King John of Jingalo
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So the long and short of it was that the King promised Charlotte her
allowance; and the Queen sat by and heard, and did not object. And as
the Princess passed out to follow her own avocations, whatever they
might be, she gave each of her parents the nicest kiss imaginable,
thanking them quite humbly for that which they had been powerless to
withhold.
The King looked enviously on that bright presence as it flitted away,
calm, wilful, and self-possessed; and much he wished that he could
conduct his own affairs with the same gay insouciance, and emerge with
as much success. Max might be able to manage it, but not he.
The Queen's voice broke in on his deliberations.
"Jack," said she, "we must get her married."
It was her Majesty's remedy for that new portent, the revolting
daughter. And there and then she started to discuss ways, means, and
dates for bringing the wished-for affair to a head. The dear lady was
already exuberantly hopeful. A carefully selected portrait of the
Hereditary Prince of Schnapps-Wasser now stood on the central table of
her boudoir, and only two days ago she had spied Charlotte looking at
it. A fine, adventurous figure, it stood out prominently from all the
uniformed splendors surrounding it. "Who is this person in fancy
costume?" Charlotte had asked, and the Queen, alive in certain
fundamental instincts, had cleverly informed her that it represented one
who had been driven by his musical taste to a three years' wandering in
the wilderness, and who, though still sadly under a cloud, was now
obliged to return to his princely duties. Charlotte did not know, as she
looked with amused pity on that sunburnt visage of adventurous youth,
that she was gazing on the remedy for her own ailments, nor did she or
any one else guess to what surprising results the attempted application
of that remedy would lead.
It was quite sufficient for the Queen's gentle lines of diplomacy that
Charlotte now knew who he was, that he was presently returning to
Europe, and would, on his way or soon after, present himself at the
Court of Jingalo. In another quarter her Majesty was less contented, she
had not yet found any one good enough for Max; and as the quest added
greatly to her daily correspondence, she felt it as a burden and an
anxiety, for she did not want to hear of another case of morals.
II
To the King, on the other hand, Max had become a very real and positive
relief. The "Max habit" had grown and flourished exceedingly; and as
this history deals largely with the mental developments of King John of
Jingalo we must follow him to his hours of training and set down their
record wherever we can find room for them.
His Majesty told Max of the Charlotte affair that same evening.
Max chuckled. "So Charlotte is not to disapprove of vivisection?" he
commented. "How very characteristic that is of the way we have to avoid
giving countenance to any movement or change of opinion till it is
backed by a majority."
"Is it not our duty to avoid all matters of controversy?"
"If it is we do not act on it. There is much controversy to-day on the
subject of vivisection; but that did not prevent you quite recently from
bestowing a high mark of favor on its foremost exponent. What you dare
not do is bestow a similar mark on one who is opposed to it. Your favors
go only to those who represent a majority; minorities are carefully shut
away from your ken. You are taught to believe that they are unimportant.
Whereas the exact opposite is the truth; for it is always the minorities
who have made history and brought about reform."
"Are you still quoting your book at me?" inquired the King.
"I am always quoting it," said Max, "or, rather, I am composing it. Yes;
this is the beginning of a chapter which I am about to put together with
your help and assistance."
"Make it a mild one!" entreated his father.
"I assure you, sir, that throughout I am understating the case. We have
already discussed the question of a monarch's relation to the political
and religious controversies of his day. Is he any more truly in contact
with the national life on its intellectual side? The only occasion on
which I meet at your Court any representatives of literature, or art, is
when popular authors and dramatists have come among a miscellaneous
gathering of pork butchers, politicians, stock-brokers, bankers, and
other prosperous tradesmen to receive at your hands the now somewhat
tarnished honor of knighthood. They come in a strange garb hired for the
occasion, and they go again. How much have we ever troubled ourselves
about the value and quality of their work, or as to why they were
selected? Are they the men, think you, who will be reckoned a hundred
years hence the artistic and literary giants of their day? I doubt if
anybody thinks so except themselves. Is it not rather because by winning
contemporary popularity they represent the trade values of their
profession, something that can be made to pay, and which, when it does
pay, invites public recognition and encouragement? We give small
pensions to the specially deserving, I know, to save them from the
extremes of poverty and ourselves from disgrace; but to those pensions
do we ever add a title? No; titles are the reward of prosperity."
