Will Someone Please Hiccup my Pat
by William Spooner Donald
Horizon, Autumn 1969
One afternoon nearly a hundred years ago the October wind gusted merrily down Oxford’s High Street. Hatless and helpless. a white-haired clergyman with pink cherubic features uttered his plaintive cry for aid. As an athletic youngster chased the spinning topper, other bystanders smiled delightedly – they had just heard at first hand the latest “Spoonerism.”
My revered relative William Archibald Spooner was born in 1844, the son of a Staffordshire county court judge. As a young man, he was handicapped by a poor physique, a stammer, and weak eyesight; at first, his only possible claim to future fame lay in the fact that he was an albino, with very pale blue eyes and white hair tinged slightly yellow.
But nature compensated the weakling by blessing him with a brilliant intellect. By 1868 he had been appointed a lecturer at New College, Oxford. Just then he would have been a caricaturist’s dream with his freakish looks, nervous manner, and peculiar mental kink that caused him – in his own words – to “make occasional felicities in verbal diction.”
Victorian Oxford was a little world of its own where life drifted gently by; a world where splendid intellectuals lived in their ivory towers of Latin, Euclid. and Philosophy; a world where it was always a sunny summer afternoon in a countryside, where Spooner admitted he loved to “pedal gently round on a well-boiled icicle.”
As the years passed. Spooner grew, probably without himself being aware of the fact, into a “character.” A hard worker himself, he detested idleness and is on record as having rent some lazybones with the gem, “You have hissed all my mystery lessons and completely tasted two whole worms.”
With his kindly outlook on life, it was almost natural for him to take holy orders: he was ordained a deacon in 1872 and a priest in 1875. His unique idiosyncrasy never caused any serious trouble and merely made him more popular. On one occasion, in New College chapel in 1879, he announced smilingly that the next hymn would be “Number One seven five – Kinkering Kongs their Titles Take.” Other congregations were treated to such jewels as “…Our Lord, we know, is a shoving Leopard…” and “…All of us have in our hearts a half-warmed fish to lead a better life…”
Spooner often preached in the little village churches around Oxford and once delivered an eloquent address on the subject of Aristotle. No doubt the sermon contained some surprising information for his rustic congregation. For after Spooner had left the pulpit. an idea seemed to occur to him, and he hopped back up the steps again. “Excuse me, dear brethren,” he announced brightly, “I just want to say that in my sermon whenever I mentioned Aristotle, I should have said Saint Paul.”
By 1885 the word “Spoonerism” was in colloquial use in Oxford circles, and a few years later, in general use all over England. If the dividing line between truth and myth is often only a hairsbreadth, does it really matter? One story that has been told concerns an optician’s shop in London. Spooner is reputed to have entered and asked to see a “signifying glass.” The optician registered polite bewilderment.
“Just an ordinary signifying glass,” repeated Spooner, perhaps surprised at the man’s obtuseness.
“I’m afraid we haven’t one in stock. but I’ll make inquiries right away, sir,” said the shopkeeper, playing for time. “Oh, don’t bother, it doesn’t magnify, it doesn’t magnify,” said Spooner airily. and walked out.
Fortunately for Spooner, he made the right choice when he met his wif-to-be. He was thirty-four years old when he married Frances Goodwin in 1878. The marriage sas a happy one, and they had one son and four daughters. Mrs. Spooner was a tall, good-looking girl, and on one occasion the family went on a short holiday in Switzerland. The “genial Dean,” as he was then called, look a keen interest in geology, and in no time at all he had mastercd much information and many technical definitions on the subject of glaciers.
One day at lunchtime the younger folk were worried because their parents had not returned from a long walk. When Spooner finally appeared with his wife, his explana-tion was: “We strolled up a long valley, and when we turned a corner we found ourselves completely surrounded by erotic blacks.” He was, of course, referring to “erratic blocks,” or large boulders left around after the passage of a glacier.
In 1903 Spooner was appointed Warden of New College. the highest possible post for a Fellow. One day walking across the quadrangle, he met a certain Mr. Casson, who had just been elected a Fellow of New College.“Do come to dinner tonight,” said Spooner, “we are welcoming our new Fellow, Mr. Casson.” “But, my dear Warden, I am Casson,” was the surprised reply.“Never mind. never mind. come along all the same,” said Spooner tactfully.
On another occasion in later years when his eyesight was really very bad, Spooner found himself seated next to a most elegant lady at dinner. In a casual moment the latter put her lily- white hand onto the polished table, and Spooner, in an even more casual manner, pronged her hand with his fork, remarkmg genially, “My bread, I think.”
In 1924 Spooner retired as Warden. He had established an astonishing record of continuous residence at New College for sixty-two years – first as undergraduate, then as Fellow, then Dean, and finally as Warden. His death in 1930, at the age of eighty-six, was a blushing to collectors of those odd linguistic transpositions known by then throughout the English-speaking world as Spoonerisms.
William Spooner Donald, a retired officer of the Royal Navy, lives in Cumberland, England