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Born
on January
22, 1747 (some
sources say February
22), was ‘Lord’ Timothy
Dexter (d. October 26,
1806),
American eccentric businessman and author. I would venture to say
that few men have ever combined in their life's narrative such wacky
individuality and incredible good fortune.
Dexter
was the author of A Pickle for the Knowing Ones, or Plain Truth in a
Homespun Dress, a small collection of correspondence and
chronicles, first self-published as an anthology in May, 1802.
But who was the the so-called 'Newburyport Nut’?
In 1769, aged 22, he began
working in Newburyport, Massachusetts, in his trade as a
leather-dresser, but he had been working since he was only eight
years old, as a farm laborer before his apprenticeship. He prospered
sufficiently to attract a rich widow named Elizabeth (Lord)
Frothingham (d. July 3, 1809),
whom he married on May 22, 1770,
and sufficiently to buy a big house in which they settled with her
four children (they later had a son and daughter of their own) and
set up a glover’s shop. He once gave Elizabeth $2000 to leave him and hired her
back for the same sum two weeks later.
Despite his lack of education, Dexter had
the Midas touch in business. At the end of the American War of Independence he bought large
amounts of European currencies that were worthless at the time. When
trade connections resumed, he had amassed a fortune. He built two
ships and began an export business to West
Indies and to Europe.
He shipped warming pans to the former, which is, of
course, a tropical region, where they were discovered by his captain
to be useful ladles for the local molasses
industry.
Dexter made a good profit. Asian merchants bought the mittens for
export to Siberia.
His next venture was the proverbial ‘selling coals to Newcastle’, which should have
signalled certain failure, but Dexter’s ships arrived as the city was crippled by a
coalminers’ strike and Dexter gained an enormous profit.
He exported bibles
to the East
Indies and stray cats to Caribbean
islands and again somehow turned a profit. He also hoarded whalebone
by mistake, but ended up selling it profitably as a support
material for corsets.
Dexter bought a huge estate from Chester, New Hampshire, and somehow acquired a peerage, which was meant to help him gain access
to the society that snubbed him for his eccentricities, but to no
avail. He also bought a new house in Newburyport and decorated it
with minarets, a golden eagle on the top of the
cupola, a mausoleum
for himself and a garden of 40 wooden statues of Venus and famous
men, including George
Washington, William Pitt,
Napoleon
Bonaparte, Thomas
Jefferson, John Hancock,
John Adams,
King George
III, and of course, himself, towering over all. The inscription
on his own effigy read: I am the first in the East, the first in
the West, and the greatest philosopher in the Western World. He stated, “I will show the world one of
the Grete wonders of the world in 15 months … that is, if no man
murders me in Dors or out of Dors.” People flocked to gawk at this
collection. His 40-piece’”mouseum’ consisted of
groupings with the titles such as, ‘Motherly Love’ and ‘Four
Lions Lying Down with a Lamb’. It is said that his mansion was the
scene of bacchanalian
orgies.
Dexter also had his own way with household
staff. He had a black and protective housekeeper called Lucy, whom
he claimed to be a daughter of an African prince. Other servants
included a large idiot, a fortune teller and his “poet
laureate”, Jonathan Plummer.
At the age of 50 Dexter decided to
write a book about himself – the aforementioned
24-page
pamphlet, entirely devoid of all punctuation: A Pickle for the
Knowing Ones or Plain Truth in a Homespun Dress. He wrote about himself and complained about politicians, clergy
and his wife.
After the sell-out of the first
printing, Lord Dexter, in deference to demanding readers, amended
the second edition by adding periods, commas, semicolons and other
punctuation. However: rather than disperse punctuation throughout
the text, Dexter added a page of ‘stops’ containing nothing but
punctuation marks, along with this curt message:
“the nowing ones complane of
my book the fust edition had no stops I put in a nuf here and thay
may peper and solt it as they please”
At first he handed his book out for free,
but it rapidly became popular and ran into eight editions in total.
It seems that no matter what Dexter did, he made money on it.
 He wasn’t entirely daft, and his
remarks could sometimes show great insight, as on one occasion, when
the newspapers were reporting Lord Thurlow’s famous remark,
“When I forget my king, may my God forget me.” Dexter parodied
it to “When I forget myself, may God forget me”.
On July 28, 1803, Dexter published
a notice of sale of his estate, mentioning fear of his life. It
seems he also began to wonder what people would say about him after
he died. He proceeded to announce his death and to prepare for a
burial. About 3,000 people appeared for the wake – they went through all the rituals of an
actual funeral while he watched from inside the house. However, Dexter’s wife refused to
cry for his passing (legend says he beat her for this indiscretion) and so he
decided not to appear to his guests at all. He did, however,
actually pass on in 1806. Towards the end of his wacky career
he appears to have regretted his follies, and was generous with his
fortune. Or, so it is said.
Sources: Wikipedia,
The Daily Bleed, Lord Timothy Dexter et
al
«
Index of articles on
folklore and other topics
A
Pickle for the Knowing Ones, at Amazon.com
Eccentrics in the Scriptorium: Bee Miles; Emperor
Norton;
Mr Eternity
List
of notable eccentrics
More Dexter And
more Dexter
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