Джон "Безумный Джек" Майтон: Жизнь и эксцентричность британского денди

British eccentric and politician

John "Mad Jack" Mytton (30 September 1796 – 29 March 1834) was a British eccentric and rake of the Regency period who was briefly a Tory Member of Parliament.

John Mytton was born on 30 September 1796, the son of John Mytton and Sarah Harriet. His family were Shropshire squires with a lineage that stretched back some 500 years. His father died at the age of 30, when Jack was two years old, and he inherited the family seat of Halston Hall, Whittington, near Oswestry, which was worth £60,000 (60000.0 in 1798 is equivalent to about <calculated amount> in recent years), as well as an annual income of £10,000 (10000.0 in 1798 is equivalent to about <calculated amount> in recent years) from rental and agricultural assets generated by estates of more than at Dinas Mawddwy and in Shropshire. Mytton was sent to Westminster School, but was expelled after one year for fighting a master. He was then sent to Harrow School, from which he was also expelled after three terms. He was then educated by a disparate series of private tutors whom he tormented with practical jokes that included leaving a horse in one tutor's bedroom. Despite having achieved very little academically, Mytton was granted entry to Trinity College, Cambridge. He matriculated in January 1816 but, according to Alumni Cantabrigienses, it is doubtful that he took up his place, although there are claims that he took 2,000 bottles of port to sustain himself during his studies. He certainly was not awarded a degree, In 1814 it was merged into the North Shropshire Yeomanry Cavalry, into which Mytton transferred. After Mytton's return from the Grand Tour, he was commissioned in the regular Army and joined the 7th Hussars. As a cornet, he spent a year with the regiment in France as part of the army of occupation after the defeat of Napoleon I, spending his time gambling and drinking before resigning his commission. He rejoined the North Shropshire Yeomanry after his subsequent return to England and was promoted to major in 1822. He had attempted in vain to lobby its colonel for an even higher rank in the place of an uncle, William Owen, who had left the regiment. Despite his later periods abroad and imprisonment, he was still on the regimental strength at the time of his death twelve years later.

Mytton had hunted foxes with his own pack of hounds from the age of ten and went hunting in any kind of weather. His usual winter gear was a light jacket, thin shoes, linen trousers and silk stockings, but in the thrill of the chase he sometimes stripped off and continued the hunt naked, even through snow drifts and rivers in full spate. He also continued hunting despite being unseated and sustaining broken ribs "unmurmuring when every jar was an agony", and sometimes led his stable boys on rat hunts, each stable boy being equipped with ice skates. He had a wardrobe consisting of 150 pairs of hunting breeches, 700 pairs of handmade hunting boots, 1,000 hats and some 3,000 shirts. Mytton kept numerous pets, including some 2,000 dogs. His favourites among them were fed on steak and champagne. His favourite horse, Baronet, had free range inside Halston Hall and lay in front of the fire with Mytton. It was said of "Mad Jack" that "not only did he not mind accidents, he positively liked them". Mytton drove his gig at high speed and once decided to discover if a horse pulling a carriage could jump over a tollgate (it could not). On another occasion he asked his passenger whether he had ever been upset in a gig. The man said he had not and Mytton responded, "What!! What a damn slow fellow you must have been all your life!" He promptly drove the gig up a sloping bank at full speed, tipping himself and his passenger out.