Love's Logic and Other Stories/The Prince Consort
THE PRINCE CONSORT
I HAD known her for some considerable time before I came to know him. Most of their acquaintance were in the same case; for to know him was among the less noticeable and the less immediate results of knowing her. You might go to the house three or four times and not happen upon him. He was there always, but he did not attract attention. You joined Mrs. Clinton's Circle, or, if she were in a confidential mood, you sat with her on the sofa. She would point out her daughter, and Muriel, attired in a wonderful elaboration of some old-fashioned mode, would talk to you about "Mama's books," while Mrs. Clinton declared that, do what she would, she could not prevent the darling from reading them. Perhaps, when you had paid half-a-dozen visits, Mr. Clinton would cross your path. He was very polite, active for your comfort, ready to carry out his wife's directions, determined to be useful. Mrs. Clinton recognized his virtues. She called him an "old dear," with a fond, pitying smile on her lips, and would tell you, with an arch glance and the slightest of shrugs, that "he wrote too." If you asked what he wrote, she said that it was something musty," but that it kept him happy, and that he never minded being interrupted, or even having nowhere to write, because Muriel's dancing lesson occupied the dining-room, "and I really couldn't have him in my study. One must be alone to work, mustn't one?" She could not be blamed for holding her work above his; there was nothing at all to show for his; whereas hers not only brought her a measure of fame, as fame is counted, but also doubled the moderate private income on which they had started housekeeping—and writing—thirteen or fourteen years before. Mr. Clinton himself would have been the last to demur to her assumption; he accepted his inferiority with an acquiescence that was almost eagerness. He threw himself into the task of helping his wife, not of course in the writing, but by relieving her of family and social cares. He walked with Muriel, and was sent to parties when his wife was too busy to come. I recollect that he told me, when we had become friendly, that these offices made considerable inroads on his time. "If," he said apologetically, "I had not acquired the habit of sitting up late, I should have difficulty in getting forward with my work. As it happens, Millie doesn't work at night—the brain must be fresh for her work—and so I can have the study then; and I am not so liable to—I mean, I have not so many other calls then."
I liked Clinton, and I do not mean by that that I disliked Mrs. Clinton. Indeed, I admired her very much, and her husband's position in the household seemed just as natural to me as it did to himself and to everybody else. Young Gregory Dulcet, who is a poet and a handsome impudent young dog, was felt by us all to have put the matter in a shape that was at once true in regard to our host, and pretty in regard to our hostess, when he referred, apparently in a casual way, to Mr. Clinton as "the Prince Consort." Mrs. Clinton laughed and blushed; Muriel clapped her hands and ran off to tell her father. She came back saying that he was very pleased with the name, and I believe that very possibly he really was. Anyhow, young Dulcet was immensely pleased with it; he repeated it, and it "caught on." I heard Mrs. Clinton herself, with a half-daring, half-modest air, use it more than once. Thus Mrs. Clinton was led to believe herself great: so that she once asked me if I thought that there was any prospect of The Quarterly "doing her." I said that I did not see why not. Yet it was not a probable literary event.
Thus Mr. Clinton passed the days of an obscure useful life, helping his wife, using the dining-room when dancing lessons did not interfere, and enjoying the luxury of the study in the small hours of the morning. And Mrs. Clinton grew more and more pitiful to him; and Muriel more and more patronizing; and the world more and more forgetful. And then, one fine morning, as I was going to my office, the Prince Consort overtook me. He was walking fast, and he carried a large, untidy, brown-paper parcel. I quickened my pace to keep up with his.
"Sorry to hurry you, old fellow," said he, "but I must be back in an hour. A fellow's coming to interview Millie, and I promised to be back and show him over the house. She doesn't want to lose more of her time than is absolutely necessary: she's in the thick of a new story, you see. And Muriel's got her fiddle lesson, so she can't do it."
"And what's brought you out with the family wash?" I asked in pleasantry, pointing to the parcel.
The Prince Consort blushed (though he must have been forty at least at this date), pulled his beard, and said:
"This? Do you mean this? Oh, this is—well, it's a little thing of my own."
"Of your own? What do you mean?" I asked.
"Didn't Millie ever tell you that I write too? Well, I do when I can get a few hours. And this is it. I've managed to get a fellow to look at it. Millie spoke a word for me, you know."
