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THE CORONATION OF MR. THOMAS SHAP
It was the occupation of Mr. Thomas Shap to persuade customers that
the goods were genuine and of an excellent quality, and that as
regards the price their unspoken will was consulted. And in order to
carry on this occupation he went by train very early every morning
some few miles nearer to the City from the suburb in which he slept.
This was the use to which he put his life.
From the moment when he first perceived (not as one reads a thing in a
book, but as truths are revealed to one's instinct) the very
beastliness of his occupation, and of the house that he slept in, its
shape, make and pretensions, and even the clothes that he wore; from
that moment he withdrew his dreams from it, his fancies, his
ambitions, everything in fact except that ponderable Mr. Shap that
dressed in a frock-coat, bought tickets and handled money and could in
turn be handled by the statistician. The priest's share in Mr. Shap,
the share of the poet, never caught the early train to the City at
all.
He used to take little flights of fancy at first, dwelt all day in his
dreamy way on fields and rivers lying in the sunlight where it strikes
the world more brilliantly further South. And then he began to imagine
butterflies there; after that, silken people and the temples they
built to their gods.
They noticed that he was silent, and even absent at times, but they
found no fault with his behaviour with customers, to whom he remained
as plausible as of old. So he dreamed for a year, and his fancy gained
strength as he dreamed. He still read halfpenny papers in the train,
still discussed the passing day's ephemeral topic, still voted at
elections, though he no longer did these things with the whole
Shap--his soul was no longer in them.
He had had a pleasant year, his imagination was all new to him still,
and it had often discovered beautiful things away where it went,
southeast at the edge of the twilight. And he had a matter-of-fact and
logical mind, so that he often said, "Why should I pay my twopence at
the electric theatre when I can see all sorts of things quite easily
without?" Whatever he did was logical before anything else, and those
that knew him always spoke of Shap as "a sound, sane, level-headed
man."
On far the most important day of his life he went as usual to town by
the early train to sell plausible articles to customers, while the
spiritual Shap roamed off to fanciful lands. As he walked from the
station, dreamy but wide awake, it suddenly struck him that the real
Shap was not the one walking to Business in black and ugly clothes,
but he who roamed along a jungle's edge near the ramparts of an old
and Eastern city that rose up sheer from the sand, and against which
the desert lapped with one eternal wave. He used to fancy the name of
that city was Larkar. "After all, the fancy is as real as the body,"
he said with perfect logic. It was a dangerous theory.
For that other life that he led he realized, as in Business, the
importance and value of method. He did not let his fancy roam too far
until it perfectly knew its first surroundings. Particularly he
avoided the jungle--he was not afraid to meet a tiger there (after all
it was not real), but stranger things might crouch there. Slowly he
built up Larkar: rampart by rampart, towers for archers, gateway of
brass, and all. And then one day he argued, and quite rightly, that
all the silk-clad people in its streets, their camels, their wares
that come from Inkustahn, the city itself, were all the things of his
will--and then he made himself King. He smiled after that when people
did not raise their hats to him in the street, as he walked from the
station to Business; but he was sufficiently practical for recognize
that it was better not to talk of this to those that only knew him as
Mr. Shap.
Now that he was King in the city of Larkar and in all the desert that
lay to the East and North he sent his fancy to wander further afield.
