Odd this day
Well, with the festive season approaching (or already upon us if music in shops, and perfume adverts on TV are anything to go by), let’s tell story of obscure politician John Elwes, described in 1888’s Oxford Dictionary of National Biography as a “miser … his name … a byword for sordid penury”, and the model, apparently, for Ebenezer Scrooge. He died 235 years ago today.
ODNB says it was “from his mother he inherited his penurious disposition, for, though she had nearly £100,000 by her husband, she is said to have starved herself to death”, but it was a little more complicated than that.
Basically, he was just bloody odd — yet another deeply eccentric English aristocrat, raised by other posh loons. He was only four when his father died, so his mother, who definitely was a miser, was the most influential parent, but for many years he had a normal (upper class) life. He spent time in Switzerland
becoming one of the best and most daring riders in Europe
…and met Voltaire, whom he was said to resemble. When he came back, he met his uncle Sir Hervey Elwes, a baronet from Suffolk, who was loaded, and
kept his money about his house, and was often robbed; on one occasion of 2,750 guineas. But he would take no step to pursue the thieves, remarking ‘I have lost my money, and now you want me to lose my time.’
So, he did come from a pretty strange family — although he wasn’t parsimonious himself at this point. He did, however, have his eye on his uncle’s cash, and used to visit the old boy regularly. In order to convince Sir Hervey that they were of like mind, Elwes would
dress up in old clothes at a little inn in Chelmsford before visiting him
…and:
Having a large appetite, he took the precaution of dining with a neighbour before sitting down to his uncle’s table.
Such subterfuge paid off, and he inherited the estate, which — because of Sir Hervey’s… careful ways, let’s say — was worth £250,000. He did appear to continue in much the same vein as his uncle, but it wasn’t quite as straightforward as that. It was, apparently:
a diseased disinclination to spend money on his personal wants rather than a grasping avarice. He would wear for a fortnight a wig which he had picked from a rut in a lane, and would never have his shoes cleaned lest it should help to wear them out. Yet he kept good horses and a pack of foxhounds, and had them well cared for.
He enjoyed playing cards, too, and didn’t appear to mind losing money if the amount he frittered away is a suitable measure. He didn’t repair his own house, but “was not a hard landlord”. He had sons, but didn’t educate them, apparently because
putting things into people’s heads is the sure way to take money out of their pockets.
There are many stories in this vein, but they appear to be a case — and certainly have that feel — of printing the legend. Most are found in a biography written the year after he died, Life of the Late John Elwes, by Edward Topham, which
It tells, for example, of the time he “cut his legs against the pole of a sedan-chair” and said to an apothecary, “I’ll take one leg and you the other” — by which he meant he’d have one treated, and bet the medicine man that the other leg would heal faster. He won — allegedly by a fortnight. He would always walk in preference to taking a carriage, carry a hard-boiled egg in his pocket rather than eat at an inn, and “a theatre he never entered”.
But he was generous of spirit. At a shooting party, one member of the party, a notoriously bad shot, caught him in the face — not full on, thankfully; just a couple of pellets — at which he turned to the man and said:
My dear sir, I give you joy of your improvement; I knew you would hit something by and by.
Modern accounts of his life tend to say that he differed from Scrooge in this respect, because Topham wrote of him:
His public character lives after him pure and without stain. In private life, he was chiefly an enemy to himself.
…by which he meant that Elwes was always lending money to people, and never expending nearly enough energy on asking for it back. He once apparently lent £7,000 to Lord Abingdon for a bet at Newmarket. But it is, perhaps, this apparent contradiction in his nature that gave Dickens the idea for a man who starts out mean and miserable, but has within him the potential for kindness and generosity.
One thing he did was to completely fail to look after himself, and once fell ill, only being found by chance by his nephew, close to death. The younger man had been looking for him and heard that “an old beggar” had gone into one of Elwes’ stables and locked the door behind him. It was, of course, Elwes himself. He was revived that time, but didn’t last much longer — and left his sons a sum reported variously as £18 million, £36.5m and £90m in today’s money. (ODNB says it was £500,000 at the time, so perhaps it depends how you calculate inflation. The Bank of England website reckons about £64.5m.)
It certainly seems possible that he inspired Dickens, because Topham’s biography was still doing the rounds in Victorian times. The name of the famous miser apparently came from Edinburgh’s Canongate kirkyard, which the novelist visited in 1841, spotting the gravestone of a merchant called Ebenezer Lennox Scroggie. In the BBC’s account, however, that’s introduced with the words “It’s been suggested that…”, so — as so often with history — it’s really a ‘who the hell knows’ sort of story. Perhaps someone as obsessed with Dickens as Julian Barnes is by one of his French contemporaries should write an equivalent of Flaubert’s Parrot about however many ‘real’ Scrooges there are…
