The Strand Magazine/Volume 5/Issue 26/The Queer Side of Things
The Queer Side of Things.
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.
"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.
"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 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———"
"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.
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.
"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 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 the 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 scathing satire, full of 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:
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 righthand 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.
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.)
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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 lamppost, when news arrived that the Idea was doing less harm to the Empire than had been supposed.
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.
But in the course of a few months, everybody in the 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.
But it was the Pauper's Idea after all.
J. F. Sullivan.
These are two photographs of a "turnip," unearthed a little time ago by a Lancashire farmer. We are indebted for the photographs to Mr. Alfred Whalley, 15, Solent Crescent, West Hampstead.
This is a photo. of a hock bottle that was washed ashore at Lyme Regis covered with barnacles, which look like a bunch of flowers. The photograph has been sent to us by Mr. F. W. Shephard, photographer, Lyme Regis.
LOCOMOTIVE BOILER EXPLOSION.
The drawing, taken from a photo., shows the curious result of a boiler explosion which occurred some time ago at Soosmezo, in Hungary. The explosion broke the greater part of the windows in the neighbouring village, and the cylindrical portion of the boiler, not shown in drawing, as well as the chimney, were hurled some two hundred yards away.
1. "You see," said the professor to his pupil, "I will hide my gold-mounted umbrella in this heap of leaves———"
2. "———and then take my dog a mile beyond this lonely spot and he will retrieve it again."
3. Meanwhile Ragged Jack the Tramp improves the shining hour.
4. Flight!
5. "And now," said the professor, "having gone about a mile, we loose the dog to return to the scent and find the umbrella."
6. Wisdom and sagacity at fault.
On the sagacity of the dog.