by T. S. Eliot
Well, it’s a better way of passing the evening
Than listening to the gramophone.
LAVINIA. We have very good records;
But I always suspected that you really hated music
And that the gramophone was only your escape
From talking to me when we had to be alone.
EDWARD. I’ve often wondered why you married me.
LAVINIA. Well, you really were rather attractive, you know;
And you kept on saying that you were in love with me —
I believe you were trying to persuade yourself you were.
I seemed always on the verge of some wonderful experience
And then it never happened. I wonder now
How you could have thought you were in love with me.
EDWARD. Everybody told me that I was;
And they told me how well suited we were.
LAVINIA. It’s a pity that you had no opinion of your own.
Oh, Edward, I should like to be good to you —
Or if that’s impossible, at least be horrid to you —
Anything but nothing, which is all you seem to want of me.
But I’m sorry for you …
EDWARD. Don’t say you are sorry for me!
I have had enough of people being sorry for me.
LAVINIA. Yes, because they can never be so sorry for you
As you are for yourself. And that’s hard to bear.
I thought that there might be some way out for you
If I went away. I thought that if I died
To you, I who had been only a ghost to you,
You might be able to find the road back
To a time when you were real — for you must have been real
At some time or other, before you ever knew me:
Perhaps only when you were a child.
EDWARD. I don’t want you to make yourself responsible for me:
It’s only another kind of contempt.
And I do not want you to explain me to myself.
You’re still trying to invent a personality for me
Which will only keep me away from myself.
LAVINIA. You’re complicating what is in fact very simple.
But there is one point which I see clearly:
We are not to relapse into the kind of life we led
Until yesterday morning.
EDWARD. There was a door
And I could not open it. I could not touch the handle.
Why could I not walk out of my prison?
What is hell? Hell is oneself,
Hell is alone, the other figures in it
Merely projections. There is nothing to escape from
And nothing to escape to. One is always alone.
LAVINIA. Edward, what are you talking about?
Talking to yourself. Could you bear, for a moment,
To think about me?
EDWARD. It was only yesterday
That damnation took place. And now I must live with it
Day by day, hour by hour, for ever and ever.
LAVINIA. I think you’re on the edge of a nervous breakdown!
EDWARD. Don’t say that!
LAVINIA. I must say it.
I know … of a doctor who I think could help you.
EDWARD. If I go to a doctor, I shall make my own choice;
Not take one whom you choose. How do I know
That you wouldn’t see him first, and tell him all about me
From your point of view? But I don’t need a doctor.
I am simply in hell. Where there are no doctors —
At least, not in a professional capacity.
LAVINIA. One can be practical, even in hell:
And you know I am much more practical than you are.
EDWARD. I ought to know by now what you consider practical.
Practical! I remember, on our honeymoon,
You were always wrapping things up in tissue paper
And then had to unwrap everything again
To find what you wanted. And I never could teach you
How to put the cap on a tube of tooth-paste.
LAVINIA. Very well, then, I shall not try to press you.
You’re much too divided to know what you want.
But, being divided, you will tend to compromise,
And your sort of compromise will be the old one.
EDWARD. You don’t understand me. Have I not made it clear
That in future you will find me a different person?
LAVINIA. Indeed. And has the difference nothing to do
With Celia going to California?
EDWARD. Celia? Going to California?
LAVINIA. Yes, with Peter.
Really, Edward, if you were human
You would burst out laughing. But you won’t.
EDWARD. O God, O God, if I could return to yesterday
Before I thought that I had made a decision.
What devil left the door on the latch
For these doubts to enter? And then you came back, you
The angel of destruction — just as I felt sure.
In a moment, at your touch, there is nothing but ruin.
O God, what have I done? The python. The octopus.
Must I become after all what you would make me?
LAVINIA. Well, Edward, as I am unable to make you laugh,
And as I can’t persuade you to see a doctor,
There’s nothing else at present that I can do about it.
