Perhaps the most tragic figure of the day is the American President who was once a historian. In those days it became his task to tell us how, after that great war in America which was more clearly than any other war of our time a war for an idea, the conquerors, confronted with a heroic task of reconstruction, turned recreant, and spent fifteen years in abusing their victory under cover of pretending to accomplish the task they were doing what they could to make impossible. Alas! Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that men never learn anything from history. With what anguish of mind the President sees that we, the new conquerors, forgetting everything we professed to fight for, are sitting down with watering mouths to a good square meal of ten years revenge upon and humiliation of our prostrate foe, can only be guessed by those who know, as he does, how hopeless is remonstrance, and how happy Lincoln was in perishing from the earth before his inspired messages became scraps of paper. He knows well that from the Peace Conference will come, in spite of his utmost, no edict on which he will be able, like Lincoln, to invoke “the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God.”[284] He led his people to destroy the militarism of Zabern;{65} and the army they rescued is busy in Cologne imprisoning every German who does not salute a British officer; whilst the Government at home, asked whether it approves, replies that it does not propose even to discontinue this Zabernism when the Peace is concluded, but in effect looks forward to making Germans salute British officers until the end of the world. That is what war makes of men and women. It will wear off; and the worst it threatens is already proving impracticable ; but before the humble and contrite heart[285] ceases to be despised, the President and I, being of the same age, will be dotards. In the meantime there is, for him, another history to write; for me, another comedy to stage. Perhaps, after all, that is what wars are for, and what historians and playwrights are for. If men will not learn until their lessons are written in blood, why, blood they must have, their own for preference.
THE EPHEMERAL THRONES AND THE ETERNAL THEATRE
To the theatre it will not matter. Whatever Bastilles fall, the theatre will stand. Apostolic Hapsburg has collapsed; All Highest Hohenzollern languishes in Holland, threatened with trial on a capital charge of fighting for his country against England; Imperial Romanoff, said to have perished miserably by a more summary method of murder, is perhaps alive or perhaps dead: nobody cares more than if he had been a peasant; the lord of Hellas is level with his lackeys in republican Switzerland; Prime Ministers and Commanders-in-Chief have passed from a brief glory as Solons and Caesars into failure and obscurity{66} as closely on one another’s heels as the descendants of Banquo;[286] but Euripides and Aristophanes, Shakespeare and Moliere, Goethe and Ibsen remain fixed in their everlasting seats.
HOW WAR MUZZLES THE DRAMATIC POET
As for myself, why, it may be asked, did I not write two plays about the war instead of two pamphlets on it? The answer is significant. You cannot make war on war and on your neighbor at the same time. War cannot bear the terrible castigation of comedy, the ruthless light of laughter that glares on the stage. When men are heroically dying for their country, it is not the time to show their lovers and wives and fathers and mothers how they are being sacrificed to the blunders of boobies, the cupidity of capitalists, the ambition of conquerors, the electioneering of demagogues, the Pharisaism of patriots, the lusts and lies and rancors and blood-thirsts that love war because it opens their prison doors, and sets them in the thrones of power and popularity. For unless these things are mercilessly exposed they will hide under the mantle of the ideals on the stage just as they do in real life.
And though there may be better things to reveal, it may not, and indeed cannot, be militarily expedient to reveal them whilst the issue is still in the balance. Truth telling is not compatible with the defence of the realm. We are just now reading the revelations of our generals and admirals, unmuzzled at last by the armistice. During the war, General A, in his moving despatches from the field, told how General B had covered himself with deathless glory in such and such a battle. He now tells us that General B came within an ace of losing us the war by disobeying his orders on that occasion, and fighting instead of running away as he ought to have done. An excellent subject for comedy now that the war is over, no doubt; but if General A had let this out at the time, what would have been the effect on General B’s soldiers? And had the stage made known what the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for War who overruled General A thought of him, and what he thought of them, as now revealed in raging controversy, what would have been the effect on the nation? That is why comedy, though sorely tempted, had to be loyally silent; for the art of the dramatic poet knows no patriotism; recognizes no obligation but truth to natural history; cares not whether Germany or England perish; is ready to cry with Brynhild, “Lass‘uns verderben, lachend zu grunde geh’n”{67} sooner than deceive or be deceived; and thus becomes in time of war a greater military danger than poison, steel, or trinitrotoluene.[287] That is why I had to withhold Heartbreak House from the footlights during the war; for the Germans might on any night have turned the last act from play into earnest, and even then might not have waited for their cues.{68}
June, 1919.
