Astronomer, omnivorous collector, philatelist
The first love of Ludovic, the 26th Earl, was astronomy. He built his own observatory at home; later, he gave it to the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh together with its ultra-modern equipment and unique library of astronomical books. In 1874, when he was supposed to be campaigning to become an MP, he took an expedition to Mauritius to view the Transit of Venus. Despite his opponent criticizing his absence from the hustings, he was elected. In his old age, he acquired a huge yacht, Valhalla, which he used for scientific expeditions. Many rare animals and plants were found and brought back to Britain for various institutions.
Inheriting a love of books and vast library from his father, he extended the family collection to new areas, such as illuminated manuscripts, 15,000 documents relating to the Bonaparte family, 1,350 volumes by, for or against Martin Luther. He was an opportunistic buyer; once, as he was sitting at a café in Athens, an Italian pedlar tried to sell him a sponge, tenaciously promoting his sponges for their good value. Becoming exasperated, Ludovic dismissed him ‘I don’t want sponges, I want manuscripts’. The pedlar soon returned with four, one of which was a Greek Gospel of the 10th-11th century, which he bought on the spot.
In his fifties, Ludovic began to collect stamps. He soon had a large collection from all over the world. His American collection ‘far surpassed any other collection of a single country’, in the view of a leading expert. The activity became unsustainable and the collection had to be broken up and sold, during his lifetime and after his death. His philatelic legacy lives on at the British Library through the Crawford Library of Philatelic Literature, the most comprehensive of its type, covering the early history of philately.