Skip to main content

Portrait of a Gentleman in Slippers

From Adobe


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

 

Top post on Blogchatter

Comments

  1. Yamini MacLeanJanuary 10, 2023 at 2:21 AM

    Hari OM
    Quite so! I have made myself a little unpopular in the past for tearing off others' "masks", exposing them for who they really are. Turns out they have to come that themselves. We all of us must learn to become 'naked'. Only then can we rid ourselves of the vulnerability that drives the 'dressing up' in the first place. YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJanuary 10, 2023 at 8:43 AM

      It's people's insecurities probably that make them wear do many masks. Now it's almost impossible to find genuine faces. Tough life.

      Delete
  2. magiceyeJanuary 10, 2023 at 10:51 AM

    So true!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Rajeev MoothedathJanuary 14, 2023 at 1:28 PM

    Loved the story. Thanks for sharing!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Yesterday

With students of Carmel Margaret, are you grieving / Over Goldengrove unleaving…? It was one of my first days in the eleventh class of Carmel Public School in Kerala, the last school of my teaching career. One girl, whose name was not Margaret, was in the class looking extremely melancholy. I had noticed her for a few days. I didn’t know how to put the matter over to her. I had already told the students that a smiling face was a rule in the English class. Since Margaret didn’t comply, I chose to drag Hopkins in. I replaced the name of Margaret with the girl’s actual name, however, when I quoted the lines. Margaret is a little girl in the Hopkins poem. Looking at autumn’s falling leaves, Margaret is saddened by the fact of life’s inevitable degeneration. The leaves have to turn yellow and eventually fall. And decay. The poet tells her that she has no choice but accept certain inevitabilities of life. Sorrow is our legacy, Margaret , I said to Margaret’s alter ego in my class. Let
27 comments
Read more

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
37 comments
Read more

William and the autumn of life

William and I were together only for one year, but our friendship has grown stronger year after year. The duration of that friendship is going to hit half a century. In the meanwhile both he and I changed many places. William was in Kerala when I was in Shillong. He was in Ireland when I was in Delhi. Now I am in Kerala where William is planning to migrate back. We were both novices of a religious congregation for one year at Kotagiri in Tamil Nadu. He was older than me by a few years and far more mature too. But we shared a cordial rapport which kept us in touch though we went in unexpected directions later. William’s conversations had the same pattern back then and now too. I’d call it Socratic. He questions a lot of things that you say with the intention of getting to the depth of the matter. The last conversation I had with him was when I decided to stop teaching. I mention this as an example of my conversations with William. “You are a good teacher. Why do you want to stop
15 comments
Read more

Uriel the gargoyle-maker

Uriel was a multifaceted personality. He could stab with words, sting like Mike Tyson, and distort reality charmingly with the precision of a gifted cartoonist. He was sedate now and passionate the next moment. He could don the mantle of a carpenter, a plumber, or a mechanic, as situation demanded. He ran a school in Shillong in those days when I was there. That’s how I landed in the magic circle of his friendship. He made me a gargoyle. Gradually. When the refined side of human civilisation shaped magnificent castles and cathedrals, the darker side of the same homo sapiens gave birth to gargoyles. These grotesque shapes were erected on those beautiful works of architecture as if to prove that there is no human genius without a dash of perversion. In many parts of India, some such repulsive shape is placed in a prominent place of great edifices with the intention of warding off evil or, more commonly, the evil eye. I was Uriel’s gargoyle for warding off the evil eye from his sc
12 comments
Read more

X the variable

X is the most versatile and hence a very precious entity in mathematics. Whenever there is an unknown quantity whose value has to be discovered, the mathematician begins with: Let the unknown quantity be x . This A2Z series presented a few personalities who played certain prominent roles in my life. They are not the only ones who touched my life, however. There are so many others, especially relatives, who left indelible marks on my psyche in many ways. I chose not to bring relatives into this series. Dealing with relatives is one of the most difficult jobs for me. I have failed in that task time and again. Miserably sometimes. When I think of relatives, O V Vijayan’s parable leaps to my mind. Father and little son are on a walk. “Be careful lest you fall,” father warns the boy. “What will happen if I fall?” The boy asks. The father’s answer is: “Relatives will laugh.” One of the harsh truths I have noticed as a teacher is that it is nearly impossible to teach your relatives – nephews
15 comments
Read more