Charles Waterton - Alleged Eccentricities

Alleged Eccentricities

A range of colourful stories have been handed down about Charles Waterton, not all of which are verifiable, but which add up to a popular portrait of an archetypal aristocratic eccentric:

• Waterton had his hair cut in a crew cut at a time when a full head of hair piled up or brushed forward was in style.
• In 1817, he climbed St. Peter's in Rome and left his gloves on top of the lightning conductor. Pope Pius VII asked him to remove the gloves, which he did.
• Waterton sometimes enjoyed biting the legs of his guests from under the dinner table, imitating a dog.
• He tried to fly by jumping from the top of an outhouse on his estate, calling the exercise "Navigating the atmosphere".
• He devised his own methods for preserving animal skins and used them to create unusual caricatures of his enemies. He also utilised his taxidermy skills to create models critiquing political events of the day.
• He believed in the medical remedy of blood-letting, which was largely an abandoned practice at that point in time. When ill he bled himself heavily.