The Free Spirit

The inventor did not enjoy socialising but his wife would invite people to formal dinner parties.

Fortunately the house was large enough for him to keep an upstairs room for himself  and his daughter recalls that, when these dinner parties occurred, “He would feign indigestion and skip dinner, being the only man to get indigestion before dinner!”

He then took a route upstairs through the servants’ quarters to his eyrie for an evening of inventing and contemplation.

Moral: Invention requires a free spirit