fun , but as part of their education ; they were taken to the bathing place by school , and there taught to swim by Charles Cox , the keeper .
In 1972 , BBC Radio Oxford aired a short feature on Parson ’ s Pleasure , including an interview with a ( rather waspish ) Christchurch professor , Michael Watts . Watts , like Richards , describes the bathing place fondly , recalling his first visit : ‘ I was introduced to “ The Pleasure ” by my tutor ,’ he explains ( without a note of irony ): ‘[ We ] wiled away the [...] afternoon talking and listening to other dons who were there - I remember [...] finding the mixture of wit and learning rather awe-inspiring .’ Socratic dialogue , indeed . In keeping with Richards ’ s account , Watts also describes the bathing place as somewhere ‘ you can bathe without swimming costumes as was the practice for a long time in this country ’. By the early 1970s , then , Parson ’ s Pleasure had begun to fulfil its own literary image as a place somehow outside of time : where formerly the sociable nudity there encouraged had been normal , it had become by this point a kind of lived anachronism in need of defence .
But maybe it ’ s worth dwelling a moment longer on the kinds of relationships the place facilitated , before nude swimming began to fall out of fashion . In 1922 , C . S . Lewis makes note in his diary of walking to Parson ’ s Pleasure for a swim : ‘ As I went in , I met Wyllie coming out ,’ he writes , ‘ we regretted having missed each other and arranged to bathe together in future .’ He continues , ‘ a beautiful bathe ( water 63 degrees ) but very crowded . Amid so much nudity I was interested to note the passing of my generation .’ Such comments reinforce the image of Parson ’ s Pleasure as a normal part of Oxford social life . The remark about ‘ the passing of my generation ’ similarly marks a phenomenon familiar to any graduate who has hung around in a university town after her contemporaries have moved on . Yet Lewis gives that common déjà vu a poignant twist : ‘ two years ago ,’ he continues , ‘ every second man had a wound mark , but I did not see one today .’ Lewis , like Richards , is critical in his writing of what he perceived as homoerotic exhibitionism , later recording his distaste for a group of ‘ Sandhurst cadets ’ encountered on the bank , ‘ looking out the corners of their eyes to see whether you ’ re admiring them .’ And yet he himself clearly entered into a physical intimacy - if not actual interaction - with nude male bodies , that would have been impossible elsewhere . Where else could he observe in such corporeal detail the disappearance from Oxford - as if by magic - of a generation traumatised by the First World War ? Even if Lewis and Richards are wary of evoking the homoerotic in their writing , their own nude bathing and sunbathing form part of a communal homosocial practice ; a practice , that is , in context of which the usual distinctions between social and sexual intimacy don ’ t quite seem to apply .
4 On the 30th of January , 1992 , the University Gazette published the following statement :
With the approval of the Hebdomadal Council , the Curators of the University Parks give notice that the Bathing Place known as Parsons ’ Pleasure will no longer be open for bathing , with immediate effect . [...]
By way of explanation , the statement cites the inability of the Parks to provide attendants , along with reference to a similar decision lately taken by the City Council to close the last of the municipal bathing places . ‘ In addition ,’ the statement says , ‘ the University has received legal advice to the effect that it would have a case to answer were there to be an accident in the absence of an attendant .’
The closure was covered by both local and national newspapers , which add to this account a set of claims focussed more directly on the place ’ s identity as a male-only enclave . ‘ For more than a century ,’ notes Reg Little of the Oxford Times ,
dons and students have been baring all on the riverside , forcing modest women punters to avert their eyes .
There have been a number of complaints in recent years from women students , who feared that Parson ’ s Pleasure was being increasingly used by exhibitionists rather than innocent bathers .
Given that nudity and Parson ’ s Pleasure had long been synonymous , the distinction here between ‘ exhibitionists ’ and ‘ innocent bathers ’ seems to obfuscate the point somewhat . Weren ’ t all bathers - ‘ innocent ’ or otherwise - ‘ exhibiting ’ to some extent by virtue of the place ’ s traditions ? And how had it come about that the latter should prompt a reversion to phrases as bizarrely Victorian as ‘ forcing women punters to avert their eyes ’? Little ’ s quote from Sarah Perman , then the Women ’ s Officer for the Oxford University Student Union , hardly illuminates the situation : ‘ It was felt some people were using it to display themselves ,’ says Perman , ‘ Nobody objected to nude swimming , it was the idea of people using [ Parson ’ s Pleasure ] for different purposes .’ Between the proclamations of the Hebdomadal Council and the euphemisms of local papers , establishing a clear-cut explanation for the place ’ s demise is no mean feat .
The logical solution to such a puzzle would be to turn to former bathers themselves , a few of whom I ’ ve been lucky enough to meet . Yet trading paper research for interviews with actual people entails a gear change that this article unfortunately cannot encompass . Doing so opens up a number angles that haven ’ t yet been touched on : the place of Parson ’ s Pleasure as one of Oxford ’ s several official bathing places ( including Dame ’ s Delight , Tumbling Bay , Long Bridges and more ); the city ’ s changing relationship with its rivers and canals on a wider level ; the effects of pollution on people ’ s taste for so-called ‘ wild swimming ’. Furthermore , the background of former bathers varies more than might be inferred from the Bowra anecdote . One man I spoke to had been a cab driver in Oxford for more than thirty years , from the ’ 60s onwards . He often went to Parson ’ s Pleasure very early in the morning , to swim before work , having secured his own key from the Parks authorities .
But perhaps most importantly , discussing the place with former bathers turns the process of research itself on its head in certain ways . Where paintings and sonnets can be dissected and analysed quite freely , personal memories clearly demand a greater degree of tact and sensitivity . As one bather I met pointed out , some might not actually want to be associated with Parson ’ s Pleasure , might not want its history laid bare for all to see , even if ( or perhaps precisely because ) they once cherished it so dearly . Perhaps a different approach altogether is required if the place ’ s history , as it exists in the memory of those bathers still living , is to be accurately and respectfully brought to light .
George Townsend