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Summary
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Model Millionaire, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Appearance vs. Reality
Artists and Society
Generosity and Compassion
Summary
Analysis
Hughie Erskine never learned that romance and charm are privileges of the rich. He has both romance and charm, but he lacks the money to back them up. Handsome, kind, and universally well-liked, he’s nevertheless intellectually undistinguished and hopeless at business. He has tried and failed several careers and is seemingly too gentle for the working world.
The story explicitly frames Hughie as a misfit in the unsentimental world of 1880s London. This society esteems the most superficial things in life—wealth and physical attractiveness. Being handsome but poor, Hughie lacks a clear place in this social structure. Paradoxically, his kindness and dreamy personality make him socially popular while ensuring that he will never get ahead in the cutthroat business world (and thus acquire the wealth that is necessary in this society to really enjoy romance). Hughie is stuck in an unfortunate position, but it’s unclear at this point whether his sentimental demeanor indicates his genuine bigheartedness or just lazy mediocrity in a handsome package.
Themes
Hughie loves Laura Merton, the daughter of a Colonel who admires Hughie but forbids their marriage until Hughie can come up with 10,000 pounds—a hopeless prospect for an unemployed person like Hughie.
The Colonel embodies this society’s contradictory set of values: he admires Hughie, presumably, for his looks and his gentleness, but he dismisses him for his poverty. As the enforcer of social expectations about wealth, the Colonel stands in the way of Hughie’s romantic fulfillment.
Themes
Hughie goes to visit his friend Alan Trevor, an eccentric but brilliant painter who was drawn to Hughie’s charm at first but then, later, to his “generous, reckless nature.” While rather odd-looking himself, Alan nonetheless declares that “men who are dandies and women who are darlings” should run the world.
Today, the model sitting for Alan’s painting is an old beggar in rags. Alan is enthralled with the man’s expressive features and the artistic use he can make of them. Hughie expresses pity for the man and criticizes Alan for taking a high payout for his work while his model gets almost nothing. Alan lightheartedly counters that painting is hard work.
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Later that night, Hughie walks into a club and sees Alan. Alan informs him that the model asked all about Hughie after he left. Hughie again expresses pity for the man, and Alan counters with an artist’s perspective: “‘What you call rags I call romance.’” Hughie calls painters “a heartless lot.”
Alan says that he told the model all about Hughie’s romantic and financial woes. A shocked Hughie feels violated until Alan reveals that the model is no beggar but is, in fact, Baron Hausberg, one of the richest men in Europe. Hughie is now even more embarrassed, revealing to Alan that he foolishly gave the Baron a sovereign. Alan laughs hysterically at Hughie’s mistake, while half-jokingly ensuring him that it reflects highly on his “philanthropic spirit.”
The next morning, a messenger on behalf of Baron Hausberg arrives at Hughie’s house. Hughie immediately starts apologizing for presumably insulting the Baron, but the messenger interrupts to hand him a letter. It reads: “A wedding present to Hugh Erskine and Laura Merton, from an old beggar,” and it contains a check for 10,000 pounds.
