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One day the Lord Chamberlain rushed into the throne-room of the palace,
panting with excitement. The aristocracy assembled there crowded round
him with intense interest.
"The King has just got a new Idea!" he gasped, with eyes round with
admiration. "Such a magnificent Idea--!"
"It is indeed! Marvellous!" said the aristocracy. "By Jove--really the
most brilliant Idea we ever----!"
"But you haven't heard the Idea yet," said the Lord Chamberlain. "It's
this," and he proceeded to tell them the Idea. They were stricken dumb
with reverential admiration; it was some time before they could even coo
little murmurs of inarticulate wonder.
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"The King has just got a new Idea," cried the Royal footman (who was
also reporter to the Press), bursting into the office of _The Courtier_,
the leading aristocratic paper, with earls for compositors, and heirs to
baronetcies for devils.
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"Has he, indeed? Splendid!" cried the editor. "Here, Jones"--(the Duke
of Jones, chief leader-writer)--"just let me have three columns in
praise of the King's Idea. Enlarge upon the glorious results it will
bring about in the direction of national glory, imperial unity,
commercial prosperity, individual liberty and morality, domestic----"
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"But hadn't I better tell you the Idea?" said the reporter.
"Well, you might do that perhaps," said the editor.
Then the footman went off to the office of the _Immovable_--the leading
paper of the Hangback party, and cried, "The King has got a new Idea!"
"Ha!" said the editor. "Mr. Smith, will you kindly do me a column in
support of His Majesty's new Idea?"
"Hum! Well, you see," put in Mr. Smith, the eminent journalist. "How
about the new contingent of readers you said you were anxious to
net--the readers who are not altogether satisfied with the recent
attitude of His Majesty?"
"Oh! ah! I quite forgot," said the editor. "Look here, then, just do me
an enigmatical and oracular article that can be read either way."
"Right," replied the eminent journalist. "By the way, I didn't tell you
the Idea," suggested the footman.
"Oh! that doesn't matter; but there, you can, if you like," said the
editor.
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After that the footman sold the news of the Idea to an ordinary
reporter, who dealt with the Rushahead and the revolutionary papers; and
the reporter rushed into the office of the _Whirler_, the leading
Rushahead paper.
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"King! New Idea!" said the editor of the _Whirler_. "Here, do me five
columns of amiable satire upon the King's Idea; keep up the tone of
loyalty--tolerant loyalty--of course; and try to keep hold of those
readers the _Immovable_ is fishing for, of course."
"Very good," said Brown.
"Shall I tell you the Idea?" asked the reporter.
"Ah! yes; if you want to," replied editor.
Then the reporter rushed off to the _Shouter_, the leading revolutionary
journal.
"Here!--hi!--Cruncher!" shouted the editor; "King's got a new Idea. Do
me a whole number full of scathing satire, bitter recrimination, vague
menace, and so on, about the King's Idea. Dwell on the selfishness and
class-invidiousness of the Idea--on the resultant injury to the working
classes and the poor; show how it is another deliberate blow to the
writhing son of toil--you know."
"I know," said Redwrag, the eminent Trafalgar Square journalist.
"Wouldn't you like to hear what the Idea is?" asked the reporter.
"No, I should NOT!" thundered the editor. "Don't defile my ears with
particulars!"
The moment the public heard how the King had got a new Idea, they rushed
to their newspapers to ascertain what judgment they ought to form upon
it; and, as the newspaper writers had carefully thought out what sort of
judgment their public would like to form upon it, the leading articles
exactly reflected the views which that public feebly and
half-consciously held, but would have feared to express without support;
and everything was prejudiced and satisfactory.
Well, on the whole, the public verdict was decidedly in favour of the
King's Idea, which enabled the newspapers gradually to work up a fervent
enthusiasm in their columns; until at length it had become the very
finest Idea ever evolved. After a time it was suggested that a day
should be fixed for public rejoicings in celebration of the King's Idea;
and the scheme grew until it was decided in the Lords and Commons that
the King should proceed in state to the cathedral on the day of
rejoicing, and be crowned as Emperor in honour of the Idea. There was
only one little bit of dissent in the Lower House; and that was when Mr.