"But, my dear Max," said the King, "how do you expect me to judge of
such things? I should only make mistakes."
"You have for your advisers," answered his son, "some twenty men drawn
from all departments of life; ought you not to be able to rely on them?
When you came to the throne one of our greatest literary men lay
bed-ridden, dying quietly of old age. He had received a State pension,
for he was poor; he was a giant whose work was done; and he had never in
all his life been to Court. Did it occur to you to go and pay this old
man reverence? Did it occur to any of your advisers to suggest that you
should? Yet in the past kings have done these things, and history has
remembered to praise them for doing it. No, sir, we are out of touch
with all the really great things that are going on around us in
literature and art; for whenever anything new is really great it
inevitably divides opinion; and wherever opinion is sharply or at all
evenly divided we are out of place. You are under exactly the same
orders as those which Charlotte received from my mother--you must not go
down into the garden while the gardeners are actually at work; only when
they have finished you may come and gather the results. You are run by
the State merely to give prestige to the established order, and you must
not support things that are not already popular."
"You are mistaken, Max," said his father, in despondent protest.
"Nothing whatever prevents me; only I haven't anything to take hold of."
"Yet I have been credibly informed," replied Max, "that when you go to
see a so-called problem play of the more intellectual kind, it is
arranged for you to go in Lent, for the simple reason that during that
period of fasting it is against etiquette for the papers to make any
announcement of the fact."
"You don't say so!" exclaimed the King.
"You were not aware of it, then? Yet it is all arranged for you by the
Comptroller-General. Tell him that you wish to go and see _The Gaudy
Girl_ presently, on its five hundredth performance, and he will raise no
difficulty whatever. Tell him that you intend to be present at a
performance of _Law and Order_, a piece that has managed to hold on
through thirty performances in spite of the many interests opposed to
it, and difficulties will immediately occur to him. Your going would
revive the fortunes of that play; and as it makes a very direct attack
upon our present judicial system, you can have nothing to do with it.
Yet I hear that as a result of its production modifications in our
criminal procedure have already been discussed."
"Max," said the King, "you are quite unfair! Our last State performance
was of a play that attacked the very things you are always talking
about, money-lending, gambling, commercial greed, and the rest of it;
and it was the Comptroller-General himself who selected it."
"There!" exulted Max, "now you have given me an example, and I will tell
you what happened. You had as your guest the king of a country
possessing a real school of drama which is affecting the whole of the
European stage. What did we do in his honor and for the honor of our
dramatic literature? We chose a play of sixty years ago--our worst
period--a piece of clever bombastic fustian mildewed with age; and we
chose it merely because it contained the greatest possible number of
small 'effective' parts in which 'star' actors could strut across the
stage, make their bow before an extremely distinguished audience, and
speak their lines in the ears of royalty as the accepted representatives
of modern drama. And how they did speak them! How they clung to their
entries and exits, how they gassed, and gagged, and threw in fresh
'business' to extend the all too brief time of their appearing; and what
an abysmally boring performance the whole thing was! Over a score of
these leading actors and actresses had appeared in a similar gala
performance on the occasion of your coronation, twenty-five years ago.
Most of them are now living on their past reputations, but they have
become established; and so that woeful exhibition of utterly used-up
material was royalty's public recognition of drama in this country!
There, then, you have our connection with art! What good do you suppose
we do by countenancing performances like that? We are merely employed to
flatter the popular choice and to fatten out the drama in its most
commercial connection. All that was done to suit the managers. It gave a
pleasant little fillip to the star-system on which most of our theaters
are now run; every theater contributed its quota and secured its
proportion of reward."
"I was under the impression that they all gave their services."
"Just as you gave yours. You were all busily engaged in making each
other popular, and in maintaining your prestige; and you were all very
well paid for your trouble."
"But what else do you expect me to do?" exclaimed the unhappy monarch
irritably. "All this destructive criticism of yours is so easy; but what
does it lead to? Nothing!"
"Revolution," declared Max, "peaceful, bloodless revolution! Whenever
any matter is submitted to you over which you have control and a
deciding voice, do the unexpected, and you will nearly always be right!
