The Importance of Being Algernon
By STRIX C OVETI-IING tells me that when the infant Strix was baptised the vicar disregarded standing orders to dip it in the water discreetly and warily. I suspect that They saved me from an immersion which, however tactfully carried out, I might not have supported with equanimity. In childhood They are generally the enemy; but here, on its threshold, They appear in a more amiable role, for if They certify that the Child is weak, it shall suffice to pour Water upon it. 1 doubt if I got the full treatment. I wonder if anyone does?
However this procedural problem was resolved, the names bestowed on me at the font were (let us say) Algernon Marmaduke. But Marmaduke was my paternal grandfather's Christian name, and after the ceremony my grandmother, a person of strong character, argued that for this reason it should have had priority over Algernon. There was a disputation; my parents gave way; and— without, as far as I can recall, any serious attempt being made to ascertain My own views—steps were taken a few days later to amend the baptismal certificate, the parish register, and any other documents involved. I was remustered as Marma- duke Algernon Strix; but I answered, as soon as it was in my power to do so, to Algernon. I still do.
In the future, the vast number of human' beings in quest of obscure literary subjects on which to write PhD theses must tend to increase; and it may tend to increase faster than the number of obscure literary subjects of which definitive, or anyhow long, studies have not already been made. In these circumstances, should they arise, it is just conceivable that some lunatic from Bangkok or Illinois may in sheer desperation embark on a study of Strix.
This keen fellow will go to work in an epoch even more enlightened than ours is. The frontiers of psychology will have been extended. Thanks Partly to Parkinson's Law, the acreage of docu- mentary evidence on which the career of even the dimmest individual is signposted in the national archives will be very considerable. The type of dedicated person who used to (and I hope still does) write papers on 'Was. Shakespeare an Apiarist?' and had to base his or her arguments entirely on textual evidence, will have been super- seded. Diligence alone will be required to prove that the twentieth century writer did, or more • prudently did not, breed chinchillas: was or was not fined for obstructing the public highway with his motor vehicle : belonged or did not belong to the Society for the Promotion of This or the Society for the Prevention of That.
This proliferation of our footprints, often in triplicate, upon the sands of time will tend to divert the eager scholar's curiosity away from the beaten track, away from the documentary land- maYrks, towards more recondite clues; for him it would be a dull world in which you Could prove, merely by reference to the annals of the Tomato and Cucumber Board, that Shakespeare was never licensed to enrich our 'national heritage by culti- vating either of these delicacies. Thus there will be a premium on the obscurer documentary sources, and a natural tendency in their dis- coverers to exaggerate their significance.
I feel therefore justified in stating that the post- baptismal jiggery-pokery to which I was subjected had, at the time, no unsettling effect upon its victim; any attempt to interpret the vagaries of my career in the light of it will prove fallacious. It has nevertheless been a continual source of petty annoyance.
We are all curiously sensitive about our names. Not even the most urbane of us can prevent his hackles from rising when he hears his name mis- pronounced: Fosdick instead of Fosdyke, Fowkes instead of Foulkes, Ackersley instead of Ackerley. It is an odd fact (at least I believe it to be a fact) that the wider the margin of error, the less we mind. Fosdyke, if he hears himself re- referred to by the chairman, the master of cere- monies, the drill sergeant or whoever it may be as Fairbrother or Farthing, is momentarily dis- concerted; but because his own name has not been mutilated his persona is unscathed. A mistake so gross is laughable, and the laugh is on its per- petrator; its victim can join in.
I sometimes wonder whether the harmony of Anglo-Russian relations is not jeopardised by our inability to pronounce, or even to spell, the name of M. Khrushchev. If we except M. Malenkov, who did not last long but who while he did was, save by a handful of insufferable pundits, in- variably mispronounced, the present head of the Russian State is the first for four decades to trade under his own name. His bold departure from a facile precedent—for any oaf in Uzbekistan or Westminster could pronounce, and often spell, Lenin or Stalin—has hardly had the welcome it deserved.
When he first came into international promi- nence, M. Khrushchev was known to the BBC as M. Kroossheff. The word eventually got around that the second vowel in his name ought to sound, roughly, like the ya- in yacht. But we are still baffled by the • initial consonant, and constantly madden him by calling him 'Mr. K,' as though his father had been called Kuropatkin or Karakhan or Kaganovich.
• I dare say it isn't really important. But I know that I, when I receive, as I frequently do, letters addressed to Marmaduke A. Strix, tend auto- matically to treat their contents with less sym- pathy than they deserve. I feel that the writers, who are often Inspectors of Taxes or other ser- vants of the Crown, ought to be aware that my operative name is Algernon, that I do not answer to Marmaduke, let alone to Marmaduke A. And it may be that much of Europe's malaise is attributable to the fact that M. Khrushchev, who is, or anyhow who looks, a more apoplectic character than me, is in a chronic state of sup- pressed irritation at being perpetually mis- pronounced or misspelt or both. I am pretty sure the world would have been a jollier, less com- plicated place if his father's name had been Popov.
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