ACT I
The hilly country in the middle of the north edge of Sussex, looking very pleasant on a fine evening at the end of September, is seen through the windows of a room which has been built so as to resemble the after part of an old-fashioned high-pooped ship with a stern gallery; [288] for the windows are ship built with heavy timbering, and run right across the room as continuously as the stability of the wall allows. A row of lockers under the windows provides an unupholstered window-seat interrupted by twin glass doors, respectively half-way between the stern post and the sides. Another door strains the illusion a little by being apparently in the ship’s port side, and yet leading, not to the open sea, but to the entrance hall of the house. Between this door and the stern gallery are bookshelves. There are electric light switches beside the door leading to the hall and the glass doors in the stern gallery. Against the starboard wall is a carpenter’s bench. The vice has a board in its jaws; and the floor is littered with shavings, over-flowing from a waste-paper basket. A couple of planes and a centrebit [289] are on the bench. In the same wall, between the bench and the windows, is a narrow doorway with a half door, above which a glimpse of the room beyond shows that it is a shelved pantry with bottles and kitchen crockery.
On the starboard side, but close to the middle, is a plain oak drawing-table with drawing-board, T-square, straight-edges, set squares, [290] mathematical instruments, saucers of water color, a tumbler of discolored water, Indian ink, pencils, and brushes on it. The drawing-board is set so that the draughtsman’s chair has the window on its left hand. On the floor at the end of the table, on his right, is a ship’s fire bucket. On the port side of the room, near the bookshelves, is a sofa with its back to the windows. It is a sturdy mahogany article, oddly upholstered in sailcloth, including the bolster, with a couple of blankets hanging over the back. Between the sofa and the drawing-table is a big wicker chair, with broad arms and a low sloping back, with its back to the light. A small but stout table of teak, with a round top and gate legs, [291] stands against the port wall between the door and the bookcase. It is the only article in the room that suggests (not at all convincingly) a woman’s hand in the furnishing. The uncarpeted floor of narrow boards is caulked and holystoned [292] like a deck.
The garden to which the glass doors lead dips to the south before the landscape rises again to the hills. Emerging from the hollow is the cupola of an observatory. Between the observatory and the house is a flagstaff on a little esplanade, with a hammock on the east side and a long garden seat on the west.
A young lady, gloved and hatted, with a dust coat on, is sitting in the window-seat with her body twisted to enable her to look out of the view. One hand props her chin: the other hangs down with a volume of the
Temple Shakespeare [293] in it, and herfinger stuck in the page she has been reading.
A clock strikes six.
The young lady turns and looks at her watch. She rises with an air of one who waits and is almost at the end of her patience. She is a pretty girl, slender, fair, and intelligent looking, nicely but not expensively dressed, evidently not a smart idler.
With a sigh of weary resignation she comes to the draughtsman’s chair; sits down; and begins to read Shakespeare. Presently the book sinks to her lap; her eyes close; and she dozes into a slumber.
An elderly womanservant comes in from the hall with three unopened bottles of rum on a tray. She passes through and disappears in the pantry without noticing the young lady. She places the bottles on the shelf and fills her tray with empty bottles. As she returns with these, the young lady lets her book drop, awakening herself, and startling the womanservant so that she all but lets the tray fall.
THE WOMANSERVANT God bless us! [The young lady picks up the book and places it on the table.] Sorry to wake you, miss, I’m sure; but you are a stranger to me. What might you be waiting here for now?
THE YOUNG LADY Waiting for somebody to show some signs of knowing that I have been invited here.
THE WOMANSERVANT Oh, you’re invited, are you? And has nobody come? Dear! dear!
THE YOUNG LADY A wild-looking old gentleman came and looked in at the window; and I heard him calling out, “Nurse, there is a young and attractive female waiting in the poop. Go and see what she wants.” Are you the nurse?
THE WOMANSERVANT Yes, miss: I’m Nurse Guinness. That was old Captain Shotover, Mrs Hushabye’s father. I heard him roaring; but I thought it was for something else. I suppose it was Mrs Hushabye that invited you, ducky?
THE YOUNG LADY I understood her to do so. But really I think I’d better go.
NURSE GUINNESS Oh, don’t think of such a thing, miss. If Mrs Hushabye has forgotten all about it, it will be a pleasant surprise for her to see you, won’t it?
THE YOUNG LADY It has been a very unpleasant surprise to me to find that nobody expects me.{69}
NURSE GUINNESS You’ll get used to it, miss: this house is full of surprises for them that don’t know our ways.
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [looking in from the hall suddenly: an ancient but still hardy man with an immense white beard, in a reefer jacket [294] with a whistle hanging from his neck] Nurse, there is a hold-all and a handbag on the front steps for everybody to fall over. Also a tennis racquet. Who the devil left them there?
THE YOUNG LADY They are mine, I’m afraid.
THE CAPTAIN [advancing to the drawing -table] Nurse, who is this misguided and unfortunate young lady?
NURSE GUINNESS She says Miss Hessy invited her, sir.
