Fault in the Structure

‘Yes, sir, that’s really the case, so what’s wrong with planting that cute little letter e some place else and changing that little letter o into a little letter u?’

‘Such as how?’ asked Osbert, who was no dabbler in poetry, although he had heard of Shakespeare and had enjoyed Miss Joyce Grenfell’s rendering of an imaginary American mother attempting to introduce an imaginary American child to the glorious works of Percy Bysshe Shelley.

‘Such as spelling it Swinburne, of course,’ said Dora Ellen impatiently. So, by deed poll, accustomed from his earliest years to female domination, Osbert slightly but significantly changed his surname and Dora Ellen became Mrs Osbert Swinburne.

When, in due course, her son was born, the mother insisted that he be named Alfriston (after his place of birth) and Calliope, after the Muse of epic poetry. With a name like A. C. Swinburne, she contended, a poet of some kind he was surely destined to become.

‘Alfriston Calliope?’ said Osbert doubtfully. ‘A bit tough on the poor little so-and-so, isn’t it? Besides, I thought Calliope was a kind of steam-engine.’

‘Honey, don’t show your ignorance,’ said his wife.

‘Anyway the kid will only be called Alf if you stick to this Alfriston label, and I’ve always thought Alf was, well, you know, rather a common sort of name; the sort of name they give barrow boys and plumbers’ mates and the chaps who wear cloth caps and belong to Unions.’

‘Alf?’ said his wife distastefully. ‘There was Alfred the Great and Alfred, Lord Tennyson. I never heard either of them referred to as Alf.’

‘He might even be called Al, like Al Capone,’ said the father rebelliously.

‘Whatever he’s called, he will be able to sign himself A. C. Swinburne,’ retorted Dora. ‘I would have liked to name him Algernon Charles, but I guess it would hardly do to plagiarise that far. Anyway, so far as what he’s to be called is concerned, we must insist on Alfrist, nothing shorter.’

‘Alfrist?’ said Osbert. ‘Oh, yes, Alfrist would be all right, I suppose. Rather classy in a way. Alfrist C. Swinburne? Yes, your father might like that! It sounds quite American, I mean to say, doesn’t it? It may reconcile the old buster to our marriage, what?’

‘We never would have married if I hadn’t seen the possibilities of this A. C. Swinburne set-up,’ said Dora Ellen, at last uncovering what had always been a mystery to her spouse, for Osbert knew that, in spite of his mother’s favourable opinion of him, he was anything but an eligible parti. ‘Pop acted kind of tough when I broke the news,’ Dora Ellen went on, ‘and if I hadn’t of gotten this Swinburne idea I guess I would have listened to his arguments.’

‘But who was Swinburne?’ asked Osbert. He had wished to ask before, but had lacked the courage. His wife looked at him with pity and contempt.

‘All I can say, honey,’ she remarked, ‘is that I guess I’m aiming to see that Alfrist gets a better education than you appear to have gotten for yourself.’

‘I was too delicate to be sent to school,’ said Osbert. ‘I was educated at home.’

‘I wonder what that explains?’ said Dora Ellen, handing the baby to the nurse. ‘The first thing you do, honey, you put his name down for a dozen or two of these Eton and Harrow schools. That way we’ll be sure he gets in somewhere good when he’s old enough. A boy with the name of A. C. Swinburne has got to be going places.’

What would have happened to A. C. Swinburne had his mother lived became a matter for speculation, for she died when the child was thirteen and in his first term at his public school. After her death, Osbert discovered, to his dismay, that she had had but a life interest in her fortune and that her father, who had returned to America, had married for the second time and now had a son of his own. He had diverted his fortune to this child of his old age, leaving Alfrist with a small annuity payable when he attained his majority. Nothing whatever was willed to Osbert, who, for the first time in his life, was faced with the hideous prospect of having to earn a living for himself and his son.

The boy was taken away from his expensive public school and sent to a State school where he did well enough so far as work was concerned, but where he was never popular and soon became known as ‘teacher’s creep’.

That was by no means the worst of it. At his public school a waggish master had referred to him as Algernon Charles, to the mystification of the form. They were more familiar with Latin than with English verse. Questioned on the matter by his peers, Alfrist, who had no intention of disclosing the truly dreadful names bestowed on him by his American mother, had replied that he supposed the master had been trying to show what a funny swine he could be. As the master in question was known and despised for his untimely and unkind wit, this definition of his humour was accepted.

Unfortunately for Alfrist, his new comrades at the State school discovered, from the classroom anthology of English poetry which was supplied by a paternal government, exactly what the public school master had had in mind, although they knew nothing of the incident. Someone found that the book of poems included Swinburne’s Itylus, so the lad was set upon in the playground one dinner-time and, to joyous yells of ‘Swallow, my sister, O sister swallow’, a cake of soap from the washroom was forced chokingly into his mouth.

From that time on, Alfrist set himself two objectives: to change his name as soon as he could (but not, for he was an intelligent although hardly a likeable lad, until after he had made sure of the annuity he was to be given by his American grandfather) and to fit himself to take vengeance upon society. He reached neither of these goals while he was still at school, but kept them in the forefront of his mind against the time when he should attain his majority.

Having reached his sixteenth birthday and his O levels, he received, to his surprise and chagrin, the now very unwelcome news that his father proposed to take him away from school and put him to the task of beginning to make his own way in the world and pay for his keep.

‘But I can’t,’ he said blankly. ‘Not yet. I’ve got my A levels to do.’

‘I don’t earn enough to go on keeping both of us,’ said his father. This was at the end of the Easter term and for another three months Osbert allowed the subject to drop. He had no wish to try conclusions with his son too soon. The long summer holiday at the end of the following term would be a better time to elaborate his point of view, he thought.