Christina Alberta's father

by H. G. Wells

“It becomes all different,” he said, “when one realizes that one is not the only Sargon. I thought of being a great king, a great leader, with the rest of the world just following me. I doubt if I ever felt quite up to a job of that sort, but I couldn’t see any other way of being Sargon and a king. Now I do. I did my best, but even when I went to Buckingham Palace I realized that the thing was going to be too big for me. I was telling Dr. Devizes—I told him, that since he was Sargon and King just as much as me and that almost anyone might become Sargon and King, then it wasn’t a case for palaces and thrones any longer, or for being proclaimed and crowned—such things were as much out of date as flint implements; and that the real things was to be just a kingly person and work with all the other kingly persons in the world to make the world worthy of our high descent. Anyone who wakes up to that becomes a kingly person. We can be active kings even if we remain kings incognito. One can be a laundryman like I was when I was just Preemby, and think of nothing but the profits and needs and vanities and fears of a little laundryman—and how dull it was!—or one can be a king, the descendant of ten thousand kings, the joint heir to the inheritance of all human affairs, the lord of the generations still unborn—who happens to be living in exile as a laundryman.”

He paused.

“I agree with most of that,” said Bobby. “It’s—it’s attractive.”

“So far it is as plain as can be. But after that the difficulties begin. It isn’t enough just to say you are a king. You have to be a king. You have to do. You can’t be a king and not do kingly things. But it’s just there that Dr. Devizes and I—we weren’t so clear. There’s a lot to be thought out. What is my kingly task? In this frail body—and what I am? I am not clear. Yet the mere fact that I am not clear shows clearly where I have to begin. I have to get clear. I have to get knowledge, find out about my kingdom. That’s reasonable. I have to learn more about my great inheritance, our great inheritance, the history of it, the possibilities of it, the ways of the men who misrule it. I have to learn about business and economics and money; and then when I see it all plain I have to exert myself and vote and work, and I have to find out what particular gifts I have and how I may best give them to our kingdom. Each king must glorify his particular reign with his particular gift. We agreed about that.

“So far I do not know my particular gift. Dr. Devizes says that so far as he is concerned he must work out human motives and human relationships; his gift and his natural interest is for mental science. He has his task meted out for him, his kingly task. But for me at present there isn’t that much self-knowledge. I have to begin lower down and with broader questions. I have to learn about the universe and about the history of this world-empire of Sargon’s, and of all the things I have neglected in my dreams and littleness. I have to go to school again. To learn how to think harder. I don’t mind the fatigue. But I am impatient. When I think of all that lies before me, the reading, the inquiries, the visits to museums and suchlike places, I want to get up right away and begin. I have lived so unobservant and irresponsible a life that I am puzzled how to account for the years I have spent. I have mooned them away. But I am glad I have awakened to my kingship before it is too late.

“I am quite a young man still. I am a little past forty, but that is nothing. Half of that was childhood and boyhood, and much of the rest inattention. For all I know I may live for another forty years. I’m not half through. And they may be the best years, the full years. I can spend three or four just learning—learning the round world. I shall begin to find out politics, and why men and women are servile and little-minded. I shall begin to realize how I can extend to those others this great liberation that has come to me. I shall begin to have a political life. A man who has no political life is like a rat which lives in a ship rather than like a man who navigates it. Then within that I shall begin to find my own proper life, my particular task. It is premature, I think, but I am very greatly drawn to the riddle of madness and asylums. I do not understand why there is madness. It puzzles and distresses me, and Dr. Devizes agrees with me that when a thing puzzles and distresses the mind the thing to do is to gather all the knowledge and ideas one can about it—scientifically. Presently it ceases to distress; it interests and occupies. And when I was in—that Place, I talked to some of those poor creatures. I was very sorry for them, I made them promises to help them when my kingdom came. And now I begin to see what my kingdom is, and the way in which I must enter in to possess it. Perhaps in good time I shall learn and spread knowledge about asylums, and make things better in them so that they will not simply imprison people but help and cure them.

“It was Dr. Devizes’ idea, I think—or we may have worked it out together—that there is a real and important purpose in madness. It is a sort of simplification, a removal of checks and controls, and a sort of natural experiment. The secret things of the mind are laid bare. But then if poor souls are to suffer that sort of thing to yield knowledge for others, they ought to be treated properly; they ought to be cherished and made the utmost use of, and not handed over to such brutes as we had.... I can’t tell you. Not yet. Brutes they were.... And in their sane moments—they all have sane moments, these lunatics—they ought to be comforted and told.”

The queer little round face, with its sprouting moustache and its pale blue eyes, stared at Bobby.

“When first I saw you,” said Sargon, “I did not realize in the least how things really were between us. I was still wrapped up in vaingloriousness; I thought I was a great prophet and teacher and king, and that all the world had to obey me. I thought you were going to be the first and best and nearest of my disciples. But now I know better about myself. And about other people. They are here not to be my followers and disciples but to be my fellow kings. We have to work together with all the others who are awakened, for our kingdom and the great progress of mankind.”

He went on talking rather to himself than to Bobby.