Curiosities of Human Nature

PETER, THE WILD BOY

On the continent of Europe, portions of which are interspersed with vast forests and uncultivated tracts, various individuals of the human species have, at different times, been discovered in a state no better than that of the brute creation. One of the most singular of these unfortunate creatures was Peter the Wild Boy, whose origin and history, previous to his discovery, must remain forever a secret. He was found in the year 1725, in the woods, about twenty-five miles from Hanover, in Germany. He walked on all fours, climbed trees like a squirrel, and fed on grass and moss.

When he was taken, he was about thirteen years old, and could not speak. He soon made his escape into the woods, where he concealed himself amid the branches of a tree, which was sawed down to recover him. He was brought over to England, in the year 1726, and exhibited to the king and many of the nobility. He received the title of Peter the Wild Boy, which name he ever afterwards retained.

He appeared to have scarcely any ideas, was uneasy at being obliged to wear clothes, and could not be induced to lie in a bed, but sat and slept in a corner of a room, whence it was conjectured that he used to sleep on a tree for security against wild beasts. He was committed to the care of Dr. Arbuthnot, at whose house he was to have been baptized; but, notwithstanding all the doctor's pains, he never could bring the wild youth to the use of speech, or the pronunciation of more than a very few words. As every effort to give him an education was found to be vain, he was placed with a farmer at a small distance from London, and a pension was allowed him by the king, which he enjoyed till his death, which occurred in 1785, at the age of about seventy-three years.

Peter was low of stature, and always wore his beard. He occasionally wandered away from his place of residence, but either returned or was brought back. He was never mischievous; was remarkable for his strength; became fond of finery and dress, and at last, was taught to love beer and gin. He was a lover of music, and acquired several tunes. He also became able to count as far as twenty, and could answer a few simple questions. He learned to eat the food of the family where he lived, but in his excursions, he subsisted upon raw herbage, berries and roots of young trees. He was evidently not an idiot, but seemed to continue in a state of mental infancy, thinking of little beyond his physical wants, and never being able to conceive of the existence of a God.

JOHN KELSEY

It is well for every person to be apprized of the fact, that, in all ages and all countries, there are religious enthusiasts, who, having given themselves up to heated imaginations, lose the power of judging according to truth and reason upon this particular subject. They see things by a false vision, and are not only deluded but they often delude others. These persons are monomaniacs – insane upon the subject of religion, though often sane upon all others.

It appears that every person is liable to this species of delusion, if he gives up the reins to his fancy, and ceases to be guided by common sense; and the frequency of such occurrences shows that this liability is by no means remote. In a recent case, a man by the name of Elijah Thayer, a native of Massachusetts, conceived the idea that the present dispensation was speedily to pass away, and that the second coming of Christ was to be realized in his own person.

Believing himself to be commanded by God to announce this event to the great powers of England, Rome, and Jerusalem, he took passage in the steamer Britannia, in September, 1842, and proceeded upon his mission. He was a common laborer, but he possessed a good deal of knowledge, especially of the Bible. He was rational and sagacious upon all subjects except that of his peculiar religious views; and even in maintaining these, he displayed much skill, and was singularly dexterous in the quoting of Scripture.

Soon after his arrival, he proceeded to Windsor, where Queen Victoria was then residing. He made application for an interview with her majesty, saying that he had a most important communication to make to her. Being requested to state the substance of it, he sent her word that Elijah Thayer, the prophet of God, had come, by the command of the Most High, to announce a mighty change, which was speedily to take place throughout the universe. The present system of things was to pass away; crowns, thrones and sceptres were to be trampled in the dust; kings and queens were to be reduced to the level of common mortals; universal equality was to be established among mankind; an era of peace was to begin, and he himself, Elijah Thayer, passing from the prophetic to the kingly state, was to reign in righteousness over the earth as Christ himself.

This message was delivered by Elijah, in his fur cap, and his long-skirted blue coat, with a perfectly sober face, to the queen's servants at Windsor Castle. These received the extraordinary tidings with decorous politeness, promised faithfully to deliver the message, and the prophet, well satisfied, went his way. He now proceeded to London, and visited the several Jewish synagogues, announcing to the high priests his wonderful mission. The last we heard of him, he was preparing to make his way to Rome, in fulfilment of his insane project.

It would be easy to add numerous instances of similar delusion. In 1790, an Englishman, by the name of Richard Brothers, announced that he had a mission for the restoration of the Jews and to make Jerusalem the capital of the world. He said that he was commanded to notify the king, the lords and the commons of the same, which he did in a manner so obstreperous, that he was lodged in Newgate prison.

