The English Eccentrics

by Edith Sitwell

Eccentricity exists particularly in the English, states Dame Edith Sitwell, because of “that peculiar and satisfactory knowledge of infallibility that is the hallmark and the birthright of the British nation.” Originally published in 1933, The English Eccentrics has lost none of its vitality and wit. We find hermits, quacks, mariners, indefatigable travelers, and men of learning. We meet the amphibious Lord Rokeby, whose beard reached his knees and who seldom left his bath; the irascible Captain Thicknesses, who left his right hand, to be cut off after his death, to his son Lord Audley; and Curricle Coats, the Gifted Amateur, whose suit was sewn with diamonds and whose every performance ended in uproar. This is a glorious gallery of the extremes of human nature, portrayed with humor, sympathy, knowledge, and love.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, History, British Literature, Short Stories, Biography Memoir, Literature

376 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1933

About the author

Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell, DBE, was a British poet and critic.

Reviews

[Kay · Rating 5 out of 5]

No mere catalog of eccentricity

The inimitable Edith Sitwell, in her jewelled prose, weaves together the threads of assorted strange personages, and the effect is hypnotic. The approach is poetic, oblique, and perhaps not to everyone's taste - and if it were, would you be at all interested? I, for one, was enchanted by her descriptions of, for example, the amphibious Lord Rokeby, the Ornamental Hermits, the dandy Romeo Coates, the rascally William Huntington "the coal-heaver Preacher", the intrepid Squire Waterton, and the ingenious Princess Caraboo, among dozens of others.

Such understated whimsy within these pages! Such a singular philosophy bound these disparate lives! Read, for example, of the rich Miss Beswick, whose sole concern was that, having passed on, she might not realize it, and that her death "might prove to be only an illusion, a dreamless sleep." And so she left a large sum of money to a certain doctor and his family, "on condition that the doctor should pay her a visit every morning, after what appeared to uninstructed persons, to be her death, in order that he might be assured of the reality of this." Dame Edith dryly notes, "When the Doctor died, the mummified Miss Beswick, that candidate for immortality, was removed to the Lying-in Hospital."

It's Edith Sitwell's droll, ornate prose, moreso even than the picturesque eccentrics, that make this a book to savor, to read bits of aloud, in the small hours of the night.

[Maria · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a collection of eleven daily life anecdotes told by first narrator and second in some incidents. Edith retold the sixteen English eccentrics daily life stories. She emphasised on specific conversations and feelings that convey the lifestyle of British people during 1890s to 1930s.
In think that she published this eccentric style of writing about eccentricity to correct this concept regardless their social,academic class and socialisation.
Frankly, it's lovely to go back 90 or 100 years ago to move from a place or another listening to various types of British people anecdotes then. Even though, I prefer Sitwell's style in gold coast customs more. Despite her poems reflect the strong influence of symbolism.

[Priscilla King · Rating 4 out of 5]

No, it's not about Dame Edith and brothers Osbert and Sacheverell. It's about people who, though competent, were quirky enough to make the Sitwells seem mainstream. We meet a bored servant girl who convinces people she's a foreign princess, a lord who discovers the benefits of drinking water rather than wine or beer and tries paying people to drink water, a non-religious hermit and the non-religious rich family who maintain him on their manor for ornamental purposes, and dozens more. It's clear throughout that Sitwell (and her brothers) enjoyed looking up the biographies of England's oddest defenders of the right not to conform. I enjoyed reading these stories, with occasional "tsk's" and frequent chortles. Perhaps reading them will help other people celebrate, rather than fearing, quirkiness in themselves or others too.

[Iblena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ermitaños, avaros, académicos, piratas y aventureros, entre otros, forman parte de un extravagante grupo de individuos que, debido a su comportamiento poco convencional, son considerados por el resto de sus congéneres como excéntricos. Sus semblanzas, no exentas de ironía y con un exquisito y agudo sentido del humor, se exponen en este curioso y delicioso libro.

Edith Sitwell, ícono cultural de los años veinte del siglo pasado y excéntrica por derecho propio, es la creadora de este estrafalario catálogo de personajes. En él figura, por ejemplo, el libertino terrateniente John Mytton, un hombre amante de las emociones fuertes que en una ocasión intentó acabar con su ataque de hipo prendiéndole fuego al camisón de dormir que llevaba puesto. También resalta el criollo Robert Coates, millonario y actor aficionado, célebre no solo por adornar con diamantes el vestuario que lucía en escena, sino también porque sus representaciones solían terminar con sendas trifulcas por parte del público asistente.