I ought to go and have a look in the kitchen.
I know there are some eggs. But we must go out for dinner.
Meanwhile, my luggage is in the hall downstairs:
Will you get the porter to fetch it up for me?
CURTAIN
Act Two
SIR HENRY HARCOURT-REILLY’S consulting room in London. Morning: several weeks later. SIR HENRY alone at his desk. He presses an electric button. The NURSE-SECRETARY enters, with Appointment Book.
REILLY. About those three appointments this morning, Miss Barraway:
I should like to run over my instructions again.
You understand, of course, that it is important
To avoid any meeting?
NURSE-SECRETARY. You made that clear, Sir Henry:
The first appointment at eleven o’clock.
He is to be shown into the small waiting-room;
And you will see him almost at once.
REILLY. I shall see him at once. And the second?
NURSE-SECRETARY. The second to be shown into the other room
Just as usual. She arrives at a quarter past;
But you may keep her waiting.
REILLY. Or she may keep me waiting;
But I think she will be punctual.
NURSE-SECRETARY. I telephone through
The moment she arrives. I leave her there
Until you ring three times.
REILLY. And the third patient?
NURSE-SECRETARY. The third one to be shown into the small room;
And I need not let you know that she has arrived.
Then, when you ring, I show the others out;
And only after they have left the house….
REILLY. Quite right, Miss Barraway. That’s all for the moment.
NURSE-SECRETARY. Mr. Gibbs is here, Sir Henry.
REILLY. Ask him to come straight in.
[Exit NURSE-SECRETARY]
[ALEX enters almost immediately]
ALEX. When is Chamberlayne’s appointment?
REILLY. At eleven o’clock,
The conventional hour. We have not much time.
Tell me now, did you have any difficulty
In convincing him I was the man for his case?
ALEX. Difficulty? No! He was only impatient
At having to wait four days for the appointment.
REILLY. It was necessary to delay his appointment
To lower his resistance. But what I mean is,
D
oes he trust your judgement?
ALEX. Yes, implicitly.
It’s not that he regards me as very intelligent,
But he thinks I’m well informed: the sort of person
Who would know the right doctor, as well as the right shops.
Besides, he was ready to consult any doctor
Recommended by anyone except his wife.
REILLY. I had already impressed upon her
That she was not to mention my name to him.
ALEX. With your usual foresight. Now, he’s quite triumphant
Because he thinks he’s stolen a march on her.
And when you’ve sent him to a sanatorium
Where she can’t get at him — then, he believes,
She will be very penitent. He’s enjoying his illness.
REILLY. Illness offers him a double advantage:
To escape from himself — and get the better of his wife.
ALEX. Not to escape from her?
REILLY. He doesn’t want to escape from her.
ALEX. He is staying at his club.
REILLY. Yes, that is where he wrote from.
[The house-telephone rings]
Hello! Yes, show him up.
ALEX. You will have a busy morning!
I will go out by the service staircase
And come back when they’ve gone.
REILLY. Yes, when they’ve gone.
[Exit ALEX by side door]
[EDWARD is shown in by NURSE-SECRETARY]
EDWARD. Sir Henry Harcourt-Reilly —
[Stops and stares at REILLY]
REILLY [without looking up from his papers]. Good morning, Mr. Chamberlayne.
Please sit down. I won’t keep you a moment.
— Now, Mr. Chamberlayne?
EDWARD. It came into my mind
Before I entered the door, that you might be the same person:
But I dismissed that as just another symptom.
Well, I should have known better than to come here
On the recommendation of a man who did not know you.
Yet Alex is so plausible. And his recommendations
Of shops, have always been satisfactory.
I beg your pardon. But he is a blunderer.
I should like to know … but what is the use!
I suppose I might as well go away at once.
REILLY. No. If you please, sit down, Mr. Chamberlayne.
You are not going away, so you might as well sit down.
You were going to ask a question.
