Historical Royals Who Had Some Seriously Strange Habits

Caligula really was a piece of work — so much so that we’ll draw a veil over some of his more unsavory activities during his reign from 37 to 41 A.D. Instead we’ll concentrate on his obsessive relationship with one Incitatus. Who was a horse. According to the historian Suetonius, Caligula lavished his favorite steed with extravagances such as an ivory feedbox, a marbled stable and a collar studded with diamonds. 

Another Roman historian, Cassius Dio, wrote that Caligula had flakes of gold mixed in with Incitatus’ daily bran. Things went so far that Caligula apparently planned to promote the horse to high political office, the position of consul. In fact, the only thing that stopped him was that his disgruntled underlings assassinated him before he could put his proposal into action.

King Maximilian II of Bavaria died in 1864. Just as you’d expect, his 18-year-old son Ludwig II succeeded him to the throne. So far, so normal. But as Ludwig settled into his new role as ruler of all he surveyed things began to veer off the rails. So much so in fact that history has given the monarch the title of “Mad King Ludwig.” 

Ludwig attracted this uncomplimentary epithet because of his castle habit. He just couldn’t stop building them, the grander and more elaborate the better. Unfortunately, this plunged him into enormous debt. This triggered a palace coup and Bavarian officials deposed Ludwig on the grounds of insanity in 1886. A contemporary German psychologist, Professor Heinz Häfner, has even given a name to Ludwig’s condition; “compulsive palace-building syndrome.” 

Lucky James, eh? He got to be king of two separate countries, Scotland, where he was the sixth James to be king and England, where he was the first. He succeeded to the Scottish crown in 1567 at the age of 13 months after his mom, Mary, Queen of Scots, was forced off the throne. In 1603, Elizabeth I died and James was first in line for the English throne. So the two kingdoms were united under one monarch, an arrangement that persists to this day.

But does any of James’ history explain why he was apparently so averse to personal hygiene? It’s a puzzle. But according to the BBC’s History Extra website, “the king bore a great aversion to water and reportedly never bathed.” Sir Anthony Weldon, a 17th-century courtier and politician elaborated on James’ unsavory habits, “He never washed his hands, only rubbed his finger ends slightly with the wet end of a napkin.” Charming.

Frederick William became King of Prussia in 1713 and his martial qualities earned him the title of Soldatenkönig which translates as “soldier king.” But he had one peculiar foible — tall men. He wanted them as soldiers and formed a special battalion, the Potsdam Giants. All of the men serving in this unit had to be over six feet tall — well above average in the 18th century. 

Frederick William went to great lengths and spent large sums to recruit men of the requisite height from across Europe. Recruits were sometimes paid handsomely to join up. In other cases, tall specimens were gifted by other monarchs. On occasion, the height-obsessed ruler even had men kidnapped. The King even went so far as to marry off his soldiers to exceptionally tall brides. Whether they liked it or not. 

Nicolas I, or Nikolai Pavlovich to give him his Russian name, became czar in 1825. By all accounts, Nicolas was an abstemious type. According to the Russia Beyond website the ruler shunned tobacco, disinterested in alcohol and preferred a simple diet with no sugar. Yet he did have one strange weakness. Pickles. 

When breakfast time came round at the czar’s residence, it was time for a plate of pickles. Nicolas would wash down five pickled cucumbers and some bread with a cup of tea. His Spartan diet saw him go without dinner. But he would treat himself of an evening with a drink of the salt water in which his beloved cucumbers were pickled. 

Napoleon Bonaparte was Emperor of France and all of her conquered territories from 1804. In his position of absolute ruler, he could presumably have eaten any luxurious tidbit from around the world. But what he chose as his favorite snack was licorice. Louis Constant Wairy was Napoleon’s personal valet for 14 years and he dished the dirt on the Emperor’s licorice habit in his memoirs.

Monsieur Wairy recalled that Napoleon always carried three things with him. They were “his handkerchief, his snuffbox, and a little shell box filled with licorice flavored with aniseed and cut very fine.” The Emperor’s licorice consumption had one unfortunate side-effect — blackened teeth. But he pursued his obsession even on his deathbed in 1821 when he’s said to have asked for licorice-flavored water. 

