Ornamental hermits

A curious and short–lived affectation arose in eighteenth–century England. Men of means and eccentric taste took up the practice of installing on the grounds of their estates an “ornamental hermit.” An ornamental hermit was not a real hermit but a man employed by the estate–owner to reside in a contrived hermitage for a period of time, making scheduled appearances on the grounds to the pleasure of the employer and the marvel of guests. In her 1933 book English Eccentrics, Edith Sitwell relates her discovery of an 1886 book by a certain John Timbs that describes solicitations for ornamental hermits.

The employer Charles Hamilton, near Pains Hall, Surrey, advertised for a hermit for a seven–year term at seven hundred pounds, who must not leave the grounds or speak to the servants, to be provided a Bible, reading glasses, a mat and hassock, hourglass, and a camlet robe. He was never “under any circumstances” to cut his hair, beard, or nails. The first applicant lasted three weeks, later spotted in the village pub. No successor is known. John Timbs himself advertised for an ornamental hermit, offering remuneration of fifty pounds a year for seven years of service if the applicant would live underground, sight unseen. A hired ornamental hermit did reside at the site for four years.

Two aspirants to positions as ornamental hermits include one in 1810 advertising in a local newspaper in Plymouth. An 1830 aspirant boasted fourteen years experience in a cave on a certain baronet’s grounds, describing himself as having a long beard and strolling about with an hourglass. Gordon Campbell, author of the 2013 book The Hermit in the Garden, notes that the revolution in garden design in eighteenth–century Georgian England brought “follies” into landscape gardens, aesthetic structures often including hermitages, which in turn might include a hermit hired to live in one, secular figures in a droll landscape.

The ornamental hermit represented several themes of contemporary interest: horticultural, antiquarian, philosophical, literary, and architectural. The decline of genuine religious hermits also coincided with cultivation of melancholy and the rise of romanticism. But even in its heyday, the demand for ornamental hermits engaged only a handful of eccentrics.

Representative of the ornamental hermit was an ancient “Father Francis” at Richard Hill’s Hawkstone, a model ornamental hermitage. A momento mori (“Remember that you must die”) is inscribed on a wall in Latin; a table displays a skull and eyeglasses. Another Father Francis resided at Woodhouse, while an ornamental hermit Carolus resided at Tong Castle, Shropshire. An estate at Shelbourne boasted a hermit to entertain at summer garden parties, where guests were in on the ruse. Vauxhall Gardens also boasted a live hermit. Hermitages appeared on estates in Northern Ireland and Scotland as well.

Campbell himself believes that Charles Hamilton’s solicitation for an ornamental hermit is apocryphal. He concludes with the interesting specu-lation that garden gnomes are descendants of ornamental hermits. Though Campbell does not mention it, perhaps the St. Francis of Assisi statues in gardens today echo ornamental hermits as well, or less popularly, the jizo in Japanese gardens.

The Book of hermits: the history of hermits from antiquity to the present / Robert Rodriguez