ANOTHER VOICE

Why the fame of anonymity is the greatest fame of all

MATTHEW PARRIS

Not many years ago the obituary appeared in the Independent of the late Mr Douglas Scott. Scott was the man who designed London Transport's Routemaster bus, the old red double-decker with a sepa- rate driver's cab which people in Brussels with pâté for brains keep trying to ban. The Routemaster, the bus you can jump off without permission, is undoubtedly the best-loved bus in British history. It may prove the last bus it is possible to love.

In a bold break with obituarial tradition, the Independent's appreciation featured a photograph not of Mr Scott but of this bus: the back end of the bus. I like to think of its designer, relaxing in the canteen of some celestial bus garage, smiling with pride that the Independent had replaced his own crumpled features, which will be forgotten, with a portrait of his bus, which never will be.

In May this year, the Times printed the obituary of Eugene M. Stoner. Mr Stoner, a friend of Mikhail Kalashnikov, was an American firearms designer whose M16 rifle (originally called the Armalite AR15) has been standard issue for the United States armed forces since 1963. Beneath the Times headline 'Eugene M. Stoner' appeared no representation of the deceased designer. Instead, there was a photograph of a gun, 'Eugene M. Stoner's M16 rifle fitted with M203 40mm grenade- launcher'. It was most striking. Had I been the son who survived him, the picture of my dad's famous design would have lifted my heart.

Last July, an obituary recorded the life and death (at 95) of Dame Sylvia Crowe, `landscape architect'. The authoress of many leading books in her field, she took particular pride in her work civilising the more brutal examples of civic and civil engineering. 'She reminded you of some Edwardian lady discussing her delphini- ums,' a friend was quoted as remarking, but `my goodness, she could tell the Forestry Commission where it got off.' Beside a small picture of Dame Crowe, a much larg- er photograph dominates that obituary; it is of a dreadful power station redeemed by a gracefully landscaped setting. 'Her land- scaping carried out at Trawsfynydd power station in North Wales', runs the caption.

`She never married', but those who love her memory must have rejoiced, as she would have done, at the visual image by which the Times chose to remember her. When I was a little boy, I wanted to be a famous explorer. Later I wanted to be a famous doctor, then a famous governor, after that a famous diplomat and finally a famous prime minister: a wide range of careers with, I fear, one common feature. But entering my middle years, something changed. Some intimation of this came when, at a noisy supper party, I heard someone repeat (she did not know where she had heard it) a rather clever observa- tion which I recognised (no one else did) as originally my own.

I was immensely proud, and I felt not the slightest desire to inform the company of my link with this remark. On the contrary, my pleasure was given a delicious edge by the knowledge that my remark had entered the currency of smart conversation, its authorship forgotten and indeed of no account.

A few years ago I volunteered to John Major a few paragraphs for his conference speech at Bournemouth. Listening as he delivered the speech, I suddenly recognised my passage. You cannot imagine what plea- sure the applause gave me, greater pleasure than any I ever received hearing applause for a speech of my own. And it was know- ing the words were mine, and knowing nobody else knew, and they would rebound to Mr Major's credit not mine, that gave the special pleasure.

My contributions to the general stock of human wisdom and gaiety are sadly rather slight. How much greater would be the thrill of being the philanthropist, observing the comfort or pleasure of which one was the cause — and knowing that nobody knew! Could anything better lift the heart of a composer, years after the composition of some song, than to overhear someone who did not even know his name whistling the melody in a park?

To be famous is something. To make something which becomes famous is some- thing more. To make something so endur- ingly famous that one's own umbilical link with the artefact withers and drops away and the work lives in its own right — cele- brated, loved or depended upon for itself — is surely the greatest of all. The moment at which the last person who ever knew of the link dies, but the object endures, would be the final triumph.

I often, especially as I get older, wish I were invisible. I wish people could not see or hear me, did not feel obliged to enter- tain me, could be oblivious to my whole existence. I would wander like a ghost around the places where people gather and work or talk, and, well, just see how they were. Were they all right? And if I found evidence that anything I had done had worked out well for them — was proving useful, giving pleasure, offering shelter or protection — it would be a most immeasur- able delight.

Sometimes I stand in gay bars (I am not much recognised) and watch people laugh- ing and talking, or dancing, or drinking so much more confident and relaxed, so much more straightforward than it ever was for me — and I think how times have changed, and try to persuade myself that, in however marginal a way, the Commons speech or two I made, and all the letters I wrote, and all the university debates I spoke at, all those bleak and awkward meetings which nobody came to, the embarrassment and strain of it all, made some difference. If so, then there is no need for those people laughing and talking, with lives of their own to lead, to know it, or see me. I would rather be invisible and watch them, all unknowing: my tribe.

Do not imagine that this is a kind of humility; rather it a monstrous vanity, greater than the little vanities of those who want attention: the wish to play God, invisi- ble to your creation.

Dame Crowe's landscapes, Mr Stoner's rifle, Mr Scott's bus, the man (or woman?) who wrote the melody of Greensleeves what happy souls, and happiest of all when quite forgotten, but hovering near to guard their bus, their gun, their garden or their tune.

Matthew Parris is parliamentary sketchwriter and a columnist of the Times.