Roger North gives us an account of one John Kelsey, a Quaker, who, about the year 1680, "went on a sort of pilgrimage to Constantinople, for converting the Great Turk; and the first scene of his action was standing up in a corner of the street, and preaching to the people. They stared at him, and concluding him to be out of his wits, he was taken and carried to the madhouse; there he lay six months. At last, some of the keepers heard him speak the word English, and told of it so that it came to the ambassador, Lord Winchelsea's ear, that he had a subject in the madhouse.

"His lordship sent and had him at his house. The fellow stood before the ambassador, with a dirty, ragged hat on, and would not put it off, though he was so charged and admonished; thereupon the ambassador ordered him down, and had him drubbed upon the feet, after the Turkish manner. Then he was anything and would do anything, and afterwards did own that that drubbing had a great effect upon his spirit.

"Upon searching him, there was found in his pouch, among a few beans, a letter to the Grand Signior, very long and canting; but the substance was to let him know that he was the scourge in God's hand with which he chastised the wicked Christians; and now, their wickedness was so great, that God, by the spirit, had sent him, to let him know that he must come forthwith to scourge them.

"He was sent for England, but got off by the way, and came up a second time to Constantinople, from whence he was more surely conveyed; and some that knew John, told Sir Dudley North that they had seen him on the Exchange, where he recognised the admirable virtue of Turkish drubbing."

BAMFYLDE MOORE CAREW

This eccentric character was born in 1693, at Bickley, in Devonshire, of which place his father was many years rector. Being descended from an ancient and honorable family, he was educated agreeably to his condition. At the age of twelve, he was sent to the Tiverton school, where his good behavior led his friends to hope that he might some day shine in the clerical profession. But the Tiverton scholars having at their command a fine pack of hounds, Carew, and two or three of his companions, devoted themselves more to hunting than study.

One day they engaged in the chase of a deer, just before the commencement of harvest. The animal took his course through the fields of grain, and the young sportsmen, with their hounds, followed, reckless of the damage that was done. The mischief was so considerable, that the proprietors complained to the school-master. Carew and his companions were so much frightened, that they absconded, and joined a gang of gipsies, who happened to be in the neighborhood. This society consisted of about eighteen persons of both sexes, who carried with them such an air of mirth and gaiety, that the youngsters were quite delighted with their company, and, expressing an inclination to enter into their society, the gipsies admitted them, after the performance of the requisite ceremonies and the administration of the customary oaths.

Young Carew was speedily initiated into all the arts of the wandering tribe, for which he seemed to have a happy genius. His parents, meanwhile, lamented him as one that was no more, for, though they had repeatedly advertised his name and person, they could not obtain the least intelligence of him. At length, after an interval of a year and a half, hearing of their grief and repeated inquiries after him, his heart relented, and he returned to Bickley. Being greatly disguised, both in dress and appearance, he was not known at first by his parents; but when he discovered himself, a scene followed which no words can describe, and there were great rejoicings, both in Bickley and the neighboring parish of Cadley.

Everything was done to render his home agreeable; but Carew had contracted such a fondness for the society of the gipsies, that, after various ineffectual struggles with the suggestions of filial piety, he once more eloped to his former connections, and soon gave new proofs of his aptitude for their peculiar calling.

Having remained with the gipsies for some time, he left them, and proceeded on a voyage to Newfoundland. He soon returned, and, landing at Newcastle, eloped with a young lady, the daughter of an eminent apothecary of that town. Proceeding to Bath, they were married, and paid a visit to Carew's uncle, a distinguished clergyman of Dorchester. He received them with great kindness, and endeavored to persuade his nephew to take a final leave of his gipsey life. This, however, proved vain, for Carew soon returned to that vagrant community, with whom he spent the remainder of his days.

He now led an adventurous career, seeming to be guided more by the humor of enterprise than the love of gain. His art in transforming his person so as to represent various characters, extorted from the gipsies themselves the greatest applause, and, at last, when Clause Patch, their king, died, Carew had the honor of being elected in his stead.

Though his character was known, he was rather a favorite with many persons of good standing, and was on one occasion invited to spend several days in hunting with Colonel Strangeways, at Milbury. The conversation happened one day, at dinner, to turn on Carew's ingenuity, and the colonel remarked that he would defy him to practise deception on him. The next day, while the colonel was out with his hounds, he met with a miserable object upon a pair of crutches, with a wound in his thigh, a coat of rags, and a venerable, pity-moving beard. His countenance expressed pain and sorrow, and as the colonel stopped to gaze upon him, the tears trickled down his silver beard. As the colonel was not proof against such an affecting sight, he threw him half a crown, and passed on. While he was at dinner, the miserable object came in, when lo, it was Carew himself!

The life of this singular man has afforded materials for a volume. His friends in vain offered to provide him with a respectable maintenance; no entreaty could prevail upon him to abandon the kind of life he had adopted. He spent about forty years with gipsies and beggars, and died in 1770, aged 77.

