ABSTRACT
When he thought he was out of the public gaze, Spencer’s care for himself was so solicitous that it now seems absurd and unpleasant. Since the publication of Edith Sitwell’s Th e English Eccentrics in , Spencer’s excessive concern for his health has provided a never-ending source of anecdote about Victorian oddity. A typical example of Sitwell humour was this:
e taking of Mr Spencer’s pulse was one of the great ceremonies of the day, and often, when out driving in his victoria, a cry of “Stop” would be heard by the coachman, and then, no matter where the equipage might fi nd itself, in the middle of busiest traffi c, in Piccadilly, or in Regent Street, the carriage would stop dead, disrupting the traffi c in question; and silence would reign for some seconds, whilst Mr Spencer consulted the dictates of his pulse. If the oracle proved favourable, the drive was continued; if not, Mr Spencer was driven home.
Spencer combined hypochondria with radical political opinions, irreligion and the frequently repeated desire to remedy the workaholic mass psychosis that affl icted his contemporaries. e presence of so many novelties in one person meant that Spencer became a target for later generations of satirists who found the Victorian period ridiculous. He came to typify quaint self-indulgence of a mildly objectionable kind. He was the quintessential molly-coddler. ere is an irony here; Spencer is seen as representative of a society that he did not like and for which he was ill adjusted. ere is also an error of judgement, because Spencer was not a true eccentric if by that one means a person whose remarkable actions were unselfconscious. Much of his unusual behaviour was a deliberate, a measured, attempt to challenge the behaviour of his contemporaries.
