ABSTRACT
The Rebel Rycrofts were hard-riding country gents, fox-hunters and soldiers, with a tendency to marry up a little. Charles Rycroft was the fourth son of Sir Richard by his second and much younger wife, and Charles was fully 28 years younger than the first son, which will suggest that he both was and was not Rycroft. The obvious parallel is with Orwell: again the upper-middle displacement, again the uneasy fastidiousness, and again, as with Rycroft, the real enemy was fascism, and the ultimate commitment was to truth and the fear of its vanishing. The crucial difference was that Orwell had an easier Oedipal hand to play, quite clearly declared his rebellion, went to Spain, down and out— properly heroic doing and writing; whereas Charles the ironist gave up his occasional headstands in 1935 and became a psychoanalyst in Wimpole Street.
