The importance of being eccentric
Oscar Wilde - one of Oxford's last great eccentrics?
About 50 years ago, when Pembroke undergraduates complained of the lack of washbasins and baths, the Master apparently said, “What do they want baths for? They’re only here for eight weeks.” Of course things have moved on since then. Today the only reason Pembroke students don’t wash is because they can’t afford the water bill. Things have also changed in terms of Oxford’s eccentrics.
Rarely do we now hear stories such as the Dean of Keble who bit the Bishop of Oxford’s leg during a heated academic dispute, or the elderly Merton don who was so depressed he gave up wearing clothes. In their place we have a handful of pretentious English students and other self-styled genii and a music genre labelled ‘alternative’.
We may wonder, is true eccentricity dead? Among our vast achievements in the spheres of science and the arts, Oxford was also the birthplace of a peculiar slip of the tongue known as a Spoonerism.
This is named after the Reverend Spooner, Dean of New College from 1903 to 1924, who delighted lazy, renegade students by accusing them of “having tasted a whole worm” (wasted a whole term), “hissed his mystery lecture” (missed his history lecture), and devastatingly told one mendacious pupil off for a “lack of pies” (you must have got it by now, so I won’t translate).
He famously suggested that the “hags be fl ung out”, and, whilst speaking to one woman at a reception he charmingly told her “you’ll be had as a matter of course”, meaning mad as hatter of course. A tragic mishap which probably left him red-faced for days. We may wonder whether this could be a minor case of the blot calling the kettle pack? This is not the only bizarre contribution to language originating in Oxford‘s dreaming spires. J. R. R.
Tolkein, as we all know, spent many valuable years of his life inventing numerous languages for seemingly innumerable books including ‘quenya’ and ‘sindarin’. There are countless anecdotes concerning eccentric Oxford tutors, many of which are probably at least half urban myth, such as the story of Dr Buckland of Christ Church who fi lled his house with exotic animals and usually ate them he often served his guests crocodile. Or W. E.
Pantin, who once told a student to go to the third stack on the fi fth row of his bookcase, and pick out the seventh book down for the text he was looking for: sure enough, the pupil found the relevant passage marked with a bacon sandwich. Oxford was also home to the birth of the Aesthetic and Decadent movements, led by eccentric characters such as Oscar Wilde and Harold Acton.
This involved a rejection of all ‘manly activities’ and whilst Oscar Wilde reportedly walked around town with a lobster on a leash and decorated his room with peacock feathers, sunfl owers and blue china, Harold Acton painted all of his Christ Church rooms bright yellow and invented ‘Oxford Bags’, the 1920s’ baggy trousers.
Eccentricity is generally a sign of strength of character, and Wilde was dunked in the Cherwell by his peers, as well as having his room trashed for his unusual tastes. Mill wrote in On Liberty that ‘The amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigour and moral courage it contained.
?? He went on to say that ‘that so few people now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of our time’, which, given that this was written in 1859, seems to spell disaster for society today.
Perhaps Mill goes some way towards explaining why Oxford has housed so many eccentric characters, but are we to see the current dearth of eccentrics as a sign that we are deteriorating into weak-minded, moral cowards? It is surely notable that the majority of people now labelled as ‘eccentrics’ belonged to the wealthy upper classes. Eccentricity was a deviation from the strict social rules that governed society and kept its rigid hierarchy in place.
Those who relied on the opinion of others more heavily, such as the lower classes or women, simply could not afford to try to subvert social norms. In intellectual circles it was even easier to break the mould because they tended to be more accepting. Although Oxford may have fewer eccentric individuals today, perhaps we should see this as a positive sign that society in Oxford has on the whole become less uniform, with fewer stringent rules governing social interaction.
It is also easier in today’s society for people’s eccentric tastes to become mainstream, just as Acton’s ‘Oxford bags’ eventually started to be sold on the high street, so gothic, grunge and punk movements were easily watered down to become more mainstream. Although it’s harder to be entirely individual, it is now easier for people to fi nd a way of life with which they feel comfortable.
The other explanation of course is that eccentricity is not often recognised at fi rst and is usually considered by others as trying, annoying or attention- seeking behaviour. Perhaps Oxford is still full of eccentrics, deserted by their peers, secretly fashioning strange clothing, speaking in peculiar made up languages or even Spoonerisms. I thread to dink.
2nd Feb 2006