Studies in Impersonality Whatever its provenance, this long-lived convention clearly
has its uses in Fleet Street. Occasionally the writer behind the nom de plume becomes (as Beachcomber has been for years) inimitable and irreplaceable; on this page somebody, alas, had to replace Janus, but nobody could imitate him and he has taken his pseudonym and all that went with it to Time and Tide. But today the main value of these half-hearted impos- tures seems to lie in the number of impostors who can, either simultaneously or successively, make use of them. The pen- name of Pendennis, who contributes to the Observer his judicious (but one rather hopes misleadingly entitled) " Table Talk " has the perfunctory inscrutability of " Mon,, Repos " on a suburban garden gate; but we feel in both cases that at times there is probably more than one person behind it. Atticus of the Sunday Times represents a variant use of the pseudonym, which in the Kemsley stables is regarded as the horse, the writers being jockeys who are hired for a season or two and then dismissed. The whole problem of pseudonyms, though intriguing in rather a specialised way, is of very great unimportance. Nevertheless—relying, as they do, on a compromise between strict anonymity and its more fashionable opposite, and defying, as they do, anyone to produce a logical explanation of their survival—they are a typical British institution. I think it will be a pity when the last one goes.
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