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