The alarming history of the British, and European, aristocracy -
from Argyll to Wellington and from Byron to Tolstoy, stories of
madness, murder, misery, greed and profligacy. From Regency
playhouses, to which young noblemen would go simply in order to
insult someone to provoke a duel that might further their
reputation, to the fashionable gambling clubs or 'hells' which were
springing up around St James's in the mid-eighteenth century, the
often bizarre doings of aristocrats. An eighteenth-century English
gentleman was required to have what was known as 'bottom', a
shipping metaphor that referred to stability. Taking part in a duel
was a bold statement that you had bottom. William Petty, 2nd Earl
of Shelburne certainly had bottom, if not a complete set of gonads
following his duel with Colonel Fullarton, MP for Plympton. Both
men missed with their first shots, but the colonel fired again and
shot off Shelborne's right testicle. Despite being hit, Shelborne
deliberately discharged his second shot in the air. When asked how
he was, the injured Earl coolly observed his wound and said, 'I
don't think Lady Shelborne will be the worse for it.' The cast of
characters includes imperious, hard-drinking and highly volatile
Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, who is remembered today as much for
his brilliant scientific career as his talent for getting involved
in bizarre mishaps, such as his death as a result of his burst
bladder; the Marquess of Queensberry, a side-whiskered psychopath,
who, on a luxury steamboat in Brazil, in a row with a fellow
passenger over the difference between emus and ostriches, and
knocked him out cold; and Thomas, 2nd Baron Lyttelton, a Georgian
rake straight out of central casting, who ran up enormous gambling
debts, fought duels, frequented brothels and succumbed to drug and
alcohol addiction. Often, such rakes would be swiftly packed off on
a Grand Tour in the hope that travel would bring about maturity. It
seldom did.
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