I do not know whether my expression was skeptical or offensive, but I suppose it must have been one or the other, for the Prince Consort went on hastily:
"Oh, I'm not going to be such an ass as to pay anything for having it brought out, you know. They must do it on spec. or leave it alone. Besides, they really like to oblige Millie, you see."
"It doesn't look very little," I observed.
"Er—no. I'm afraid it's rather long," he admitted.
"What's it about?"
"Oh, it's dull, heavy stuff. I can't do what Millie does, you see. It's not a novel."
We parted at the door of the publisher who had been ready to oblige Mrs. Clinton, and would, I thought, soon regret his complaisance; and I went on to my office, dismissing the Prince Consort and his "little thing" from my mind.
I went to the Clintons' about three months later, in order to bid them farewell before starting for a holiday on the Continent. They were, for a wonder, without other visitors, and when we had talked over Mrs. Clinton's last production, she stretched out her end and pointed to the table.
"And there," she said, with a little laugh, "is Thompson's" (the Prince Consort's Christian name is Thompson) "magnum opus. Vincents' have just sent him his advance copies."
The Prince Consort laughed nervously as I rose and walked to the table.
"Never mind, papa," I heard Muriel say, encouragingly. "You know Mr. George Vincent says it's very good."
"Oh, he thought that would please your mother," protested the Prince Consort.
I examined the two large thick volumes that lay on the table. I glanced at the title page: and I felt sorry for the poor Prince Consort. It must have been a terrible "grind" to write such a book—almost as bad as reading it. But I said something civil about the importance and interest of the subject.
"If you really don't mind looking at it," said the Prince Consort, "I should like awfully to send you a copy."
"Oh yes! You must read it," said Mrs. Clinton. "Why, I'm going to read—well, some of it! I've promised!"
"So am I," said little Muriel, while the Prince Consort rubbed his hands together with a sort of pride which was, on its other side, the profoundest humility. He was wondering, I think, that he should have been able to produce any book at all—even the worst of books—and admiring a talent which he had not considered himself to possess.
"I'm going to worry everybody who comes here to buy it—or to order it at Mudie's, anyhow," pursued Mrs. Clinton. "What's written in this house must be read."
"I hope Vincents' won't lose a lot over it," said the Prince Consort, shaking his head.
"Oh well, they've made a good deal out of me before now," laughed his wife lightly.
I did not take the Prince Consort's book away with me to the Continent. Whatever else it might be, it was certainly not holiday reading, and it would have needed a portmanteau to itself. But the reverberation of the extraordinary and almost unequaled "boom" which the book made reached me in the recesses of Switzerland. I came on The Times of three days before in my hotel, and it had three columns and a half on Mr. Thompson Clinton's work. The weekly Budget, which my sister sent to me at Andermatt, contained, besides a long review, a portrait of the Prince Consort (he must have sat to them on purpose) and a biographical sketch of him, quite accurate as to the remarkably few incidents which his previous life contained. It was this sketch which first caused me to begin to realize what was happening. For the sketch, after a series of eulogies (which to my prepossessed mind seemed absurdly extravagant) on the Prince Consort, reached its conclusion with the following remark:—"Mr. Thompson Clinton's wife is also a writer, and is known in the literary world as the author of more than one clever and amusing novel." I laid down the Budget with a vague feeling that a revolution had occurred. It was now Mrs. Clinton who "wrote too."
I was right in my feeling, yet my feeling was inadequate to the reality with which I was faced on my return to England. The Prince Consort was the hero of the hour. I had written him a line of warm congratulation, and I settled at once to the book, not only in order to be able to talk about it, but also because I could not, without personal investigation, believe that he had done all they said. But he had. It was a wonderful book—full of learning and research, acute and profound in argument, and (greatest of all surprises) eminently lucid, polished, and even brilliant in style; irony, pathos, wit—the Prince Consort had them all. I laid the second volume down, wondering no longer that he had become an authority, that his name appeared in the lists of public banquets, that he was quoted now by one, now by the other, political party, and that translations into French and German were to be undertaken by distinguished savants.
And of course both The Quarterly and The Edinburgh had articles—"did him," as his wife had phrased it. Upon which, being invited by Mrs. Clinton to an evening party, I made a point of going.