From 1509, Henry ruled England for 38 years, and you could argue that he is the best known English king. Although he’s not always remembered for the best of reasons. His six wives immediately spring to mind — two of whom lost their heads in truly unpleasant circumstances. Then there was his notorious gluttony which brought with it entirely predictable consequences.

While Henry was famously an athletic and handsome youth, he became morbidly obese in his later years. To be fair, it’s been said that he only put on the pounds after a jousting mishap in 1536 left him unable to exercise. But probably his oddest habit was insisting that the attendants who daily made his bed must kiss his sheets and pillows. Why? It was to foil anyone who might smear poison onto his bedding.

As monarch, it comes as no surprise that Elizabeth I took some trouble to appear at her best before her subjects. During the 45 years of her reign — from 1588 onwards — she went to great pains to preserve her looks. A bout of smallpox when she was just 29 made things all the more difficult. The unpleasant disease spared her life but left her with a pockmarked face.

But some of the measures she took to disguise her scars were ill-advised to say the least. Every day she plastered evil concoctions onto her face and neck. A first layer included white lead ore and sometimes actual arsenic. Another mixture containing mercury was applied as a second layer. That gave Elizabeth the ghostly white complexion seen in many portraits of her. To put it mildly, this beauty regimen can hardly have been good for her. 

Louis XIV was just four years old when he ascended to the French throne in 1643. Presumably, he would have been fully toilet trained by that age — but his bathroom habits as an adult certainly left a lot to be desired. When nature called, the King saw no reason to be shy about his bodily functions, even in the presence of his courtiers. 

Most of us expect a bit of privacy when we visit the bathroom, but not Louis it seems. In fact, the throne he sat on actually had a commode built into it. That meant he could exercise his bowels in full view of those in attendance at his court. In 2013 British newspaper The Daily Mirror reported that a replica of the King’s unusual throne-commode was displayed at the Sublabh International Museum of Toilets in New Delhi, India. 

Something very strange happened to Princess Alexandra Amelie of Bavaria 23 years after her birth in 1826. The Princess became convinced that she’d suffered a terrible misfortune during her childhood. To be precise, she came to believe that she’d swallowed an entire grand piano made of glass. This strange delusion was to blight the poor woman’s life. 

Believing she had a glass piano lodged in her innards meant that Alexandra had to be very careful in her daily life, very careful indeed. Her family couldn’t help but notice her increasingly weird behavior. She would creep around the palace, taking great care when passing through doorways. After all, with that amount of glass inside her the slightest collision could have been catastrophic. 

Princess Mary of Teck became Queen Mary of Great Britain when the Prince of Wales, whom she’d married in 1893, became King George V in 1910. During her reign, Mary managed to earn a rather undesirable reputation among the British aristocracy. Gossip had it that if she paid a visit to your stately home, it was best to count the silver spoons after she’d left. 

In fact, there’s some controversy over the question of whether the Queen actually stole stuff. But it does seem that the idea that she might arose from her own behavior. Apparently if she spotted some valuable and desirable object, she would comment on it. And when she did, she’d expect it to be offered as a gift. So British bluebloods began to hide their valuables ahead of a visit by Mary.

Emperor Justin II became the ruler of the Byzantine lands — the eastern section of the Roman Empire — in the year 565. Sadly Justin began to show signs of mental instability around 574. This might have been connected to the fact that his Empire was besieged by enemies and his attempts to repel them in battle were catastrophically unsuccessful. 

The manifestations of his illness were disturbing and bizarre to say the least. It’s said that he would tear around his palace howling like a wild animal. At other times, he would crawl under his bed and conceal himself behind a wall of pillows. He would even try to hurl himself out of the palace windows. But perhaps his most disturbing behavior was his habit of biting anyone he could catch. 

Christian VII succeeded to the Danish crown in 1766 after the death of his father Frederick V. Christian and is said to have been a lecherous fellow. According to Encyclopedia Britannica “he gave himself up to debauchery.” This may have been the result of an unhappy childhood and the baleful influence of certain courtiers of low morals. 

Whatever caused Christian’s woes, his mental instability was not in doubt. We turn again to the verdict of Encyclopedia Britannica which starkly labels the King as “mentally incompetent.” His eccentricities included leapfrogging over distinguished visitors to his court when they bowed before him. Also, he was also fond of giving the hapless officials a firm slap. 

