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LUMLEY KETTLEWELL, ESQ. 
Lumley Kettlewell, Esq. 
This gentleman was a resident of Clementhorpe, near York, and was 
noted for eccentricity of character. He died in the year 1819 , in t!ie 
seventieth year of his age. His education and fortune had fitted him 
for the enjoyment of life; but from some mysterious bias of mind, he 
renounced the comforts, pleasures, and honours of the world, and 
adopted the life of a hermit. In his person he was delicate,. rather 
below mediocrity, and capable of great exertion. He possessed a 
very acute and intelligent countenance. His dress was mean, squalid, 
tattered, and composed of the most opposite and incongruous gar- 
ments ; sometimes a fur cap with a ball-room coat, bought at an old 
clothes shop, and hussar-boots ; at another time a high-crowned 
London hat, with a coat or jacket of oil-skin, finished ofl* with the 
torn remains of black silk stockings, and so forth. His manners were 
polished, soft and gentlemanly, like those of a courtier of the middle 
of the last century. 
Early in life he shone in the sports of the field ; and he kept blood- 
horses and game dogs to the last ; but the former he invariably starved 
to death, or put such rough, crude, and strange provender before 
them, that they gradually declined into so low a condition, that the 
ensuing winter never failed to terminate their career, and their places 
were as regularly supplied by a fresh stud. The dogs also were in 
such a plight, that they were scarcely able to go about in search of 
food in the shambles or on the dunghills. A fox was usually one of 
his inmates, and he had Muscovy ducks, and a brown Maltese ass, of 
an uncommon size, which shared the fate of his horses, dying for 
want of proper food and warmth. All these animals inhabited the 
same house with himself, and they were his only companions there ; 
for no human being was allowed to entgr that mysterious mansion. 
The front door was strongly barricadoed within, and he always enter- 
ed by the garden, which communicated with Clementhorpe fields, 
and thence climbed up by a ladder into a small aperture that had 
once been a window. 
He did not sleep in a bed, but in a potter’s crate filled with hay, 
into which he crept about three or four o’clock in the morning, and 
came out again about noon the following day. His money used to 
be laid about in his window seats, and on his tables ; and from the 
grease they had contracted by transient lodgment in his breeches 
pockets, the bank-notes were once or twice devoured by rats. His 
own aliment was most strange and uninviting : vinegar and water 
was his beverage; cocks’ heads with their wattles and combs, baked 
on a pudding of bran and treacle, formed his most dainty dish, and 
occasionally he treated himself with rabbits’ feet : he liked tea and 
coffee, but these were indulgences too great for every day. He read 
and wrote at all hours not occupied with the care of the aforesaid 
numerous domestic animals, and with what he called the sports of 
the field. His integrity was spotless; his word at all times being 
equal to other men’s bonds. 
His religion is what is commonly understood by the ** religion of 
