Futility Closet

In 18th-century England, wealthy landowners would sometimes hire people to live as hermits in secluded corners of their estates. In today's show we'll explore this odd custom and review the job requirements for life as a poetic recluse. We'll also meet a German novelist who popularized an American West he had never seen and puzzle over some very generous bank robbers. Sources for our feature on ornamental hermits: Gordon Campbell, The Hermit in the Garden, 2013. Alice Gregory, "Garden Hermit Needed. Apply Within," Boston Globe, May 19, 2013. Robert Conger Pell, Milledulcia: A Thousand Pleasant Things, 1857. Edith Sitwell, The English Eccentrics, 1933. John Timbs, English Eccentrics and Eccentricities, 1875. Allison Meier, "Before the Garden Gnome, The Ornamental Hermit: A Real Person Paid to Dress Like a Druid," Atlas Obscura, March 18, 2014 (accessed June 9, 2015). Graeme Wood's article "The Lost Man," describing the latest efforts to identify the Somerton Man, appeared in the California Sunday Magazine on