Francis Egerton, 8th Earl of Bridgewater
It was only at the age of 67 that Francis Henry Egerton (1756-1829) became an Earl, upon the death of his brother, but he had long before that time cultivated a reputation for outrageous eccentricity. Like Sir Thomas Barrett-Lennard, this unusual behavior was centered around animals. A Church of England clergyman, in 1796 Egerton fled to Paris, probably owing to scandals around his illegitimate children. In Paris, it was reported that he kept cats and dogs dressed as aristocrats in his home, each with a personal footman who would attach their tailored leather boots and napkins at meal times.
Each day, his dogs were transported via carriage to exercise in the Bois de Boulogne, their attendants sheltering them with umbrellas when necessary. Unfortunately, his expectation that his pets would behave like gentlemen at the table was disappointed. ‘The blackguards have deceived me. I have treated them like gentlemen, and they have behaved like rascals’, complained Egerton. Their punishment was severe: ‘they shall wear for eight days the yellow coats and knee breeches of my valets and shall stay in the ante-room and be deprived of the honor of seeing me for a week’. The animals’ reaction is not recorded.
Egerton’s dress sense was suitably eccentric for a man of such proclivities. With a prominent under bite and upturned chin, his garish and flamboyant outfits were designed to distract attention away from his face. He wore a new pair of boots every day, made by the cobbler he shared with his pets, and kept the once-worn pairs in a room, so that he could calculate the date and remember the weather and what he did on a particular day by the residue collected on them. Somehow, this was deemed preferable to keeping a diary or consulting a newspaper.
Though he lived in France for 30 years, Egerton claimed never to have mastered French, and so instead conversed with non-English speakers in Latin. As you can probably tell from this linguistic eccentricity, Egerton was a well-educated man: he was elected as a member of the Royal Society in 1781, and was known for his works on genealogy, writing around 30 books in total. Academic concerns received much of Egerton’s estate in his will, along with charities in which he took an interest. Upon becoming Earl in 1823, he proclaimed himself Holy Roman Emperor, an entity formally dissolved in 1806.
Though France must have agreed with him in many respects, Egerton still missed fox hunting, and would frequently invite friends to engage in a miniature meet in his gardens, complete with hunting livery, hounds, and an imported fox. He also kept 300 rabbits, partridges, and pigeons, which he would take delight in shooting when fancy took him. Most remarkably, he also bettered Napoleon Bonaparte, whose designs on remodeling Paris involved altering the Hotel Egerton. His troops were soon discouraged, and a similar attempt by the Duke of Saxe Coburg was resisted by Egerton himself and 30 armed servants.