That is the biggest revolution in this unwritten Constitution of ours
that I can suggest. Do it, and then watch the results."
"But, for instance, do what?"
"Well, go for a beginning to the very plays your Comptroller refrains
from recommending or tries to dissuade you from. Oh, you won't come upon
anything shocking; quite the reverse. That play, _The Gaudy Girl_, which
I spoke of just now, is about to be revived in a new form--with
additions. No doubt it will draw enormously; and as a fortune has been
spent on it you would do a popular thing by attending the first
performance. It is a risky and indecent piece, but no one will object,
on that score, to its receiving the royal patronage."
"How possibly can it be indecent," protested the King, "when it has
already run for five hundred nights at one of our leading theaters?"
Max smiled. "Father," he said, "in all your life have you ever once been
in a crowd--formed part of it, I mean? Well, then, how can you tell? I
have. There is plenty of indecency in a Jingalese crowd--especially
indecent suggestion; and it is crowds the theaters have to cater for."
"Still, they have the Censor to reckon with."
"The Censor!" exclaimed Max. "Have you ever asked the Lord Functionary,
who controls him, to show you the text of the plays he passes?--or gone
further in order to compare them with those he does not pass? Till you
have, you know nothing about the Censor's protective powers. He merely
protects the existing order of things, like yourself; whatever is paying
and popular it becomes his duty to countenance. Well, all that is
strictly within your own department, for the supervision of the morals
of the stage is still a royal prerogative outside parliamentary control.
And I tell you this--that if you were to begin exercising your
prerogative conscientiously you would get into more intimate touch with
the popular will than would suit the calculations of your ministers. As
for the Lord Functionary, he would probably resign. He might be glad of
the excuse. Just now there is a considerable row on, and he finds
himself in hot water. When you see him you had better ask him about it;
and as he is technically the keeper of your conscience you really have a
concern in the matter. What has he been doing? Oh, merely drawing the
usual invidious distinction between adultery treated seriously and
adultery treated as a joke. Under this latter and more popular form it
is now occupying with success half the theaters in Jingalo. And if you
want to see the deeps open, and understand what they contain,--well,
there you have your cue: follow it! Only do that, and you will light
such a candle--Ah! now I am quoting from English history; and as I am
only concerned with that of Jingalo--I perceive that my present chapter
has come to an end. May I take another cigar?"
III
All this time the King had sat cautiously imbibing the stimulus of his
son's words. They sent a curious glow through his system; for they
touched on the very point which was now daily engaging his
thoughts--how, in connection with his own ministerial problem, to do the
thing which Brasshay did not expect without thereby involving the
prestige of the monarchy in ruin. He looked at his son, so full of
self-confidence, so easy and unconcerned in the opinions of others, and
very greatly he envied him.
"Max," he said slowly, "you are a very dangerous character."
And Max was flattered, as your man of words and not of deeds always is
flattered when the attributes which belong by rights to his betters are
ascribed to him.
Nevertheless, in this instance the epithet was well earned, for these
secret potations of Max were having their effect upon the King's brain;
they reproduced in facsimile the cerebral excitement which had followed
upon his fall, and touching the same spot kindled in him a curious
mental ardor, which sent him to his Council a different person
altogether, one whom his ministers were finding it difficult to
recognize and still more difficult to reconcile to their plans. Only
when the effects had died down towards the end of each day did the King
become himself again. Obstreperous till noon, he would then quiet down
by degrees till, at six o'clock, his spirits had reached a strange nadir
of depression. Had Brasshay only caught him then, in that period of
reaction, he would have found him unformidable as of old; but Brasshay
did not know. And then, night after night, came Max with his tangle of
words and whipped him into fresh revolt.
He still carried the memory of that last conversation--that chapter
which Max had composed into the echoing cavities of his brain--when he
next encountered the Lord Functionary.
Certain questions of court etiquette and procedure having been disposed
of: "By the way," said his Majesty, "I was told yesterday that you are
being criticised--in the play department, I mean."
The Lord Functionary had been spending sleepless nights in a scrambling
attempt to acquire a literary education; but his own royal master was
the last person to whom he would give himself away; so he only smiled
with that air of deference and self-complacence which all court
officials know how to combine. "I have heard rumors of it, sir," he
replied, in a tone of easy detachment.
