On 16th January, The
Independent carried an article by Jeremy Parrott about the various people
who contributed to All The Year Round,
a weekly magazine owned, and edited, by Charles Dickens [1]. Much was made in the
article of Frank Buckland, whom Parrott describes as "an epitome of
British eccentricity" for keeping a wide variety of animals in his home and
for the habit, infused by his eminent father (William Buckland, Dean of
Westminster from 1845 to 1856), of eating many kinds of animals, both for
pleasure and as a means of investigating whether they should be farmed [2].
Buckland is often mentioned alongside Charles Waterton,
another eccentric Natural Historian; Waterton as much for his ascetic way of
life, climbing habits, and attitudes to medicine, as for his love of animals. There was an
exception to his affection – the brown rat. As a Roman Catholic Squire, he was
strongly anti-Hanoverian and believed that brown rats were brought to Britain
on ships conveying the future George I, making them proxy hate obects. It
didn't help that his home, Walton Hall, was infested with the rodents. Waterton
also gained notoriety for riding on the back of a cayman during one of his
visits to South America, despite this being the best way to subdue the animal
for the neat kill required for the preservation of an undamaged skin. Waterton was
an accomplished taxidermist and also composed groups of animal skins in
cabinets to convey satirical messages [3].
Waterton is given a whole chapter to himself in Edith
Sitwell's The English Eccentrics [4] and
he is included, together with Frank Buckland, in William Donaldson's more eclectic Brewer's Rogues, Villains and Eccentrics
[5], subtitled An A-Z of Roguish Britons
Through the Ages. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that eccentricity
is a characteristic of English, or British, society, but I'm sure that is not
the case and eccentrics are found everywhere. However, it seems that English
cultural norms are especially suited to eccentricity and Edith Sitwell
celebrated this in The English Eccentrics
[4]. In it she writes:
The man of genius and the
aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentric by the ordinary because both
genius and aristocrat are entirely uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of
the crowd.
I doubt whether either Frank Buckland or Charles Waterton
would have regarded themselves as being eccentric and they were protected from constraints
that most face because of their privileged upbringing and way of life. However,
the ordinary (to use Sitwell's term) often think of eccentrics in a negative light
and that is reflected in Donaldson's book, where they are quite undeservedely
grouped with rogues and villains. That seems harsh.
It is tempting to ask whether eccentrics provide a valuable
function in addition to being figures of fun (as they are commonly regarded in
private). I think they do and I'll draw an analogy. In science, we commonly investigate
the relationship of two variables; for example, weight against length in a
group of insects. Mostly, points fall close to a line but occasional ones do
not and we call these outliers; one individual may be noticeably heavier than
others of the same length, for example. The initial reaction of students to
outliers is that they represent an error in measurement and this
may indeed be the explanation. However, some outliers are real and, after
careful checking, remain outside the trend. Students find this annoying as it
can affect the significance of the relationship they are trying to establish.
In our example this would be that weight increases in a linear fashion with
increase in length and an outlier individual may be unusually heavy because it
has a thicker body covering for some reason.
Just as outliers in science are interesting, so eccentrics are
similarly interesting as they show ways and attitudes that are different from the
accepted norm of the time. There may be one eccentricity or, in individuals like
Frank Buckland and Charles Waterton, a suite of them.
Most of us prefer to conform to conventions because they allow
us to feel comfortable and have a sense of belonging. Indeed, the need to
conform can bring pressures to "keep up with the Joneses" as it has
been termed, even though we may feel that doing so is rather silly. There is
always the pressure to conform, but the eccentric has no worries on that score
as they need only their own personal view and the freedom to pursue whatever
they wish. We sometimes look on eccentrics with suspicion, as they challenge our
view of what is "normal", but this is a narrow way of thinking. Just
as I was always interested in outliers when working in science, so I am
fascinated by eccentrics and what they have to say. I always enjoy reading
about Buckland and Waterton and wonder who their contemporary equivalents may
be.
Having general agreement about ways to proceed do not necessarily
mean that those ways are the best, so we should embrace eccentrics and
challenge conventions. The conventions that are valuable will persist, but
others will be seen only as trends. That applies to the study of animals that
so consumed Buckland and Waterton, but it applies generally too.
[4] Edith Sitwell (1933) English
Eccentrics. London, Faber and Faber.
[5] William Donaldson (2002) Brewer's Rogues, Villains and Eccentrics: An A-Z of Roguish Britons
Through the Ages. London, Cassell.
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