Starry with a name not of his own making, he came into the world sporting a face everyone had already seen. Those sanguine eyes, those nasty nostrils, that snobbish snot: yes, that was sir's baby. Laurelled with prizes he could —and need—never win for himself, repetitious when he had not yet spoken, the son of the famous man strutted before he crawled and was pissed before he had had a drop. When he came into his own, it had already been someone else's; his nest, like his cap, is still feathered with paternal plumage. He was fated to become the image of his old man in everything save originality: what was art in the first became drear diary with the second.
Esquiredom, too, can seem hereditary. Although his blood is common, the son of the famous man trails his coat as if it were lordly with ermine. When he says who he is, we are expected to grant that he is somebody, even if what he is full of is not himself. The father's achievements redeemed a mundane name; the son pronounces it as if it were itself an achievement. How dotingly savage of the parent to baptise his infant with a pretentious Christian name! The chosen polysyllables both lent prefixed grandeur to a tradesman's style and made sure that the boy would be mordantly bullied. When Maximilian—let us say—was simplified to Max, was it in the hope that self-mutilation would avert the bloods or in the brief belief that what was short might also seem sweet?
The boy may have acquired his morgue from his sire, but he left behind the salt to give it savour. Heir to a horse which will always be higher than he is, he condescends from a pedestal that towers above him. Wanting no nastier weapons than the ones a splenetic parent employed against him, the hurt child plucked the darts from his own wounds and has been firing them at others ever since. Like corks from a dated popgun, his ancestral ammunition has strings attached so that it can be used again. His own bruises make him merciless; a burnt child longs to toast his friends. He fears that no one will ever suffer as cruelly and undeservedly as he did, though he longs to see them do so. Having endured a tyrant (stories of whose greed supply both bread and butter), the son of the famous man imagines that he himself only pretends to be the shit he so regularly depicts his father to have been.
As, with the pitiless dexterity of a make-up man, time does its recapitulating work, the boy waxes, as he wanes, into the wine-dark replica of his surly sire. His father was the last thing the son wanted to be; now that is exactly the last person he is going to be. In the senescent son, the great dictator lives again, this time as mere dictator. He squares his little circle to second his opinion of himself, and others. Today, if the son makes a joke, the clan dare not not laugh; if he has an aversion, all must turn their backs. He may say what he likes about his father; others only what he authorises.
The giant's son matures into a tall dwarf who knows that stories about the father, if spiced with spleen, will peddle better even than his father's stories. The green boy has yellowed into a venomous maturity. Blossoming in the shade of a reputation without whose bilious taint he would remain a mere weed. He is half the man his father was.
The son of the famous man is born with a complimentary ticket to the great world. Knowing how terrible the real lion was, hostesses find nothing more pettable than a cub who brays. Safe danger is what we like from our celebrities. Who is more to London's taste than a man who is famous only for his father's eminence? What cat deserves prompter cream than one that mice can safely toy with? The famous man, should he return, might remind us of our deficiencies, in knowledge, wit or style; his son reminds us only of the gorgeous family face. Appearance is the reality of our age.
As a look-alike, the son of the famous man recalls a braver era without uttering any unanswerable calls to bravery. How fortunate to have a hero whose deepest scars come from self-inflicted wounds! Resentment gives him aptitudes all London strives to emulate: spite, complacency and pettiness. (It also pays by the word.) Who will speak ill of an example none need strain to live up to?
In a world of imposture, in which a perjurer is a man to be trus- ted, plagiarism is serialised, and arrivisme is but a point of departure, what should better be regarded as the genuine article than a prating replica? The son of the famous man passes for outsize in a miniature England where his derivative tirades lament the hollowness of a society whose unearned niches suit him perfectly. Never spoiled enough to be happy, never overpaid enough to be generous, never confident enough for doubt, however closely he may come to resemble his father, the biggest chip off the old block will always be the one that he wears on his shoulder.
