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Now hiring: Garden Hermit

Compensation:
> If and only if the hermit fulfilled the terms of his contract, living in solitary contemplation without stepping foot outside of the estate for seven years, he would be rewarded with £500 to £700 (around $95,000 to $130,000 today).*

Was reminded of the role via the always-excellent, pro-labor history podcast for kids, “Forever Ago” (still interesting and listenable for adults, imo)

Episode title: "Jobs that don’t exist anymore"

https://www.brainson.org/episode/2024/12/04/jobs-that-dont-exist-anymore

* https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ornamental-hermits-were-18th-century-englands-must-have-garden-accessory-180982469/

#parenting #history #BrainsOn #recommended #podcast
An 18th-century etching of "eccentric hermit" John Bigg Wellcome Collection under public domain
An excerpt from English Eccentrics by Edith Sitwell Publication date 1994 Source: https://archive.org/details/englisheccentric0000edit_r1x9/page/25/mode/1up > . . . advertised for a hermit, he built a retreat for this ornamental but retiring person on a steep mound in his estate. This hermitage annoyed Mr Horace Walpole, who announced that it was ridiculous to set aside a quarter of one's garden to be melancholy in: and, indeed, the retreat seems to have been re- markable more for its discomfort than for its beauty, for we learn that there was 'an upper apartment, supported in part by con- torted legs and roots of trees, which formed the entrance to the cell'. Still. Mr Hamilton seems to have found no difficulty in pro- curing the hermit; and in any case, a professional discomfort was only to be expected by the hermit, who, according to the terms of the agreement, must 'continue in the hermitage seven years, where he should be provided with a Bible, optical glasses, a mat for his feet, a hassock for his pillow, an hour-glass for his timepiece, water for his beverage, and food from the house. He must wear a camlet robe, and never, under any circumstances, must he cut his hair, beard, or nails, stray beyond the limits of Mr Hamilton's grounds, or exchange one word with the servant.' If he remained without breaking one of these conditions, in the grounds of Mr Hamilton for seven years, he was to receive, as a proof of Mr Hamilton's
An excerpt from English Eccentrics by Edith Sitwell Publication date 1994 Source: https://archive.org/details/englisheccentric0000edit_r1x9/page/25/mode/1up admiration and satisfaction, the sum of seven hundred pounds. But if, driven to madness by the intolerable tickling of the beard, or the scratching of the camlet robe, he broke any of the conditions laid down, he was not to receive a penny! It is a melancholy fact that the Ornamental Hermit stayed in his retreat for exactly three weeks ! But a gentleman living near Preston, Lancashire, had better luck with his hermit. He had advertised in the papers, offering a salary of £go a year for life, to any man who would live for seven years underground, without seeing any human being, and without cut- ting his hair, beard, toe-nails, or finger-nails. The advertisement was answered immediately, and the happy advertiser prepared an apartment underground which, as Mr Timbs assures us, was "very commodious, with a cold bath, a chamber organ, as many books as the occupier pleases, and provisions served from the gentleman' own table'. The ornamental occupant bloomed, unseen, in this retreat for the space of four years. But, unseen as he was, it is a little difficult to guess what pleasure his employer can have got out of the matter.
The restored hermitage at Painshill Park Rictor Norton and David Allen via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY 2.0 It's an old, tiny house with a pointed roof, nestled in a lush garden, and raised off the ground by wooden stilts.

Ornamental Hermits Were 18th-Century England's Must-Have Garden Accessory

Wealthy landowners hired men who agreed to live in isolation on their estates for as long as seven years
Shoshi Parks (Smithsonian Magazine)
#podcast #history #parenting #brainson #recommended

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