http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Cavendish-Scott-Bentinck_5th_Duke_of_Portland. Anon., “A Leader among British Eccentrics,” http://www.suite101.com/article/a-leader-among-british-eccentrics.
- 89.
Pickover, Strange Brains, 134, 138, 140. Galton’s obsessive thinking and behavior are analyzed in Lennard J. Davis, Obsession, A History (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 2008), 86–94. Clement Markhams was president of the Geographical Society.
- 90.
Uta Frith makes the case that Howard had Asperger’s syndrome. Autism: Explaining the Enigma, 2d ed. (Malden, MA, Oxford, Victoria: Blackwell, 2003), 55–57. Ioan James, Asperger’s Syndrome and High Achievement: Some Very Remarkable People (London and Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley, 2006), 53–61. Rod Morgan, “Howard, John (1726–1790),” DNB 28: 390–94, on 392–93.
- 91.
George Wilson, Religio chemici. Essays, ed. J. A. Wilson (London, 1862), 286–87, 291, 293–94.
- 92.
Charles Babbage, Reflections on the Decline of Science in England, and on Some of Its Causes (London, 1830), 203–6. I thank Geoffrey Cantor for calling my attention to this passage. Trevor I. Williams, “Wollaston, William Hyde (1766–1828),” DNB 59: 991–93.
- 93.
Certificates, Royal Society 5 (9 May 1793).
- 94.
1–3, 6–8, 17, 23 February; 9, 17 March 1810, Charles Blagden Diary, Royal Society 5: 307–9, 312–13, 318, 320.
- 95.
6, 8 March 1810, Charles Blagden Diary, Royal Society 5: 430 (back)-432.
- 96.
Frederick Cavendish to Henry Cavendish, 1 March 1780; in Jungnickel and McCormmach, Cavendish (1999), 493–94.
- 97.
Anon., “Memoirs of the Late Frederick Cavendish, Esquire,” Gentleman’s Magazine 82 (1812): 289–91. The anonymous obituary was written by a friend of Frederick’s.
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McCormmach, R. (2014). Eccentricity. In: The Personality of Henry Cavendish - A Great Scientist with Extraordinary Peculiarities. Archimedes, vol 36. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02438-7_7
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