JOHN ELWES

A monomaniac is generally made by dwelling for a long period upon one object with intense interest, to the exclusion of others. By this process, this one object at last occupies the whole soul, fills the entire vision, and makes the mind blind to the relative importance of other things. A man in this condition is insane, and resembles the bedlamite, who, being asked why he was confined, replied, "I thought the world mad, and the world thought me mad, and they outvoted me!" While the world, guided by common sense, assigns to each subject its relative importance, the monomaniac we have imagined, sees but one thing, his own hobby, and pronounces mankind mad because they do not agree with him.

There are a thousand forms and shades of this insanity; one of the most common is displayed by the miser, who has dwelt so long and so intently upon the acquisition of money, that money becomes his idol: he thinks it the supreme good: he has a mad delight in amassing it: his eagerness to increase his store, quenches the lights of the soul – pity, benevolence, charity, and mercy; he is beset by a horrid fear of its being taken from him; and, as age creeps on and weakens his powers of body and mind, the demon of avarice takes possession of the bosom, and, putting out the light of reason, holds its revel in darkness and fear, till death closes the scene.

Of misers, history has furnished us a long list. We are told of M. Osterwald, a wealthy banker of Paris, who died in 1790, of want, yet leaving an estate of 600,000 dollars! When he began life, and bought a bottle of beer for his dinner, he took away the cork in his pocket. He practised this for a long period, and had at last collected such a quantity that they sold for nearly one hundred dollars! A few months before his death, he refused to buy meat for soup. "I should like the soup," said he, "well enough, but I do not want the meat. What, then, is to become of that?" The fear of losing the meat, led him to starve himself; yet, at the very moment, he had 800 assignats, of 200 dollars each, in a silken bag, around his neck!

Another Frenchman, by the name of Fortescue, affords a curious piece of history. He was a farmer-general of the taxes, and amassed an immense fortune by grinding the poor. The government at length called upon him for a considerable sum, but he pleaded poverty. Fearing that some of his neighbors should testify to his wealth, he determined to conceal it. He therefore dug a vault beneath his wine-cellar, where he deposited his gold. He went down to it by a ladder, and fastened the door by a spring lock. One day, while he was in the vault, the door closed, and the lock fastened him in! In vain were his cries for help! There he remained, till, worn out by horror of mind and starvation of body, he perished in the very midst of his heaps of gold! His miserable fate was not known till some years after, when, his house being sold, his bones were discovered in the vault with his treasures.

The celebrated John Elwes, whose portrait we have placed at the head of this article, has furnished a memorable instance of the inconsistency of man. He has showed that the most sordid parsimony may be combined with the greatest negligence and profusion, and that principles of the purest honor may be associated with a degree of meanness, that is utterly degrading to the human character. He was born in London, about the year 1714, his father's name being Meggot. He was educated at Westminster school, and afterwards went to Geneva, where he seems to have led rather a gay life.

On his return to England, his father being dead, he went to live with his uncle, Sir Harvey Elwes, a wealthy miser, who resided at Stoke, in Suffolk. In order to make a favorable impression upon his uncle, the nephew doffed his gay attire, at the little inn at Chelmsford, and appeared at Stoke with an old worn-out coat, a tattered waistcoat, darned worsted stockings, and small iron buckles in his shoes. He was received by Sir Harvey with satisfaction, who now adopted him as his heir. Here the two lived together, shivering with a single stick on the fire, occasionally dividing a glass of wine between them, and railing against the extravagance of the times. When night approached, they went to bed, to save the expense of candles!

But at last, Sir Harvey paid the debt of nature, and left his fortune, of more than a million of dollars, to his nephew. John Meggot, who was now about forty years old, adopted his uncle's surname agreeably to the will, and, while he inherited Sir Harvey's parsimony, he still addicted himself to gambling. He became a member of various clubs in London, and often played for very high sums. He once played two days and a night without intermission, the Duke of Northumberland being one of the party; and, as it was the custom among these gamblers in high life to throw aside the cards after being once used – at the close of the sitting, the party were nearly up to their knees in cards.

While Elwes was thus engaged, he had the most grasping desire of money, and, having sat up all night at play with persons of the highest rank, he would walk out at four o'clock in the morning, to Smithfield, to meet his cattle coming to market from his estates in Essex. There, forgetting the scenes he had just left, he would stand in the cold or rain, higgling with the butcher for a shilling. Sometimes, if the beasts had not arrived, he would walk on in the mire to meet them; and more than once he has gone on foot the whole way to his farm, which was seventeen miles from London, without stopping, after sitting up all night.

Mr. Elwes usually resided at Meacham, in Berkshire. In travelling between this place and London, he used to put two or three eggs, boiled hard, with a few crusts of bread, into his great-coat pocket; then, mounting one of his hunters, he would set off, taking the route with the fewest turnpike gates. Avoiding the taverns, he would stop under a hedge, and, while he ate his frugal meal, the horse would refresh himself by nibbling the grass.