Corderoy, M.P. for the Rattenwell Division of Strikeston, moved, as an
amendment, that Bill Firebrand, dismissed by his employer for blowing up
his factory, should be allowed a civil service pension.
So the important day came, and everybody took a holiday except the
pickpockets and the police; and the King was crowned Emperor in the
cathedral, with a grand choral service; and the Laureate wrote a fine
poem calling upon the universe to admire the Idea, and describing the
King as the greatest and most virtuous King ever invented. It was a very
fine poem, beginning:--
Notion that roars and rolls, lapping the stars with its hem;
Bursting the bands of Space, dwarfing eternal Aye.
It became tacitly admitted that the King was the very greatest King in
the world; and he was made an honorary fellow of the Society of
Wiseacres and D.C.L. of the universities.
But one day it leaked out that the Idea was _not_ the King's but the
Prime Minister's. It would not have been known but for the Prime
Minister having taken offence at the refusal of the King to appoint a
Socialist agitator to the vacant post of Lord Chamberlain. You see, it
was this way--the Prime Minister was very anxious to get in his
right-hand man for the eastern division of Grumbury, N. Now, the
Revolutionaries were very strong in the eastern division of Grumbury,
and, by winning the favour of the agitator, the votes of the
Revolutionaries would be secured. So, when the King refused to appoint
the agitator, the Prime Minister, out of nastiness, let out that the
Idea had really been his, and it had been he who had suggested it to the
King.
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There were great difficulties now; for the honours which had been
conferred on the King because of his Idea could not be cancelled; the
title of Emperor could not be taken away again, nor the great poem
unwritten. The latter step, especially, was not to be thought of; for a
leading firm of publishers were just about to issue an _édition de luxe_
of the poem with sumptuous illustrations, engraved on diamond, from the
pencil of an eminent R.A. who had become a classic and forgotten how to
draw. (His name, however, could still draw: so he left the matter to
that.)
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Well, everybody, except a few newspapers, said nothing about the King's
part in the affair; but the warmest eulogies were passed on the Prime
Minister by the papers of his political persuasion, and by the public in
general. The Prime Minister was now the most wonderful person in
existence; and a great public testimonial was got up for him in the
shape of a wreath cut out of a single ruby; the colonies got up a
millennial exhibition in his honour, at which the chief exhibits were
his cast-off clothes, a lock of his hair, a bad sixpence he had passed,
and other relics. He was invited everywhere at once; and it became the
fashion for ladies to send him a slice of bread and butter to take a
bite out of, and subsequently frame the slice with the piece bitten out,
or wear it on State occasions as a necklace pendant. At length the King
felt himself, with many wry faces, compelled to make the Prime Minister
a K.C.B., a K.G., and other typographical combinations, together with an
earl, and subsequently a duke.
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So the Prime Minister retired luxuriously to the Upper House and sat in
a nice armchair, with his feet on another, instead of on a hard bench.
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Then it suddenly came out that the Idea was not the Prime Minister's
either, but had been evolved by his Private Secretary. This was another
shock to the nation. It was suggested by one low-class newspaper
conspicuous for bad taste that the Prime Minister should resign the
dukedom and the capital letters and the ruby wreath, seeing that he had
obtained them on false pretences; but he did not seem to see his way to
do these things: on the contrary, he very incisively asked what would be
the use of a man's becoming Prime Minister if it was only to resign
things to which he had no right. Still, he did the handsome thing: he
presented an autograph portrait of himself to the Secretary, together
with a new £5 note, as a recognition of any inconvenience he might have
suffered in consequence of the mistake.
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Now, too, there was another little difficulty: the Private Secretary
was, to a certain extent, an influential man, but not sufficiently
influential for an Idea of his to be so brilliant as one evolved by a
King or a Prime Minister. Nevertheless, the Press and the public
generously decided that the Idea was a good one, although it had its
assailable points; so the Private Secretary was considerably boomed in
the dailies and weeklies, and interviewed (with portrait) in the
magazines; and he was a made man.