Pero no todos los excéntricos retratados pertenecen a la alta sociedad o a la aristocracia; también los hay con orígenes más modestos. Tal es el caso de Mary Baker y Louis Grin, quienes causaron sensación en la sociedad inglesa de la época al asumir la identidad de la enigmática y misteriosa Princesa Caraboo y del intrépido explorador y jefe caníbal Louis de Rougemont, respectivamente, cuando en realidad se trataba de una sirvienta y un lacayo. Sin embargo, el deseo de estos individuos de vivir aventuras y su búsqueda de fama y fortuna merecen la indulgencia del lector.

No así Donald Dancer, cuya avaricia y crueldad sin límites solo despiertan rechazo. Este infame caballero, a pesar de poseer una considerable renta, negó la asistencia médica a su hermana agonizante alegando:

«¿Por qué habría de gastar mi dinero en el intento de llevar malvadamente la contraria a la voluntad de la providencia? Si a la pobre chica le ha llegado su hora, la panacea de todos los curanderos de la cristiandad no podrá salvarla; da lo mismo que muera ahora que en cualquier momento futuro».

Además, para evitar pagar por los posibles daños que su perro pudiera ocasionar entre el rebaño propiedad de sus vecinos, llevó a su mascota al herrero para que le cerrara los colmillos al pobre animalillo.

No puedo dejar de hacer mención a mi excéntrico favorito: Charles Waterton, naturalista, explorador y gran amante de los animales. Durante uno de sus viajes por América del Sur en busca del curare, compartió dormitorio con una boa constrictor de cuatro metros de largo. Ya retirado y con ochenta años, se dedicaba a trepar a los árboles de su propiedad, eso cuando no le daba por recibir a sus visitas hincándoles los dientes en la pantorrilla.

Sin duda, es un libro divertidísimo, con anécdotas insólitas capaces de sacar unas cuantas carcajadas a sus lectores. Para disfrutarlo plenamente, es mejor leerlo poco a poco.

[Michael Beattie · Rating 3 out of 5]

the basic proposition of this book is the same as that of the tv programmes like my strange addiction, extreme hoarders, or fat families, where a person who is unusual in certain ways is inspected by the viewer for entertainment

however, Sitwell does two things differently to contemporary reality tv which makes fun of working class people
1. she finds, extracts, and magnifies narrative in the lives she chronicles, convincing you that each could be the centre of their own epic novel/film/poem
2. sitwell is so sympathetic to her subjects, and you feel that she is writing about them from a place of love, even empathy

the truth is, of course, that we could every one of us be the centre of our own epic novel/film/poem, and we deserve every one of us to be treated with respect and empathy. also, fuck the truth - a story can be so much more than that !

Overall, a lovely lesson in how we ought to think of the life stories of ourselves and others

[Eric Byrd]

All English, except Margaret Fuller, who Sitwell calls a slut right off the bat. This'll be strange.

[Christine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Let me begin by saying that it takes one to know one. If you want to know more about the famous author, take a look at Wikipedia.

This book is charmingly, and imaginatively written, as you might expect. It covers a mere smattering of the eccentricities that British culture has to offer. I got the impression that Edith had particular favourites she wanted to talk about at length and so the book was born. It starts with a cavalcade which gallops off in all directions, ending up no where in particular, but still, the reader has been entertained. It's not necessarily a book to read from cover to cover, though I did. It's more of a dipper.

[Iñaki Echarte · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ya sabía que los ingleses eran peculiares, pero este libro de retratos escritos por la simpar Edith Sitwell nos demuestra que siempre pueden ser más peculiares de los que los imaginamos.
Las historias más interesantes son, a mi entender, las de la falsa princesa Caraboo, las del peculiar naturalista Waterton que se atrevió a subirse sobre la cabeza del ángel que corona el castillo de Sant’Angelo en Roma o la de Sarah Whitehead, la monja del Banco, que acudía a esperar a su hermano todos los días a la salida del trabajo incluso después de que este fuera ejecutado por problemas fiscales.
Muy interesante si te gustan los retratos de personas singulares.

[Jane · Rating 3 out of 5]

How could you possibly not like a book with a chapter entitled "Ornamental Hermits?"
There are days when I'd love to BE an ornamental hermit. Sitwell cribs like crazy from
John Timbs' English Eccentrics and Eccentricities (1866), but she writes so well, so dryly and
tongue-in-cheek, that we forgive her.

[Simón Taña · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un libro diferente con personajes diferentes. ¡Cuamtas veces abré contado en mis conversaciones alguna de las historias que aquí se cuentan!

