Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigour, and moral courage which it contained. –quoded from John Stuart Mill
It has oft been asserted that Wits, Gifted Intellectuals, and Artists tend to be “eccentric,” a visible expression of a strong, active intellect sui generis or a creative impulse. I cannot pretend to any mental powers that I do not possess, such powers are discernible to the receptive parties and less so to the “doubter of his genius,” critical of all things, especially himself. I cannot be said to be more or less creative than any gentleman nurtured in youth on tales of mischievous faeries and chivalrous knights, civilised beasts and daring adventurers. I cannot be said to be more or less creative than any man exposed to the poetry of nature and the melodies of the unknown god, an entity detected in childhood though neither attainable nor understandable.
I am, however, an eccentric. My nature is that of an analytic and observer. Through reflection I have identified the quality of my character and while generally displeasing, I can (unlike some truly aloof eccentrics) detect my deviations from the accepted norms of society, however inherent in my nature.
I do not conform. I have often wondered if my defense of Christendom and the West is not merely a symptom of the miasma of “post-modernism” within which we are drowned. Would I have been as firm an advocate of Tradition in Carolingian Gaul or Regency England? Would I have been a non-conformist for the sake of non-conformity? Would novelty have inspired me as tradition presently does? Is it symptomatic of my intense curiosity, my gift of intellect, my creative urges, the paradox of my idealism in contrast with my cynicism, the felicity of my obsessions, that I should hold any philosophy that is unpopular and counter-revolutionary?
I have known since the boundary of memory that I was not as other children. I read with such appetite that I had exhausted the library of my grammar school of all classic children’s literature. I early formed strong opinions, derived from books and from what was a gift of acute discernment, that lead me to distrust the authority imposed upon me, in all of its vain hypocrisy and inconstancy. Though my opinions changed, my nature did not. I slowly evolved into a pedant and clubroom bore, a dull expositor whose chief concern was a undefinable “truth” that called to me from out a fathomless abyss.
A mischievous wit, smart and dry, laden with sarcasm and irony soon displaced the physical comedy and gross humour that delight the young. I secluded myself to the book-stacks and to quiet corners where reality could not reach me. I lived out my days in the pages of Dickens and struggled against Quilp with Nell and her nameless grandfather, was plunged into madness with Mr Dorrit, and shivered ‘neath the shrewd gaze of Ebenezer; I walked the meadows with Ratty and Mole, ‘poop-pooped’ with mr Toad, and sipped tea with the ever hospitable mr Badger; into the heavens I flew with the Little Prince and spent ages on a deserted beach with Friday; I died with Tom and Huck and then attended my own funeral; I tiddly-pommed with Winnie and braved the high seas with Long John Silver and Captain Ahab.
I read more than any little boy of ten could be expected to and I subsisted on the escapes to Treasure Island and the Nautilus, to Middle-Earth and the gin-soaked streets of London, to the caverns of the Morlock and Hemingway’s rugged Savannah.
As a sophomore, I began to identify others of the same ilk and soon blossomed into a social butterfly, whose desire to share the wonder of literature and whose newly burgeoning love of thought turned him into a dreadful coffee-room orator. I should not have been suffered for long but for a certain charisma with which God imbued my character. I soon developed a clique of astute friends that sought me out and listened with diligence and thoughtfully discussed those premises that would otherwise have been drowned in indifference and apathy of the “popular”.
My natural eccentricity is now appreciated, if poorly understood. Many would think it affected, but for my protestations to the contrary. Affectation typically follows some form, be it a fashion set or a movement. I am far more eclectic in my dress, mannerisms, and habits. It is respected that should I alter one tittle or jot of my character and persona, I would cease to be that person who both infuriates and delights, moves and arrests, clarifies and confuses.
I should like, as an example, to mention that I wear – almost exclusively – brown-leather, hard-soled, tasseled loafers. Now mark me, I am of the absent-minded type that frequently neglects to attend to wear and disrepair and so, upon seeing the ramshackle state of my well-worn loafers, Jennifer insisted upon purchasing for me a new pair as a belated Christmas gift.
It is rather embarrassing to admit that Jennifer is gainfully employed while I dither about in idleness, a crippled wretch with a debilitating itch to write. Nevertheless, I have never devised to hide my short-comings and Jennifer proceeded to obtain an excellent pair of Bostonian loafers with leather uppers, hard leather/rubber soles with steel shanks, and padded footbeds. Sturdy shoes that breath better than rubber-soled alternatives and support the feet without being invasive and uncomfortable.
Like the tweed to which I am also inclined, they are practical and hard-wearing; aging well and often improving aesthetically with wear. I find them heavy enough for all seasons, comfortable enough for walking, and casual enough for stomping about the house in. A creative intellectual – if that is what I am to be called – doesn’t have the time of day for fripperies and niceties, yet is saddled with enough pride to desire presentability. This is achieved in often eccentric ways, such as the universal wear of loafers and the omnipresence of a favourite jacket – albeit shabby and threadbare. Dark-rimmed glasses that boast of one’s devotion to the page with all the physical sacrifice that that entails – the hunched shoulders, the squinting eyes, the inflamed knuckles and sunken-cheeks.
Whether you’re like me and you eat peanut butter and jam sandwiches as if they’re going out of style – but only after nine o’clock; if you refuse to drive and walk to every destination no matter the distance; if you have extravagant tastes – like most aspiring contributors to culture – and yet live in virtual poverty, dependent on the beneficence of appreciative parties willing to provide a few luxuries as payment for exposure to your so-called genius; if your idea of a Friday night is sitting down with like-minded fellows over a cigarette, cigar, or bowl of tobacco for an evening of shared verses of epic length and esoteric subject;
If you insist that while condescending to use a computer for distributing work is a necessary evil, a manual typewriter is needed for prose and a fountain pen married to a Moleskine notebook is demanded for verse; if you find the world a dismal, uninviting ball of mud within which you are forced to operate, yet, nevertheless, delight in the fragrance of flowers and the rustling of the leaves; if you are madly attached to Reason, but still pray fervently to a God whom you doubt and question;
If you transcend the expected; if you are defined by your indefinable qualities; if you are more full of paradoxes than certainties; if you are at once vain and yet supremely meek; if you see the world through jaundiced eyes and feel it through a palsied heart, yet hope in its virtues and grin at its follies; then you are, perhaps, a member of that society of men that are, among the rich, styled eccentrics and, among the poor, are given the name of madman.
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