Appreciating eccentrics at a school full of them
Matthew Taylor
Issue date: 2/26/09 Section: Opinion
"Under an oak, in stormy weather,
I joined this rogue and whore together;
And none but Him who rules the thunder
May put this rogue and whore asunder."
There was William Blake, who would sit in his back garden with his wife, naked, reading Homer aloud. And let us not forget the provincial eccentrics, a little funny in the head, no ambition and seriously rich. They gave us the folly: a plumed skeleton on the field of English architecture, nostalgia for a ruined past, a building dedicated to the principle that a thing cannot properly be enjoyed for its own sake unless it is has no conceivable utility.
Eccentrics qua eccentrics generally hold to vast, incorrigible principles, but which have little to do with religion or ethics. Indeed, most of them seem uncommonly harmless, unless one happens to be a nice flourishing corner of an English country garden. But they have a definite sense of their own tastes, and it is usually impossible to disagree with them, for contradicting all appeals to propriety, expense, or tradition, they refer to themselves as the only authority on matters of private judgment.
Mill was right. Among the odd they are the yeomen, among the absurd they are the defenders of liberty, among the foolish they are the proud, among the aristocracy they are the majority. For by their whims they hate egality, and only the thump of a baton will subdue them.
Still, there's no sense in Mill's advising anyone to dare to be eccentric. He may as well invite a New Yorker to dare to be a Texan. Eccentricity seems to be in the blood, though it is possible that, as babies, their brothers hung them upside down for too long. It's no good trying to learn from their lifestyles, either. They choose to be what they already are.
It's a kind of destiny, sometimes great, sometimes small, like that of the PhD reject I met one summer evening in Cambridge, blocking the sidewalk, looking at the moon with his homemade refracting telescope. He believed that World War II was won only after ancient Egyptians traveled forward in time to give to the Americans the nuclear technology that they had received from aliens.
These men and women will have the last laugh. While we are never quite sure of ourselves, they are quite sure of who they are. So we remain the more absurd.
I joined this rogue and whore together;
And none but Him who rules the thunder
May put this rogue and whore asunder."
There was William Blake, who would sit in his back garden with his wife, naked, reading Homer aloud. And let us not forget the provincial eccentrics, a little funny in the head, no ambition and seriously rich. They gave us the folly: a plumed skeleton on the field of English architecture, nostalgia for a ruined past, a building dedicated to the principle that a thing cannot properly be enjoyed for its own sake unless it is has no conceivable utility.
Eccentrics qua eccentrics generally hold to vast, incorrigible principles, but which have little to do with religion or ethics. Indeed, most of them seem uncommonly harmless, unless one happens to be a nice flourishing corner of an English country garden. But they have a definite sense of their own tastes, and it is usually impossible to disagree with them, for contradicting all appeals to propriety, expense, or tradition, they refer to themselves as the only authority on matters of private judgment.
Mill was right. Among the odd they are the yeomen, among the absurd they are the defenders of liberty, among the foolish they are the proud, among the aristocracy they are the majority. For by their whims they hate egality, and only the thump of a baton will subdue them.
Still, there's no sense in Mill's advising anyone to dare to be eccentric. He may as well invite a New Yorker to dare to be a Texan. Eccentricity seems to be in the blood, though it is possible that, as babies, their brothers hung them upside down for too long. It's no good trying to learn from their lifestyles, either. They choose to be what they already are.
It's a kind of destiny, sometimes great, sometimes small, like that of the PhD reject I met one summer evening in Cambridge, blocking the sidewalk, looking at the moon with his homemade refracting telescope. He believed that World War II was won only after ancient Egyptians traveled forward in time to give to the Americans the nuclear technology that they had received from aliens.
These men and women will have the last laugh. While we are never quite sure of ourselves, they are quite sure of who they are. So we remain the more absurd.
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