EDWARD. When you came to my flat
Had you been invited by my wife as a guest
As I supposed? … Or did she send you?
REILLY. I cannot say that I had been invited;
And Mrs. Chamberlayne did not know that I was coming.
But I knew you would be there, and whom I should find with you.
EDWARD. But you had seen my wife?
REILLY. Oh yes, I had seen her.
EDWARD. So this is a trap!
REILLY. Let’s not call it a trap.
But if it is a trap, then you cannot escape from it:
And so … you might as well sit down.
I think that you will find that chair comfortable.
EDWARD. You knew,
Before I began to tell you, what had happened?
REILLY. That is so, that is so. But all in good time.
Let us dismiss that question for the moment.
Tell me first, about the difficulties
On which you want my professional opinion.
EDWARD. It’s not for me to blame you for bringing my wife back,
I suppose. You seemed to be trying to persuade me
That I was better off without her. But didn’t you realise
That I was in no state to make a decision?
REILLY. If I had not brought your wife back, Mr. Chamberlayne,
Do you suppose that things would be any better — now?
EDWARD. I don’t know, I’m sure. They could hardly be worse.
REILLY. They might be much worse. You might have ruined three lives
By your indecision. Now there are only two —
Which you still have the chance of redeeming from ruin.
EDWARD. You talk as if I was capable of action:
If I were, I should not need to consult you
Or anyone else. I came here as a patient.
If you take no interest in my case, I can go elsewhere.
REILLY. You have reason to believe that you are very ill?
EDWARD. I should have thought a doctor could see that for himself.
Or at least that he would enquire about the symptoms.
Two people advised me recently,
Almost in the same words, that I ought to see a doctor.
They said — again, in almost the same words —
That I was on the edge of a nervous breakdown.
I didn’t know it then myself — but if they saw it
I should have thought that a doctor could see it.
REILLY. ‘Nervous breakdown’ is a term I never use:
It can mean almost anything.
EDWARD. And since then, I have realised
That mine is a very unusual case.
REILLY. All cases are unique, and very similar to others.
EDWARD. Is there a sanatorium to which you send such patients
As myself, under your personal observation?
REILLY. You are very impetuous, Mr. Chamberlayne.
There are several kinds of sanatoria
For several kinds of patient. And there are also patients
For whom a sanatorium is the worst place possible.
We must first find out what is wrong with you
Before we decide what to do with you.
EDWARD. I doubt if you have ever had a case like mine:
I have ceased to believe in my own personality.
REILLY. Oh, dear yes; this is serious. A very common malady.
Very prevalent indeed.
EDWARD. I remember, in my childhood …
REILLY. I always begin from the immediate situation
And then go back as far as I find necessary.
You see, your memories of childhood —
I mean, in your present state of mind —
Would be largely fictitious; and as for your dreams,
You would produce amazing dreams, to oblige me.
I could make you dream any kind of dream I suggested,
And it would only go to flatter your vanity
With the temporary stimulus of feeling interesting.
EDWARD. But I am obsessed by the thought of my own insignificance.
REILLY. Precisely. And I could make you feel important,
And you would imagine it a marvellous cure;
And you would go on, doing such amount of mischief
As lay within your power — until you came to grief.
Half of the harm that is done in this world
Is due to people who want to feel important.
They don’t mean to do harm — but the harm does not interest them.
Or they do not see it, or they justify it
Because they are absorbed in the endless struggle
To think well of themselves.
EDWARD. If I am like that
I must have done a great deal of harm.
REILLY. Oh, not so much as you would like to think:
Only, shall we say, within your modest capacity.
Try to explain what has happened since I left you.
EDWARD. I see now why I wanted my wife to come back.
It was because of what she had made me into.
We had not been alone again for fifteen minutes
Before I felt, and still more acutely —
Indeed, acutely, perhaps, for the first time,
The whole oppression, the unreality
Of the role she had always imposed upon me
With the obstinate
, unconscious, sub-human strength
