The Dissemblers If you write, as I do, under a
pseudonym and if you read—as 1, alas, too seldom and too cursorily do—the other public prints, you will sooner or later find yourself musing on the whole question of these noms de plume. They are clearly a survival of some kind. The brisk and combative atmosphere of American journalism has proved, I think, com- pletely fatal to them over there. In these islands their original purpose must have been to conceal, or anyhow to mask, the writer's identity; Junius retains inviolate an alias which for some time he has not really needed. I can see that, to this day, they have a certain functional value in sporting journalism; the prognostications of Tattenham, The Scout or Captain Coe sound somehow more Delphic than they would if they emanated from less disembodied sources. Was it perhaps through The Pitcher (of The Pink 'Un) that editors inherited the convention which recognised a purpose in disguising George Bernard Shaw as Corno di Bassetto, Desmond MacCarthy as Affable Hawk, Robert Lynd as Y.Y. and Lytton Strachey (during his tour of duty as dramatic critic of the Spectator) as Autolycus ?
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