Eccentricity

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.

In a study of several British scientists, Victoria Carroll shows how they came to be regarded as eccentric. The setting is the early nineteenth century when the sciences were becoming more clearly demarcated, their practitioners more self-consciously professional, and the boundaries between orthodox and unorthodox science more carefully observed. Crossings of boundaries were perceived as eccentric. Carroll’s study succeeds in showing that eccentricity can be a “revealing lens” for understanding social developments of science.1

Cavendish belonged to an earlier stage of science, and his eccentricity arose from a different source, one having to do with character rather than scientific boundaries. Young supposed that Cavendish’s severe habits of study alone spared him from “absolute eccentricity.”2 I take him to mean that outside of science, Cavendish was eccentric. In this chapter, I speak of Cavendish as “eccentric.” Alternatively, I could speak of his “difficult character,” as Wilson does,3 but “eccentric” is acceptable, and it has the advantage of precedent.

If we think of eccentricity as lying on a scale, at one end we find ticks, fanciful beliefs, and odd likes and dislikes. A person who will touch nothing yellow has a minor eccentricity. At the other end of the scale, we find behavior so strange as to cause general wonderment.4 Clifford Pickover, in his book on scientific eccentrics, Strange Brains and Genius, says that Cavendish was the “shyest of all scientists,” whose shyness went “beyond shyness, beyond ordinary social phobia”; this “shabby, eccentric man” was “not entirely human,” “more an alien robot than a member of the human race.”5 If we believe half of what Pickover says, Cavendish was notably eccentric with respect to shyness.

We use the word “eccentricity” loosely to refer to persons who are notably odd in some manner. Before it was used in that sense, it had technical meanings. In geometry it meant a circle that is not concentric with another circle. In astronomy it meant paths of planets not centered on the earth or sun or not circular. It was applied to comets because their paths are not circular, and it is from comets that the figurative use of “eccentric” derived, entering English usage in the late seventeenth century. To the middle of the eighteenth century, it was applied to persons who were bold and innovative. The London Times in 1787 gave it the wider meaning we accept today, “a departure from the general conduct of society.” It was not until the early nineteenth century that “eccentric” was used as a noun applying to a person exhibiting eccentric behaviors.6

Although the word “eccentric” originated in science, in its figurative meaning it has had scant scientific study. To make a start, in 1988 David Weeks and Kate Ward, and again in 1995 Weeks with another co-author Jamie James, published book-length studies of eccentrics as psychological subjects, based on a sample of about 1,000 self-professed British eccentrics. They also studied around 150 eccentrics from the past, persons who were called eccentric or were given a comparable description in their time. Cavendish qualified as one of their historical eccentrics by reason of his social behavior: he was shy and introverted “to a highly eccentric degree,” and his “selective avoidance of people probably amounted to a social phobia.”7

The authors found eccentricity in all ranks of society and in both sexes. Historically, aristocracy and landed gentry dominated the ranks of eccentrics, but that is because the upper class was written about more than other people and because they had more money, required for some kinds of eccentricity. The reason there seemed to be more male than female eccentrics is probably prejudice. The authors recognized that eccentricity lies on a continuum, that it varies over time, place, and social stratum, and that the perception of eccentricity is subjective. Their work was descriptive, not analytic.8

By examining eccentrics from the perspective of more or less non-eccentric persons, the authors constructed a profile of 15 most common characteristics, 5 of which stand out. Of the full 15 characteristics, 8 apply to Cavendish. Of the short list of five, four apply to him: nonconformity, creativity, strongly motivating curiosity, and obsession with one or more hobbyhorses. The one characteristic that does not obviously apply is idealism, a desire to change the world. As a Whig, Cavendish would have supported liberal reforms, and he welcomed changes in the material world through applied science and technology, but there is no sign he wanted to change the social world, in which he had a comfortable place. Of the four traits that do fit, the two that best describe him are curiosity and obsession. Of the range of possible motivations, curiosity is the only one that is primarily intellectual, and when it is combined with obsession we have our man: Cavendish the eccentric investigator, who goes to obsessive labor to satisfy his curiosity, the end result of which is truth, its own reward.9

The common idea of the eccentric Englishman in Cavendish’s time was a highly unusual person “whose faults were on the right side.” Then as now, the harmless misfit was the type, though misanthropy was often present, and eccentrics could be disturbing.10 Beyond that, it is easier to say what the idea was not than what it was, and any generalization has exceptions. Eccentricity was not conscious exhibitionism. It was not libertine; libertines were occasionally included in collections, but for other reasons.11 It was not criminal or sinister, though robbers, swindlers, and murderers were occasionally included.12 It was not revolutionary, though it could be political. It was not religious, though individual clergy could behave eccentrically.13 Of particular relevance to Cavendish, eccentricity was not maladaptive. Richard Kirwan, a colleague of his, is an example. We read in Blagden’s diary in 1795, “Kirwan as eccentric as ever.” Kirwan was a hypochondriac given to marvelous routines to maintain body heat. He had his servant sleep in his room with instructions to wake him every few hours to pour hot tea down his throat.14 Kirwan’s eccentricity did not affect his work: he was competent and productive in several scientific fields. His eccentricity was also benign: at worst, his hot-tea routine interrupted his servant’s sleep, and the servant was paid for the discomfort.

