Afternoon:
15°c
Tomorrow, the election for Oxford Professor of Poetry will proceed without its most illustrious candidate.
Derek Walcott, Nobel prize-winner and recent recipient of an honorary degree from Oxford, withdrew after it became clear that there was a campaign to revive against him old allegations of sexual harassment.
Frankly, I don't blame him, even though the withdrawal has left his campaigners mortified and his chief rival for the post, Ruth Padel, in what looks like an unbeatable position.
I've run twice in the past in this election - I lost once, won once and held the post for the statutory five years - so I know something about the job. It is not for the faint-hearted.
It is daunting enough to stand before the university in the role of Professor of Poetry.
The thought of facing a potentially hostile audience or of being called upon to justify your behaviour of decades ago, before critics who probably know nothing but second-hand accounts of some crumby book - who would wish to face such unpleasantness and humiliation? Why be glared at in chilly Oxford when you are a hero on your native Caribbean island?
Walcott is 79 and has sometimes been in poor health. Yet only last year he came to Essex, where he was honoured with a degree, spoke to students, gave generously of his time and left everyone (as I was told by one of the organisers) radiant with excitement.
The idea had been to attract him to Oxford for this visiting lectureship (which is what the professorship is, it is not like a full-time teaching post).
Perhaps he would not wish to serve the full five years. Who knew? But at least students, who study his work, would get a chance to hear him read and speak.
The first public opposition on the grounds of Walcott's sexual morality came from a rather startling source, John Walsh of the Independent, a man not known as one of nature's Calvinists.
Walsh referred to the race as a "two-horse Parnassian gallop" (there are, in fact, three candidates, the last being Arvind Mehrotra) and to Ruth Padel as his old friend.
Since he then proceeded to ask whether Walcott's fans had forgotten "the shadows of sexual harassment that have swirled around their man over the years" and to revive a claim made in 1995 about alleged events in the Eighties, it takes no genius to construe his article as part of an election campaign.
Whether or not Padel knew he was going to write it, whether or not she approved, there it was, in the open.
The next development was underhand. About a hundred dossiers, postmarked from the London sorting office in Mount Pleasant, were sent, personally addressed by hand, to figures in Oxford University, repeating and developing some of the material Walsh had used, and including photocopies from the book Walsh had mentioned as "a study of priapic academics called The Lecherous Professor". It doesn't sound like a very sober tome, does it?
At this point it would have been easy for Padel to dissociate herself both from her old and close friend Walsh's article and from the anonymous dossier.
She could have said that none of these issues from Walcott's past had any bearing on the campaign, and she was appalled that they had been raised. But she did not say this.
She said something different. According to the Daily Mail of 11 May, she said that "while the dossier was 'horrible', its contents should not be ignored".
Of course, the Mail could have misquoted her but later developments make this unlikely. For it was around this time that Walcott was being informed about the nature of the campaign against him. As soon as he heard what was going on, he withdrew from the race.
As far as the old allegations were concerned, he had never told his side of the story and he did not propose to do so now. He did not want to cause embarrassment to his supporters.
He beat a dignified retreat from a contest which he had entered only at the invitation of Hermione Lee, the president of Wolfson College.
Last Tuesday, the Evening Standard printed Padel's reaction, in which she did indeed dissociate herself from the clandestine campaign but only because it was clandestine.
"It would have been far better," she said after a few crocodile tears, "if the issue had been mentioned and discussed openly much earlier. This would have prevented anything secret or anonymous."
She went on to deny that she knew who had sent the anonymous dossier but she felt she should point out "that what they did was not a smear. It was not even a revelation. As far as I can see, what they sent has been known for decades. The papers they sent out were published fact".
In other words, she's Professor Have Your Cake and Eat It, Too. She's mortified that Walcott, whose poetry she deeply admires, has been hurt by the campaign launched by her old friend Walsh, as well as by the anonymous dossier-mongers with their inscrutable motives.
But she thinks we should read the dossier, treat it as fact, and not ignore it. Really, after all that, one can't help wondering if she would have published the dossier herself, she has so roundly endorsed it.
Walsh's article was well timed. It appeared after the nominations for the professorship had closed, and when the campaign turned nasty in this way it was too late for any of the potential candidates who had stood aside for Walcott to allow their names to go forward, which is why the contest we are left with is between Ruth Padel and the Indian Arvind Mehrotra, whose works are not easily available.
It has been disgusting to watch as this hypocritical duo have kicked a 79-year-old poet in the slats, not because he represented some kind of threat to the weak-willed young women of Oxford (come on!) but because he stood in the way of Padel's ambitions.
Who, in their right minds, would have preferred Padel's poetry to Walcott's? Who but the most bigoted would think that professional issues settled a quarter of a century ago should debar a poet from standing up at a lectern three times a year to give a public lecture on poetry? Who thinks Oxford's reputation has been enhanced by this unscrupulousness?
Reader views (12)
I am a graduate of Oxford (Somerville 1991) and I wrote my PhD on Walcott's poetry (Open University 2001). I was upset enough by this latest episode but if what James Fenton says is correct then I am utterly disgusted.
- Rhona Hammond, Newcastle, Australia
James Fenton, I'm in Paris with you.
Thank you for this article, it redeems hope. As an Ox. student I am sad about the prospect of these next five years. I wish an alternative were in sight.
- Former Bu Student, oxford
I feel a little ill. I don't want to believe this of Ruth Padel but James Fenton's article has the ring of truth. As far as the post is concerned the best thing is to start again.
- Diana, Tauranga, New Zealand
Thank you James Fenton for having the balls and honor to speak up! Hats off to you!
- Stephanos Papadopoulos, New York USA
Totally agree with Gilbertson. Walsh's character assassination is unsubstantiated, unprincipled, and in the final analysis irrelevant. Who says that poets have to be paragons of virtue? It's a Chair of Poetry, not Moral Probity. Even worse is Padel's damnation by faint defence. If Oxford wants to reward these vicious and tawdry shenanigans, by all means give the Chair to Padel. Otherwise, abandon the whole farcical business and start with a clean slate preferably minus la Padel.
- David, London, UK
Well at least Oxford will be up xxxx creek WITH a Padel.
- Paul Freeman, London, England
Gosh. I met Ruth Padel at the Literary Review's Bad Sex Award party. She seemed a bit leopard-obsessed, but apart from that I thought she was hot. Although I feel sorry for Derek. Why couldn't she let him have had the chair? He's not going to live forever and it sounds like he's a better poet, too. Bad girl, Ruth.
- Altera Merces, London
Ruth Padel shoudl be ashamed of herself.
The only solution now is for the contest to be halted and for new candidates to be invited to apply for the post.
- Ian Gilbertson, Newcastle
Great heavens above. James Fenton, my customary summer headgear, a Yankees cap, is off to you permanently for this article. What does it feel like to roll over a rock and see so very many worms beneath? Thank you for doing it. Oxford oughtn't to have a Poetry Professor these next five years. It should, indeed, not even be permitted to read poetry, by anyone living or dead, these next five years. Yours sincerely, and delighted that my academic degree is from a kinder town in another country,
- Annie, New York City, NY
I am glad James Fenton has spoken out. All the candidates should have withdrawn once the election became tainted with issues beyond the compass of the poetry brief.It is not too late for them to withdraw. Whoever gets elected stands compromised and poetry itself, an art in crisis, is further injured.
- Duncan Mcgibbon, Bath UK
This is a terrible episode for people who care about poetry.
- Bloke, London
Sounds more like a plot from an Inspector Morse script set in the bitchy, small world of the Oxford middle-classes.
- Janet, London, UK
