Beginning with B
BY MOTH.
ISUPPOSE there is no one who has not, at one time or another, found himself staring glassily at a piece of paper, sucking a strange pencil, and trying to remember the names of Great Men Beginning With B. It is a hideous experience. The careless laughter of a moment ago is silenced. A stop has been put to the thrust and parry of brilliant conversation—such conversation as only the English know how to make. (" Have you been to any plays lately ? " " No. Have you ? " " No." Or : " Do you read much ? " " Well, I'm awfully fond of it, of course, but I find one doesn't really get enough time, you know. Not in these days, anyhow. Do you ? Read much, I mean ? " " No ; well, as a matter of fact, I never seem to get any time for it, either.") From such innocent, though aimless, delights as these you and your fellow-guests have been called off. The man who was going to show you all a match trick, the aunt who was just getting her Patience out, the Major in mid-anecdote —all have been checked and brought to heel.
Now, thwarted and dragooned, you sit round in a circle, breathing thickly, flashing at each other glances of hatred and distrust, and speculating feverishly as to whether Buddha was ever mortal, and on what besides his disease Bright's claims to fame might be said to rest, and whether Brahms was an inventor or an Indian religious sect.
It is a bad time for all concerned. To contemplate their sufferings can only cause us pain. Let us leave the poor creatures stretched on their mnemonic rack ; let us turn to consider those who are at once their inspiration and their reward—the Great Men Beginning With B.
These arc all taking the very keenest interest in the game. The Terrestrial Parade on Olympus (commonly known as The Front) is crowded. Time hangs heavy on the hands of the Illustrious Dead. Occasionally one of them gives a Centenary Party. But most of the time there is nothing much to do except keep your Press- Cutting Album up to date and look through a telescope, wistfully, proudly, or disgustedly, at the various statues erected in your honour. It is impossible to forget that you are dead ; you are too seldom reminded that you were illustrious.
It is accordingly with an almost childish eagerness— though they affect an elaborate unconcern—that the Great Men Beginning With B hurry down to the front and crowd round the loud-speaker. All are conscious of a certain trepidation, for on similar occasions more than one reputation has sustained a shocking blow. There was the time when two house-parties running forgot to put down Napoleon among the N's ; and the Ancients are always getting overlooked nowadays, even the really big men like Asoka, while the Chinese colony (with the exception of Confucius) have been so consistently neglected that they have taken to boycotting the whole thing altogether.
However, by the time you and your fellow-unfortu- nates, under the sultry eye of your hostess, have begun to read out in cracked, apologetic voices your inconsequent lists of Great Men Beginning With B, there is a pretty sizeable crowd round the loud-speaker on Olympus : a crowd, alas, which far outnumbers the aggregate total of celebrities on your party's lists. In the front ranks—out- wardly confident, but secretly a little anxious—are the certainties—the people who hardly ever get left out : Beethoven and Bach, Boswell, Boadicea, Byron, Barabbas, and a few others. Behind them, shifting from one foot to the other and irritably chewing asphodel, are the people who feel very strongly that they ought to be certainties, but who have learnt from bitter experience that they are not : prominent among these are Bishop Berkeley, Boyle, Bryce, and King Brut. In this section of the crowd an atmosphere of nervous tension painfully prevails ; but it is nothing to the almost tangible hostility which is to be found on the outskirts of the gathering. For here are congregated those bearers of a great name who are not alone in bearing it, and these eye with fear and loathing their namesakes and relations. The Dukes of Buckingham cannot trust themselves to speak to one another. Roger Bacon—a rather pathetic figure, so often has he been passed over in favour of Francis—bites his nails dejectedly. The Bo bias, and all the Popes called Boniface, brace themselves for the inevitable argument as to which of them you were really thinking of at the time. The poet Blake and Blake the sailor pray silently that both will be remembered.
There is in truth an ugly spirit abroad in that august assembly. It is only on the very fringes of the throng that you can find a care-free face. Here is to be seen a sprinkling of those minor celebrities on whom the cares of greatness weigh less heavily because (as they will readily admit) they are not really so very great. They are amateurs among professionals : curious, but not deeply concerned, to see whether their names will occur to these incalculable mortals. There is no rivalry between them, because their dignities are not at stake, and they wander up and down arm-in-arm, talking and laughing and making little bets on their chances of being remembered ; people like Topham Beauclerck, and Mr. Banting, who invented the cure, and Capability Brown, and the other Brown who was Queen Victoria's ghillie, and Mrs. Barry the actress, and General Burgoyne.
For them it is rather fun, and for the other Great Ones it is at least a salutary experience. When the game is finished, and the pencils have been jealously garnered, and the bits of paper thrown away, and you have gone to bed, the Illustrious Dead sit up half the night, trying to analyse—pettishly or complacently, according to their individual luck—the entirely new set of values with which you have provided them. Botticelli and Robert Bruce, for once, have been left out, and are deploring, in a maudlin and resentful way, your fickleness and lack of discernment. Mrs. Barbauld—rather a back number, these days—came into her own again ; no less than three of you (two of whom, however, cribbed each other) had her on their list, and she is absurdly pleased. So are Brian Boru and Henri Beyle. In the Russian quarter, however, there is an ugly scene going on between the eighteen celebrities called Boris.
Only on one point is the whole community agreed. Something ought to be done about the habit these mortals have of including Beelzebub in their lists. Illustrious, indeed ! And, for that matter, Dead ! . . . There is some talk of passing a resolution.
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