King Farouk I succeeded to the throne of Egypt in 1936. For a king, Farouk had some decidedly outré habits. It’s said that he would disguise himself in commoner’s clothing and frequent markets to pick the pockets of his own subjects. Reportedly he even took lessons from a professional pickpocket. 

One story, possibly apocryphal, is too good to leave out. Apparently Farouk invited Sir Winston Churchill to dinner during World War II. Churchill was carrying his pocket watch, a highly valued family heirloom dating back to the time of Queen Anne. Sure enough, Farouk managed to snatch the timepiece. When Churchill noticed its absence, there was uproar. Eventually Farouk produced the watch claiming he’d “found it.” 

Emperor Nero ruled the Roman Empire from 54 to 68 A.D. He’s perhaps best remembered for the legend of him playing his lyre while the great city of Rome was engulfed in flames. It’s a tale that’s possibly not true — it’s believed that he was actually at his villa on the coast at the time. Another musical story that’s entertaining but more likely true is the tale of Nero’s aspiration to perform as a professional singer. 

The story goes that Nero sang in public whenever the opportunity presented itself. The problem was that his singing was terrible. At one lengthy performance a woman in the audience actually went into labor in reaction to his tuneless caterwauling. Other members of the audience attempting to escape from the amphitheater were thwarted by guards posted at the exits. 

Peter III became Czar of all the Russias in January 1762. It was short-lived reign since he was overthrown six months after his investiture. His dethroning illustrated just how brutal Russian imperial politics could be in the mid-18th century. For it was his own wife, Catherine, who deposed him so that she became Russia’s ruler. He died shortly afterwards, slain by one of Catherine’s men. 

On a rather less somber note, in life Peter had an endearing if eccentric hobby. The Russia Beyond website quotes the words of one of Peter’s contemporaries, Prussian diplomat Karl-Wilhelm Finck von Finckenstein. He wrote, “For several hours every day [Peter] plays with dolls and puppets.” Catherine was none too impressed by her husband’s pastime, complaining that he hid his dolls under her bed. 

In 2018 the literary magazine Lapham’s Quarterly carried an intriguing article about the Chinese emperor Qin Shihuang who ruled from 221 B.C. Qin firmly believed that he would find a way to achieve immortality and so rule his lands forever. This delusion led him in a lifelong search for foolproof methods of avoiding death. 

One tale that especially appealed to Qin was the legend of the Three Spirit Mountains. It was said that these magical features could be found beneath the waters of the Bohai Sea off China’s north coast. These mythical mountains fascinated him because fairies living there had an elixir that guaranteed eternal life. Sadly the year 210 B.C. came round and Qin Shihuang died, badly let down by those pesky fairies. 

Charles VI had a good run as the French monarch, reigning for 42 years until his death in 1422. Since he was born in 1368, he was just a lad of 11 when he came to the throne. Perhaps being thrust into the royal limelight so young suggests a reason for his bouts of mental illness. But Charles’ belief that he was made of glass is difficult to explain. 

In order to live with this strange disorder, the King wore specially made clothing strengthened with iron ribs. As a precaution he ordered his attendants to keep their distance lest they shatter him. People were also forbidden from touching him. Bizarrely this glass delusion was apparently quite common from the 1400s onwards. But inexplicably this particular form of mental disturbance all but disappeared in the 19th century. 

Sultan Mustafa I had two spells as ruler of the Ottoman Empire, one in 1617 and another in 1622. Each of his periods on the throne lasted only a year. The BBC’s History Extra website points out that when Mustafa became sultan in 1617 it was by default. The simple fact was that no one could agree on an alternative candidate. 

In any case he was deposed in 1618 by a nephew who was in turn assassinated, leaving the door open for Mustafa to have a second bite at the cherry. He’d displayed a certain eccentricity in the past, but this second reign seemed to unbalance him further. He took to tweaking the beards of his courtiers and bashing off their turbans. Eventually the exasperated Ottomans deposed Mustafa for a second time. 

Queen Christina succeeded to the Swedish throne after her father, Gustavus Adolphus, was killed in battle while fighting the Holy Roman Empire in 1632. After her coronation, Christina’s reign was notable for her refusal to accept the norms of behavior expected of a queen. An instance of her eccentricity came at the end of her reign in 1654 when she abruptly abdicated.