There were a great many people there that night. A large group was on the hearthrug. I am tall, and looking over the heads of the assembly I saw the Prince Consort standing there. He was smiling, still rather nervously, and was talking in quick eager tones. Every one listened in deferential silence, broken by murmurs of "Yes, yes," or "How true!" or "I never thought of that!" And Muriel held the Prince Consort's hand, and looked up at him with adoration in her young eyes. I rejoiced with the Prince Consort in his hour of deserved triumph, but I did not, somehow, find Muriel as "pretty a picture" as a lady told me later on that she was. Indeed I thought that the child would have been as well—or better—in bed. I turned round and looked for Mrs. Clinton. Ah, there she was, on her usual sofa. By her side sat Lady Troughton; nobody else was near. Mrs. Clinton was talking very quickly and vivaciously to her companion, who rose as I approached, gave me her hand, and then passed on to join the group on the hearthrug. I sat down by Mrs. Clinton, and began to congratulate her on her husband's marvelous triumph.
"Yes," said she, "do you see he's in both the quarterlies?"
I said that such a tribute was only natural.
"And it's selling wonderfully, too," she went on. "You may imagine how much obliged Vincents' are to me for sending him there!"
"Did you know he was doing it?" I asked.
"Oh, I knew he was working at something. Muriel used to be always chaffing him about it."
"She doesn't chaff him now, I should think."
"No," said Mrs. Clinton, twisting a ring on her finger round and round. Suddenly the group opened, and the Prince Consort came through, leading Muriel by the hand. He marched across the room, followed by his admirers. I rose, and he stood close by his wife, and began to talk about her last novel. He said that it was wonderfully clever, and told us all to get it and read it. Everybody murmured that such was their intention, and a lady observed:
"How charming for you to be able to provide your husband with recreation, Mrs. Clinton!"
"Papa doesn't care about novels much, really," said Muriel.
"You do, I suppose, young lady?" asked some one.
"I like papa's book better," the child answered, and we all laughed, Mrs. Clinton leading the chorus with almost exaggerated heartiness.
And then an enthusiastic woman must needs see where Mr. Thompson Clinton (the Prince Consort bid fair to be double-barreled before long) worked. She would take no denial, and at last Mrs. Clinton rose, and, in spite of her husband's protests, led the way to the study. I had been in the room a little while before I went abroad. It was much changed now. A row of Mrs. Clinton's novels, indeed, still stood on the top of the whatnot, but her "litter" (it had been her own playful name for her manuscripts and other properties) had vanished. Large, fat, solemn books, Blue-books, books of science, of statistics, and other horrors dominated the scene.
"And to think that the great book was actually written in this very room!" mused the enthusiastic woman in awe-struck accents. "I shall always be glad to have seen it."
Again we murmured assent; and the enthusiastic woman, with an obviously sudden remembrance of Mrs. Clinton, turned to her, and said:
"Of course you don't work in the same room?"
"Oh, I do my little writing anywhere," smiled Mrs. Clinton.
"In the dining-room, generally," added Muriel, "when it's not wanted you know."
"Ah, well, you don't need such complete quiet as Mr. Thompson Clinton must have to think out his books, do you?" asked the enthusiastic woman, with a most amiable smile.
"There's plenty of thought in my wife's books, said the Prince Consort.
"Oh yes, of that sort," conceded the enthusiastic woman.
Then we went back to the drawing-room, and the worshipers gradually took their leave, till only Lady Troughton and I were left. The child Muriel looked at her watch.
"Papa's got to go on to a party at the—" she begun.
"There's no hurry, my dear; no hurry at all," interposed the Prince Consort.
"And, anyhow, I'm not going out, Muriel," said Mrs. Clinton. "I'm not asked there, you know."
Yet Lady Troughton and I said "Good-by." The Prince Consort came down-stairs with us, and made us renew our promises to procure his wife's novel. "It's really a striking book," said he. "And, look here, Tom; just write her a line, and tell her how much you like it, will you? You're sure to like it, you know."
Lady Troughton stopped on the door-step, and looked him full in the face. She said nothing; neither did he. But when they shook hands I saw her squeeze his. Then she was good enough to offer me a lift in her carriage, and I handed her in and followed myself. We drove a quarter of a mile or so in silence, and when we had gone thus far Lady Troughton made what appeared to me to be the only remark that could possibly be made.
"Poor little goose!" said Lady Troughton.