Wednesday
When I watched an infirm Donald Trump take a vanity ride around Walter Reed Hospital and then gasp for breath as he returned prematurely to the White House, I thought of the dying king in Maria Mulock Craik’s The Little Lame Prince (1875), a fairy story that riveted me when I was young. Trump may not be dying, but he suddenly seems what Robert Frost would call “a diminished thing.”
As a small child, lame Prince Dolor is spirited off to a tower prison in the desert when his uncle, the regent, usurps the throne. The prince grows up knowing nothing of what has happened, but his fairy godmother provides him with various supports, including a magical traveling cloak and a magpie guide to explain things.
Eventually Dolor learns his history and desires to see the usurper. The magpie knows of a hole in the palace roof that will allow them access. Think of it as the transparency that Trump’s doctors, at his command, are denying the American public:
But the boy hesitated. “Isn’t it rude?—won’t they think us intruding?”
“O, dear, no! There’s a hole like this in every palace, dozens of holes, indeed. Everybody knows it, but nobody speaks of it. Intrusion! Why, though the royal family are supposed to live shut up behind stone walls ever so thick, all the world knows that they live in a glass house where everybody can see them and throw a stone at them. Now pop down on your knees, and take a peep at his Majesty!”
The prince expects something marvelous—“His Majesty!”—but what he finally sees does not impress:
The Prince gazed eagerly down into a large room, the largest room he had ever beheld, with furniture and hangings grander than anything he could have ever imagined. A stray sunbeam, coming through a crevice of the darkened windows, struck across the carpet, and it was the loveliest carpet ever woven—just like a bed of flowers to walk over; only nobody walked over it, the room being perfectly empty and silent.
“Where is the King?” asked the puzzled boy.
“There,” said Mag, pointing with one wrinkled claw to a magnificent bed, large enough to contain six people. In the center of it, just visible under the silken counterpane,—quite straight and still,—with its head on the lace pillow, lay a small figure, something like wax-work, fast asleep—very fast asleep! There was a number of sparkling rings on the tiny yellow hands, that were curled a little, helplessly, like a baby’s, outside the coverlet; the eyes were shut, the nose looked sharp and thin, and the long gray beard hid the mouth and lay over the breast. A sight not ugly nor frightening, only solemn and quiet. And so very silent—two little flies buzzing about the curtains of the bed being the only audible sound.
“Is that the King?” whispered Prince Dolor.
“Yes,” replied the bird.
He had been angry—furiously angry—ever since he knew how his uncle had taken the crown, and sent him, a poor little helpless child, to be shut up for life, just as if he had been dead. Many times the boy had felt as if, king as he was, he should like to strike him, this great, strong, wicked man.
Why, you might as well have struck a baby! How helpless he lay, with his eyes shut, and his idle hands folded: they had no more work to do, bad or good.
I remember, as a child, gazing at the Lucille Corcos illustration (from the 1948 edition) of the prince gazing down at the tiny king, who is swallowed up by the vast bed. The impressive splendor once used to impress the masses has been stripped away.
Although the president may rebound, I sense that he is shrinking in the eyes of all but his most fervent supporters. His tax returns show him to be a failed businessman while his illness proves his reassurances to be hollow, self-serving, and dangerous.
Little Lame Prince, as a fairy tale, concludes with the country coming to its senses and returning the prince to his rightful place. Many of us would like such an ending for ourselves.
Further thought: I also thought of the diminished Wizard of Oz after the screen comes down and of the Red Queen being shaken into a kitten by Alice at the end of Through the Looking Glass. Think of Alice as an America public fed up with the non-stop carnival we have been witnessing:
At this moment she heard a hoarse laugh at her side, and turned to see what was the matter with the White Queen; but, instead of the Queen, there was the leg of mutton sitting in the chair. ‘Here I am!’ cried a voice from the soup tureen, and Alice turned again, just in time to see the Queen’s broad good-natured face grinning at her for a moment over the edge of the tureen, before she disappeared into the soup.
There was not a moment to be lost. Already several of the guests were lying down in the dishes, and the soup ladle was walking up the table towards Alice’s chair, and beckoning to her impatiently to get out of its way.
‘I can’t stand this any longer!’ she cried as she jumped up and seized the tablecloth with both hands: one good pull, and plates, dishes, guests, and candles came crashing down together in a heap on the floor.
‘And as for you,’ she went on, turning fiercely upon the Red Queen, whom she considered as the cause of all the mischief—but the Queen was no longer at her side—she had suddenly dwindled down to the size of a little doll, and was now on the table, merrily running round and round after her own shawl, which was trailing behind her.
At any other time, Alice would have felt surprised at this, but she was far too much excited to be surprised at anything now. ‘As for you,’ she repeated, catching hold of the little creature in the very act of jumping over a bottle which had just lighted upon the table, ‘I’ll shake you into a kitten, that I will!’
She took her off the table as she spoke, and shook her backwards and forwards with all her might.
The Red Queen made no resistance whatever; only her face grew very small, and her eyes got large and green: and still, as Alice went on shaking her, she kept on growing shorter—and fatter—and softer—and rounder—and—
—and it really was a kitten, after all.
Trump is no cute kitten but he needs a good shaking.