Photo of Wilde is from the British Library, and has no known copyright restrictions.
Although I’ve read both The Importance of Being Earnest, and Stephen Potter’s One-Upmanship books, many times over the years, it has only just struck me that, in one particular chapter, Potter may have been influenced by Wilde.
In the play, a character called Algernon has invented a character called Bunbury. Bunbury is a very useful (non-) person to know. Why? Because whenever Algernon wants to get out of a social engagement, Bunbury falls ill, requiring Algernon to rush to see him and drop everything else!
So what’s the connection with the One-Upmanship books? Well, in the section on Weekendmanship, Potter describes a gambit called Important Person Play. This was exemplified by Geoffrey Field, who would be completely tired when he arrived at his hosts’ house on the Friday evening, thereby ensuring that people allowed him to rest, and presumably didn’t expect him to lift a finger to help out in any way. Potter writes:
“
No question of having to entertain Field, or, indeed, of Field entertaining. He was there for a rest-had to be, got to be, if he was going to get through next week’s work. He would lie back, legs out, eyes relaxed, arms hanging straight down on the sides of the chair-content. ‘Sh - they won’t ring me up because (not a word) nobody knows where I am. Except Bales.’
No one knew who Bales was, and only I knew that he didn’t exist, and that in fact Field had been out of a job for nine months. ”
Isn’t ‘Bales’ a great invention? As well giving everyone the impression that you’re a very important person, you could arrange for ‘Bales’ to phone you and tell you that an urgent issue has come up and requires your urgent attention. I’ve been to a few events where that would have come in handy!
Could Wilde have borrowed the idea of Bales from Wilde’s Bunbury? It’s quite possible: Potter was a lecturer in English Lit at Oxford University, so he would almost certainly have been well-acquainted with Bunbury.