"Who are making the complaints?"
"Certain members of Parliament, I believe. They have constituents to
satisfy; and under a democracy, of course, autocrats can never do
right."
"Are you the autocrat?" inquired the King.
"At your Majesty's disposal," returned the Lord Functionary with a bow.
"Then you are not responsible to Parliament?"
The Lord Functionary smiled, with a touch of disdain. "I should not be
holding office if I were," said he.
"Then you are not under the Prime Minister, either?"
"No more than your Majesty," said the magnificent one blandly. "In the
order of precedence I am, indeed, several degrees above him. It is, of
course, a Government appointment; but while I hold it my discretionary
powers are unlimited."
This seemed a very great person, and the King looked on him with envy.
"To whom, then, are you actually responsible?" he inquired.
"To you, sir."
"To me alone?"
"My official title would make it indecent for me to consult any one but
your Majesty."
"Ah, yes, you keep my conscience for me, don't you?" said the King. Max
was right, then; here was something still left for him to do. He
addressed himself to the previous question.
"What exactly is the trouble?"
"A self-advertising minority, sir, has been persistently submitting
plays which it was quite out of the question to pass. Being annoyed,
they are now attacking the plays which _have_ passed."
"I should like," said the King, "to see some of these plays; to be in
touch, if I may so put it, with my own conscience. Would you be good
enough to send me three of those you have not passed, and three of the
others which are now being attacked. I would like also," he added, "to
see _The Gaudy Girl_ in its new version."
The Lord Functionary raised his pale eyebrows.
"May I be allowed to know why, sir?" he inquired.
"Just curiosity," said the King. "I thought of going to see it, and I
wanted first to be sure that there was nothing--nothing, you know----"
The Lord Functionary's face became wreathed in smiles.
"Why, certainly, sir. I will see that a copy is sent to your Majesty at
once. It is, of course, work of a very light and frivolous kind--but it
is popular and it does no harm." Then, as by an after-thought, the
official countenance grew grave. "Was her Majesty also intending to be
present?" he inquired.
The King, discerning that a negative was invited, gave the required
assurance. "As a matter of fact," said he, "it was the Prince who asked
me to go--suggested it, that is to say." And immediately official
confidence was restored, for to the Lord Functionary Max as a reformer
was still unknown, while his taste for frivolous diversion was more
easily assumed. And so in due course a copy of the play reached the
King's hands.
Perhaps it was through mere inadvertence that the other six did not
accompany it. The King noted the omission; but when once he started to
read the single play which had reached him he forgot all about the
others, for he found that his hands were full. At one stroke of the
scythe he had reaped a plentiful harvest.
Here was a play on the very eve of production, reeking with the
sniggering improprieties which the keeper of the King's conscience had
permitted to become the popular vogue. Suggestions and innuendoes to
which the ordinary theater-going public had now grown accustomed, struck
his inexperienced Majesty as bold and glaring novelties. The mere
cheapness of the wit he passed uncritically by, but the indecencies
were so bare and bald that even he, with all his innocence and
inexperience, could not fail to understand them. The explanation, of
course, was easy; this new version of an old and accepted play had
received the official sanction through oversight. Providence had sent
him to the rescue in the nick of time; and delighted to have found
something which his hand really could do, he took up the blue pencil and
set to work.
Snatches of dialogue, half lines of lyric--especially when it came to
the last verse--here, there, and everywhere he scored them through with
a ruthless hand; and with a renewed sense of usefulness, and a
conscience well at ease, he returned the much deleted copy to the Lord
Functionary.
Before long that official visited him, presenting a grave countenance.
He was by no means enthusiastic over the royal handiwork; the production
was about to take place; the play had already practically been
licensed--silence up to so late a moment having virtually given consent;
and--most difficult point of all--these things which the King was now
ruling out had almost all of them been in the previously accepted
version.
"Then I suppose," said his Majesty, "that nobody really reads the
plays?"
"Oh, yes, sir, they are always read," corrected the Lord Functionary,
"but our readers have necessarily to go upon certain lines. They are
guided by precedent and custom, which it would be highly inadvisable to
disturb."
