Portrait of a Gentleman in Slippers

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All kings and others who wield similar powers (e.g., the Prime Minister in a democracy) are counterfeit people. They hide their real selves behind many masks and facades and present to the public what they think is the ideal image of themselves. A A Milne’s short play, Portrait of a Gentleman in Slippers, entertains us with the motley masks worn by Henry XXIV, a 30-year-old bachelor king who is going to marry Princess Averil soon. Introducing him, Milne says that “He is all the Kings that there have been in fairy tales and history.” He is a paragon of all royal virtues, apparently. How many of those virtues are real, however? This is what the play explores.

The King is seen in the beginning of the play with his body-servant Brand. Brand knows, like anyone who has even the remotest association with royalty, how to keep the King pleased with subtle and not-so-subtle flattery. “It is a pleasure to deal with a beard like your Majesty’s” is one of his opening dialogues. He has just given the King a shave. He knows that his as well as his family’s survival depends on the ‘pleasure’ of the Majesty. Even when the King tells him to address him as ‘you’ instead of ‘your Majesty’, because “I am only a man like yourself,” Brand will put ‘your Majesty’ three times in a single utterance: “Thank you, your Majesty. Your Majesty will understand how devoted I am to your Majesty’s service.” Brand knows too well that Kings love obsequiousness. Kings see themselves as the heroes of most adventurous epics or as models posing for portraits. By and by they come to believe that those projected images of themselves are real.

But people who are close to them know the truth. Princess Averil knows Hilary (the original name of Henry XXIV) from their childhood. She knows that as a boy Hilary was coward and a liar. While playing in the garden as children, Hilary wanted to practise life-saving and asked Averil if she would jump into the pond. She jumped promptly. But Hilary didn’t follow her. The gardener saved her. She taunted Hilary, calling him a coward and wanted to marry the brave gardener. Hilary slapped her and said that his foot slipped and that’s why he did not jump in to save her. “But I promise you it will never slip again,” he added clinging to her.

Averil loved that boy with his cowardice and dishonesty. That boy was real. Today King Henry is counterfeit. “Am I going to lose that little boy?” Averil asks Hilary a few days before their marriage. Hilary is ready to shed his masks and facades before Averil. “I want you to know me as I am,” he says.

He does mean that in spite of himself. In spite of the numerous masks and facades that make up his royal ego. When a stranger comes with a wedding gift which is a magical mirror that shows the reality of a person, Hilary is flummoxed. He sees his own “cruelty, cowardice, deceit, vanity, cunning, arrogance, treachery, meanness, false humility…” in it. “Never have I seen such a face,” he tells himself looking at his image in the mirror. However, he gathers the courage to show that real Hilary to Averil before marriage even if it means rejection from her. The stranger counsels him against it. “The world is at an end if we lose our illusions about our friends,” he knows.

Can we love a person without some illusions that veil his/her flaws? Will we love a person if we see his/her real self in all its ugliness? Averil shows we can. Hilary reveals his magical mirror image to her. Initially Averil thinks the King is going to show her yet another projected image of his like in all the paintings of his. She mocks him listing some of the false images he has created already. “False, dressed-up images” of a coward.  

What she sees, however, amazes her as much as it delights her. “Toto!” She calls him his childhood nickname. “Toto! My darling! You’ve come back to me.” Hilary is not sure whether she is serious. But she is. “My ugly little, stupid little, vain little, bad little, funny little Toto!” She hugs him in genuine affection. Now there is no mask, no façade between them.

The real you is what others will accept gladly and honestly. Shed the masks and facades. Your vices will be seen openly. But people will love you for that transparency. The truth is that we are all flawed. The truth is also that people will see through the masks and facades we erect. If we insist on putting up those masks and facades for whatever reasons, people will pretend to love us for their own reasons – as Brand loves the King. [The stranger advises the King never to see Brand’s image in the mirror. Some illusions are necessary consolations in life.] When we shed those masks and facades, people love us genuinely. Now they know that you are not posing for a portrait. You are not advertising your false images. You are just what you are: a gentleman in slippers, a person without the burden of costumes and cosmetics.

A A Milne [1882-1956]

PS. My post on another play of A A Milne: The Ugly Duckling