THE CAPTAIN And had she no friend, no parents, to warn her against my daughter’s invitations? This is a pretty sort of house, by heavens! A young and attractive lady is invited here. Her luggage is left on the steps for hours; and she herself is deposited in the poop and abandoned, tired and starving. This is our hospitality. These are our manners. No room ready. No hot water. No welcoming hostess. Our visitor is to sleep in the toolshed, and to wash in the duckpond.
NURSE GUINNESS Now it’s all right, Captain: I’ll get the lady some tea; and her room shall be ready before she has finished ished it. [To the young lady.] Take off your hat, ducky; and make yourself at home [she goes to the door leading to the hall].
THE CAPTAIN [as she passes him] Ducky! Do you suppose, woman, that because this young lady has been insulted and neglected, you have the right to address her as you address my wretched children, whom you have brought up in ignorance of the commonest decencies of social intercourse?
NURSE GUINNESS Never mind him, doty.[295] [Quite unconcerned, she goes out into the hall on her way to the kitchen.]
THE CAPTAIN Madam, will you favor me with your name? [He sits down in the big wicker chair.]
THE YOUNG LADY My name is Ellie Dunn.
THE CAPTAIN Dunn! I had a boatswain whose name was Dunn. He was originally a pirate in China. He set up as a ship’s chandler[296] with stores which I have every reason to believe he stole from me. No doubt he became rich. Are you his daughter?
ELLIE [indignant] No, certainly not. I am proud to be able to say that though my father has not been a successful man, nobody has ever had one word to say against him. I think my father is the best man I have ever known.
THE CAPTAIN He must be greatly changed. Has he attained the seventh degree of concentration?
ELLIE I don’t understand.
THE CAPTAIN But how could he, with a daughter? I, madam, have two daughters. One of them is Hesione Hushabye, who invited you here. I keep this house: she upsets it. I desire to attain the seventh degree of concentration: she invites visitors and leaves me to entertain them. [NURSE GUINNESS returns with the tea-tray, which she places on the teak table.] I have a second daughter who is, thank God, in a remote part of the Empire with her numskull of a husband. As a child she thought the figure-head of my ship, the Dauntless, the most beautiful thing on earth. He resembled it. He had the same expression: wooden yet enterprising. She married him, and will never set foot in this house again.
NURSE GUINNESS [carrying the table, with the tea-things on it, to ELLIE’s side] Indeed you never were more mistaken. She is in England this very moment. You have been told three times this week that she is coming home for a year for her health. And very glad you should be to see your own daughter again after all these years.
THE CAPTAIN I am not glad. The natural term of the affection of the human animal for its offspring is six years. My daughter Ariadne was born when I was forty-six. I am now eighty-eight. If she comes, I am not at home. If she wants anything, let her take it. If she asks for me, let her be informed that I am extremely old, and have totally forgotten her.
NURSE GUINNESS That’s no talk to offer to a young lady. Here, ducky, have some tea; and don’t listen to him [she pours out a cup of tea].
THE CAPTAIN [rising wrathfully] Now before high heaven they have given this innocent child Indian tea: the stuff they tan their own leather insides with. [He seizes the cup and the tea-pot and empties both into the leathern bucket.]
ELLIE [almost in tears] Oh, please! I am so tired. I should have been glad of anything.
NURSE GUINNESS Oh, what a thing to do! The poor lamb is ready to drop.
THE CAPTAIN You shall have some of my tea. Do not touch that fly-blown[297] cake: nobody eats it here except the dogs. [He disappears into the pantry.]
NURSE GUINNESS There’s a man for you! They say he sold himself to the devil in Zanzibar before he was a captain; and the older he grows the more I believe them.
A WOMAN’ S VOICE [in the hall] Is anyone at home? Hesione! Nurse! Papa! Do come, somebody; and take in my luggage. Thumping heard, as of an umbrella, on the wainscot.
NURSE GUINNESS My gracious! It’s Miss Addy, Lady Utterword, Mrs Hushabye’s sister: the one I told the captain about. [Calling.] Coming, Miss, coming.
She carries the table back to its place by the door and is hurrying out when she is intercepted by LADY UTTERWORD, who bursts in much flustered. LADY UTTERWORD, a blonde, is very handsome, very well dressed, and so precipitate in speech and action that the first impression (erroneous) is one of comic silliness.
LADY UTTERWORD Oh, is that you, Nurse? How are you? You don’t look a day older. Is nobody at home? Where is Hesione? Doesn’t she expect me? Where are the servants? Whose luggage is that on the steps? Where’s papa? Is everybody asleep? [Seeing ELLIE.]Oh! I beg your pardon. I suppose you are one of my nieces. [Approaching her with outstretched arms.] Come and kiss your aunt, darling.
ELLIE I’m only a visitor. It is my luggage on the steps.
Pygmalion and Three Other Plays Page 51
