KENEALY ON THE ECCENTRICITIES OF HUMAN CHARACTER.

Grey River Argus, Volume XIV, Issue 1785, 25 April 1874, Page 2

KENEALY ON THE ECCENTRICITIES OF HUMAN CHARACTER.

In the course of his defence of Arthur Orton, Dr Kenealy had occasion to" shoiy that there was nothing unprecdented orbeyond the limits of experience, or even - probability, in a young man of family and fortune taking to a life of hardship and sordid brutality ; and he adduced as in- ■-' stances of this form of eccentricity, a, ' number of historical and social reminiscences, which are exceedingly interesting, and must have been a sort of oasis, ;in the desert of his long address. -After complaining that counsel for the prosecution assumed that there had never before been a man who had done such' wild and extravagent things as the defendant"al--"-leged had formed part of his career, Dr Kenealy said: — "Let me refer you $q u . some instances to show the contrary/ There was Bampfylde Moore Garewj a. connection of the Earl of Totnes, and. a r man who had within his grasp all those things that make life enjoyable, and who, nevertheless, became a beggar, a wanderer, ■ a gipsy— eventually the king of the gipsies. Should we try such a man as this by the ordinary rules ? Again, if we fion-v template the career of Lord Byron, andi other great poets, we don't try . them by ordinary rules, but we make allowances for their eccentricities. The delight of this man, Carew, was to go abdui iv perpetual disguise to veil the gentleman, to live with persons of a far inferior class to his own, to have course ad ven-j ture, to investigate human nature in the* lowest vein, to live in pot-bouses and* under trees. He had everything a man could have to induce him to return to his home, but he preferred the wild life to which he had given himself up. .If the defendant had been the first man guilty of wildness and folly and eccentriciTJr, you might have declined to accept his . story, but when others are shown to have, similar, wild, foolish, and eccentric thingsj I submit you should pause before deciding his tale is false becauseit is marvellous. One of Carew's intimate friends was a nob,] eman, Lord Weymouth, who ti'a^d a, similarity of taste and fancies, land who' used to travel about the country," some" times as a sailor, and sometimes as a begger, acting his part so well as to mix in the company even of sailors and beggars 1 without being discovered. This -ib an- 1 other man we would not judge by ordinary rules. Then I have no doubt you have all read of the wonderful career of Lord Peterborough. This nobleman left a memoir in which he said he committed 1 three capital crimes before he was twentyone, but the document was destroyed by his widow as not calculated to redound to his credit. He was one of the '''eccentric lights that were always flashing about during the last century. No historian

would judge him by the same rules as lie would judge the Duke of Wellington. Yet he was as great a warrior in liis day as the duke, and was second only to the Duke of Marlborough, who was a staid, solid, and wise man like Wellington. An account is given of him going to dinner at the Guildhall, and, on seeing a French dancing-master in silk stockings on the way, getting out of his carriage, and, sword in hand, driving the poor man through the mud ; and that Lord Peterborough looked upon it as a good joke. Well, perhaps he was cracked, but yet Swift says of him, ' And Mordaunt fills the trump of fame.' Then it is also related of this nobleman that, when he entertained company at his house, he did his own cooking ; and Philip of Orleans, the Regent of France, is known to have done the same thing. That surely was a low taste. Mr Hawkins says this man cannot be a gentleman because he acted as a butcher; on the same ground, it would have to bo held that Lord Peterborough and Phi'ip of Orleans could not be gentlemen because they acted as cooks. Again, it is related of Swift that, after conversing with Addison and St. John (afterwards Lord Bolingbroke), and Matt Prior and the greatest wits and scholars of his day, he used to go and sit in a low pot-house and smoke his pipe, drink his tankard of ale, and speak to all the lowest people who frequented it. Addison accounts for this extraordinary proceeding on the fancifnl ground that, having elevated his mind to a high pitch, he was compelled afterwards to lower it in order to restore the equilibrium ; but I don't think we can accept that as a satisfactory explanation. You can call this cracked?" ness if you like ; and I say if this is Eoger Tichborne, I consider him cracked. Then a great deal has been made out of the (For remainder of News, see 4&h page.)

