January 3, 2006
JUST HOW DID THEY WIN ANY WARS?
Epitome of eccentricity delights in dotty difference (Ben McIntyre, The Australian, January 04, 2006)
Tristram Shandy is only one cult eccentric among a host of glorious British literary oddballs. Shakespeare and Chaucer abound with human oddities; Dickens revelled in the strangeness of Pickwick and Miss Havisham. Graham Greene caught the species precisely in the strange British characters who endure the horrors of Papa Doc's Haiti in The Comedians. Think of Mr Toad, or Fiver in Watership Down or Nancy Mitford's Uncle Matthew. Evelyn Waugh and P.G. Wodehouse elevated upper-class weirdness to high farce, for eccentricity is, on the whole, a luxury of the well-to-do.By contrast there are few genuine eccentrics in American literature, and none that I can think of in European fiction. There are exhibitionists aplenty, but to be truly eccentric one must be unconscious of being different. Uncle Toby in Tristram Shandy is a genuine eccentric because though he spends his days re-enacting the 1695 Battle of Namur on the bowling green with scale models, he has no notion that this behaviour is in any way exceptional. Captain Ahab, on the other hand, is mad and dangerous (and knows it), which is something else entirely.
Americans find eccentricity slightly threatening: witness the ridicule poured on poor, peculiar Ross Perot. The French find unorthodox habits and hobbies vulgar: have you ever spotted a French train-spotter?
Why should Britain be the home to this rich history of eccentricity, literary and actual? Perhaps it is the weather, which encourages the British to stay indoors (or, more often, inside the sheds they love so much) collecting thimbles and growing elaborate facial hair. Perhaps it is the formality of British manners and the rigidity of the class system that makes the oddities stand out. Often a veneer of genteel eccentricity is a mask, a way to avoid confrontation with reality, like Mr Bennet in Pride and Prejudice.
The English abhor exhibitionists. Anyone who plants, say, a huge fibreglass shark in his roof is not an eccentric but a wannabe extrovert, whereas the 18th-century 5th Earl of Portland, a man so shy he dug a series of private subterranean tunnels underneath his stately home, was the real thing.
John Stuart Mill reckoned that "the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigour and moral courage which it contained". But then, Mill never met my great-aunt Lilly, whose habit of riding her horse upstairs had nothing to do with mental vigour and everything to do with convenience. She also did not think her behaviour remotely odd.
Surely after the rule of law, the presumption of innocence and the great British breakfast, eccentricity is their greatest contribution to civilization. So rich and formative is the tradition that it by itself is sufficient to cast serious doubt on darwinism. You are invited to contribute your most memorable example of real or fictional English eccentricity, remembering that a lack of awareness is a sine qua non. To start it off, my favourite is the Nancy Mitford country squire character who, when asked why he did not read books, replied: “I have only read one book in my life-–White Fang. It was so frightfully good I never wanted to read another.”
Posted by Peter Burnet at January 3, 2006 12:20 PMDoes the Monty Pyton Ministry of Silly Walks sketch count?
Posted by: Brandon at January 3, 2006 12:47 PMI think my favorite was already mentioned: Fiver from Watership Down.
Another is Tom Bombadil from Tolkien lore. Hopefully he qualifies.
Posted by: Jay at January 3, 2006 2:04 PMNigel Tufnel.
Posted by: ghostcat at January 3, 2006 2:33 PMwell, i have seen genuine train spotters. then there are the lawn mower racers. my brother in law used to disassemble motorcycles in the living room (so you didn't want to ask him to house sit).
Posted by: toe at January 3, 2006 2:39 PMHeavens, can Peter or OJ take a walk without seeing something that calls Darwinism into question? I leave it as an exercise to the reader to explain how eccentricity can be just as much an argument for Darwinism as against.
For pure eccentricity in full bloom, though, it's hard to beat Timothy Dexter. For a fine collection of such folks, track down Zanies by Jay Robert Nash.
Posted by: PapayaSF at January 3, 2006 3:48 PMWasn't there an Englishman who started a church so he could divorce his wife?
Posted by: Guy T. at January 3, 2006 3:56 PMNigel Fawlty and "the Colonel."
Posted by: Genecis at January 3, 2006 5:18 PMDon't you mean Basil Fawlty and Major Gowen? (Friend of mine who manages a well-known accomodation in a National Park says that he sometimes likes to use episodes in staff meetings for a game of "Spot the things they're doing wrong.")
Posted by: Raoul Ortega at January 3, 2006 6:26 PMFor some reason Eddie the Eagle immediately came to mind.
Posted by: MB at January 3, 2006 6:40 PMWallace , of course.
Posted by: joe shropshire at January 3, 2006 8:21 PMLieutenant Colonel Alfred Wintle (Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Wintle ). (British, of course.)
Early in WWII, Lt. Col. Wintle was meeting with the Commodore for Air Intelligence. In the course of their meeting, Wintle produced a revolver and proposed that they hunt down and shoot a number of government ministers. He was arrested, charged with treason, and held in the Tower of London.
At trial, Wintle declared that his was not an act of treason, but of patriotism. He named the government ministers he had proposed to kill. At this point, the prosecutor told the judge that he could not disagree with a single name on Wintle's list. Neither could the judge, who reduced the charge to mishandling a firearm and released Wintle.
In Britain, eccentricity is contagious.
Posted by: Bob Hawkins at January 3, 2006 8:37 PM
Tigger.
Posted by: ghostcat at January 3, 2006 9:28 PMOJ -- Where did your family come over from, again?
Posted by: David Cohen at January 3, 2006 11:53 PMWell done, David.
Posted by: ghostcat at January 4, 2006 12:21 AMPeter:
I knew a real life version of your country squire. Chap I used to work with - one day in his lunch break I found him reading a battered copy of Robinson Crusoe. So we got to talking about books and I asked what was his favourite. "Robinson Crusoe", of course. He just read it over and over again. (He was the same with music and films, it turned out).
I also know a very peculiar Catholic priest who has a completely accurate model version of Plymouth habour in his attic. When ships come in and out of dock he recreates it in real time. And he spends all of his holidays in the same railway hotel at Crewe, so he can spot the trains.
Posted by: Brit at January 4, 2006 4:13 AMWe are Swiss, Swiss....
Posted by: oj at January 4, 2006 8:31 AMOrrin is the archetypal English eccentric, who happens to have been born in the wrong timezone.
Other real-life eccentricities (as opposed to out-and-out madness) that have stayed with me: a childhood friend's father used to have many an odd habit. After every Sunday lunch - always roast pork - he would sit back in his chair, throw back his head and, taking a long piece of pork scratching, slide it up and down inside his windpipe. This operation he referred to as "greasing his throat", and presumably he felt it carried some medical benefit.
I also know a man who has the strange Christmas tradition for his three kids: he alots a precise and equal amount of money for presents to each, and if he doesn't spend it all, he writes a cheque for the balance. So if the amount is 50, the three children might get presents totalling 35, 42 and 49.60, plus cheques for 15, 8 and 40p respectively. Quite bizarre.
True to the formula, none of these people see anything remotely odd in their behaviour.
Posted by: Brit at January 4, 2006 8:42 AM