Bealby

n addition to evoking the author's early revolt from the modest circumstances into which he was born, Bealby satirizes a variety of features of English life on the eve of World War I. These include the popularity of Hegelianism of the British Idealist school (the Lord Chancellor is an amateur philosopher), the fashion of weekend parties, the cultivation of wealthy patrons by political parties, the ill-prepared state of the British military, and the egotism of small entrepreneurs (represented by Mr. Benshaw, a Crayminster horticulturalist).