The “eccentric” Mr Smith?

Absences – we all get them. Wondering why we’ve opened the fridge, walking into a room to get… oh what was it again? And they afflict even the geniuses of this world…

Adam Smith has been portrayed as the absent-minded professor: a man so deep in thought that the ordinary world around him seemed invisible to him. There are certainly some remarkable stories about his eccentric behaviour. But is it fair to give him this characterisation - and what might it tell us about the man? Let’s review the evidence!

“the most absent man in company”

Alexander Carlyle described Smith as “the most absent man in company” he had ever seen, moving his lips, talking to himself and smiling while in the midst of a large gathering. If brought out of his reverie and drawn into conversation, Carlyle said, Smith would launch into what amounted to a lecture, continuing until he had told his listener everything he knew about the subject.

A similar account describes Smith walking in the country with the astronomer James Hutton. Hutton would apparently talk away without receiving much response, while Smith walked beside him, moving his lips and muttering to himself – and again, when Smith did speak, his manner was said to resemble that of the lecture room rather than ordinary conversation.

Aside from his ‘absences’, there are other strange stories.

Sir Walter Scott recalled Smith wandering round a tea table, apparently oblivious to an invitation to sit down, stopping occasionally to take a lump of sugar from the bowl, and eating it. Eventually the elderly hostess had to put the sugar bowl on her own knee to protect it from his “uneconomical depredations”.

“well-to-do lunatic”

Francis Hirst, in his book about Adam Smith, mentions that Smith himself enjoyed telling another story of a market woman in the High Street who, seeing him talking to himself, took him for a “well-to-do lunatic” – uttering a phrase akin to the modern “is that you out without your carer again?”!

On one occasion, at a grand dinner party in Dalkeith Palace, Smith reportedly launched into a scathing monologue, showering harsh criticisms on a prominent statesman of the day – until he realised the man’s closest relative was directly across the table from him. He stopped, recovered himself — and then, apparently losing his self-possession once more, muttered: “De’il care, de’il care; it's a’ true.”

Yet another anecdote concerns his behaviour at the breakfast table: deeply engrossed in his thoughts, he picked up a piece of bread and butter and began to roll it into a ball between his hands for some time. Eventually, without thinking, he popped it into a teapot, poured himself a cup, drank it, and declared it “the worst tea I have ever met with”.

The oddest story

Perhaps the oddest story, quoted by John Rae, though concerns Smith's work as a Commissioner of Customs. A colleague recalled him one day unconsciously imitating the elaborate ceremonial movements of the Customs House porter, copying the man's gestures with his cane and even trying to place his feet on the same steps. The porter became increasingly uncomfortable, while Smith seemed entirely unaware that he was doing anything unusual.

So far, so strange. But we should be cautious about these individual anecdotes; we’ve surely all done odd things. And the many people who encountered Smith and thought him perfectly unremarkable left no record. That said, the surviving accounts from different people and different periods repeatedly describe similar striking characteristics.

A modern reader might wonder whether some of Smith's behaviour would today be discussed in terms of neurodivergence, but that diagnosis would be speculation. What we can say is that the absent-mindedness seems to have been real, that Smith himself was aware of it, and that it plainly coexisted with remarkable intellectual and practical abilities.

Is “eccentric” the right word?

So – is “eccentric” the right word? On the surviving evidence, probably. But we need to remember – here was one of Scotland’s foremost philosophers, a professor who was for years adored by his students, a man entrusted with substantial responsibilities in running the University of Glasgow, and – of course -  the man who wrote one of the most influential books of the modern era.

So while the stories of the absent-minded Adam are often curious and sometimes hard to believe – behind them was a remarkable intellect, and in the end, maybe just a man whose mind was simply capable of becoming rather more completely absorbed than most!

by Martin Cotter