So he pleaded that the _status quo ante_ might prevail; and yet, man to
man, he could not defend what the King showed him.
"Could you," inquired his Majesty indignantly, "read such things aloud
to your own family? Could you comfortably, if I called upon you to do
so, read them aloud to me?"
"The drama," explained the Lord Functionary, "is so different from
anything else; it has not to observe the same conventions. In light
comedy, especially, these things really do not count. People never
trouble to think about them--they mean nothing."
"In that case," said the King, "no one will mind your cutting them out."
The Lord Functionary seemed not so sure,--his assurance went, in fact,
in quite an opposite direction. He pleaded hard for the trade interests
which he stood to represent. The play was in an advanced state of
rehearsal; many thousands had been spent upon it; and, seeing that it
was but a revival, no doubt about the new version passing had existed
anywhere.
But to all his entreaties the King remained adamant.
"In this matter," said he, "you have to consult my conscience."
The point could not be further argued.
"It is very unfortunate," said the Lord Functionary in acid tones.
"I must insist," said his Majesty, "that you see to these omissions
being made." And the Lord Functionary bowed his pained body over the
hand which the King graciously extended.
"Your Majesty must be obeyed," said he.
It was a phrase that the King very seldom heard; it gave him a taste of
power.
"Max," said he to his son, upon their next meeting, "I have been doing
as you advised. And I do believe you are right."
"What did I advise?" inquired Max, assuming forgetfulness.
"That I should 'do a bust' was, I think, your expression; something
unexpected."
"And how have you done it?"
"I have censored _The Gaudy Girl_."
Max whistled.
IV
The sibilations of that whistle were prophetic of atmospheric
disturbance to come. In a week the storm broke.
The King happened to be away, paying a visit of complimentary inspection
to frontier fortresses and heard nothing about it. But on his return Max
came to him charged with tidings.
He stood over his father and looked at him with a note of satirical
approval in his eye, which did not inspire the King with any confidence.
"Sir, do you know what you have done?"
His Majesty denied the impeachment. "I haven't done anything. Not yet."
"You have revolutionized the drama! Even now, at this very moment, the
great heart of Jingalo is throbbing from plushed stalls to gallery
stair-rail. Because of you _The Gaudy Girl_ is playing its third night
to an accompaniment of hilarious riot and uproar such as have not been
known in our dramatic world since the public was forced to give up its
right to free sittings."
The King was startled; some alarm crept into his voice. "Do you mean
that I have done harm?"
"Not in the least; no, quite the reverse. But you have certainly doubled
the play's fortune. The run is going to be tremendous."
His Majesty felt flattered; had he not reason? For this surely must mean
that he had rightly interpreted the public taste, and that what the
popular will really wanted was a pure and carefully expurgated drama.
But Max speedily undeceived him.
"What happened," said he, "is this. The Lord Functionary obeyed your
orders, and less than a week ago word went to the management, happily
engaged with its finishing touches to the play. Your share in the
business, of course, was not mentioned; your cuttings had become the
official act of the department. What that meant, you can perhaps hardly
conceive. Here was popular musical comedy censored as it had never been
censored before. Time was too short for negotiation; besides the whole
thing was too drastic for half measures to be of any avail. Dullness,
decorum, and disaster stared the management in the face. Suddenly
perceiving that its strength lay in submission, it accepted the
situation like a man, and in all Jingalo to-day, no hand is raised for
the censorship. You have given it the _coup de grace_--it will have to
go; for you have enlisted the managers--the trade interest against it."
"I?" exclaimed the King.
"Its moral position, as I told you," went on his son, "had recently been
shaken by the attacks of the intellectuals--a camp, however, so much in
the minority that hitherto its hostility has not been seriously
regarded. But now Jingalese drama, as a great commercial enterprise, an
interest wherein hundreds of thousands of pounds are yearly invested,
has been touched on the raw, and Jingalese drama has risen and shaken
itself in wrath. The press, which depends on it for advertisement, has,
of course, rushed to its assistance, and condemnation of the censorship
now figures in stupendous headlines on all the posters. Leading
articles, interviews, and indignation meetings are the order of the day;
I wonder you can have missed them."