A Victorian Orientalist mastered Romany, mesmerism, and multiple languages without formal schooling

Evidence

Palmer, whose life was the stuff of doomed romance, was born in 1840. He had an undistinguished school career, though it was as a schoolboy that he learnt Romany by frequenting gypsy campsites. He went on to work as a junior clerk with a wine merchant in the City (and it was during this fairly idle period that he mastered mesmerism and mind-reading as well as attending spiritualist seances). He was apt to study eighteen hours a day, a habit that may have exacerbated his always frail health. — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 319

Categorization

• CANDY: A self-taught gypsy-campsite linguist practicing mind-reading in a wine merchant’s office is a perfect anecdotal color detail.