7^:> 



CHAPTER VIII 



An eccentric country gentleman — Egyptologist and astronomer — 

 Singular political career — Rural pursuits — His marriages — Estab- 

 lishment of prize gooseberry shows — Practices of exhibitors — 

 Names of noted gooseberries — Jas. Carter, landlord of the ' Bugle ' 

 inn — Teetotal festivities — Dr. Lee in excehis — Elihu Burritt — 

 Drunken orgies of the visitors to the Teetotal banquets — The 

 historic career of the Lee family — Their remarkable influence — 

 Admiral Smythe — Old Wiggs, the parish clerk — '^Cdes Hart- 

 wellianas' — The museum — Hartwell House, the seven years' resi- 

 dence of Louis XVIII. 



Amongst the many gentlemen I have known and 

 been pleased to call my friends was John Lee, 

 LL.D., of Hartwell House, near Aylesbury. He 

 was an extraordinary character, and was known far 

 and wide for his benevolence, his eccentricity, and 

 his versatility. His whole career was marked by 

 changes of position in society, whilst his vagaries as 

 a politician, as a Doctors' Commons lawyer, and as 

 a country gentleman, were varied by his studies in 

 Egyptian antiquity, and other similar fields of 

 research. But his greatest achievements were in 

 the study of the heavenly bodies ; and, as an 

 astronomer particularly and scientist generally, he 

 was deservedly held in high esteem. His eccen- 

 tricities culminated in a sudden manifestation of zeal 

 on behalf of teetotalism, and his personal exertions 

 for those enthusiastic faddists, the total abstainers, 



