Quentin Keynes: Our Darwin Connection

I was scooping out dark corners of my apartment over the weekend, determined to fill garbage bags in a pre-fall cleanup campaign, when I happened upon my chunk of petrified wood. As I regarded it in the afternoon sun, it reminded me of the man who gave it to my husband and me as newlyweds, Quentin Keynes, III.

My husband met Quentin Keynes when he was a student at St. Andrews School prep school for boys in Middletown, Delaware. Quent was a self described African explorer and the great-great-grandson of Charles Darwin. He was very tall, about six feet four or five inches, blonde or light brown hair brushed over Donald Trump-wise. He stooped sometimes and I seem to remember one arm was a bit withered, perhaps a left-over from a bout of polio. He spent his summers in Africa chasing elephants and photographing wildlife for the National Geographic Magazine. In the winter, he went back to the States and toured various prep schools and venues showing his slides and lecturing on his adventures. As if this was not enough to fascinate his young audience, he also owned a Jensen car.

My husband was fascinated by anything mechanical, especially automobiles. This Jensen was made by the same company as Jaguar but was more valuable because there were limited numbers produced each year. I cannot recall precisely but it was very limited, like sixty per year... At any rate, Quent was thrilled to have his car serviced for free and ended up leaving it with my husband's family during the summer time he was touring Africa on safari with his paying schoolboy charges. When they all returned in the fall for the next lecture circuit, he dropped in, picked up his car and set up his next visit.

This was the arrangement for years until my husband and I set up housekeeping. Much to my surprise, even after we married and started a family, Quent presented himself on our doorstep to stay for several days until his next lecture engagement. Then he would take his marvelous one of-a-kind car off on the tour du jour.

In the Victorian era, persons of repute frequently drifted from one household to another with their welcomes predicated on principles of hospitality and the novelty of having a celebrity houseguest. Attitudes changed however and in the sixties and seventies this celebrity became a bit of a nuisance.

I remember once, in an effort to impress this sophisticated Englishman, I pan fried trout for breakfast and served up biscuits, home-made preserves, home canned tomato juice...and he complained he was still hungry so I went back and cooked eggs, skillet potatoes, then oatmeal as a chaser. He did not care much for my version of porridge but ate it anyway.

We had moved recently to a larger home and now had a guest room. We were quite pleased to be able to give him some privacy. The next morning he came thundering down the front stairs of our small colonial and sputtered,

"My laces are gone! Your cat ate my shoes, my laces are destroyed!" He shook his suede shoes at us and exclaimed,

"They were brand new. What am I going to do?"

This was the era of Pat Boone and blue suede shoes were still popular although I think this pair was tan. Before the day was out, his rawhide laces that must have tasted pretty good to the cat, were replaced by conventional braided ones.

Quentin Keynes continued his visits up through the seventies. He left a huge trunk with us that was filled with notes, letters, even a metal sign that had marked the border of Kenya. Africa was changing. Quent's photography was not selling enough to support him and his novelty lectures were waning in popularity. His stories now mentioned the "monkey fever" that seemed to be mysteriously killing people. That later was identified as AIDS and would spread throughout the world.

Sometime in this decade, he showed up with a friend and managed to load up all his belongings in a single trip. As they drove down the driveway I confessed to my husband to having mixed feelings. By now we had two children and a business to run so there was not much time for hosting guests like our Englishman. He replied,

"I wonder if we will ever see him again. Probably not." We were concerned because Quent was showing the toll of years of exposure to the disease and strife in Africa.

Quent became a bittersweet part of the past and recently I found out that he passed away in Connecticut in 2003. His obituary did not give a cause of death but it was June, and, in another time he would have been off to Africa for the summer safari...but at 82 when he died, I like to think he had settled down.

Quentin Keynes represented a cross between the Darwins and the Wedgewoods that produced many scientists, writers, philosophers, doctors, politicians. One uncle was Lord Keynes, the famous economist, another was Physician to the Queen. Even today there is a Keynes at Cambridge University. I have a very old brown earthenware type cup and saucer stamped Wedgewood and I wonder if that came from Quent. Both Quent and my husband are now gone so I guess I will never be sure.

Now it's back to cleaning up the corners of my life and dusting off some more memories. Isn't that what seniors are all about?

Have a nice day.