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But, after he had got made, it was accidentally divulged that the Idea
had never been his at all, but had sprung from the intelligence of his
brother, an obscure Government Clerk.
There it was again--the Private Secretary, having been made, could not
be disintegrated; so he continued to enjoy his good luck, with the
exception of the £5 note, which the Prime Minister privately requested
him to return with interest at 10 per cent.
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It was put about at first that the Clerk who had originated the Idea was
a person of some position; and so the Idea continued to enjoy a certain
amount of eulogy and commendation; but when it was subsequently divulged
that the Clerk was merely a nobody, and only had a salary of five and
twenty shillings a week on account of his having no lord for a relation,
it was at once seen that the Idea, although ingenious, was really, on
being looked into, hardly a practicable one. However, the affair brought
the Clerk into notice; so he went on the stage just as the excitement
over the affair was at its height, and made quite a success, although he
couldn't act a bit.
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And then it was proved beyond a doubt that the Clerk had not found the
Idea at all, but had got it from a Pauper whom he knew in the St.
Weektee's union workhouse. So the Clerk was called upon in the Press to
give up his success on the boards and go back to his twenty-five
shilling clerkship; but he refused to do this, and wrote a letter to a
newspaper, headed, "Need an actor be able to act?" and, it being the
off-season and the subject a likely one, the letter was answered next
day by a member of the newspaper's staff temporarily disguised as "A
Call-Boy"--and all this gave the Clerk another lift.
About the Pauper's Idea there was no difficulty whatever; every
newspaper and every member of the public had perceived long ago, on the
Idea being originally mooted, that there was really nothing at all in
it; and the _Chuckler_ had a very funny article, bursting with new and
flowery turns of speech, by its special polyglot contributor who made
you die o' laughing about the Peirastic and Percipient Pauper.
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So the Pauper was not allowed his evening out for a month; and it became
a question whether he ought not to be brought up before a magistrate and
charged with something or other; but the matter was magnanimously
permitted to drop.
By this time the public had had a little too much of it, as they were
nearly reduced to beggary by the contributions they had given to one
ideal-originator after another; and they certainly would have lynched
any new aspirant to the Idea, had one (sufficiently uninfluential)
turned up.
And, meanwhile, the Idea had been quietly taken up and set going by a
select company of patriotic personages who were in a position to set the
ball rolling; and the Idea grew, and developed, and developed, until it
had attained considerable proportions and could be seen to be full of
vast potentialities either for the welfare or the injury of the Empire,
according to the way in which it might be worked out.
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Now, at the outset, owing to tremendous opposition from various
quarters, the Idea worked out so badly that it threatened incalculable
harm to the commerce and general happiness of the realm; whereupon the
public decided that it certainly _must_ have originated with the Pauper;
and they went and dragged him from the workhouse, and were about to hang
him to a lamp-post, when news arrived that the Idea was doing less harm
to the Empire than had been supposed.
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So they let the Pauper go; for it became evident to them that it had
been the Clerk's Idea; and just as they were deliberating what to do
with the Clerk, it was discovered that the Idea was really beginning to
work out very well indeed, and was decidedly increasing the prosperity
of the realm. Thereupon the public decided that it must have been the
Private Secretary's Idea, after all; and were just setting out in a
deputation to thank the Private Secretary, when fresh reports arrived
showing that the Idea was a very great national boon; and then the
public felt that it _must_ have originated with the Prime Minister, in
spite of all that had been said to the contrary.
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But in the course of a few months, everybody in the land became aware
that the tide of national prosperity and happiness was indeed advancing
in the most glorious way, and all owing to the Great Idea; and _now_
they perceived as one man that it had been the King's own Idea, and no
doubt about the matter. So they made another day of rejoicing, and
presented the King with a diamond throne and a new crown with "A1" in
large letters upon it. And that King was ever after known as the very
greatest King that had ever reigned.
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But it was the Pauper's Idea after all.