He took the regiments of his camel-guard and went jingling out of
Larkar, with little silver bells under the camels' chins, and came to
other cities far-off on the yellow sand, with clear white walls and
towers, uplifting themselves in the sun. Through their gates he passed
with his three silken regiments, the light-blue regiment of the
camel-guards being upon his right and the green regiment riding at his
left, the lilac regiment going on before. When he had gone through the
streets of any city and observed the ways of its people, and had seen
the way that the sunlight struck its towers, he would proclaim himself
King there, and then ride on in fancy. So he passed from city to city
and from land to land. Clear-sighted though Mr. Shap was, I think he
overlooked the lust of aggrandizement to which kings have so often
been victims; and so it was that when the first few cities had opened
their gleaming gates and he saw peoples prostrate before his camel,
and spearmen cheering along countless balconies, and priests come out
to do him reverence, he that had never had even the lowliest authority
in the familiar world became unwisely insatiate. He let his fancy ride
at inordinate speed, he forsook method, scarce was he king of a land
but he yearned to extend his borders; so he journeyed deeper and
deeper into the wholly unknown. The concentration that he gave to this
inordinate progress through countries of which history is ignorant and
cities so fantastic in their bulwarks that, though their inhabitants
were human, yet the foe that they feared seemed something less or
more; the amazement with which he beheld gates and towers unknown even
to art, and furtive people thronging intricate ways to acclaim him as
their sovereign--all these things began to affect his capacity for
Business. He knew as well as any that his fancy could not rule these
beautiful lands unless that other Shap, however unimportant, were well
sheltered and fed: and shelter and food meant money, and money,
Business. His was more like the mistake of some gambler with cunning
schemes who overlooks human greed. One day his fancy, riding in the
morning, came to a city gorgeous as the sunrise, in whose opalescent
wall were gates of gold, so huge that a river poured between the bars,
floating in, when the gates were opened, large galleons under sail.
Thence there came dancing out a company with instruments, and made a
melody all around the wall; that morning Mr. Shap, the bodily Shap in
London, forgot the train to town.
Until a year ago he had never imagined at all; it is not to be
wondered at that all these things now newly seen by his fancy should
play tricks at first with the memory of even so sane a man. He gave up
reading the papers altogether, he lost all interest in politics, he
cared less and less for things that were going on around him. This
unfortunate missing of the morning train even occurred again, and the
firm spoke to him severely about it. But he had his consolation. Were
not Arathrion and Argun Zeerith and all the level coasts of Oora his?
And even as the firm found fault with him his fancy watched the yaks
on weary journeys, slow specks against the snow-fields, bringing
tribute; and saw the green eyes of the mountain men who had looked at
him strangely in the city of Nith when he had entered it by the desert
door. Yet his logic did not forsake him; he knew well that his strange
subjects did not exist, but he was prouder of having created them with
his brain, than merely of ruling them only; thus in his pride he felt
himself something more great than a king, he did not dare to think
what! He went into the temple of the city of Zorra and stood some time
there alone: all the priests kneeled to him when he came away.
He cared less and less for the things we care about, for the affairs
of Shap, the business-man in London. He began to despise the man with
a royal contempt.
One day when he sat in Sowla, the city of the Thuls, throned on one
amethyst, he decided, and it was proclaimed on the moment by silver
trumpets all along the land, that he would be crowned as king over all
the lands of Wonder.
By that old temple where the Thuls worshipped, year in, year out, for
over a thousand years, they pitched pavilions in the open air. The
trees that blew there threw out radiant scents unknown in any
countries that know the map; the stars blazed fiercely for that famous
occasion. A fountain hurled up, clattering, ceaselessly into the air
armfuls on armfuls of diamonds. A deep hush waited for the golden
trumpets, the holy coronation night was come. At the top of those old,
worn steps, going down we know not whither, stood the king in the
emerald-and-amethyst cloak, the ancient garb of the Thuls; beside him
lay that Sphinx that for the last few weeks had advised him in his
affairs.
Slowly, with music when the trumpets sounded, came up towards him from
we know not where, one-hundred-and-twenty archbishops, twenty angels
and two archangels, with that terrific crown, the diadem of the Thuls.
They knew as they came up to him that promotion awaited them all
because of this night's work. Silent, majestic, the king awaited them.
The doctors downstairs were sitting over their supper, the warders
softly slipped from room to room, and when in that cosy dormitory of
Hanwell they saw the king still standing erect and royal, his face
resolute, they came up to him and addressed him:
"Go to bed," they said--"pretty bed." So he lay down and soon was fast
asleep: the great day was over.
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