clothes this man wore ; but, open the life of Lord Nelson, and you will find that at the time he was at the height of hisglorv. he used to walk about in his own house dressed in such a manner that the painters or other workmen who happened to be employed in it used to ask him to assist them in doing various things, and offered him something for doing it. I don't know whether any of you are old enough to remember the extraordinary pranks of a late marquis who possessed an Irish title. His latest performance was to go through the form of fighting a duel with a cobbler, and, probably because he found it difficult to do anything more absurd, that ended the extraordinary things he was in the habit of doing in the Haymarket. He may have been cracked too ; but I say all these things should make us pause before coming to any_ hasty conclusion about this man. Again, in reading Sir Walter Scott's 4 Tales of a Grandfather' the other day 1 came across the mention of a Scotch earl who seemed to be a Tichborne of the last century. I call him a Tich borne because I think that would do as a generic name for people who do these wild and foolish things. This earl, then, is related to have passed some time in France as a bellows-blower and assistant to a blacksmith, without holding any communication with his country or family. He might also be supposed to have been cracked, but that it was merely eccentricity is shown by Sir Walter going on to say that from his conduct in the Rebellion he seemed to have shown more sense and prudence than the other noblemen who were engaged in it. Every man who has a family knows how different may be the dispositions of his sons, and that the one who is wild and eccentric is not judged by the same rules as one who is staid and methodical. Let us take into account the life of Savage, one of the most extraordinary characters that ever lived. His mother while pregnant of him declared that the child she was about to bear was not that of her husband, and got divorced from her husband before the boy was born. The boy was born under the most unhappy circumstances ; but he turned out to be a person of extraordinary powers of intellect— which powers as a rule were wrongly directed. Johnson knew him well— indeed, better than any one else ; and he tells us that he lodged as much by accident as he dined — passing the night sometimes in mean houses and amongst the commonest and most depraved of the rabble, and at other times wandering about till he was^ tired, and then lying down on a bulk, in a cellar, or in cold weather on some heaps of a9hes. That man— the son of the Countess of Macclesfield, and, as she said, of Lord Rivers, but as others, who have investigated the matter say, her own husband — wasted powers of intellect that Johnson says might have guided statesmen, and powers of eloquence that could have influenced senates, by mixing with the vilest of the vile. Suppose Savage were brought up before us, would we not make great allowance for eccentricities ? I ask you to mak e similar allowance for a man like the defendant. I ask you not to judge him by isolated incidents in his career, but to take a !arge and philosophic view of his whole life. But my examples of wildness and eccentricity are cot exhaustive. Dryden speaks of the Duke of Buckingham as being : — "Stiff in opinion —always wrong; Everything by turns, ani nothing long ; But in the cousre of one revolving moon, Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon. Beggared by fools, until he found too late, He had fled his jest, and they had his estate." Another of these eccentric individuals was the late Lord Mornington, the handsomest man I ever saw, and one whose appearance was calculated to fascinate almost every one. An account of him is to be found in Russell's Enquiry Reports, and after hearing what he did I think you will agree that Roger Tichborne might have done almost anything. For, it is related of him that not only did he swear and use obscene language in the presence of his children, but encouraged his son, and even his daughter, to learn and repeat the most indecent words, . and the most vulgar oaths. ' A man and his children,' he said, ' ought to go to the devil in their own way if they pleased.' And again he says : ' Neither God nor the devil will interpose between me and my children.' He even went the length of declaring his intention to let his children associate with children of low habits, and to encourage them to adopt the manners and language of the lower classes, in order to obtain a knowledge of the world ; and said that in Paris he used to get low children to come to his back door and teach his children low, vulgar, and profane talk."