[K. P. · Rating 4 out of 5]

open and enjoy, we are in a world of sameness now and produced eccentricity.

[Irene Adler · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a mix of really interesting and dull. Dull won, I couldn't keep reading after page 140, and I was skimming before that.

[Caro]

He leído poco, un largo primer capítulo y no, no es el momento, quizá lo retome más adelante

[Michael Spring · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m not sure that eccentricity is such a peculiar preserve of the English. I seem to remember a king of somewhere on the continent (Prussia?) who thought he was made of glass and acted accordingly. Then, too, the descriptions of the home life of Brigham Young, the much married founder of the Mormon church (which Edith Sitwell cannot ignore here) show how the rich vein of vanity and illusion that is at the heart of eccentricity, is alive wherever human life is to be found.

It is just that here, in England, eccentricity does seem to flourish. Perhaps it is just that we notice it more – as those in California are particularly attuned to allergies*. It certainly seems to me that the schoolmasters who tried to teach me many years ago were eccentric to a man. In the end, perhaps, it is an English trait to actually like a touch of the eccentric about us.

Edith Sitwell was not perhaps the first to notice this, but she certainly was one of the first to record and cherish so many examples of those who over many years have worshipped at vanity’s altar. English Eccentrics, first published in 1933, is perhaps the first of the bedside books, compilations of the kind which populate the shelves in the smallest room in the house and from whose close confines we occasionally hear the disconcerting laughter of a weekend guest for whom we have been waiting some time.

All kinds of eccentricity are noted by this witty, urbane and often unexplored writer. Hermits are there in great number (they were the de rigeur ornament of almost every stately home at one particular time it would seem). Healers, men of learning, followers of fashion, travellers in exotic lands all are closely chaperoned within the 250 or so pages of the book, lest they escape and resume their firework-like careers.

To detail just one example is to pluck a single blossom from an orchard of blooms, but I think a word must be said about Squire Mytton, the sporting squire who exhausted his fortune and his life by a reckless disregard for almost everything except gentility.

To say that Jack Mytton was keen on country pursuits is akin to describing Edmund Hilary as a man who liked a view. Mytton lived for sport, and didn’t understand anyone who did not share his passion. Generous (while ploughing through his fortune at a prodigious rate) to his friends, his animals and his tenants, he was loved by all whose lives he touched, except perhaps the poor unfortunate who, when riding with him in a gig, confessed to never having had an accident in one.

“Were you ever much hurt then, by being upset in a gig?” Mytton asked, and when his passenger admitted his lack of experience in the matter, was quickly enlightened as Mytton promptly directed the vehicle at speed toward a closed gate, with predictable effect.

Mytton, who habitually dressed for the height of summer, was known to seek shelter for himself, and his horse as well, before the fire in any nearby cottage after a long day’s hunting in rough weather. Surely, he must have his own special place now in a heavenly replica of Rutland with innumerable horses and bottomless barrels of port.

If there is any justice in heaven, many of these tragic heroes, the sad Beau Brummell in particular, will be restored to their youthful glories. Meanwhile Edith Sitwell’s book allows them – like butterflies around a flame - to live a while with us.



* don’t 90% of the world’s allergy victims live in California? Or have I got that wrong?

[stenia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Le père d'Edith Sitwell a écrit une anthologie sur l'histoire de la fourchette. Rien que pour ça, cette famille mérite qu'on s'y penche. Les anglais sont cintrés, ça, on le sait déjà depuis longtemps, mais les Sitwell sont encore pire. Absolument convaincu que leur fille a un problème à la colonne vertébrale, la pauvre doit subir le port d'un corset de fer. Jamais mariée, collectionnant les crush pour des homosexuels, Edith vécut avec sa gouvernante jusqu'à la mort de cette dernière, emportée par un cancer. Une vie un peu WTF qui doit sans doute être la résultante de son ton si sarcastique et de ses roulements d'yeux permanents dans ses ouvrages. Grande gueule de la littérature anglaise, Sitwell se fout de la tronche de tout le monde et ça, on aime beaucoup. The English Eccentrics aurait pu avoir sa propre série télé si Netflix avait existé en 1933.

[Avis Black · Rating 4 out of 5]

Available at the Internet Archive:
https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet...

[Chris Lewis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Like the curate's egg - good in parts but quite a lot of dross in between!

[₵oincidental Ðandy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautifully written & composed & quintessentially English - made all the more so by a good measure of Sitwellian wit. Enjoyable.

[Karen-Leigh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Going through my Bloomsbury period. A true eccentric writing about eccentrics as only the British have them.