During her reign she converted from Protestantism to Catholicism. This was especially strange since her father had dedicated much of his life to fighting the Roman church. Christina had another habit that was highly unusual and even regarded as sacrilegious in 17th century Sweden. She enjoyed dressing as a man. But she took a somewhat different tack after her abdication, arriving in Rome tricked out as an Amazonian warrior.

And even beloved American leaders from back in the day had their quirks. John Hancock had the distinction of being the first of the Founding Fathers to sign the Declaration of Independence. Since that meant there was plenty of space on the document he wrote his name large. In fact his signature took up more space than anyone else’s. That led to his name itself becoming synonymous with a signature. So you could say that John Hancock put his John Hancock to the Declaration.

Massachusetts governor Hancock had another string to his bow: he was a highly successful smuggler. He’d been importing tea for years while avoiding the duty payable. And it wasn’t just tea – he also bootlegged raw sugar, paper and glass. He was charged with smuggling but found not guilty thanks to the efforts of his attorney, fellow Founding Father – and his cousin – John Adams.

Look at drawings and paintings of George Washington – he was decades too early for photography – and you’ll see a man with an intricately styled hairdo. Given that he lived in the 18th century when many men wore powdered wigs, it’s easy to assume that those locks did not belong to him. But it turns out that his carefully manicured mane was very much created from his own hair.

Washington had long hair which he tied back in what was then called a queue. We’d call it a ponytail. He did powder his hair, it’s true, giving it the white tones we see in his portraits. According to the Mount Vernon website, he was actually red-headed when young. And in an interesting footnote, a lock of Washington’s hair sold for nearly $40,000 at auction in April 2021.

Born in Fife, Scotland, in 1742 James Wilson became one of the first Supreme Court justices. So you would think that his reputation must have been entirely unimpeachable. But you’ll have to think again, for this honorable judge actually served time in prison. Even more startling, he did so while he sat on the bench of the Supreme Court.

In fact, Wilson was locked up twice in debtors’ prison. The judge ended up on the wrong side of a national financial crisis in the years 1796 and 1797, when unwise land speculations left him with debts he couldn’t honor. But it seems that spells in jail for debt weren’t enough to unseat a Supreme Court judge. The unfortunate Wilson died a broken man in 1798.

John Hart’s precise date of birth is unknown, although he was baptized in 1713 – so by the time he was forced to go on the run in November 1776 he must have been in his 60s. British forces seized Trenton, New Jersey, where Hart lived and his home was no longer a safe place for a man who’d signed the Declaration of Independence.

The month before the British arrived, Hart’s wife had died. After that loss he faced the destruction of his home and farm by the hostile British. Compelled to flee, Hart had nowhere to go but the open countryside. He was forced to seek refuge in caves and woods, even spending one night in a dog kennel. Eventually, after the rebels had defeated the British at Trenton, he was able to return to his devastated home.

If you’re getting any wild ideas about the relationship between Benjamin Franklin and John Adams, hold your horses. From the outset, we’ll emphasize that the two men enjoyed nothing other than an entirely platonic friendship. All the same, it is true that they did spend a night in the same bed in the fall of 1776 – but not by choice.

Franklin and Adams were traveling through New Jersey and decided to stop for the night at New Brunswick’s Indian Queen Tavern. Only a small room was available, furnished with just one bed. So the two had to make the best of it. It was not a peaceful night by all accounts. The diminutive chamber had only one window and the two argued whether that should be open or shut. As far as we know, Franklin and Adams never slept together again.  

Born in Norfolk, England, in 1737 Thomas Paine’s working life started as an apprentice to his father, who was a corset-maker. But, as we know, his future was not to lie in the world of women’s undergarments. What the young man really wanted was a life at sea. So, aged 16 he signed up to a ship named The Terrible, skippered by a Captain Death. His father put a stop to that; it was probably just as well.

Fate intervened when Paine met Benjamin Franklin in 1774. It’s said that the American persuaded him to travel across the Atlantic. Armed with Franklin’s letter of introduction, Paine duly boarded a ship bound for Philadelphia. Unfortunately, the vessel was bedeviled by sickness – typhoid or scurvy, perhaps both. On arrival in America a stricken Paine had to be stretchered off the ship. The American Revolution had nearly lost a man who would become one of its most feted sons.

There’s a famous story that does the rounds claiming that George Washington had a set of dentures made of wood. An entertaining tale, but one that is entirely without foundation. All the same, it is certainly true that the great man wore dentures: from as early as his 20s, Washington’s teeth gave him merry hell and he began to lose them at a steady rate.

