ROYCE. No, I don’t think I realised it.
OLIVER (thinking it out). I suppose if I had a famous father I shouldn’t mind so much. I should feel that it was partly my doing. I mean that he wouldn’t have begun to be famous until I had been born. But the poet Blayds was a world-wide celebrity long before [185]I came on the scene, and I’ve had it hanging over me ever since.... Why do you suppose I am a member of the club?
ROYCE. Well, why not? It’s a decent club. We are all very happy there.
OLIVER. Yes, but why did they elect me?
ROYCE. Oh, well, if we once began to ask ourselves that——
OLIVER. Not at all. The answer in your case is because A. L. Royce is a well-known critic and a jolly good fellow. The answer in my case is because there’s a B. in both. In other words, because there’s a Blayds in Blayds-Conway. If my father had stuck to his William Conway when he got married, I should never have been elected. Not at the age of twenty-two, anyway.
ROYCE. Then I’m very glad he changed his name. Because otherwise, it seems, I might not have had the pleasure of meeting you.
OLIVER. Oh, well, there’s always a something. But, compliments aside, it isn’t much fun for a man when things happen to him just because of the Blayds in Blayds-Conway. You know what I am doing now, don’t you? I told you.
ROYCE. Secretary to some politician, isn’t it?
OLIVER. Yes. And why? Because of the Blayds in——