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AN INHERITED PREFERENCE FOR SOLITUDE: Great-Grandson of the Isolated Baronet

AN INHERITED PREFERENCE FOR SOLITUDE: Great-Grandson of the Isolated Baronet Isabel Colegate Sir Vauncey Harpur Crewe of Calke Abbey in Derbyshire was of a reclusive disposition. He inherited a preference for solitude and a passion for natural history and the means to indulge both. He may well have been a happy man; if so he seems to have kept it (along with everything else) to himself. He was the son of the ninth baronet, who had married a first cousin. The characteristics of a mutual ancestor who had been known as “the isolated baronet” were thus passed on through both parents to their eldest son, whom they christened Vauncey after a medieval forebear, Sir Edmund Vauncey. The isolated baronet had been pathologically shy, preferring to communicate even with his household servants by letter only. Briefly galvanized by the Napoleonic wars, he raised a troop of yeomanry from his estate and commissioned Haydn to compose the Derbyshire Marches for them; but when the threat of invasion was over, he once again retreated from the world, while lamenting in letters to his friends his inability to overcome his reclusive tendencies. His great-grandson Sir Vauncey, born in 1846, inherited this lack of sociability but does not seem to have felt it http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Common Knowledge Duke University Press

AN INHERITED PREFERENCE FOR SOLITUDE: Great-Grandson of the Isolated Baronet

Colegate, Isabel
Common Knowledge , Volume 12 (2) – Apr 1, 2006
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Publisher
Duke University Press
Copyright
Copyright 2006 by Duke University Press
ISSN
0961-754X
eISSN
1538-4578
DOI
10.1215/0961754X-2005-008
Publisher site
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Abstract

Isabel Colegate Sir Vauncey Harpur Crewe of Calke Abbey in Derbyshire was of a reclusive disposition. He inherited a preference for solitude and a passion for natural history and the means to indulge both. He may well have been a happy man; if so he seems to have kept it (along with everything else) to himself. He was the son of the ninth baronet, who had married a first cousin. The characteristics of a mutual ancestor who had been known as “the isolated baronet” were thus passed on through both parents to their eldest son, whom they christened Vauncey after a medieval forebear, Sir Edmund Vauncey. The isolated baronet had been pathologically shy, preferring to communicate even with his household servants by letter only. Briefly galvanized by the Napoleonic wars, he raised a troop of yeomanry from his estate and commissioned Haydn to compose the Derbyshire Marches for them; but when the threat of invasion was over, he once again retreated from the world, while lamenting in letters to his friends his inability to overcome his reclusive tendencies. His great-grandson Sir Vauncey, born in 1846, inherited this lack of sociability but does not seem to have felt it

Journal

Common Knowledge – Duke University Press

Published: Apr 1, 2006

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