By 1789 – the year he became president – Washington was left with precisely one of his own teeth. Dentures were therefore essential. His artificial choppers were constructed using brass fixings, gold wire and, believe it or not, teeth carved from hippopotamus ivory. But perhaps the most horrifying aspect of those presidential dentures was the fact that they also included actual human teeth.

Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and James Monroe were all founding fathers. Plus they had something else in common – the three went on to become U.S. presidents. Adams was the second president, Jefferson the third and Monroe the fifth. But it’s the third thing that the trio shared which is surely the spookiest.

The three men all died on July 4 which, of course, is Independence Day. Both Jefferson and Adams departed from life on the very same date, July 4, 1826. Monroe hung on for another five years, passing away on Independence Day in 1831. What on earth do these bizarre coincidences mean? Truth be told, your guess is as good as ours.

According to the History.com website James Madison, president from 1809 to 1817, was the smallest man ever to live at the White House. He stood just 5’4” tall in his socks and weighed in at a puny 100 pounds or so. Just in case you’re wondering, our tallest president was Abraham Lincoln, at a commanding height of 6’4”. 

As well as wanting in stature, the unfortunate Madison also lacked robust health. He suffered from frequent feverish attacks and was also a victim of fits reminiscent of epilepsy. His enfeebled constitution meant that his voice was weak, a clear handicap for a politician. Despite his physical disadvantages, apart from Abraham Lincoln, he remains the only sitting president to get his own hands dirty in military action. Armed with a brace of pistols, he faced the British advance on Washington in 1812.

It’s perhaps rather difficult to decide for which single act Aaron Burr is most notorious. There’s the fact that he killed fellow Founding Father Alexander Hamilton in a duel in 1804. But we’ve chosen to go with Burr’s trial for treason. He was arrested, charged and brought before the court in an infamous trial in 1807.

Born in Newark, New York, in 1756 Burr got into very hot water after his term as Thomas Jefferson’s vice president. His crime? Independent of normal channels of authority, he had decided to invade Mexico. By some accounts, he planned to set up an independent state comprising Mexico and a western portion of America. At his trial in Richmond, Virginia, he was found not guilty, but it was the end of his political career.

Perhaps unsurprisingly it was a Scotsman, farm manager James Anderson, who persuaded George Washington to start a commercial whiskey distillery at his Mount Vernon estate. And it was a highly successful operation – within just two years it was one of the largest distilleries in America. In fact, if you visit Mount Vernon today, you can pick up a bottle of whiskey from the still-operational distillery.

It was probably wise that Washington waited until his time as president was up in 1797 before he started his booze business. For during his presidency he’d introduced a tax on spirits which provoked the Whiskey Rebellion in Western Pennsylvania. Washington had to send 12,000 militiamen to the territory to quell the rage of the citizens there.

President of the Continental Congress for a time and America’s first Chief Justice, John Jay had another career, albeit a very secret one: he was a spymaster. While his activities were obviously highly confidential at the time, today the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) is free to reveal the facts about Jay’s clandestine activities during the Revolutionary War.

The DIA website notes that “some historians consider [Jay] to be the first chief of American counterintelligence.” After U.S. independence, Jay led the Committee for Detecting and Defeating Conspiracies which was dedicated to rooting out royalist loyalists. The Committee pursued over 500 cases involving spies working for the British. Jay was himself directly involved in the counterintelligence operations.

A signatory of the Declaration of Independence, Richard Stockton had the misfortune to be captured by the British towards the end of 1776. A member of the Continental Congress, he had been sent on a mission to assess the readiness of the Patriot forces. The British seized him while he was traveling back to Philadelphia.

Stockton was locked up in New York’s notorious Provost Prison. The prisoners were fed barely enough to stay alive and subject to the harsh winter conditions without the benefit of heating. His spell of incarceration broke his health, and to secure his release Stockton signed a document disavowing the Declaration of Independence. It seems he never recovered from his ordeal, and he died in 1781 aged just 50.

It’s not quite as bad as it sounds, John Adams introducing the Devil to the White House. That’s because the Satan in question was actually a dog. The pooch had a partner called Juno. Oh, and we mustn’t forget the horse called Cleopatra. Why the Adams family chose these outré names for their livestock is lost to history.