Notwithstanding this excessive meanness, Mr. Elwes displayed many instances of generosity. On one occasion, he lent Lord Abington £7000, at a very critical moment, and entirely unsolicited, and when he had little reason to suppose the money would ever be repaid. Beside, he made it a principle never to ask for money which he won at play, and thus he lost many thousands of pounds, which he might have received by demanding it. At the same time, he had an equanimity of temper which nothing could disturb, and a gentleness and urbanity of manner, which never forsook him.

When he was somewhat advanced in life, he dismissed his fox-hounds, retrenched his expenses, and lived in the most parsimonious manner. Riches now rolled in upon him like a torrent; at the same time, his mean, miserly propensities increased. When in London, he would walk home in the rain, rather than pay a shilling for a coach; and sit in his wet clothes, rather than have a fire to dry them. On one occasion, he wore a black wig above a fortnight, which he picked out of a rut in a lane, and which had probably been discarded by a beggar. While the black, stray wig was thus atop of his own gray hair, he one day tore his coat, and, in order to supply himself, resorted to an old chest of Sir Jervaise, his uncle's father. From this, he took the first he came to, which was a full-dress, green, velvet coat, with slashed sleeves. In this attire, he sat down to dinner: not even the solemn severity of his poor old servant could resist the ludicrous effect of his appearance.

In order to invest his immense property, Mr. Elwes erected a great number of buildings in London, particularly about the Hay-Market. He was the founder of a large part of Mary-le-bone, Portman Place, Portman Square, and several of the adjacent streets. It was his custom in town, to occupy any one of his numerous houses that was vacant. Two beds, two chairs, a table and an old woman, comprised all his furniture. Thus he travelled from street to street, and it was often difficult to find him.

One day, his nephew, Colonel Timms, came to town, and, wishing very much to see him, made a long, but ineffectual search for him. At last, he was directed to a particular house, which he found, and knocked loudly at the door, but no answer was returned. He then entered, but all was silent below. On ascending to one of the chambers, he found Mr. Elwes on a shabby pallet bed, in a state of insensibility. The poor old woman, the partner of his journeys, was found lifeless on a rug in one of the garrets, where she had apparently been dead for at least two days, and where she had probably expired for want of the comforts of life. Mr. Elwes, being restored by cordials, stated that he had been sick for a long time, and wondered that the old woman did not come to his assistance.

Notwithstanding the unfavorable traits in Mr. Elwes' character, yet such was the confidence reposed in his integrity, that, without his own solicitation, he was elected a member of the House of Commons, for Berkshire, which he represented for three successive parliaments. Nothing could exceed the rigid fidelity with which he fulfilled his duties here. His vote was always given according to his conscience, and, in all weathers, and during the latest sittings, he was in his seat.

One night, as he was returning from the House of Commons, it being extremely dark, he ran against the pole of a sedan chair, and cut both his legs very badly. As usual, he refused to have medical assistance, but Colonel Timms insisted upon some one being called in. At length he submitted, and a surgeon was sent for, who immediately began to expatiate on the ill consequences of breaking the skin, the good fortune of his being sent for, and the peculiarly bad appearance of the wounds. "Very probable," replied Mr. Elwes, "but, Mr. – , I have one thing to say to you. In my opinion my legs are not much hurt; now you think they are; so I will make this agreement. I will take one leg, and you shall take the other; you shall do what you please with yours; I will do nothing to mine; and I will wager your bill that my leg gets well before yours." He exultingly beat the surgeon by a fortnight.

About the year 1785, Mr. Elwes paid a visit to his seat at Stoke, which he had not seen for some years. On his arrival, he complained of the expensive furniture of the rooms. To save fire, he would sit with a servant in the kitchen, or walk about the remains of a ruinous greenhouse. During harvest, he amused himself with gleaning the corn upon the grounds of his own tenants. In the autumn, he would pick up stray chips and carry them to the fire in his pocket. On one occasion, he was seen robbing a crow's nest for fuel. He denied himself the common necessaries of life: one day, he dined on a moor-fowl, which a rat had drawn out of a river, and, on another, he ate the undigested part of a pike, which was taken from the stomach of a larger fish, caught in a net.

At last, the powers of life began to decay, and, in the autumn of 1786, his memory entirely failed him. On the 18th of November he sank into a state of extreme debility; yet he lingered till the 26th, when he expired without a sigh, leaving property to the amount of four millions of dollars. More than half of this was bequeathed to his two natural sons; the rest, being entailed, was inherited by Colonel Timms. Such was John Elwes, a singular compound of parsimony and profusion, of generosity and meanness, of honesty and avarice, of virtue and vice.

BARON D'AGUILAR