How odd

Frank Muir

Irish Eccentrics Peter Somerville-Large (Hamish Hamilton 0.95)

Most people — excluding a small list of neglected wives, starved children, beaten-up watchmen, ruined tradesmen and dispossessed tenants — have always been fascinated and amused by eccentrics, those seemingly irratio nal citizens who invented their own codes of behaviour and ignored every body else's. In this book Peter Somerville-Large has parcelled up

as colourful a batch of nature's sports as could be found a whisker this side of lunacy, and has written about them in a witty, detached prose style which admirably sets off their extraordinary behaviour.

Ireland and eccentricity seem to go together and it is no surprise to find that Dublin beggars included among their number such individual ists as Stoney Pockets, who walked through the streets with a pronounced list to port but his right-hand pocket filled with stones to help straighten himself up. Or The Female Oddity, a lady who wore green clothes and ate charcoal, flyblown mutton and mice. Or Zozimus, the blind reciter, a believer in the true religion who would only beg from Catholics, Or Bang-Bang, who shouted "Bang Bang you're dead!" at passers-by.

What .is, perhaps, a little surprising is that eccentricity on the grand scale was not an indigenous trait. It seems that the old Irish families mainly concerned themselves with feasting each other and brooding over their vast estates, and by the eighteenth century were frequently too rich, badly-educated and bored.

One such was the second Earl of Aldborough, who lived in an enormous mansion, Belan, in County Kildare. He was looked after by a vivacious daughter who, unlike the Earl, loved having people around her and invited guests down by the score. Lord Aldbo rough greeted , each of his guests with "When do you leave? The coach passes Bolton Hill every morning, and I can send you there tomorrow." Then he would get up at dawn and shuffle round the garden with a huge basket, picking all the best fruit so that his guests would not have it.

The sixth and last Earl of Aldboro ugh lived as a recluse in another of the family mansions, having all his meals sent down ready cooked from Dublin, forty miles away, by Royal Mail coach. He spent his time building a gigantic balloon. When his house, and the balloon, caught fire he retired to a single room in a hotel in Alicante, Spain, augmenting his income by becoming the local agent for Holloway's Pills.

There were some notable eccentrics among religious men, from John Perrot, an over-zealqus Quaker who took himself off to Rome to convert the Pope (he failed), to the magnificent figure of Frederick Hervey, Bishop of Derry, son of the Lord Hervey who was Pope's enemy `Sporus'. The bishop inherited an earldom, became Lord Bristol and deserted his see for the pleasures of Europe. He was such a free spender that hostelries in six countries changed their name to 'Hotel Bristol'. He Was not very holy.

At one time, in Ireland, he assembled the fattest clerics in his diocese, gave them a huge, rich dinner, and then made them race each other across boggy ground to determine which of them would be given a particularly desirable living. Nobody finished the course. The bishop detested the sound of church bells. One day, in Siena, a religious procession passed beneath his hotel window with bells tinkling away. The earl-bishop leaned out of the window and poured a tureen of spaghetti over the Host.

Eccentric attitudes towards health were common in a country of mists and marshes. Richard Kirwan, second President of the Irish Academy, was afraid of flies and gave his servants a small bonus for each fly cadaver they produced. He was also afraid of catching cold. Before going out for a walk he would stand in front of a blazing fire with his topcoat open, gathering in enough "calorific" to last him until he returned home to safety. When he gave a party he received his guests lying on a couch next to a roaring fire, rolled in cloaks, with his hat on.

The philosopher and mathematician, Hamilton Rowan, took the opposing view of the art of preserving health. When going for a walk on a wet day he would roll himself in the first pool he came to "in order that he might he beforehand in the rain". The second Earl Massereene (family name, Clotworthy) was worried about being small and thin so took to walking through the streets with his arms crossed tightly in front of him, hugging his shoulders. He took the view that if he suppressed the growth of one part of the body it would bulge out elsewhere and he would grow broad and tall.

Brooding over the disposition of their mortal remains was a popular preoccupation of the more thoughtful. William Thompson, a pioneer socialist, left instructions that his corpse was to be disinterred and the skeleton displayed, with (not a very socialistic touch) the ribs tipped in silver to present a more fashionable appearance. Many gentlemen asked to be entombed on a hill bolt upright, so that their remains could enjoy the view. Adolphus Cooke built himself an underground marble tomb with a marble fireplace, marble table and chair and a rich selection of books. He was to be embalmed and sat in the chair and the fire was to be kept lit so that he could spend eternity in comfort, reading improving literature..

Cooke was the archetypal eccentric, working things out for himself with remorseless logic.

When a bullock fell into a pond on his estate and drowned, Cooke had his workers round up all the cattle and march them slowly past the floating corpse as an awful warning of what could happen if they stumbled into water without looking where they put their hooves.

Observing that his beloved crows became most agitated and noisy at nest-building time, he instructed his work force to gather twigs and brushwood and build the nests themselves.

What has happened to the eccentricity which makes such delightful reading in this very amusing book? All we seem capable of nowadays is streaking, or walking into a post office and where a notice says 'Please Take One', taking two. Perhaps Computer Man lacks not only the money and the nerve but also the capacity for original, totally idiosyncratic thought.

If only Patrick Campbell was rich. . .