In any case, as Adams was the first President to live in the White House, the two dogs and the horse were the first animals to reside there. While we’re on the subject of Founding Fathers’ pets it would be criminal to leave out George Washington’s canines. He had quite a pack and here’s a selection of the names: Drunkard; Sweetlips; Tipsy; Tipler and Mopsey.

If a sharp intellect is a qualification for political life, then Sam Adams was well ahead of the pack. The Bostonian was just 14 years old when he started at Harvard College in 1736: a veritable child prodigy. Four years of study saw him graduate from the venerable institution in 1740 with a bachelor’s degree.

Adams’ time at Harvard was not without its hardships. While he was a student his father got into financial difficulties because of his involvement in the murky affairs of the Massachusetts Land Bank. The young Adams now had to work his way through college. He got a job as a waiter at the Harvard dining room which saw him through to graduation.

It was the soldier, explorer and adventurer Captain Zebulon Pike who shipped a very unusual present to Thomas Jefferson during his time as President: two bear cubs, of the grizzly variety. The animals, a boar and a sow, arrived at the White House in 1807. Helpfully, Pike sent a letter with the bears explaining that he’d bought them in what was then New Spain.

Ominously, Pike added that these bears were “considered by the natives of that country as the most ferocious animals of the continent.” Jefferson wrote back to thank Pike for the gift. But Jefferson’s professed gratitude seems to have been less than sincere. Apparently, judging the grizzlies too ferocious to keep, he handed them over to Philadelphia’s Peale Museum. It seems that Charles Peale was none too happy with the bears either, since the animals soon ended up stuffed.

A Declaration of Independence signatory and a member of the Continental Congress, Benjamin Rush was a medical doctor. Unfortunately he was one who held some entirely wrong-headed ideas about the treatment of disease. It was his gruesome belief that the best way to counter almost any illness was through bloodletting and enforced vomiting.

The more severe a disease, Rush believed, the more extreme his treatments should be. He used his theories during yellow fever outbreaks in 1790s Philadelphia with little success. On the bright side, he has been recognized as an early pioneer of modern psychiatry. He rejected the idea that mentally ill patients were gripped by the Devil and advocated treating them humanely.

Whether you regard Benjamin Franklin’s introduction of tofu to the U.S. as a blessing or a curse will depend on your attitude to the bland, white foodstuff. The esteemed Founding Father didn’t actually import the stuff into the U.S. But a letter he wrote home from London in 1770 includes the first known American reference to tofu.

The letter was to his friend John Bartram and in it Washington wrote, “I send…some Chinese Garavances, with Father Navaretta’s account of the universal use of a cheese made of them, in China.” According to a 2018 Smithsonian Magazine article Franklin meant soybeans when he wrote garavances, and this Navaretta described the “cheese” as “teu-fu.” So there you have it. Among Franklin’s many contributions to American life we should include the launch of tofu. Probably.

On October 5, 1789, George Washington walked out of the New York Society Library on E. 79th St. with two books under his arm. What happened next does not exactly show the first U.S. president in the best of lights: he missed the due date to return the books, November 2. Washington wasn’t just a little bit late in returning the volumes. In fact he still hasn’t.

For obvious reasons, it’s highly unlikely that Washington will ever hand the books in. We can only hope that he thoroughly enjoyed the tomes, although they were probably rather dry reading. One was a book about international relations, the other an account of debates in the British House of Commons. Current head librarian Mark Bartlett told New York newspaper the Daily News, “We’re not actively pursuing the overdue fines.” So how much does Washington owe? Adjusted for inflation, it was a staggering $300,000 in 2010.

During 1825 the distinguished veteran of the French Revolution, the Marquis de Lafayette, paid a call to the White House, while John Quincy Adams was President. He wasn’t a true Founding Father, but his father John Adams was, so we’ll stretch a point. It’s entirely normal that visiting dignitaries should arrive at the presidential mansion bearing gifts. But the item which the Marquis presented to Adams must have caused a certain amount of consternation, even alarm. 

For the Marquis’ strange idea of a fraternal gift was a live alligator. In fact, the creature had been given to Lafayette during his American tour. It’s hard to escape the idea that when he got to the White House, he was simply trying to get rid of it. In any case, Washington accepted it gracefully and installed it in a White House bathtub. According to the Presidential Pet Museum website, the president kept the beast for several months before it was moved elsewhere.