Lonely London Lad: A Celebration of the Life of My Uncle, the Aristocrat
So much attention has been focused on my English uncle Vivien bequeathing 140 hunting dogs to me in his last will and testament, that his own life has been shamefully overshadowed. I aim to correct that omission, here and now, as he lived a good and worthy life. Yes, he was a touch eccentric, but who among us is not?
The first thing you need to know is that Uncle Vivien had various physical quirks due to the intramixing of familial DNA for generation after generation. For one, the knuckle on his right thumb was mislocated in vitro and ended up as his kneecap, which itself became his right thumb knuckle. He had an enormous thumb, as a result. [The portrait at right shows how successfully he could conceal both infirmities].
Vivien was often approached by vulgar commercial interests who wanted to exploit his thumb for their gain. One, a gardening concern, wished to paint his thumb green and use it in a TV advert to promote their turf care product, "GreenThumb Growth Granules".
Another, a national health organisation, wished to use his thumb to encourage men to have their prostates examined, with the tagline, "Don't fear, this man is not your doctor."
He turned them, and others, down.
Nobody ever wished to profit from his small knee, perhaps because he kept it well hidden, or perhaps because it wasn't terribly marketable. Few people have small knees -- or more specifically, thumb knuckle knee caps -- and thus products serving their needs are scarce.
He was, to the core, a country gentlemen, and found comfort only amidst his large family of hounds, who never judged him for his withered kneecap or his oversized thumb.
He had other quirks, too, but some were more affectation than inborn defect, such as his propensity to bathe fully clothed. I had many visits with him when I was younger where he would read Keats to me from within his bathtub, smoking his pipe, fully dressed in tweed and Wellies. I found it odd that he required me to be fully unclothed whilst I sat there listening. But it was just one of his eccentricities, I suppose, or some idiosyncratic syndrome resulting from his oversized thumb joint and undersized kneecap.
At one point, he went to Vienna to consult with Dr. Freud, but found that he had died years earlier, so instead found therapy in the consumption of Sacher tortes. To his dying day, he would have Sacher tortes airlifted weekly to his estate direct from Vienna. He would often joke that if we wanted to kill him and inherit his estate (he didn't mention the hounds), we should simply poison him via his Sacher tortes (See: Dick And Jane). It is ironic that the cause of death was anaphylactic shock secondary to cocoa overdose. The butler is being questioned as I write this. Not his butler, my butler. Because I might have suggested doing so. In jest, of course, but butlers tend to be literalists.
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Vivien gave generously to many worthy charities, none of whom have a web site, such as the Rhododendron Club of East Stoneborough, the Ladies Gin Rummy Society of Upper Tawdrich, and the Beth Israel Synagogue of East Syosset, New York. Since he was hardcore CE (Church of England), it was never discovered why he was so generous to a synagogue thousands of miles away. Perhaps he just liked the way the name rolled off his tongue. He would often sit in his Chippendale couch and allow words to roll off his tongue. I recall one evening watching him say "mellifluous" for hours on end, rolling off his tongue like the honey of Hybla. It had a mantra-like aspect to it.
His romantic life was hard to decipher. He always professed to loving one thing in this world, his hounds, but how far he took that love is impossible to know. He did have a brief fling with one of the ghosts in his manor, an upstairs girl from 1745, who had perished in the apathy epidemic of that year. I met her on one occasion, and she was perfectly nice and had this old-fashioned beauty to her. I frankly thought he could do much better, as there are scores of ghosts to choose from at the manor, and why he would gravitate to a low-born ghost was difficult for me to grasp. He once spoke of the idea of having children with her, and got lost in an endless loop wondering what a half-man half-ghost would look like. He didn't care for my music, said it sounded like "aristocrats on acid". I thought his displeasure was a good thing. Certain people you want NOT to like your music. In fact, you want most people not to like your music. He was, by the way, a big fan of the Jonas Brothers. Let us remember him not for the dogs he left me, but for all the people whose lives he touched (sometimes inappropriately) in his lifetime. And for his large thumb knuckle and small kneecap. - LLL
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