Eccentricities were often comical or absurd, not least because their behavior was unnecessary. Kirwan could have slept through the night with no ill effects. Lest we write off eccentricity as quirkiness and nothing else, we should be aware that it has its champions. During a time of industrial leveling and Victorian conformity, the philosopher John Stuart Mill welcomed eccentricity as an antidote to oppressive popular opinion, regarding it as a measure of “strength of character.” He quantified its benefits: “the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigour, and moral courage it contained.”15 In the next century, Edith Sitwell, author of English Eccentrics, and herself an eccentric, wrote an appreciation of eccentricity that could apply to Cavendish: “the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd.”16 More recently, in the face of conformity of another kind, Weeks and Ward wrote that the existence of eccentricity points to a valued quality of human nature, its allowance for individuality. “In an era when human beings seem typecast by their culture or genes, eccentrics are a refreshing reminder of everyone’s intrinsic uniqueness. By heedlessly flouting norms of behavior that most of us never question, they remind us how much of our liberty we forfeit without thought, and how great our ability is, in fact, to forge our own identities and shape our own lives.”17 John Timbs, in his English Eccentrics and Eccentricities, wrote, “how often do we find eccentricity in the mind of persons of good understanding.” However “outlandish, odd, queer” the eccentric appears, he “may possess claims to our notice which the man who is ever studying the fitness of things would not so readily present.” We do well to keep Timbs’s observation in mind where we consider Cavendish’s eccentricities.18

The English spoke of “character” where we speak of “personality.” Both words imply wholeness, though modern psychology does not identify personality with character alone. Personality is said to express temperament as well as character, the former shaped more by inheritance, the latter by social experience.19

Paul Langford has written about how certain traits came to be seen as distinctive of the English character in the eighteenth century. Foreigners largely agreed with the English on what these traits were. The word Langford uses for them is “Englishness,” which entered the dictionaries only at the end of Cavendish’s life. During his lifetime, the expression “national character” was preferred. Today the idea of national character is unpopular, suggesting behaviors rooted in race and ethnicity, but in the eighteenth century it did not have this forbidding association.20 It is, of course, a stereotype, but useful nonetheless here.

National character implied a degree of conformity, which appeared at odds with English individuality. Priestley said that the English had the reputation of having “least of an uniform national character, on account of their liberty and independence, which enables every man to follow his own humour.”21 The English resolved the seeming contradiction by adopting the idea of “eccentricity,” which by assuming a norm of behavior allowed for individual diversity without threatening social harmony. Eccentricity was “a kind of safety valve for pursuits that might be plausibly tolerated.” In practice, a departure from the norm was tolerated so long as it could be “classified as harmless.”22 Cavendish’s departure from the norm met the test.

Langford organizes his study of national character around six “supposed traits of Englishness”: eccentricity, taciturnity, reserve, candor, decency, and energy. He acknowledges an arbitrariness in his selection; for example, for candor he could as well have used other traits such as honesty, simplicity, sincerity, and directness. Cavendish scores high on all of these traits, if higher on some than others. By making eccentricity an English trait, Cavendish is seen both as a model of an eighteenth-century Englishman and as someone who differs in some striking ways from the average Englishman.

Some traits of the eighteenth-century English national character look eccentric today, and because Cavendish shared them he looks more eccentric to us than he did to his contemporaries. In what follows, we place Cavendish in his social setting. We look to the national character for help in clarifying what was seen as eccentric in his behaviors. For our purposes, we regard the national character as behaviors that were commonly observed in England and which foreigners and the English alike saw as characteristic. In addition, we compare Cavendish’s behaviors with those of Englishmen who lived in or around Cavendish’s time who were seen as eccentric, giving us an idea of the range of eccentric behaviors. We view Cavendish’s eccentric behaviors as departures from an assumed norm, leaving aside the possibility of their arising from a neuropsychological condition.

We know the names of many English eccentrics of the eighteenth century thanks to a genre of popular biography that began about 1800 and is still going strong: collections of biographical sketches, each a group of anecdotes, more or less jumbled together, demonstrating eccentricity of various sorts. The subjects were a catchall of persons who showed odd ideas, habits, or physical traits. They included persons who today are considered eccentric such as misers and recluses, but also giants, hermaphrodites, strong men, and freaks of all kinds. They included both male and female eccentrics, the latter often for masculine traits and irrationality. They often included Irish, Scots, and Welsh as well as English.23 Their criteria for eccentricity were vague, as seen in the advertisement in the revised second edition of Eccentric Biography, Or, Memoirs of Remarkable Characters. Evidently in response to criticism of the first edition, the editor removed characters whose “peculiarities are not sufficiently striking,” replacing them with characters whose “eccentricities render them truly worthy of insertion.” His decisions about removing and adding characters were based on what readers wanted, striking peculiarities. The purpose of his collection of eccentric characters was to entertain and instruct, with care taken to exclude any account that has the “least umbrage to delicacy.” “Singularities of human nature” is as close as he came to defining eccentricities.24 Timbs, in English Eccentrics and Eccentricities, a mid-nineteenth century standard of the genre, began his sketch of Cavendish, “Eccentricity in men of science is not rare,” following which he mentioned Cavendish’s demonstration of the composition of water. Discovery could possibly count as an eccentricity, seeing things that others do not, but discovery is not why Timbs included Cavendish. To portray Cavendish’s eccentricity, he strung together entertaining anecdotes from what he called Wilson’s “clever memoir.”25

Footnotes

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.

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